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Working Papers | 2005

Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to Investigate Patterns in Marketing Channels and International Marketing Strategies

Prathap Oburai and Kok Wai Chew

Changed agenda and paradigms require marketing's research methods and tools of enquiry to reflect fully the need to intensify theory-building programmes. We examine the evolution of the case research strategy in the context of business markets and inter-organisational relations, and submit that there is marked convergence of its underlying methodological and philosophical perspectives. Given that marrying qualitative and quantitative is a strategy endorsed by several eminent researchers, we apply mixed method approach to studying two significant phenomena viz. marketing channels and international marketing strategies. We adopt a mix of case research, grounded theoretic research methodologies and multivariate multidimensional mapping techniques for exploring both the subject areas. The first study offers a classification scheme for grouping marketing channels observed across thirteen industries into five homogenous clusters. The second study investigates the international marketing strategies adopted in twelve different business sectors in India. This study identifies several elements of international marketing strategies that may have the potential to affect business outcomes across sectors. In this paper, a case is made to promote the use of innovative and novel combinations of research methodologies to derive new insights of business phenomena.

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Working Papers | 2005

Determinants of Cellular Competition in Asia

Chakravarty Sujoy

Using data from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Database I explore the market for the provision of cellular services in Asia. This study looks at the diffusion of mobile technologies and mobile tariffs over the last decade. It compares the degree of competition, regulation and its effects in Asia with mobile markets in developed countries. It also analyses a 29 country 10 year panel data set in order to study the determinants of mobile penetration in Asia. The results indicate that competition has played a major role in increasing the diffusion of cell phones. The presence of an independent telecommunication regulator as well as increasing capacity of fixed line telephone exchanges has also positively affected the diffusion of mobile services. The last part of the study takes a brief look at the cellular market in India, where mobile service provision has seen startling growth in the last decade. This growth has made for falling tariffs, increase in the number of firms and technologies and a large subscriber base which is still growing at a significant rate. The structure of competition is explored in some detail for regional markets using monthly data from 1997 to 2004.

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Working Papers | 2005

Conditions in Which Microfinance has Emerged in Certain Regions and Consequent Policy Implications

Sriram M S and Kumar Radha

The paper looks at some macro data on the availability of infrastructure, economic growth, density of population and the availability of formal financial services to examine if any of these factors explain the growth of microfinance in certain regions, while the other regions lag behind. For the study, data from the four southern states and three states from the western part of the country have been examined. We find that most of the indicators are not significant enough to explain the regional disparity in the growth of microfinance. However, anecdotal evidence and a perusal of the state policy pronouncements explain that the role of the state could be significant in promoting some of these initiatives. In case of Karnataka, we also find that the banking system seems to have played an additional role in rolling out microfinancial services. The paper concludes by indicating that possibly the sector is still insignificant in the rural economy to establish causality with macro variables. However, there could be possibility of growth in states like Rajasthan where most of the parameters that could foster microfinance seem to exist and with policy intervention on the routing of developmental projects, the movement could get a big boost. We also indicate that the existing network has the potential of unleashing more finance and financial products, and that initiative should be seized forthwith.

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Working Papers | 2005

Women and Formal and Informal Science

Anil K. Gupta and Mashelkar R A

Gender imbalance among various streams of professionals is a constant cause of concern to policy planners and institution builders. The situation becomes more serious when we notice that girls often perform much better academically at secondary school level and then there is a sharp decline in their performance at graduate and postgraduate levels. The situation in the field of science and technology is no less serious. There are very few scientific institutions, which have women scientists as directors, or senior leaders of programmes. In this paper, we compare our insights from the formal scientific sector with our investigations in informal scientific sector. The effort to blend excellence in formal and informal scientific sectors would require overcoming the gender imbalances in both these sectors. A review of the current status and offer of some policy and institutional suggestions are also included, which could help in overcoming asymmetry in the knowledge and power of women in formal and informal sciences.

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Working Papers | 2005

How Close Can You Get - The Effect of Proxemics on LMX

Rai Himanshu and Vaibhavi Kulkarni

The study of how human use space to communicate is termed as Proxemics. In an organizational setting, this behavior has been found to be culturally conditioned and thus may differentially affect the degree of mutual influence and obligation between superiors and subordinates. The hypothesis that differential informal interactional levels and dining arrangements would have different effects on the perceptions of leader-member exchange quality was tested with a sample of employees (N=142) from organizations across India. We have discussed the results and their implications in the present study.

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Working Papers | 2005

Revisiting Appraisal Politics from Assessors' Perspective

Dhiman Amit and Manjari Singh

Past research on performance appraisal focusing on assessor's ability to assess accurately has not made much progress because practitioners have not adopted most of the recommendations. One of the arguments has been that enhancing assessor's ability to is useless unless s/he intends to appraise accurately. The focus of this paper is to understand assessor's intention to appraise performance and it draws from political view of organisation, which considers assessor as a politician and proposes that certain contextual factors cause assessor's to adopt goals other than accuracy. Specifically, it is proposed that, instrumentality of outcomes, ambiguity in the process/ policies, and accountability pressures shape the assessor's perception of appraisal politics, which determine assessor's intention to achieve specific goals through appraisal. Accountability research reveals that only specific accountability conditions have favourable affect on decision. While procedural accountability reduces assessor's perception of appraisal politics, the outcome accountability will increase this perception and affect appraisal accuracy.

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Working Papers | 2005

Mediating Effects in the Relationship between 360-Degree Feedback and Employee Performance

Rai Himanshu and Manjari Singh

360-degree feedback has been linked to several positive outcomes like improved performance, better interpersonal communication, smoother work relationships, etc. The paper empirically examines the mediating effects in the relationship between 360-degree feedback and employee performance with a sample of executives (N=198) working in four organisations in Western India. The results show that interpersonal communication and quality of working life have a complete mediating effect. Leader member exchange quality and perceived organisational support were found to have a partial but significant mediating effect. An elementary form of an integrated model, which includes all the four mediating variables and their inter-relationships, has been developed conceptually. This model is examined and built up empirically using structural equation modelling.

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Working Papers | 2005

Organizational Citizenship Performance in Non-Governmental Organizations: Development of a Scale

Kumar Rajiv

Past two decades have seen increasing research in the broad area of beneficial non-task employee behaviors. Several concepts have been proposed to capture such behaviors, like organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), prosocial behavior, organizational spontaneity, extra-role behavior, contextual performance, etc. But "contextual performance" (labeled here as organizational citizenship performance, meaning behaviors that support the organizational, social and psychological environment in which the technical core, i.e., task performance, must function) has emerged as the best specified concept (Organ, 1997). Despite the emphasis by scholars on the twin needs of construct validity and developing culture-specific measures for concepts like OCB, progress is lacking in this direction. This study aims to fill this gap. The research design involved three broad stages: item generation, scale development and assessment of scale's psychometric properties (reliability and validity). Fulltime and paid employees of several NGOs participated in data collection. The emerging scale shows satisfactory psychometric properties. It is expected that this scale would be useful for research as well as practice. Besides bridging the research gaps mentioned above, NGOs can use it to measure organizational citizenship performance. With some modifications, this scale is expected to be useful for other Indian organizations as well.

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Working Papers | 2005

Career Drivers of New-age Employees: Implications for Organisational Reward and Employee Development Systems

Manjari Singh

The paper conceptualises the linkages among individual career drivers, psychological contracts, and organisational reward and employee development systems. The model also incorporates employee reward preferences and skill-acquisition drivers. The career drivers, reward preferences, and skill-acquisition drivers of 104 software professionals in India were empirically examined. Our findings indicate that organisational reward and employee development systems need to be linked to employees' expectations that are based on their career aspirations and preferences, and also that these systems need to have the flexibility to incorporate employee diversity.

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Working Papers | 2005

Expanding Financial Services Access for the Poor: The Transformation of SPANDANA

Sriram M S

The paper traces the evolution of Spandana group of institutions. At the outset we explore the background of Spandana, the motivation for the promoters to set up the organisation and how it has aggressively grown from the time it was set up. The organisation reached a stage where transformation became inevitable and this change happened in a very quick time. As a part of the study, we examine the unique issues arising out of fund movement (in the form of debt or equity) between an organisation incorporated for public purposes and a for-profit entity that would generate profits to the shareholders. The paper examines how these two seemingly contradictory aspects could be reconciled. The structural options available and how they jell with the orientation of the promoters are examined. We examine how the organisation has experimented with various options in carrying out its financial services and trading activities. We conclude that while the current legal environment did place some constraints on how the organisation's design got determined, there were issues about the quality of governance available to the organisation during its initial years. Spandana demonstrates that there is a huge potential for many MFIs to operate both in the urban and rural space. The fact that it could garner a portfolio of Rs. 2.4 billion in a fairly limited area and time demonstrates the size of the potential market that could be served by microfinance. In undertaking activities at such scale, any organisation would face hurdles. This paper looks at the hurdles caused by the regulatory regime that forces organisations to take fairly circuitous routes to achieve obvious results in the organisational form. It also deals with the other services that were being offered by Spandana and how these had to be dropped due to regulatory requirements. The study concludes by drawing important lessons, raising further issues for regulation by bringing out the peculiar circumstances in which Spandana and similar organisations are working.

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