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849 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2019

Strategizing in small informal retailers in India: Home delivery as a strategic practice

Atul Arun Pathak and George Kandathil

Asia Pacific Journal of Management

Small informally organized family-owned grocery retailers—kiranas—are ubiquitous in India and have retained market dominance while facing increasing competition from large formally organized retailers (FORs). Yet, strategy literature has under-explored such informal businesses. We explore kiranas’ distinct strategic practices that give them competitive advantage over FORs, generating kiranas’ sustained market dominance. To explore kiranas’ informal strategizing, grounded theoretic analysis of our multi-year case study suggested the employment of strategy as practice (SAP) framework, enriched with the social exchange theory (SET) concepts of trust and reciprocity. We find that the kiranas’ sustained enactment of strategic practice such as free-of-charge home-delivery significantly depends on contextually rich, reciprocity-based social exchange relationships with customers which evolve through praxes involving continuous exchange of trust. The practice enactment and exchange relationships constitute strategy-practitioner’s emerging dual-identity, which in turn reinforces the practices, generating a self-reinforcing cycle of practice enhancement. Within this cyclic relationship, an inimitable enactment of a strategic practice can be a key source of competitive advantage for informally organized small retail retailers over large FORs. By linking two unconnected prominent approaches to understanding patterns of workplace interactions, namely SAP and SET, the study opens theoretical avenues for exploring strategizing of informal businesses.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Non-optimality of state by state monopoly pricing with demand uncertainty: An example

James Peck and Jeevant Rampal

Economics Letters

This paper considers a monopoly’s profit maximizing problem, where there is a continuum of consumers with unit demand, and valuations are given by one of two possible demand distributions/states. The firm’s problem is to maximize profits by choosing an optimal mechanism among direct revelation mechanisms that satisfy interim incentive compatibility and ex-post individual rationality. We show that setting the monopoly price in each demand state may not be optimal.

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Journal Articles | 2019

An examination of factors driving big 4 audit fee premiums: Evidence from India's audit market

Joshy Jacob, Naman Desai, and Sobhesh Kumar Agarwalla

Accounting Horizons

This study examines fee premiums earned by Big 4 auditors in India and identifies the primary reason for such fee premiums. There are three primary drivers of Big 4 fee premiums. Big 4 auditors charge a fee premium for their reputation, for providing a superior quality of audit, and for indemnifying losses for a company's stakeholders. Since the risk of auditor litigation in India is relatively low, Big 4 premiums in India would not be driven by the need for auditors to indemnify losses. The results indicate that Big 4 auditors earn significantly higher fees in India and also that their clients enjoy significantly higher earnings response coefficients compared to non-Big 4 clients. However, there is no difference in the quality of audit provided by Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors as measured by the magnitude of reported discretionary accruals.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Trust in humanitarian operations: a content analytic approach for an Indian NGO

Prakash Awasthy, K.V. Gopakumar, Sirish Kumar Gouda, and Tanushree Haldar

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH

Trust between partners, a key element enabling coordination across supply chains, has recently started gaining attention in humanitarian operations literature. Yet, empirical examination of this concept is scant. Borrowing from extant literature on trust within organisational behaviour stream, this paper aims to empirically verify trust formation types: companion, competence and commitment, in a disaster relief supply chain using primary and secondary data from an Indian Humanitarian relief organisation (HRO). Further, we identify variations in trust formation during disaster relief activities and developmental programmes, and between upstream and downstream partners of a humanitarian relief organisation. Based on the results of our content analysis, we contend that while companion based trust is significantly more prevalent during developmental programmes, competence based trust is important during both disaster periods and otherwise. We also find that there are significant differences in the trust formation between upstream and downstream partners and the HRO. This study has significant theoretical and practical implications on identifying the role of trust in humanitarian operations.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Can subordinate voice prevail with abusive supervision? A conceptual model using conservation of resources perspective

K.V. Gopakumar and Sweta Singh

Management Research Review

Purpose

Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explain why certain voice types prevail while other voice types are inhibited in the presence of abusive supervision.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper surveys extant literature on abusive supervision, employee voice and COR theory and provides propositions linking abusive supervision and types of voice behaviours.

Findings

The paper develops a conceptual model linking abusive supervision and three types of subordinate voice behaviours – prosocial, defensive and acquiescent voices. It identifies psychological distress as a mediator and locus of control as a moderator to this relationship.

Originality/value

This paper deepens our present understanding of abusive supervision and voice relationship by explaining why only certain voice types prevail with abusive supervision while others do not. While extant literature concluded abusive supervision only as an inhibitor of voice behaviours, the present study identifies how abusive supervision could both inhibit and motivate different voice behaviours. Further, it links abusive supervision to multiple voice types, diverting from extant literature linking abusive supervision to only constructive voice. Lastly, this study contributes to resource acquisition strategies within COR theory.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Do tweets create value? A multi-period analysis of Twitter use and content of tweets for manufacturing firms

Adrija Majumdar and Indranil Bose

International Journal of Production Economics

In this research we enquire if adoption of Twitter by manufacturing firms creates any value for the firm. We conduct two studies to examine the relationship between Twitter related activities of manufacturing firms and the market reaction towards these firms. We collect a novel multi-period dataset and analyse the overall impact of adoption of Twitter on Tobin's Q by employing a propensity score matching and difference-in-difference research design. Our findings suggest that adoption of Twitter increases the value of the firm post adoption. We also conduct additional robustness check such as use of Industry Week data as a proxy of firm value and find our results to be consistent. We adopt a text mining-based approach and examine the communication environment of the manufacturing firms. We use the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm for short texts and identify six broad topics among tweets posted by firms. Our panel regression based analysis suggests that there is positive association between divulging product related information and Tobin's Q. Our research showcases the strong impact of use of Twitter and contributes to the nascent literature on firm generated content. It is likely to encourage managers of manufacturing firms to start actively using Twitter for sharing product related information on social media.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India

Klaus Deininger, Hari K Nagarajan, and Sudhir K Singh

Journal of Comparative Economics

Despite recent advances, women trail men in political participation, especially in developing countries where the long-term economic benefits from empowering women politically have not been well-researched. We use data from 163 villages of 12 main Indian states to explore whether requiring that village leadership positions be held by women (political reservation) affected uptake of economic opportunities via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Reservation triggered increases in women's demand for work, program participation, and access to financial services that were sustained beyond the period of female political leadership. Enhanced female participation in program oversight, civic engagement, and electoral participation are plausible channels for such effects and political and economic empowerment seem to be complementary.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Jati, local public goods and village governance: Private actions and public outcomes

Raghbendra Jha, Hari K Nagarajan, and Anirudh Tagat

Economic & Political Weekly

Whether voting along narrow parochial lines in socially and ethnically fragmented societies has measurable gains is explored. Using data from rural India, it is established that identity-based voting, driven by membership in social and informal networks, will lead to enhanced participation in welfare programmes, which in turn leads to increased consumption growth. Further, reducing agency costs does not necessarily remove the need for identity-based voting, and such voting behaviour is a means for engaging in the capture of public and private benefits by these groups.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Addressing the undergraduate internship challenge in developing countries:A “learning-by-doing” project-based online internship model

Vijaya Sherry Chand and Ketan S. Deshmukh

Education And Training

Purpose

The difficulties higher education institutions in developing countries face in finding adequate and relevant onsite student internship opportunities make a case for online internships. The purpose of this paper is to present an online internship model, developed over a two-year period, which challenged students to engage in learning-by-doing projects that addressed a key barrier in the implementation of ICT policies in public education, the paucity of audio-visual content in local languages.

Design/methodology/approach

The design of the model comprised the development of instructional videos by 340 interns, the evaluation of the videos by two interns and their testing by 31 interns through a field experiment using a between-subjects pre-test – post-test design in 54 schools. The process was repeated the following year with the field experiment replaced by the development of teaching manuals. The changes in reflective learning among 112 of the 119 interns who developed video content in this repeat round were assessed.

Findings

The field experiment found that the intern-developed videos improved Mathematics and Science scores among school students but not the attitudes to these subjects. Participation in online internships improved reflective learning.

Research limitations/implications

The evaluation of change in reflective learning is based on self-reported measures.

Practical implications

The online internship model presented in the paper can address concerns related to inadequate internship opportunities, while addressing gaps in public policy implementation by systems such as education, health and rural development.

Originality/value

The paper outlines the design of an online student internship model and a methodology for implementing it. The study indicates the feasibility of a low-cost, large-scale online model of internship.

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Journal Articles | 2019

Numeracy and financial literacy of forest-dependent communities

Sundar Balakrishna and Vineet Virmani

Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers

The article examines the numeracy and financial literacy of the Indian forest-dependent communities (FDC) involved in the joint forest management (JFM) programme, launched by the Government of India in 1990. An understanding of the financial literacy levels of the Indian FDCs may provide insights to policymakers regarding customized literacy programmes that can reduce exploitation from petty traders and local forest officials. The research draws sample data from FDCs of two geographical regions with differing resource endowments (Rayalaseema and the coastal region) in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The results show that a third of the sampled members of the FDCs were able to answer the questions on probability and simple interest correctly. At least half of the sample had a clear idea on the time value of money and had less difficulty in computing when the mathematical questions were framed in the form of sentences which embedded situations from their daily lives. Participants, however, faced difficulty in recognizing mathematical symbols and performing simple computations in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The average scores of the sample in the standard numeracy and financial literacy tests were 4.98 (out of 12 points) and 1.32 (out of 5 points), respectively.

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