bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Systematic Review of Postfertilization Effects and Potential for Embryo Formation and Loss during the Use of Intrauterine Devices
Authors: Buskmiller Cara , Harrison Donna , Ruppersberger Lester A. , Yeung Patrick P. 
Published: June 2019

Objectives: This review sought to evaluate the evidence for embryo formation during intrauterine device (IUD) use, to articulate how often embryo loss occurs in well-designed studies, and to comment on other bodies of literature suggestive of postfertilization mechanisms of action of IUDs. Methods: The MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Ovid databases were searched for English-language studies of markers of pregnancy in IUD users in May 2018. Studies of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) were subjected to quality assessment based on the US Preventive Services Task Force quality tool. Bias of studies assessing pregnancy in other ways was assessed on a study-to-study basis. Results: In all, 1,073 studies were identified and 138 were read in detail. Twenty-three studies of β-hCG, 4 studies of direct observation of embryos in fallopian tubes, 2 studies of pregnancy-specific binding globulin (PSBG), and 1 study of heat-shock protein 10 (Hsp10) or chaperonin 10 were included. In all studies considered together, 7.3 percent of IUD users had evidence of fertilization and pregnancy failure. In good-quality studies, 4.5 percent had evidence of fertilization and pregnancy failure. Discussion: There are no randomized trials of embryo formation and loss in IUD users compared with noncontracepting controls. Studies of β-hCG span a large spectrum of quality, but several good-quality studies exist, which support embryo formation and loss in IUD users. Evidence of embryos found in tubes is moderate and evidence of PSBG and Hsp10 elaboration was limited, but these are also concerning for embryo formation and loss. Conclusion: There is good-quality evidence of embryo formation and loss in IUD users. Studies are inconsistent, and the stated conclusions of several papers inaccurately diminish postfertilization evidence of embryo formation. To better assess the rate of embryo loss in IUD users compared with non-users, future research should include well-designed prospective trials and less subjective assessments of embryos in fallopian tubes. Summary: A systematic review was carried out examining the English-language literature in the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Ovid databases for evidence of embryo formation and loss during IUD use. In all, 1,073 studies were identified and 138 were read. There are no randomized trials and evidence ranges in quality, but evidence for the embryo formation and loss in 4.5 percent of IUD users exists in good-quality research. Further research is needed to compare embryo loss in IUD users to loss in controls.
Predicting Indian Shoppers’ Malls Loyalty Behaviour
Authors: Prashar Sanjeev , Singh Harvinder , Parsad Chandan , Vijay T. Sai 
Published: June 2019

Executive Summary Mall managers tend to believe that purchasing decisions are made inside the shopping malls. These decisions, however, are influenced by various antecedent factors. This implies that shoppers look beyond the basic chore of shopping and experience while shopping plays a vital role. To attract the attention of shoppers, mall developers make huge investments in mall promotion and ambient factors in order to enhance the shopping experience. As the Indian shoppers’ euphoria about shopping malls gets toned down with time, mall managers need to focus on something more substantive. Such fundamental benefits can be offered to shoppers only if mall managers know what is more relevant for the shoppers visiting the malls. Past studies have identified a number of factors such as ambience, physical infrastructure, convenience, safety, and marketing activities. This research posits that a more optimal and focused approach in mall management requires identification of relative significance of various influencing factors. This way, mall managers would be able to offer the most meaningful benefits to shoppers at a very optimal level of investment. Once shoppers get what they value the most, they are expected to be more loyal to the shopping mall. Despite the development of various forecasting techniques, predicting mall loyalty has remained under-explored in marketing literature. This article addresses the gap by using neural network model to predict shoppers’ loyalty towards a particular mall. To gain more insights from the model, the authors have also identified relative significance of the factors impacting shoppers’ mall selection. This study establishes that mall shoppers value ‘convenience’ as the most influencing factor in their selection of malls. This factor alone garners one-third of the total weightage among the five factors, which reflects that significance of convenience is 66 per cent more than what is expected in a scenario when all determinants contribute equally. This strongly indicates that Indian mall shoppers are more utilitarian than hedonic.
Factors Mitigating Firm-specific Information Asymmetry and Target Price Accuracy in India
Authors: Sayed Samie Ahmed , Sreeram Latha 
Published: June 2019

Executive Summary Over the last decade, efforts have been made to improve the quality of financial reporting and corporate governance standards prevailing in emerging markets. Even after 20 years of globalization, emerging markets continue to trade as a separate class ( Bekaert & Harvey, 2014 ). On account of a weak regulatory environment, firm-specific information asymmetry is expected to be on the higher side as compared to developed markets. In such an environment, any factors which mitigate information asymmetry may help improve efficiency of information providers such as equity research analysts. The role of equity research analysts is to process financial information and provide estimates which may be used by investors to make informed investment decisions. This study investigates whether the factors which mitigate firm-specific information asymmetry improve analyst target price accuracy in India. We expect sophisticated financial intermediaries such as equity research analysts to produce more accurate target price forecasts for firms with higher frequency of corporate announcements, higher analyst coverage, and higher foreign institutional holdings. Past research suggests that these three factors reduce information asymmetry and this reduction could possibly help analysts produce superior results. Our results show that higher frequency of corporate announcements creates short-term noise which reduces target price accuracy at the end of one-year forecast horizon. Our findings reveal that higher analyst coverage leads to better flow of firm-specific private information and improves target price accuracy anytime during or at the end of one year. We report that higher foreign institutional holding possibly improves stock liquidity, attracting more traders, which eventually leads to better target price accuracy at the end of forecast horizon. Our key finding is that there is a reduction in firm-specific information asymmetry due to the presence of more number of analysts and higher percentage of institutional holding.
Indian Psycho‐Philosophy and Human Response in Organizations
Authors: Jhunjhunwala L.N. 
Published: June 2019

The ideas S K Chakraborty presented in his article “The Will-to-Yoga: Key to- Better Quality of Work Life,” published in the April-June 1986 issue, have drawn several responses from our readers. Some of them were published in the Letters to the Editor in the October-December 1986 issue along with a reply from the author. In this issue we publish three more responses. In the first instance, L N Jhunjhunwala narrates his experiences of putting some of Chakraborty's ideas into practice in his company. In the second response, R Jayaraman Iyer wonders whether a majority of the executives who need to practise the yoga concepts can do so. On the other hand, a minority of executives who can, do not specifically need the concepts, he states. Even so, he feels that the dissemination of concepts themselves and attempts at praGtising them would help. The final piece by P K Srivastava provjdes additional insights into some of the concepts of yoga and their impact on organizational life when they are put into practice. Vikalpa hopes that this exchange of ideas and experiences clarifies the issues and improves managerial practices.
Lucas-TVS Limited: A Journey towards Manufacturing Excellence
Authors: Sethuraman Kannan , Tirupati Devanath 
Published: June 2019

The case featured in this issue of Vikalpa discusses the journey embarked on by the top management of Lucas-TVS Limited in 1985 to make their firm a world-class manufacturing organization. The company's oldest plant at Padi, Chennai acted as a test bed for several of their initiatives. The case describes the steps that Lucas-TVS management took to implement this change process in manufacturing at their Padi plant during the period 1985-1998. The case concludes at an interesting stage where the company needs to decide on a future course of direction that would address a number of critical issues identified by Mr T K Balaji, the Chief Executive and MD of Lucas-TVS. Readers are invited to send their responses on the case to Vikalpa Office.
Abstracts Indian Management Research
Authors: Sarkar Mitali 
Published: June 2019

This section features abstracts of articles covering empirical studies, experiences, ideas, and theories published in Indian and international journals. Sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, this service is intended to facilitate Indian management research. Authors desirous of having their publications considered for inclusion in this feature may please send reprints of their articles to Vikalpa Editorial Office.
BHP Limited: Risk Management Strategy
Authors: Sinha Sidharth 
Published: June 2019

BHP Limited, a global natural resource company based in Australia, has traditionally hedged its market price risks with derivatives. Based on the analysis of a ‘Cash Flow at Risk’ model, which exploits the diversification effect in a portfolio context, it has now decided to discontinue its hedging activities. However, this portfolio approach to risk management raises questions about the standard ‘stand-alone’ approach to project evaluation and capital allocation. Readers are invited to send their responses on the case to Vikalpa office.
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.
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.