Home Menu
icon-menu-close.svg

Faculty & Research

Faculty & Research

Research Productive

Show result

Clear
Search Query :
Area :
Search Query :
821 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2019

Casting the net: India's public distribution system after the Food Security Act

Jean Dreze, Prankur Gupta, Reetika Khera, and Isabel Pimenta

Economic & Political Weekly

A broad-brush assessment of the public distribution system is presented in six of India’s poorest states—Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal—soon after the National Food Security Act, 2013 came into force. Important gains have been made, including broader coverage, lower targeting errors, accelerated PDS reforms, and a greater political commitment to food security. In four of the six reference states, the PDS seems to be doing reasonably well, but Bihar and Jharkhand still have a long way to go. Even in the leading states, much remains to be done to achieve the purpose of the NFSA: ending food insecurity.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

An overlapping community detection algorithm based on rough clustering of links

Samrat Gupta and Pradeep Kumar

Data and Knowledge Engineering

The growth of networks is prevalent in almost every field due to the digital transformation of consumers, business and society at large. The unfolding of community structure in such real-world complex networks is crucial since it aids in gaining strategic insights leading to informed decisions. Moreover, the co-occurrence of disjoint, overlapping and nested community patterns in such networks demands methodologically rigorous community detection algorithms so as to foster cumulative tradition in data and knowledge engineering. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for overlapping community detection based on granular information of links and concepts of rough set theory. First, neighborhood links around each pair of nodes are utilized to form initial link subsets. Subsequently, constrained linkage upper approximation of the link subsets is computed iteratively until convergence. The upper approximation subsets obtained during each iteration are constrained and merged using the notion of mutual link reciprocity. The experimental results on ten real-world networks and comparative evaluation with state-of-the-art community detection algorithms demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

The goblet and two faces: Understanding transcendence and paradox from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta

Shiva Kakkar (FPM)

Human Resource Management International Digest

Purpose

Paradox theory looks at ambidexterity as a set of paradoxical yet interrelated demands. A form of response to such paradoxes is transcendence. Currently, there is limited understanding of the concept among researchers. Using concepts from the Indian philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of transcendence, highlight some of the epistemological challenges it presents and suggest ways in which the concept can be used by practitioners and ambidexterity researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses concepts and theories from advaitic episteme to look at concepts of paradox and transcendence. The method of adhyaropa–apavada is introduced as a way to help individuals get a transcendental perspective of paradoxes. The application of the method is demonstrated using secondary data from published research on ambidexterity management.

Findings

It is postulated that transcendence is an “intuitive experience” born out of reflexive thinking. The dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada (affirmation followed by recension) is suggested as a pedagogical tool that can promote reflexive thinking.

Originality/value

The paper significantly adds to the theoretical understanding of paradoxes and transcendence in ambidexterity literature. The paper also makes a strong pedagogical contribution to literature by suggesting the dialectic of adhyaropa–apavada that can be used by managers to promote reflexive thinking among subordinates when faced with paradoxical situations.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Leveraging service recovery strategies to reduce customer churn in an emerging market

Sourav Bikash Borah, Srinivas Prakhya, and Amalesh Sharma

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Building on the properties of emerging markets, we investigate how a firm should align its service recovery strategies with different types of service failure to reduce customer churn in an emerging market. Using resource exchange theory and a multi-method approach, we show that the conventional wisdom related to service recovery needs to be reevaluated in emerging markets. Our results show that process failures lead to a higher likelihood of customer churn compared to outcome failures in emerging markets. Investigating service recovery mechanisms, we find that compensation is more effective in recovering from process failures than in recovering from outcome failures in emerging markets. Similarly, employee behavior has a stronger impact on mitigating the ill effects of process failures than those of outcome failures. The study contributes to the literature on service recovery and resource exchange theory and provides managerial insights for the effective management of customer churn due to service failures in emerging markets.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Understanding the structural characteristics of a firm's whole buyer–supplier network and its impact on international business performance

Amalesh Sharma, V. Kumar, Jun Yan, Sourav Bikash Borah, and Anirban Adhikary

Journal of International Business Studies

Building on the network theory and the concept of organizational ambidexterity, we investigate the impact of structural characteristics of a firm’s whole buyer–supplier network: network density, betweenness centralization, and average clustering coefficient on its international business (IB) performance. We also explore the moderating roles of average path length and PageRank centrality. Using a manually-collected dataset and a robust empirical methodology, we find that, while network density is negatively related, betweenness centralization and average clustering coefficient have an inverted U-shape and a U-shaped relationship with IB performance, respectively. We also find significant moderation effects, and, in the process, we show the economic importance of firms’ whole buyer–supplier network to their IB performance. We contribute to the international business and whole buyer–supplier network literature.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Is it too complex? The curious case of supply network complexity and focal firm innovation

Amalesh Sharma, Surya Pathak, Sourav Borah, and Anirban Adhikary

Journal of Operations Management

Firms have increasingly relied on their supply network for improving their innovation performance. Although the relationship between the supply network structure and innovation has been investigated, the link between supply network complexity and a firm's innovation remains unexplored. By employing transaction cost economics and the concept of a recombinatory search, we propose that the complexity dimensions (horizontal, vertical, and spatial complexity) of a supply network impact the innovation performance of a firm and that such relationships are moderated by a strategic emphasis on value creation and the influence of the firm over the supply network. With a large-scale network data of 201 firms across six industries and 20 countries, we take a robust empirical approach that accounts for endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity and intrafirm error correlation to test our theory. We find strong support for a nonlinear relationship (with diminishing growth) between both horizontal and vertical complexity with respect to innovation performance. We find that spatial complexity is negatively related to innovation performance. Additionally, we find that a firm's strategic emphasis and its influence indeed moderates the link between the complexity dimensions and innovation performance. Based on our findings, we offer specific managerial guidance for the effective implementation of sourcing practices.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Celebrity endorsements in emerging markets: Align endorsers with brands or with consumers?

Subhadip Roy, Abhijit Guha, Abhijit Biswas, and Dhruv Grewal

Journal of International Business Studies

This paper investigates country-of-origin (CO) effects as they relate to celebrity endorsements. Across multiple studies in emerging markets, the authors show that consumers’ evaluations depend on the match between (1) celebrity CO and consumer CO (termed consumer CO fit), and (2) celebrity CO and brand CO (termed brand CO fit). If there is a trade-off between consumer CO fit and brand CO fit, the authors identify contingencies (e.g., ethnocentrism levels) that determine which type of CO fit leads to higher evaluations. Furthermore, the authors develop prescriptions for segmentation in emerging markets and specify when these prescriptions differ from those prescribed by prior international business research.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Developing an emic scale to measure ad-evoked nostalgia in a collectivist emerging market, India

Subhadip Roy, Varsha Jain, Altaf Merchant, and John B Ford

Journal of Business Research

Although there has been recent interest in the measurement of advertising-evoked nostalgia, the dimensionality and generalizability of the related scales are restricted to the national/cultural boundaries of Western nations. In the present study, we develop an emic scale to measure ad-evoked personal nostalgia in an important emerging economy, India, refining and purifying the scale with seven separate studies (with a combined sample size of 1823). The resulting scale contains five dimensions: past imagery, physiological reactions, positive emotions, negative emotions and collective nostalgia. In the present study, we follow rigorous scale development procedures, and we also go beyond by comparing the effectiveness of our emic scale with a previous scale developed in France (etic), and subsequently we test our measure in another (culturally-congruent) market – Bangladesh. Our study emphasizes the need for culture-specific measures (emic), and we present important theoretical and managerial insights.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Service quality versus service experience: An empirical examination of the consequential effects in B2B services

Subhadip Roy, S. Sreejesh, and Sandhya Bhatia

Industrial Marketing Management

The present study investigates the role of service experience in B2B services vis-a-vis service quality. In particular, the study addresses the question: how do the relative effects of service quality versus service experience in a B2B setting influence the immediate (satisfaction and perceived value) and subsequent customer outcomes (loyalty and word of mouth)? To this end, three surveys were conducted (with a combined sample size of 626) of customers of financial consultancy services. The collected data is subjected to factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the study hypotheses. Major findings indicate a stronger influence of service experience on satisfaction and perceived value as compared to service quality. Results also show a stronger indirect effect of service experience on loyalty and word of mouth (via satisfaction) compared to service quality. In addition, service experience was found to influence both perceived utilitarian and hedonic value derived from service while service quality was found to influence only utilitarian value. The findings underline the importance of service experience in a B2B setup.

Go to link
Read More

Journal Articles | 2019

Improving the measurement of school climate using item response theory

Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, Ray E. Reichenberg, Kathan Shukla, Tracy E. Waasdorp, and Catherine P. Bradshaw

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice

The U.S. government has become increasingly focused on school climate, as recently evidenced by its inclusion as an accountability indicator in the Every Student Succeeds Act. Yet, there remains considerable variability in both conceptualizing and measuring school climate. To better inform the research and practice related to school climate and its measurement, we leveraged item response theory (IRT), a commonly used psychometric approach for the design of achievement assessments, to create a parsimonious measure of school climate that operates across varying individual characteristics. Students (n = 69,513) in 111 secondary schools completed a school climate assessment focused on three domains of climate (i.e., safety, engagement, and environment), as defined by the U.S. Department of Education. Item and test characteristics were estimated using the mirt package in R using unidimensional IRT. Analyses revealed measurement difficulties that resulted in a greater ability to assess less favorable perspectives on school climate. Differential item functioning analyses indicated measurement differences based on student academic success. These findings support the development of a broad measure of school climate but also highlight the importance of work to ensure precision in measuring school climate, particularly when considering use as an accountability measure.

Go to link
Read More
IIMA