bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Implementation of VRS in India
Authors: Maheshwari Sunil Kumar , Kulkarni Vilas
Published: June 2019

In today's Indian business environment, inter-organization rivalry has become intense. Most of the organizations in the erstwhile protected business environment had focused on production volumes, not necessarily on productivity. Consequently, they often got overstaffed as they tried to neutralize the adverse impact of absenteeism and unionization on production volumes by hiring new staff. Organizations are now exposed to the inevitability of improving productivity in order to survive in the competitive environment. Many of them have taken recourse to Voluntary Retirement Schemes (VRS) to reduce the employee strength. This paper examines different types of VRS offered by organizations in the year 1999–2000 in India. It also examines the effect of VRS on the profitability of these organizations.

The authors adopted two approaches to the study. In the first phase, they collected the details of VRS that were announced by organizations in India in the year 1999–2000 and examined the performance implications of these schemes after a time lag of two years. They gathered 30 such responses in total and did a content analysis of these schemes.

In the second phase of the study, the authors met managers in four organizations which were selected based on their willingness to discuss about the schemes. Having discussed with the managers, the employees, and the union leaders in these organizations, they developed detailed cases. These cases provided an insight about various qualitative issues relating to VRS. The discussion with managers in the companies showed that managers spent substantial time to decide the following characteristics of VRS: duration of VRS eligibility for VRS discretions with managers compensation

The authors considered PAT⁄Total assets as a measure of success of implementation of VRS as, conceptually, VRS should result in improvement in PAT owing to reduction in labour expenses. Further, in the gap of two years after VRS, there would be no expenditure on scheme-related payments as in the first year. It should inflate the change in PAT. Hence, lack of gain in PAT⁄Total assets would be a clear signal of decline of financial performance of the organization in the post-VRS phase.

The study reveals that: There is no fixed pattern of VRS among organizations and even the implementation of VRS differs significantly between organizations. The design of schemes that target older employees and remain conservative to work out compensation to employees should be encouraged. The schemes that are kept open for appropriate period of time seem to be more effective. The success of VRS significantly depends on how the scheme is implemented and the perception of the persons opting for VRS and the survivors. Factors contributing to the success of VRS are effective communication, building trust among employees about procedural justice, and involvement of multiple stakeholders.
Operating Performance of the Firms Issuing Equity through Rights Offer
Authors: Lukose P J Jijo , Rao S Narayan
Published: June 2019

Rights equity issue is one of the most common methods for subsequent equity issue in the Indian market. In rights offer, current shareholders are given short-term warrants on a pro-rata basis with the option to either purchase the new shares or sell the warrants in the market before expiration. Rights equity issue can be a potential solution to the adverse selection problem associated with capital issue and has comparatively low direct costs. In this paper, the authors analyse the operating performance of the BSE- listed manufacturing firms following rights equity issue and their linkages with firm-specific characteristics as hypothesized in the finance theory. They have selected 392 rights equity issues during the period 1991-2000 and used a methodology robust to the mean-reverting nature of accounting income. Consistent with empirical results for seasoned equity offerings in the US market, there is a statistically significant decline in the operating performance after the rights equity issue. This decline in performance is more severe for big firms, low market-to-book value firms, and firms with lower directors' holdings. Interestingly, foreign companies and companies belonging to small business groups do not show any declining trend. The authors find that the decline in perform- ance is due to the inefficiency in utilization of assets and not due to decrease in profit margins. Further, various proxies measuring market valuation also decline during the post-issue period after a run up in the pre-issue period. The results of the study suggest that over-investment hypothesis and agency models can better explain the decline in performance compared to asymmetric information hypothesis. The results also indicate that rights equity issues are not simple de-leveraging decisions. These findings have implications for several groups of capital market participants and the authors conclude with specific guidelines for them which are as follows: The investing public and analyst who are too optimistic about the issuers should consider deteriorating performance while arriving at the valuations. Investors should be vigilant about the ‘empire building’ implications of increased investments through rights issue. Optimistic managers should reassess the investment opportunities and have con-servative plans before approaching the market. The policy makers and regulators should come out with better regulatory framework to control and penalize the opportunistic managers.
From a Manager to a Leader: Bridging a Gulf or Jumping a Chasm?
Authors: Manikutty S
Published: June 2019

This paper argues that the transition from being a manager to becoming a leader is more like jumping a chasm than walking smoothly on a bridge over a gulf. Traditional methods of management education, training, and mentoring are not likely to be very helpful in making this transition because they fail to recognize that leadership involves fundamentally different processes as compared to managing and hence leaders cannot be developed by more liberal doses of traditional management inputs. This paper identifies five dimensions for the transition from a manager to a leader: From a manager of ‘facts’ and ‘data’ to a manager of emotions: Leadership has less to do with cold analysis of hard facts and more with managing the emotions that exist among people in the organization. From a manager of emotions to a generator of emotions: ‘Managing’ the emotions is not enough; generating the right kind of emotions is also essential. People must be inspired by the goals and must seek fulfillment in attaining them. Emotions such as loyalty and passion for a cause are to be generated. From a follower of standards to a setter of standards: Leaders do not follow standards; they set their own standards often at variance with prevailing and accepted views. It is this characteristic that sets leaders apart from run-of-the-mill managers. From a realist to a dreamer: Leaders are not necessarily realists they are great dreamers. Great dreams, they know, are what inspire people. These may or may not be ‘practical’ dreams, but, often, the leaders are governed less by the practicality of the dreams than by the fact that they are worth pursuing. From an optimizer to a compromiser: Leaders do not try to optimize for they know that such solutions exist only in books. They are constantly driven by the need to compromise, to make the best of a situation, and pry open loose bricks to gain entry into their world of dreams. They are also very keen on making sure that their compromises do not dilute the basic objectives and become a sell-out.

These are shown to be major transitions involving development of new skills and schemas. Making the transition involves three steps: Knowing oneself, i.e., one's strong as well as weak points, potential, and capabilities. Becoming oneself, i.e., shedding the masks worn so long that the person has forgotten what his true face is like. One has to again become oneself. Deciding what to become in future and mo1ing towards it : This is essentially a process of self-development of gathering of new perspectives, fresh interpretation of facts, reflection, and developing a fresh worldview that is all one's own. Nietzsche's poser, ‘This is my way, what is yours?’ captures the essence of this transformation. Self-development is a vital ingredient of leadership; leaders have to find their own paths to their goals.
Managing Core Competence of the Organization
Authors: Srivastava Shirish C
Published: June 2019

Past studies on ‘core competence’ have deliberated either on the theoretical concept of core competence or its usefulness as a strategic tool for firms. In spite of a large number of papers on the subject, to the author's knowledge, there has been no study which spells out an actionable framework for leveraging the concept of core competence in creating competitive advantage for organizations. This perceptible gap in strategy literature is the prime motivation for this study. In this paper, the author views core competence as a ‘dynamic learned resource’ which is subject to continuous metamorphosis with changes in internal and external environment. The proposed ‘critical competence’ framework integrates the various studies on core competence and puts forth an all-encompassing practicable methodology to be utilized by firms for sustained success. Critical competence is the ability of a firm to successfully identify, nurture, develop, upgrade, and deploy its hierarchy of competencies to attain sustainable competitive advantage. In the process of proposing and explaining the framework for critical competence, this paper makes four major contributions: First, it provides a consolidated and comprehensive literature review on the subject of core competence which can be used by academics for future studies on the subject. Second, the proposed framework for critical competence shows that the possession of meta/core competencies will in itself not result in competitive advantage; rather, it is important to understand how these competencies are utilized for adding value to the firm. Third, the proposed critical competence framework serves as a tool for analysing the past success/failure and also serves as a guide for charting out the future strategy of firms. Fourth, through the example of Indian Railways, the paper illustrates the ‘descriptive capability’ of the proposed critical competence framework.

The proposed framework helps us conclude that competencies in an organization need to be continuously nurtured, developed, and also abandoned. Critical competence emerges as a universal competence which is at the highest level in the hierarchy of competencies and is a prerequisite for attaining sustainable competitive advantage.
Information Asymmetry and Trust: A Framework for Studying Microfinance in India
Authors: Sriram M S
Published: June 2019

In recent times, microfinance has emerged as a major innovation in the rural financial marketplace. Microfinance largely addresses the issue of access to financial services. In trying to understand the innovation of microfinance and how it has proved to be effective, the author looks at certain design features of microfinance. He first starts by identifying the need for financial service institutions which is basically to bridge the gap between the need for financial services across time, geographies, and risk profiles. In providing services that bridge this gap, formal institutions have limited access to authentic information both in terms of transaction history and expected behaviour and, therefore, resort to seeking excessive information thereby adding to the transaction costs.

The innovation in microfinance has been largely to bridge this gap through a series of trustbased surrogates that take the transaction-related risks to the people who have the information — the community through measures of social collateral. In this paper, the author attempts to examine the trajectory of institutional intermediation in the rural areas, particularly with the poor and how it has evolved over a period of time. It identifies a systematic breach of trust as one of the major problems with the institutional interventions in the area of providing financial services to the poor and argues that microfinance uses trust as an effective mechanism to address one of the issues of imperfect information in financial transactions. The paper also distinguishes between the different models of microfinance and identifies which of these models use trust in a positivist frame and as a coercive mechanism.

The specific objectives of the paper are to: Superimpose the role of trust in various types of exchanges and see how it impacts the effectiveness of repeated transactions. While greater access to information fosters trust and thus helps social networks to reduce transaction costs, there could be limits to which exchanges could solely depend on networks and trust. Look at the frontiers where mutual trust cannot work as a surrogate for lower appraisal costs. Use an example in the Canadian context and see how an entity that started on the basis of social networks and trust had to morph into using the techniques used by other formal nonneighbourhood institutions as it grew in size and went beyond a threshold. Using the Canadian example, the author argues that as the transactions get sophisticated, it is possible to achieve what informal networks have achieved through the creative use of information technology.

While we find that the role of trust both in the positivist and the coercive frame does provide some interesting insights into how exchanges with the poor could be managed, there still could be breaches in the assumptions. This paper identifies the conditions under which the breaches could possibly happen and also speculates on the effect of such breaches.
Ethics in Organizations: The Case of Tata Steel
Authors: Maheshwari Sunil Kumar , Ganesh M P
Published: June 2019

The concern for ethical decision-making among the regulators, social groups, and managers has substantially increased in recent years following the failure of some of the prominent business organizations owing to strong social condemnation of some of their business practices. This paper reviews the literature to address this concern by examining and discussing significant issues of ethical decision-making in organizations.

Literature shows that the research to examine the linkage of ethical decision-making with other organizational construct is inadequate. This paper tries to fill this gap by developing a comprehensive framework of organizational ethical decision-making and behaviour of individuals in organizations. The framework identifies three groups of variables: a) moral intensity, b) intrinsic factors, c) extrinsic factors. Further, it is used to analyse the implementation of code of conduct at Tata Steel.

Ethical problems are problems of choice owing to the conflicting nature of values. They occur when the individual values and the social norms conflict with each other. Often, due to conflicting interests of different stakeholders, managers in organizations face the dilemma of identifying the righteous decision as perceived by these stakeholders. Hence, it is important to guide managers � by articulating and communicating unambiguously — regarding what is right and what is not. Intense socialization will be required at different levels to imbibe organizational values and ethical practices. The socialization that leads to willing adoption of practices is likely to lead to better implementation of ethical practices. The scope of socialization could be extended to include the family members of employees to develop a sense of pride among them for being ethical.

Organizations would need to undertake the following initiatives which would be useful for implementation of ethical practices: Enhance perceived self-efficacy among the employees. This study shows that people with high self-efficacy are more open to ethical choices in their decision-making. Initiate reward and incentive mechanisms, suitable monitoring system, and accountability mechanisms. Internal competition-driven performance management practices induce violation of ethical norms in organizations. Hence, organizations with such practices would need extra effort in socialization, training, and monitoring to ensure ethical decision-making. Develop different mechanisms for avoidance of violation of code of ethics. For adequate monitoring, ethic supervisors should ideally report to an independent unit in the organization, preferably at a higher level. Hence, the reporting relationships may need alteration for implementation of ethical practices.

The study also suggests that leadership at different levels of the organization will have to display strong commitment to ethics through communication and adoption of role model stature.
Management of Rising Power by China and India in the 21st Century: Scope for Strategic Partnership
Authors: Wadhva Charan D
Published: June 2019

China and India are being widely recognized as rising powers in the 21st century. With its track record of fast economic growth in the last two decades, China is already a global economic power. Based on India's more recent growth performance, India is steadily catching up with China as an economic power.

Despite fundamental differences in their political systems, both countries have acquired rising economic power due to open market economy-oriented reforms. China has the advantage of an earlier start than India in this respect. China started its economic reforms in 1978 and India in 1991. These economic reforms have miraculously transformed China into a global economic power. Although politically constrained, economic reforms have helped India to improve its growth trajectory and to further integrate with the global economy.

China and India have been following different paths for managing their rising power: China has been credited with carefully evolving a grand vision and a grand strategy for transforming it into a ‘global power’ by the year 2020 (or so). Pragmatism and effective political will have been the hallmarks of the ‘calculated strategy’ adopted by China to achieve this objective. India's economic power has been rising more due to the impulses generated by its entrepreneurs especially in the knowledge-intensive services and industries than due to its government's pursuit of a well-thoughtout grand vision and grand strategy for becoming a global power. Currently, China is nearly two decades ahead of India in moving towards acquiring significant global power.

The author's analysis of the existing and projected strengths and weaknesses of both countries in this paper leads him to the conclusion that both the countries have the potential to become global powers — China most probably by the year 2020 and India by the year 2050.

Further analysis of the existing and potential complementarities and competition in the economies of China and India indicates that there is a tremendous scope for forging mutually beneficial strategic partnership between them. A very useful beginning can be made in this direction by establishing mutually rewarding strategic alliances in these two countries at the business-to-business level. Progress in this direction can be expedited by supportive government policies and procedures.

Despite the existing deficit of political trust between India and China, the two countries have recently agreed to become strategic partners. Concrete moves towards operationalizing this strategic partnership can be initiated in two areas identified in this paper. These are: strengthening cooperation at the international level for enhancing national energy security further cooperation in negotiations at the World Trade Organization and other multilateral forums for collectively promoting the interests of all developing countries in the emerging new international trade and investment order.
The Big Pictures: Sources of National Competitiveness in the Global Movie Industry
Authors: Howse Joseph , McLarney Carolan
Published: June 2019

This paper examines the global film industry through a detailed discussion of four national players (US, Canada, China, and Hong Kong). According to Porter, the international competitiveness of any industry cluster is shaped by four characteristics of the domestic market: demand conditions, factor endowments, firm rivalry, and supporting industries. The authors assess the film industry in these countries in terms of the four factors of national competitiveness and conclude that only the US possesses all of them at this juncture. Moreover, they propose that the exclusivity of US interests in the global distribution system creates competitive dynamics that neither Porter nor critics such as Rugman have fully explored. It is in this context that this paper discusses co-production as an alternative means for nations to develop⁄improve competitiveness through exploitation of overseas markets.

Based on their analysis of the film industry of the US, Canada, China, and Hong Kong, the authors make the following observations: There is a need to increase the presence of Canada⁄Canadian film co-productions with other countries as there may be greater opportunities for large Canadian producers to leverage both their US connections and their home country's treaties to create a unique pool of film-making resources. The potential size of the Chinese film audience makes it attractive to other nations. However, the Chinese government's monopoly over film imports, pirated home versions, and denial of access to the official film distribution channels are major barriers to entry. Despite the massive historical price gap between domestic and foreign movies, box office figures would suggest that Chinese audiences prefer the latter. Another popular option is cheap, pirated home versions. Hong Kong's box office size, domestic box office share, and number of domestic productions have been decimated over the past decade and, hence, Hong Kong producers' main option is to find stronger opportunities in mainland China. Being the only external co-production partner nation of China and Hong Kong, Canada has in place the foundations for a powerful competitive position in these regions relative to other foreign entrants.

According to the authors, further research in this field could include an analysis of coproductions within Europe or of emerging co-production blocs across other regions. For instance, Canada is currently in the process of concluding a co-production treaty with India which has the potential to clear barriers between the two powerful yet traditionally quite segregated film industries of the subcontinent and North America. This is indicative of the fact that the governments and the movie industries are gaining power to change the global competitive scenario in films.
Characteristics of Merging Firms in India: An Empirical Examination
Authors: Kumar B Rajesh , Rajib Prabina
Published: June 2019

The process of corporate restructuring through mergers and acquisitions has occupied much relevance in post-liberalization period. The financial characteristics of a firm play a critical role in the merger decision process. This study analyses the distinctive financial characteristics of the acquirer and the target firms in the period of merger. In addition, the empirical challenge is to determine the measurable factors that make a firm attractive as a takeover target. The fundamental research focus is on the characteristics that make a firm an acquirer and on identifying those characteristics of a firm, which will have a significant impact on the probability that firms will be acquired.

The ratios involved in the study were reflective of the financial and product market characteristics. The sample firms consisting of 227 acquirer and 215 target firms represented the mergers during the period 1993—2004. The distinctive characteristics of the acquirer and the target firms were analysed with Mann Whitney U test and Kolgomorov Smirnov test on the assumption of non-normality of the sample distribution. The final step involved using the logit regression to examine the likelihood that a given firm will be the target of an acquisition attempt. The same sample of target firms merged between 1993-2004 period and a random sample of 490 non-acquired firms based on a matched industry sector and similar size (sales) are obtained for the logit model estimation.

The comparative study of the acquirer and the target firms in the year of merger and the logit analysis reveals the following: The size of the target firms was much smaller compared to the acquirer firms. The acquirer firms have higher cash flow, higher PE ratios, higher book value, higher liquid assets, and lower debt to total assets ratio, which are statistically significant when compared to the target firms. Some evidence points out higher leverage for the target firms especially for measures of market leverage. The lesser the liquidity position, greater the probability of a firm becoming a target. The larger firms are less likely to become acquisition targets. Logit coefficients are consistent with the size hypothesis and inefficient management hypothesis.

The advertising intensity ratio and the cash flow to market value of assets show statistical significance based on logit results. The results of the study indicate that firms generating free cash flows and having low debt levels have a tendency to incur agency costs. Capital structure characteristics provide the acquirers and the target firms a motive for mergers. The acquirer firms with unused debt capacity can use mergers as a strategic business tool for gaining financial synergy.
Understanding New Venture Failure due to Entrepreneur-Organization Goal Dissonance
Authors: Seshadri D V R
Published: June 2019

New ventures tend to have an alarmingly high casualty rate. Those who take the most severe brunt in such failures are key managers, who unwittingly take on roles much beyond their formal job descriptions, in an effort to keep the venture alive, often ending up as ‘employee entrepreneurs.’ Employees taking ownership of their jobs far in excess of that specified by their formal roles, thereby manifesting entrepreneurial behaviour, are also referred to as intrapreneurs.

This paper presents the real life case study (with names, identities, and situations disguised) of the chief executive of a start-up venture who tried to repeatedly salvage the start-up company from one crisis after another, over a span of seven years, when two successive promoters failed to deliver their part of the commitment through timely infusion of the required promoter�s equity. In addition, he also had to reckon with facing undue pressure from the promoters to cater to their short-term goals.

Based on the case study of Global Optical Disc Company Ld., the author presents a model to better understand new venture failure arising out of goal dissonance between the promoter and the organization and proposes the following hypotheses: A low degree of psychological ownership by the professional top management and a low goal congruence of the promoter and the new venture can be lethal for a new venture. A high degree of psychological ownership by the professional top management and a high goal congruence of the promoter and the new venture could result in a likely success, provided the industry structure, strategy, financial structuring, etc., do not result in the creation of conditions to cause failure. The situation of a low degree of psychological ownership by the professional top management team and a high goal congruence of the promoter and the new venture may result in a weak beginning for the new venture despite heroic efforts of the professional top management team. A high degree of psychological ownership by the professional top management and a low degree of goal congruence of the promoter and the new venture would most likely result in an eventual failure of the new venture. The transition from an employee mindset on the part of the intrapreneurial chief executive in a new venture to that of an entrepreneurial mindset in the situation of distress in the new venture, due to failure on the part of the promoter, is not automatic.

The paper concludes with lessons for those managers who may be put into similar �testing by the fire� situations. While there could be any number of reasons for the failure of entrepreneurial start-ups, this paper focuses in particular on the failure attributable to dissonance between promoter�s personal goals and the start-up organization�s stated goals. Such lack of goal convergence is a phenomenon that occurs with alarmingly regular frequency. The paper describes some of the options that an employee-chief executive has under such adverse circumstances.
Indian Model of Executive Burnout
Authors: Sharma Radha R
Published: June 2019

Burnout is described as a state of depletion of a person's resources and energy resulting in apathetic and impassive behaviour towards others, having dysfunctional repercussions on the individual and adverse effects on organizations. Though an enormous amount of research is available on “stress” in both Western and Indian contexts, there is very little research on “burnout” in the Indian workplaces.

For this study, important considerations included evolving an exclusive construct of “executive burnout” in the industrial context which does not exist and also developing the construct of burnout in the Indian context. The Western construct of burnout using Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) developed in 1982 has largely been based on people occupations (like nurses and teachers) and later extended to non-service occupations. When tested by the author on the Indian sample of executives, it revealed the following: There is a difference in the dimension of diminished personal accomplishment which was not valid on the Indian sample. Those suffering from burnout did not have low personal accomplishment; on the contrary, high achieving executives were mostly found to suffer from burnout. Some dimensions, viz., ambiguity; dissatisfaction and powerlessness; inadequacy; and physical exhaustion, which were empirically found vital for executives in the Indian context, were not covered by MBI.

With technological advancements, workplaces have undergone drastic changes and many executives work in situations which require very little people contact, implying that the construct of executive burnout is qualitatively different and needs to be evolved for better understanding of this pivotal problem. The author's professional interactions with executives from a variety of industry and a study of mental health professionals in India revealed that the problem of burnout has been acute and on the increase. This study identifies the determinants of burnout among Indian executives and thus evolves an Indian model of executive burnout to help the executives/organizations in taking preventive measures to mitigate this problem.

Reliable tools are used on a representative sample of middle level executives from manufacturing and service industry representing both public and private sectors. Basic statistics, Pearson's correlation, factor analysis, t-test, and hierarchical regression test the hypotheses. The analysis of data reveal the following: Emotional intelligence mediates and leads to personal effectiveness which moderates the onset of burnout. Stress personality and personal inadequacy are personality-related predictors. Role expectation conflict, role stagnation, self-role distance, role overload, role erosion, resource inadequacy, inter-role distance, and role ambiguity are role- related predictors of burnout among executives in India.

The author (2005) has found that burnout can be prevented with early detection, timely intervention, and enhancement of emotional intelligence.
Public Private Partnership in Transportation: The Case of the Washington State
Authors: Murray Edward
Published: June 2019

While the world has changed dramatically in the last five decades or so, transportation has not been able to keep pace with the overall development. However, in order to ensure prosperity of a country or a state, it is imperative that the ability to move people and products must improve. This paper examines the status of transportation infrastructure and its funding in the State of Washington, USA and suggests some new approaches towards public-private partnership (PPP) in the area. In the process, the success and some of the challenges of PPP are also discussed.

In the US, traditionally, people were not charged direct tax such as a toll for using the roads, the primary mode of financing transportation being gas tax. The new sources of revenue collection being developed include: Specific roadway pricing Mileage-based user fees Real-time variable rate roadway pricing.

Traditionally, in the US, the public sector shouldered the main responsibility for managing transportation�acquire right-of-way (ROW), design, finance, operate, own, and maintain while the private sector was only allowed to build roads following all the regulation and permits introduced by the government. The reformed PPP model awards ‘design-build’ contracts on a competitive ‘best-value’ basis instead of the conventional ‘low-bid’ basis and thus turn over the design build responsibility to the private sector leaving with the government the financing and maintenance of the roads. The idea is to give road to everybody while allowing the private sector to earn some profit and the public sector to save some money. However, PPP could face a problem if: the traffic and revenue estimates are wrong traffic and revenue risks are taken by private sector but at a huge price construction costs are underestimated the people do not accept the proposition the PPP legislation is not favourable.

For any infrastructure project such as transportation to succeed, what is most critical is a set of factors including feasibility, essentiality, reliable revenue forecasts, collateral, credibility, political stability, and transparency. Above all, the government has the responsibility to all its citizens while the private sector is accountable to its stockholders and business partners. What is therefore important is to see how the two parties meet their obligations while building a suitable transportation infrastructure.
Non-linearities and GARCH Effects in the Emerging Stock Markets of South Asia
Authors: Dhankar Raj S , Chakraborty Madhumita
Published: June 2019

Up to the beginning of the last decade, financial economics was dominated by linear paradigm, which assumed that economic time series conformed to linear models or could be wellapproximated by a linear model. However, there is increasing evidence that asset returns may be better characterized by a model which allows for non-linear behaviour. Though more efforts are now being directed towards the Asian stock markets in the light of their increasing importance to the investment world and the world economy, there is an extremely sparse literature, which utilizes recent advances in non-linear dynamics to examine the data generating process of the South-Asian stock markets.

This study investigates the presence of non-linear dependence in three major markets of South Asia: India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. It was, however, realized that merely identifying non-linear dependence was not enough. Previous research has shown that the presence of nonlinear characteristics usually takes the form of ARCH/GARCH (Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity or Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity) type conditional heteroscedasticity. Keeping this in view, this study investigates whether the non-linear dependence is caused by predictable conditional volatility. It has been found that the simple GARCH (1, 1) model has fitted all the market return series adequately and accounted for the non-linearity found in the series.

The findings reveal the following: The application of the BDS test developed by Brock, et al., (1996) strongly rejects the null hypothesis of independent and identical distribution of the return series as well as the linearly filtered return series for all the markets under study. With the possibility of linear dependence causing the rejection of independent and identical distribution (IID) being eliminated by linear filtering, the study also shows that non-stationarity of return series is also not a cause for non-IID behaviour by applying Augmented Dickey Fuller test and Phillips-Perron test.

This implies the presence of non-linear dependence in the return series. For researchers in the developing countries, it is time to embrace the shift to non-linearity as it would provide a better understanding of the underlying dynamics of financial time series.

However, the results are not necessarily inconsistent with efficient market hypothesis, simply because non-linearity does not essentially imply predictability as the future price changes can be predictable but only with a time horizon too short to allow for excess profits. The implications of non-linear dependence and presence of GARCH effects go beyond the issue of market efficiency. The common assumption of constant variance underlying the theory and practice of option pricing, portfolio optimization, and value-at-risk (VaR) calculations needs to be revised. If the assumed stochastic processes do not adequately depict the full complexity of the true generating processes, then any derivatives in question may be mis-priced.
Measurement and Validity of Jennifer Aaker's Brand Personality Scale for Colgate Brand
Authors: Thomas Bejoy John , Sekar P C
Published: June 2019

Brand differentiation is now becoming an important tactic for combating competition in the hostile marketplace. A viable solution for establishing the distinctiveness of a brand is through brand personality. Attaching personalities to brands contributes to a differentiating brand identity, which can make brands more desirable to the consumer. Jennifer Aaker developed a specialized brand personality scale, the five dimensions of the scale being sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.

This study focused on measuring the brand personality of Colgate brand and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aaker's Brand Personality scale. The study indicated that: About 93 per cent of the respondents used toothpaste and toothbrush among the oral care products. About 55 per cent of the respondents used only Colgate brand and about 39 per cent used Close-up and Pepsodent together with Colgate brand. 61 per cent of the respondents who were using only Colgate brand were using the brand for more than three years which indicates that most of the respondents had an understanding about the Colgate brand. Most of the respondents who were using more than one brand have indicated that they switch among the brands once in three months or once in more than six months. About 53 per cent of the respondents have indicated that they prefer Colgate dental cream among Colgate paste brands and 35 per cent Colgate Cibaca top among Colgate toothbrush brands. Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that ruggedness, competence, and excitement are the main dimensions of Colgate Brand Personality. This shows that the company should stress more on its functional benefits than the emotional benefits whenever the company introduces a new brand, new ad campaign or any other form of communication with the user. The items—trendy, exciting, and young—under Exciting Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate brand and the items—cool, contemporary and imaginative—are not applicable to the Colgate brand. This will be a major finding for the company and ad agency because they can improve the score in this dimension by concentrating on the creativity and contemporariness of its advertisements and other promotional materials. Also, the items—confident, secure, and hardworking—under Competence Dimension are more relevant for the Colgate Brand and the item—successful—is not applicable to the Colgate brand. This finding will be an eye opener for the company

A validity check of the scale using Factor Analysis was carried out which indicates that the number of dimensions of Brand Personality is 13 and that about 10 items of Jennifer Aaker—s Brand Personality scale are not applicable in the Indian situation. The applicability of this scale in the Indian situation was not checked because it required an exploratory study to identify the dimensions of Brand Personality in the Indian situation. Hence, identifying the Indian Brand Personality construct can be undertaken by future researchers.
Leading and Executing Industry Change through a Learning Network
Authors: Hazarika Anjali
Published: June 2019

There is a widespread recognition of the fact that organizations need to continuously enhance their capabilities to be able to retain a competitive edge in a highly complex business environment. One of the mechanisms available to them is an intercorporate learning network. This paper reports on the way a learning network— National Petroleum Management Programme (NPMP)— was set up and institutionalized to address the strategic needs of the petroleum industry in India. It focuses on the external and internal drivers for change and describes the key challenges encountered in translating change. It also demonstrates the advantage of collaboration between oil and gas companies as a strategy to deal with competitive times.

The objectives of setting up NPMP was to: develop among the enterprises a shared understanding on the strategic advantage of collaboration in the competitive environment to help the industry in meeting its objectives of growth and vitality act as a catalytic agent for initiating macro level changes in the policies and practices in petroleum enterprises provide a range of learning opportunities and services.

The dynamics of the Network provide a critical lens for analysing how change is impacted and dealt with in the petroleum industry in India. The author addresses some of the management issues involved in the process. The challenges include: motivating members to participate on a joint cost-sharing basis building upon and dissemination of new knowledge translating change through the Learning Network.

Finally, the author points out the implications for HR professionals and suggests what new skills and competencies they need to develop for managing change.
Do NGOs Differ? How, with What Consequences?
Authors: Jammulamadaka Nimruji
Published: June 2019

NGOs are an integral part of present day organizational landscape. They are perceived to be much better than government and for-profit businesses in delivering the social welfare goods and services needed by society. Policy makers in India and the world over are showing an increasing preference for NGOs to implement various social welfare programmes. The present essay examines the rationale underlying such a preference and the relevance of the advantages attributed to NGOs.

The NGO organizational form differs from public bureaucracies and for-profit businesses based on the two criteria of non-governmentness and non-profitness. Various advantages like ability to attract altruistic resources, to provide for unmet and heterogenous demand for public goods, protection against contract failure, and freerider problem are attributed to these two defining features of NGOs. They are also seen as sites that facilitate socialization in democratic participation, social innovation, and responsiveness. When examined in the socio-historical backdrop of Indian NGO sector, each of these advantages while having relevance historically is being severely compromised in recent times. The shift in voluntarism from a calling to a paid employment, institutionalization of funding sources, deployment of hard contracting and other developments in the NGO sector have dampened the perceived advantages. Altruism is more likely an involuntary subsidization and NGOs are more and more becoming mass producers of welfare goods. The focus on clear, wellplanned project proposals and documents and clearly specified procedures and budgets have reduced the elbow room available to NGOs to innovate. This loss of relevance is primarily because the organic features of the organizational form which bestowed some of the advantages on NGOs are now being traded off in favour of a more standardized, formalized form that is scalable and monitorable.

Yet, because of the preferences of the institutionalized funders, non-profitness continues to remain a defining feature of NGOs even though it may not be giving the organization a competitive advantage over public bureaucracies or for-profit businesses. On the contrary, the constraint on profits, has resulted in NGOs adopting practices which expose them to criticism. These practices, while being perfectly rational for other kinds of organizations, become contortions in the case of NGOs. It is therefore necessary for us to re-examine the nature of NGOs and assess the role played by the non-profit constraint and come up with appropriate mechanisms that facilitate the provision of welfare goods/services to society by these organizations.
An Exploratory Study on Negotiating Styles: Development of a Measure
Authors: Kumar Manish , Rai Himanshu , Pati Surya Prakash
Published: June 2019

Negotiation study as a tool in conflict management has been in vogue since long and spans the disciplinary boundaries. The outcome of business negotiations depends on bargainer characteristics, situation, and the negotiation process, which also drive the style adopted by a negotiator. Negotiation as a universal phenomenon does not have a universal style as the notion of consistent improved results for an individual�s business value has multiplicity of measures. Also, when it comes to negotiation style studies, they have either been packaged with other constructs or have been confused with them. For the clarity of the construct therefore it is essential that separation needs to be maintained between the definition of negotiating style as a construct and other closely related constructs. It is therefore proposed that works in negotiation need to be broadly divided into three types, involving the constructs of: Negotiating style Negotiating ability Negotiating strategy.

Literature review suggests that the researchers are divided regarding the number of dimensions of negotiating style. In most of the studies, the proposed dimensions range from one to five. Also, no scale on negotiating style has been validated. In recent years, there has been an increased recognition of need to look at negotiations in Asia-Pacific context. Therefore we developed a scale to measure negotiating style of people and tested it in the Indian context.

The sample included a cross-section of working executives and management students and the research design for the exploratory study included item generation, scale development, and assessment of scale�s psychometric properties. On analysis, the scale showed robust psychometric properties. Based on the results obtained, there are four types of negotiation style adopted by people: Analytical Equitable Amicable Aggressive.

The findings can be used as a diagnostic tool to evaluate the extent to which one would like to have an attribute on a particular kind of negotiating style as well as a tool to enable in bridging the gap in the value systems.