bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Children with Orofacial Clefts: Health-Care Use and Costs among a Privately Insured Population
Authors: Boulet Sheree L. , Grosse Scott D. , Honein Margaret A. , Correa-Villaseñor Adolfo 
Published: January 2017

Objectives. Orofacial clefts are common birth defects that often require multiple surgeries and medical treatments during childhood. We used healthcare insurance claims data to estimate health-care expenditures for infants and children ≤10 years of age with an orofacial cleft. Methods. The data were derived from the 2000–2004 MarketScan® Commercial Claims and Encounters databases, which include person-specific information on health-care use, expenditures, and enrollment for approximately 50 large employers, health plans, and government and public organizations. Health insurance claims data from 821,619 children ≤10 years of age enrolled in employer-sponsored plans during 2004 were analyzed. Expenditures for inpatient admissions, outpatient services, and prescription drug claims were calculated for children with and those without an orofacial cleft. Results. The difference in annual mean costs (i.e., incremental costs) between children aged 0 through 10 years with an orofacial cleft and those without an orofacial cleft was $13,405. The mean and median costs for children ≤10 years of age with an orofacial cleft were eight times higher than for children of the same age without an orofacial cleft. Mean costs for infants with a cleft and another major, unrelated defect were 25 times higher than those for an infant without a cleft, and five times higher than for infants with an isolated cleft. Conclusion. These findings document substantially elevated medical care costs for privately insured children with an orofacial cleft. Additional study of the economic burden associated with this condition should include a broader range of economic costs.
The Middle Eastern Jesus: Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Christian Understandings
Authors: Shenk Calvin E. 
Published: January 2017

Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians each claim Jesus as the center of their faith. Their location in the Middle East gives them special affection for the Middle Eastern Jesus. But their varied histories, cultures, and socio-political dynamics condition each to see particular aspects of Jesus. Messianic Jews explore the meaning of Jesus in the context of normative Judaism, which has not accepted Jesus as Messiah. Messianic Jews are keen to show how Jesus makes them more Jewish, not less Jewish. Palestinian Christians who experience the oppression of the state of Israel are encouraged by Jesus, the refugee who acted justly and spoke against injustice. Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians see Jesus as the basis of reconciliation, but their different understandings of Jesus in relation to the power of the state of Israel are a source of tension.
Balanced Scorecard in Indian Companies
Authors: Anand Manoj , Sahay B S , Saha Subhashish 
Published: January 2017

There has been growing criticism of financial measures in performance evaluation system in postreform India as they are historic in nature and lack futuristic outlook. Their relevance in the information age, when the companies are building internal assets and capabilities, is questioned. The situation may worsen when the firm is compelled to pursue short-term goals at the cost of the organization's long-term objectives. Kaplan and Norton developed an innovative and multi-dimensional corporate performance scorecard known as the Balanced Scorecard. It compels the firm to align its performance measurement and controls from the customers' perspective, internal business processes, and learning and growth perspectives and investigate their impact on the financial indicators. There are arguments that the Balanced Scorecard should be ‘unbalanced’ based on the strategy followed by the firm. The corporate experiences with the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard suggest mixed results. In this article, the authors a) identify the extent of the usage of the Balanced Scorecard by corporate India; b) explore whether Indian firms use all the four perspectives, namely, customer, financial, internal business, and learning and growth in their performance scorecard; c) capture the management motivations for implementation of the Balanced Scorecard; d) identify the key performance indicators in different perspectives of the performance scorecard; and e) evaluate the performance of the Balanced Scorecard as a management tool. The major findings of this study are as follows: The Balanced Scorecard adoption rate is 45.28 per cent in corporate India which compares favourably with 43.90 per cent in the US. The financial perspective has been found to be the most important perspective followed by customers' perspective, shareholders' perspective, internal business perspective, and learning and growth perspective. The environmental, social, and employees' perspectives also figure in it. The expense centre budgets, brand revenue/market share monitoring, profit centre, and transfer pricing mechanism are the other performance management tools used by the Indian companies. Corporate India monitors the indicators as per ISO 14000 norms in the environmental and social perspectives of the performance scorecard. The difficulty in assigning ‘weightage’ to the different perspectives and in ‘establishing cause and effect relationship among these perspectives’ has been found to be the most critical issue in the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in corporate India. Most companies claimed that the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard has led to the identification of cost reduction opportunities in their organizations which, in turn, has resulted in improvement in the bottom line. Insights from such an analysis can be useful to both management practitioners and management accounting academics.
Volatility Models and their Performance in Indian Capital Markets
Authors: Pandey Ajay 
Published: January 2017

Estimation and forecasting of volatility of asset returns is important in various applications related to financial markets such as valuation of derivatives, risk management, etc. Till early eighties, it was commonly assumed that the volatility of an asset is constant and estimation procedures were based on this assumption even though some of the pioneering studies on property of stock market returns did not support this assumption. Following the pioneering work of Engle and Bollerslev in eighties on developing models (ARCH/GARCH type models) to capture time-varying characteristics of volatility and other stock return properties, extensive research has been done world over in modeling volatility for estimation and forecasting. There are broadly four possible approaches for estimating and forecasting volatility. These are: Traditional Volatility Estimators— These estimators assume that ‘true’ volatility is unconditional and constant. The estimation is based on either squared returns or standard deviation of returns over a period. Extreme Value Volatility Estimators— These estimators are similar to traditional estimators except that these also incorporate high and low prices observed unlike traditional estimators which are based on closing prices of the asset. Conditional Volatility Models— These models (ARCH/GARCH type models) take into account the time-varying nature of volatility. There have been quite a few extensions of the basic conditional volatility models to incorporate ‘observed’ characteristics of asset/stock returns. Implied Volatility— In case of options, most of the parameters relevant for their valuation can be directly observed or estimated, except volatility. Volatility is, therefore, backed out from the observed option values and is used as volatility forecast. The empirical research across countries and markets has not been equivocal about the effectiveness of using these approaches. This study compares the result of the first three approaches in estimating and forecasting Nifty returns. Based on four different criteria related to bias and efficiency of the various estimators and models, this study analysed the estimation and forecasting ability of three different traditional estimators, four extreme value estimators, and two conditional volatility models. As a benchmark, it used ‘realized’ volatility estimates. The findings of this study are as follows: For estimating the volatility, the extreme value estimators perform better on efficiency criteria that the conditional volatility models. In terms of bias, conditional volatility models perform better than the extreme value estimators. As far as predictive power is concerned, extreme value estimators estimated from sample of length equal to forecast period perform better than the conditional volatility estimators in providing five-day and month ahead volatility forecasts.
Manager as a Trainer, a Coach, and a Mentor
Authors: Manikutty S 
Published: January 2017

This paper argues that for effective development of managers, training programmes are far from sufficient. The major development of managerial capabilities, in fact, takes place not so much as a result of training programmes as on the job. But this development can be directed or undirected and one of the important tasks of a senior manager is to make sure this development is directed and effective. The development of junior managers by senior managers is a vital activity in a learning organization. In today�s fast changing environment, the only organizations that will survive will be learning organizations. Competitive advantage is not static. Organizations cannot place themselves in particular strategic postures in an industry and stay there for all time to come but have to evolve and adapt to new situations. This ability to adapt depends on the amount and kind of learning that takes place continuously in the organizations and how effectively managers can apply these learnings in their jobs. Formal training programmes can be useful and effective not by themselves but through effective coupling to organizational situations. This linkage is often lacking which is the prime reason for the apparent lack of effectiveness of such formal programmes. But building such linkages can hardly be done by academic institutions or consultants; they need to be ultimately done by the managers of the organizations themselves. As a general rule, most managers are aware of this role but have neither the time, energy nor incentive to do the development and training of their junior managers. They also lack a framework to do this systematically. This article suggests a possible framework. The role of senior managers as trainers varies with the stages the junior manager is in his career: as the first boss of a new manager, the senior managers have to shape the values and develop the ability in the new manager to prioritize and set goals for himself for the middle level managers, the senior managers have to act as trainers capitalizing on the experience the junior managers would have had thus far and integrating them with the training programmes they might have been deputed to for senior managers, they must act as disseminators and enablers of dissemination of new ideas for all levels, mentoring is very important. Not all managers can make effective mentors; and for those who have the aptitude, training programmes for mentorship can be useful. Ultimately, the role of the senior managers as trainers, coaches, and mentors is to enable the junior managers to learn effectively and help them in their self development.
HRD Practices and Philosophy of Management in Indian Organizations
Authors: Singh Anil Kumar 
Published: January 2017

The managerial philosophy of a company is generally based upon the top management's assumptions about people working in the organization. It reflects the attitude of the top management towards the human resources of an organization. Managerial philosophies of companies are embedded in the society. McGregor (1960) has labelled these managerial philosophies as ‘Theory X and Theory Y.’ This paper is an attempt to identify the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and the philosophy of management of the Indian business organizations. For this, the different variables of HR practices were studied and the management's philosophy was identified by measuring beliefs of top management about employees in the organizations. The sample for the study consisted of 95 respondents from two private sector organizations and 119 respondents from two public sector organizations. The findings of the study indicate that the variables of HR practices (planning, recruitment, and selection) were highly but negatively related to the philosophy of management in the private sector organizations. This meant that the Indian organizations were practising traditional philosophy of management in such organizations. The prevalence of traditional managerial philosophy focusing on managerial control has always dominated the managerial community in the sense that it is more prevalent and is more ‘tightly’ linked to managerial practice. As new managerial ideologies evolved, the older ones “never disappeared; instead, images and practices central to each were gradually institutionalized” (Barley and Kunda, 1992). The philosophy of management showed a blurred picture in the public sector organizations. Though the top management's views and balance sheet emphasized the belief of the organization towards Theory Y, the analysed responses proved that management philosophy was not clear to managers working in these organizations. In fact, the Indian public sector organizations started as welfare organizations. However, the impact of market economy has led to a competitive environment. Though the public sector organizations have started realizing the impact of competition, it is difficult for them to understand when they lost their focus on the managerial philosophy. The following key issues emerged from the study: Organizations will have to design managerial philosophy which is sensitive to human existence. The managerial philosophy in the organization has an impact on the organizations of the future. HR concepts that get packaged along with modern managerial philosophy are likely to revolutionize the workplace. The bottom line is that people want to be cared for and respected. On their part, organizations want commitment and integrity. A successful combination of committed people and a benevolent organization could well be the way for organizations in this competitive environment in India.
Rural Finance in Contemporary Times: Interface with Microfinance
Authors: Sisodia N S , Rao M B N , Mahajan Vijay , Leeladhar V , Vasimalai M P , Reddy Rama , Mohan Brij , Srinivasan R , Sriram M S 
Published: January 2017

In India, when we talk about rural finance, the stereotype offered is that of a banking system that fails to reach out to the poorer clients and, when it does, fails to recover the money so disbursed. The counter-point offered is usually the magic wand of microfinance. This Colloquium was an interface between leading bankers and microfinance practitioners in India to examine where these two worlds meet and how they could learn from each other. The discussions were organized around three themes: a) the legacy of the banking system, b) the limitations of microfinance, and c) an assessment of the potential. On the issue of legacy, the message was clear that the intervention of the state in certain aspects has been undesirable. These areas were clearly identified as granting general pardon for loans, tinkering around with interest subsidies, and interfering with the commercial aspects of banking. The limitations of the microfinance institutions were in terms of their sustainability and their inability to draw commercial capital and grow rapidly. However, these limitations were partly seen as a consequence of regulatory apathy and support from the state both in terms of formulating and articulating a regulatory framework and also in terms of the central bank being reluctant to supervise the efforts. These did not help in enhancing the legitimacy of microfinance institutions. The participants saw a great potential in the rural markets which were beyond agriculture. The emerging sectors were identified as construction, non-farm enterprise, handloom, clusters that involve garment making and quarrying, etc. According to them, there was scope for both the banks and the microfinance institutions to intervene. The following points emerged from the discussion: Rural finance has suffered from interventions from the state in the past. While some interventions have been positive, they have harmed the sector when compromises such as write-offs have been made. Microfinance has emerged as an important mechanism to reach out financial services to the poor. There are interesting lessons from this for the banks to adopt. There are problems for the microfinance institutions in the form of regulatory and supervisory apathy. This leads to financial exclusion of large segments of the poor. There is a huge market for financial services — both loans and savings. Innovations across the world indicate important breakthroughs in delivery of financial services. These can be implemented provided the regulatory impediments are removed. The issue of risk management has to be systematically addressed. The role of the state, wherever positive, has been effective and, therefore, this should be sharply defined to see how the state could contribute to this sector. The issue of interest rates continues to be vexatious and needs to be addressed urgently.
Managing the Customer Perceived Service Quality for Cellular Mobile Telephony: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: Seth Anita , Momaya K , Gupta H M 
Published: January 2017

With the liberalization and internationalization in telecommunication, service quality has become an important means of differentiation and path to achieve business success. Such differentiation based on service quality can be a key source of competitiveness for many Indian firms and hence have implications for leadership in such organizations. For the past few years, cellular mobile service sector in India has been experiencing the highest growth rate in terms of subscribers and revenues. With the increasing demands of the customer, cellular mobile sector has become competitive. Despite this, most of the cellular mobile service providers in India are primarily focusing on expanding their customer base and tend to overlook investing in service quality. A thorough review of literature revealed that most of the studies reported on service quality focused on the service delivery aspects, ignoring the role of technical quality. The present study strives to develop a valid and reliable instrument to measure customer perceived service quality incorporating both service delivery as well as technical quality aspects. Through a survey of 225 regular users of cellular mobile services, a seven dimensional service quality instrument is revealed, which is empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability, and construct validity using confirmatory factor analysis. The resulting validated instrument comprised of dimensions including reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, tangibles, convenience, and customer perceived network quality. Further, the results of the regression analysis highlighted the priority areas of service improvement. The study indicated that among the various dimensions, responsiveness is the best predictor, followed by reliability, customer perceived network quality, assurance, convenience, empathy, and tangibles. Thus, superior performance on the most important dimension, responsiveness may be helpful in providing enhanced quality of service. The major managerial implications of study include the following: The service quality instrument so developed can be used by managers for periodic monitoring of service quality as perceived by customers. The study also provides directions to service providers as to which particular dimension require attention in terms of their importance. This would enable the service providers to focus resources in accordance with the importance of these dimensions. Further, the service quality index derived by aggregating the scores on these dimensions can also be developed, which can be used for benchmarking their performance against competitors. The instrument is developed and validated by collecting data from customers in India. There may be a possibility of cultural differences playing a role in the outcome of the study. Thus, there is a need to explore these results for other developing and developed economies. The future studies may also take into account the factors that influence service quality for corporate customers.
Predicting Acquisitions in India
Authors: Barai Parama , Mohanty Pitabas 
Published: January 2017

Statistical models for predicting takeover targets by using publicly available information, specifically historical accounting information, has attracted considerable academic endeavour. These empirical studies draw from the stylized fact that has unequivocally emerged from literature on performance of mergers and acquisitions: that target firms gain abnormal returns when a takeover announcement is made. Hence, it has been hypothesized that early prediction of takeover targets can stimulate strategic trading that can consistently ‘beat the market’, and make abnormal returns. While it has now been generally proven that such a strategy cannot succeed within semi-strong efficient markets, attempts continue to construct such prediction models to identify potentially valuable firms that can at least provide higher returns under a new management with synergistic propositions. Besides, the characteristics identified by a robust model are also used for preliminary exploration for a potentially good target by acquirers. Following this strand of literature, this paper builds a prediction model for acquisition targets in India using logistic regression. For the estimation of the logistic regression, 122 target firms of acquisitions during the three year-period from 2002 to 2005 were considered, and matched with non-acquiring, non-target firms that had similar promoters' holdings and belonged to the same industry as the target. Results from logistic regression indicate that, a typical target is inherently strong with high growth and large free cash flow, in spite of high debt levels, but encumbered by an inefficient management, who are probably disciplined by takeover market. Traditional determinants of US and UK studies, viz., size and growth-resource imbalance are not significant in the Indian context. Methodological care was taken at various steps to avoid known biases. Estimation period was taken for a modest three year period rather than a longer period to ensure minimal changes in the macro-economic landscape that might have a bearing on the target characteristics. Further, both raw accounting ratios, and industry adjusted ratios were used to account for non-normality of such data. To build the prediction model, cut-off values were calculated using two methods, one that minimized statistical errors and another that maximized returns; again, the latter was found to be superior. Finally, the prediction model was tested on an out-of-sample database of acquisitions that took place during 2005-2006 and was found to yield prediction accuracies up to 91 per cent.