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3554 items in total found

Working Papers | 2016

Is Conspicuous Consumption of Business Leaders Justified and Morally Defensible?

Shaheen Borna and Dheeraj Sharma

In this paper, we first discuss the concept of conspicuous consumption of the business leaders. Next, we argue that the conspicuous consumption of corporate leaders can be justified from economics, marketing, and philosophical perspectives. Further, we present a religious perspective in order to provide a contrasting view of morality of conspicuous consumption. Lastly, we discuss the societal implications of the conspicuous consumption of business leaders. The study uses conceptual approach to justify the Conspicuous Consumption of Business Leaders. The study draws some useful managerial implications about the ethicality of how people perceive about the actions performed by business leaders from ancient examples and theories.

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Working Papers | 2016

Meta-Analysis for Online Retail Performance

Ankur Kapoor and Dheeraj Sharma

With continuous rise of business value and importance of online retail business (e-commerce), academic research has not been far behind to understand this recent market phenomenon. This has led to numerous studies exploring several antecedents, consequences, and models; but without any consolidated framework to unambiguously guide researchers and practitioners. This meta-analysis, by combining and synthesizing research of past two decades, attempts to identify key constructs (which have been, so far, defined in multiple ways in different researches) that explain the details of online retail performance in more coherent manner. The authors attempt to synthesize a diverse set of 26 studies by analysing 203 correlations between different antecedents and consequences related to online retail performance. We hope that this should resolve some existing ambiguities of conflicting research findings, help identify relatively more important factors influencing online retail and provide a concise framework to researchers and practitioners to further build upon in coming times. Lastly, implications of findings and directions for future research are discussed.

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Working Papers | 2016

Consumers' Expectations of Sales Events: How satisfied are consumer with shopping during sales events?

Shaheen Borna and Dheeraj Sharma

Past researchers have examined the influence of sales events on multitude of variables. However, there is no study which specifically examines the influence of sales events on consumer participation in sales events and their expectations from the sales events. In this study, we examine the relationship between consumers' participation in a given sales event and their expectations of savings from that event in North American context. Research findings indicate that only 11 sales events have a high realization rate of expected savings. Based on research findings, we proffer several recommendations for the retail managers.

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Working Papers | 2016

Antecedents and consequences of Brand Equity: A meta-analysis

Arpita Pandey and Dheeraj Sharma

Brand equity provides the firms, a competitive, financial and strategic advantage over other firms in the market. Over the past few decades, brand equity has received increasing attention from various domains. However a great deal of variance exists in extant literature regarding the antecedents and consequences of brand equity and their relationships. This study attempts to bring clarity to this framework through the meta-analysis of a set of 37 studies that investigate antecedents and consequences of brand equity by empirically analyzing 139 correlations between the various antecedents and consequences. The authors attempt to develop a framework of antecedents and consequences of brand equity that explains their relationships and strength of impact of these antecedents on the consequences. The findings suggest that Brand associations and perceived quality, Brand loyalty and Relational equity have maximum impact on the brand equity and subsequently on the consumer brand preference, perceived value and purchase intention

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Working Papers | 2016

Executive Stock Options: Will It Work as a Good Governance Mechanism in all Scenarios?

Preet Deep Singh and Chitra Singla

Agency theory proposes different mechanisms to mitigate agency costs in the firms. An executive stock options (ESoPs) is one of such mechanism, which is given to the CEO of the firm to align CEO's goals with that of the owners. In this paper, we contend that ESoPs will not work as a good governance or mitigation mechanism in all types of firms. ESoPs can be an effective mitigation mechanism for a firm with dispersed ownership but it might not be the case for a firm with majority or block shareholding. We extend this argument for ESoPs given to board members as well. We present a framework to understand when it makes sense for a firm to incentivise top management with ESoPs.

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Working Papers | 2016

Dedicated High Speed Rail Network in India: Issues in Development

G. Raghuram and Prashanth D. Udayakumar

India and Japan have signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a high speed rail (HSR) network costing INR 976.36 billion, between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. As of now, the top speed in India is 150 kmph, and that too for a few special trains in limited segments of their run. The Ministry of Railways first proposed HSR in 2007-08 and have conducted pre-feasibility studies on various routes in the country.
While documenting the progress of proposed HSR routes for India, the paper also draws lessons from international HSR experience in Europe and Asia. For the development of HSR network in India, there are a variety of issues. This paper examines issues with regards to route fixation, choice of technology partner and need for standards, location of stations, choice of grade level, choice of gauge and interoperability of trains beyond core networks, and pricing, revenues and funding.

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Working Papers | 2016

Understanding Coefficient Alpha: Assumptions and Interpretations

Dheeraj Sharma

A procedure is developed for determining appropriate levels of scale reliability by examining coefficient alpha in conjunction with the standardized regression coefficient for each variable. Present study aims to examine the effect of addition and deletion of items on coefficient alpha. Also, necessary assumptions for appropriate interpretation of coefficient alpha are examined. Present research suggests that deleting scale items to increase coefficient alpha may result in an under specification of the construct the scale attempts to measure. Furthermore, this research offers prescriptive and descriptive insights for appropriate use of coefficient alpha.

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Working Papers | 2016

A THEORY OF TAX EVASION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Errol D'Souza

The literature on tax evasion assumes that taxpayers wish to evade their taxes entirely and the only reason they do not do so is that there is some non-zero probability of being caught by the government. Also, it is assumed that government uses the taxes and fines from caught evaders on goods that it consumes which produce no utility to taxpayer-citizens. In a developing country, however, we argue that taxpayers use tax evasion to compensate for imperfect financial markets as well as government expenditure patterns that do not benefit them. We demonstrate that imperfect financial markets result in situations where when individuals find the chance of earning high returns from investments, it causes them to overcome their aversion to risk and participate in actuarially unfair tax evasion gambles. Also, tax evasion increases when either public goods are underprovided, or the government is sufficiently predatory , or the government directs policies at groups that the taxpayer is not a member of. In such a situation tax evasion is viewed by the taxpayer as a means of shifting the allocation of his income in favor of investments and away from government expenditure policies that give little benefit to him.

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Working Papers | 2016

Impact of Independent Directors' Resignations on Firm's Governance

Preet Deep Singh and Chitra Singla

Directors are liable for any act of omission or commission. They have a reputation to protect. While Independent directors might engage in passive monitoring; when apprised of a decision where the probability of detection of negligence is higher, they might prefer to abandon ship rather than suffer consequences. Under such circumstances, directors' resignations could lead to some consequences on firm's governance. We test this using a sample of more than 2300 resignations during 2006-2014 from firms listed on National Stock Exchange, India. We specifically identify clustered resignations, i.e., when 2 or more people leave the board within the same year for company-specific reasons and see its association with earnings management in the following year.

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Working Papers | 2016

Impact of Board and CEO characteristics on Firms' Performance

Chitra Singla

Corporate governance characteristics like board composition and leadership impact a firm's performance. Researchers have attempted to explain the relationship using different theoretical perspectives like agency theory, resource dependence theory, and stewardship theory. However, the literature presents ambiguous results where some empirical findings support negative impact and other support positive impact. In this paper, we argue that ambiguity in results could be due to the context specificity of the nature of this relationship. In some contexts, agency theory might be more valid than other theories and in others stewardship theory or resource dependence theory might be more valid. Building on this context specificity, we look at the relationship between board and CEO characteristics on firm's performance in a longitudinal sample of Indian firms. Our findings suggest that none of the above mentioned theories are completely valid in the India context because we get mixed support for these theories. This calls for a mid-range theory to explain the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and firm's performance.

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