bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
Discontinuity in the Environment, Firm Response, and Dynamic Capabilities
Authors: Dixit M R , Bhowmick Bhaskar 
Published: June 2019

Technological innovations, regulatory reforms, institutional overhauls, and socio-cultural developments create discontinuities in a firm's environment. They deny resources that it had depended on for its functioning, thus challenging its sustenance, or provide new paths for growth. The firm needs to respond to these discontinuities by anticipating them well in advance, creating options for change, choosing an appropriate option, and implementing it by reconfiguring its resources. The demands from the management in responding to discontinuities are unique. The response engages the management in processes like unlearning what is redundant, learning what is required in the new situation, and leveraging on whatever is relevant from the past. Such capabilities of ‘sensing’, ‘seizing’ and ‘reconfiguring’ have been referred to as ‘dynamic capabilities’ in the literature on strategic management. In this perspective, the authors propose a framework of interrelations among discontinuity in the environment, firm responses, and dynamic capabilities. The framework is illustrated by presenting the experiences of two companies: (a) R R Donnelley & Sons – from the printing industry, where the old heavy iron-based printing technology was giving way to digital printing and (b) Gramophone Company of India Limited (GCIL) – from the entertainment industry, where PVC as a medium for recording music and playing back. The two cases demonstrate: the need for the firm to challenge its own sources of success and be prepared to face discontinuities the need for sensing the change, seizing the opportunity, and shaping the responses (re-configuring). the adaptive response through capabilities of sensing scenarios and preparing for the response. This perspective not only urges managers to explore the relevance of the proposed interrelations framework but also to think through the possible sources of discontinuities in their environment, and develop capabilities to visualize the implications and accordingly engage in the reshaping process to make itself relevant to the environment once again.
Determinants of Goan SME Firms Going Global: Theoretical and Empirical Approach
Authors: Reddy Y V , Naik Subhash S 
Published: June 2019

Choice of entry mode has been widely recognized as one of the critical decisions in a firm's internationalization. However, most of the research primarily focuses upon Western multinational enterprises rather than Indian state small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In the past, several major theories have been proposed but none of them is able to explain the choice from the complete set of entry modes. The purpose of this research is to understand the various entry modes, improve the selection decision, and explain the entry mode strategies of Goan SME firms in the international markets. A firm can deploy a variety of arrangements (entry modes) like wholly-owned subsidiaries, joint ventures, contracts, and export modes to implement its product market strategies in foreign countries. Each of these arrangements entails decisions about the location of production facilities and⁄or marketing operations, and the type of ownership of these operations. This study examines the internationalization behaviour of 200 randomly selected Goan SME firms. It examines the factors associated with each theory and seeks to integrate them to gain a better understanding of how SME businesses succeed in the international marketplace. The determinants under examination are also substantiated with the identification of several international SME entry mode models. The nine groups of determinants are: International planning experience, firm size, R&D intensity, competitive advantage, degree of standardization, demand intensity, economic development, regulation, and political risk. The proposed framework is an effort to fill the gap between theory and practice of entry mode choice. The framework is broader in scope than the extant theories because it transcends across industries and nationalities of firms. The primary objectives of the study are: (a) to identify the descriptive determinants that have been strongly associated with SME internationalization entry behaviour; and (b) to determine if the propensity of Goan SME firms will be significantly predicted using specific empirical analysis. Data for the study were obtained through a questionnaire used in numerous previous theories. The study used multivariate logistic regression analysis. The results from the hypothetical foreign market entry situation strongly support the propositions that firm-specific resources and host country factors, viewed as a source of sustainable competitive advantage, encourage involvement in foreign markets. One broad implication for managers is the importance of both analysing the characteristics of the chosen product market and critically examining the firm's capabilities in order to focus on what it does best, build upon it and, where necessary, complement this through collaboration with others.
Transfer Pricing: Impact of Taxes and Tariffs in India
Authors: Gupta Pradeep 
Published: June 2019

Transfer pricing in an economy is very significant to corporate policy makers, economic policy makers, tax authorities, and regulatory authorities. Transfer pricing manipulation (fixing transfer prices on non-market basis as against arm's length standard) reduces the total quantum of organization's tax liability by shifting accounting profits from high tax to low tax jurisdictions. It changes the relative tax burden of the multinational firms in different countries of their operations and reduces worldwide tax payments of the firm. This paper explores the influence of corporate taxes and product tariffs on reported transfer pricing of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in India by using the Swenson (2000) model. This study of custom values of import originating from China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, and USA into India reveals that transfer pricing incentives generated by corporate taxes and tariffs provide opportunity for MNCs to manipulate transfer price to maximize profits across world-wide locations of operations and reduce tax liability. The main findings of this paper are: The estimates computed by grouping together products of all industries being imported into India from sample countries reveal that TPI coefficients are positive and significant. Overall, positive and significant coefficients of TPI predict that one per cent reduction in corporate tax rates in the home country of the MNC would cause multinational corporations with affiliated transactions to increase reported transfer prices in the range of 0.248 per cent to 0.389 per cent. The Generalized Least Square estimates for individual industries display that out of nine industries in the sample, three industries (38, 73, and 84) have a positive and significant co-movement with transfer pricing incentives. In four industries (56, 83, 85, and 90), coefficient of Transfer Pricing Incentive (TPI) is negative but significant. In case of two industries (39 and 82), TPI coefficient is negative but not significant. Positive and significant coefficients of TPI predict that one per cent reduction in corporate tax rates in the home country would cause multinational corporations with affiliated transactions to increase reported transfer prices by 1.20 per cent in ‘Miscellaneous Chemical Products’ Industry (Industry 38), 0.175 per cent in the ‘Articles of Iron or Steel’ Industry (Industry 73) and 0.908 per cent in �Nuclear Reactors, Boilers, Machinery and Mechanical Appliances; Parts thereof' Industry (Industry 84). In industries where coefficient of TPI is negative and significant, MNCs would like to shift the taxable income of their affilates to the host country by decreasing their reported transfer price. The government's approach should be to reduce corporate tax and tariff rates to bring them at a level comparable with countries across the world which will reduce incentives for the MNCs for shifting of income out of India and increase the tax base for tax authorities. This will also result in an increase in the tax revenue of the country.
Effects of Psychological Contract Breach on Organizational Outcomes: Moderating Role of Tenure and Educational Levels
Authors: Agarwal Upasna A , Bhargava Shivganesh 
Published: June 2019

In contemporary knowledge-intensive organizations, which are characterized by short product life cycles and unhindered access to information and resources, organizational survival, let alone success, necessitates higher-than-average performance. Engaged and committed employees are considered critical resources for organizational survival and business success. Research suggests that the quality of employment relationship significantly impacts employee attitudes. Psychological Contract is a useful framework for examining the quality of employee-organization relationship. Psychological Contract Breach (PCB), defined as the cognition that one's organization has failed to meet one or more obligations within one�s psychological contract in a manner commensurate with one's contributions has deleterious effects of employee motivation. Previous research has shown that breach is a norm, not an exception. However, given that PCB is an organizational reality, little effort has been made to examine the impact of PCB on critical behaviours of work engagement and commitment. Further, extant research on psychological contract has primarily tended to adopt main effects approach in examining the psychological contract-outcome relationship and not addressed various individual and situational variables which can alleviate/aggravate our reactions. Finally, most previous research on psychological contract breach has been conducted in Western countries where cultures are typically individualist and low in power distance. This work is significant for three reasons: It examines the effect of PCB on two critical organizational outcomes: work engagement and affective commitment. It tests the role of individual level variables — tenure and educational level on PCBOutcome relationship. It examines PCB in novel geographical context. Respondents to a survey were 1,302 Indian managerial employees working in eight organizations in India. Results suggest that Tenure moderates the PCB-affective commitment relationship Education level moderates the effects of PCB on affective commitment Education level moderates the effects of PCB on work engagement. Most of the research on psychological contracts has focused on direct effects of breach on organizational outcomes. By examining the moderating effects of employee tenure and educational levels, this study has unmasked some interesting findings in the PCB-outcome relationship. The results of this study suggest that much like their counterparts in the West, Indian employees perceive their psychological contracts to have been breached. The negative ramifications of PCB challenge organizations not to ignore the situation but to approach it.
The Microflora Diversity and Profiles in Dental Plaque Biofilms on Brackets and Tooth Surfaces of Orthodontic Patients
Authors: Velliyagounder Kabilan , Ardeshna Anil , Koo Julia , Rhee Mathew , Fine Daniel H. 
Published: June 2019

Objective: Fixed orthodontic appliances may influence the oral environment through accumulation of plaque, decreased plaque pH, and increased gingival inflammation. These changes in the oral cavity can potentially lead to periodontal disease, demineralization, and other infectious diseases. Materials and Methods: To investigate the changes in biofilm throughout the initial 2 weeks, we placed a stainless steel bracket on the upper second premolar and collected plaque samples on the bracket and on the tooth surface at different time points (0, 24, 48 h and 1 and 2 weeks) and plated on tryptic soy agar blood agar plate, and kept at 37°C in an anaerobic chamber for 5 days to determine the CFUs of bacteria. At the end of 2 weeks, we removed the bracket and elastomeric module, and we isolated genomic DNA from the bacterial biofilm for identification of bacteria by 16S rRNA PCR analysis. We also analyzed the morphology of biofilm on the bracket by scanning electron microscope. Results: Our results show that the bacterial biofilm was significantly increased on the bracket in all the subjects, whereas on the tooth surface, the CFUs were not significantly increased. PCR assay showed that biofilm on orthodontic brackets from all subjects showed colonization by Streptococcus gordonii, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Streptococcus mutans were observed on some of the subjects after 48 h, whereas Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans biofilm was observed in all the time points except 24 h. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that both periodontal and cariogenic bacterial biofilms were formed on the bracket as early as 24 h.