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2761 items in total found

Working Papers | 2016

Consumers' Expectations of Sales Events: How satisfied are consumer with shopping during sales events?

Shaheen Borna and Dheeraj Sharma

Past researchers have examined the influence of sales events on multitude of variables. However, there is no study which specifically examines the influence of sales events on consumer participation in sales events and their expectations from the sales events. In this study, we examine the relationship between consumers' participation in a given sales event and their expectations of savings from that event in North American context. Research findings indicate that only 11 sales events have a high realization rate of expected savings. Based on research findings, we proffer several recommendations for the retail managers.

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Working Papers | 2016

An Exploratory Investigation of Impact of Perceived Cannibalization on Salesperson's Trust, Commitment, Job Satisfaction, Job Performance and Relational Capital

Dheeraj Sharma

With the increasing ubiquity of the Internet, organizations are using the Internet channel to increase overall performance, consolidate existing markets, and expand into new markets. The literature, however, contends that the overarching benefits realized through the Internet oftentimes come at the expense of perceived job insecurity among individuals in the organization. This study explores perceptions of sales agents that develop because of the potential for the Internet to cannibalize their business and jeopardize relationships and their jobs. Results suggest that sales agents' perception of cannibalization negatively influences their trust and commitment. Furthermore, environmental munificence moderates the influence of PC on trust and commitment. Additionally, Trust and Commitment mediate the impact of PC on Relational Capital, Job Satisfaction and Job Performance of a salesperson.

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Working Papers | 2016

Open Access Temptations: Buyer Beware

Vineet Virmani

Backlash against "megapublishers" which began in mathematics a decade ago has led to an exponential growth in open access journals. Their increasing numbers and popularity notwithstanding, there is evidence that not all open access journals are legitimate. The nature of the "gold open access" business model and increasing prevalence of "publish or perish" culture in academia has given rise to a dark under-belly in the world of scientific publishing which feeds off academics' professional needs. Many such "predatory" publishers and journals not only seem to originate out of India but also seem to have been patronized by academics in the country. This article is a cautionary note to early-career academics and administrators in India to be wary of this "wild west" of the internet and exercise discretion when considering/evaluating open-access journals for scholarly contributions.

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Working Papers | 2016

Impact of Board and CEO characteristics on Firms' Performance

Chitra Singla

Corporate governance characteristics like board composition and leadership impact a firm's performance. Researchers have attempted to explain the relationship using different theoretical perspectives like agency theory, resource dependence theory, and stewardship theory. However, the literature presents ambiguous results where some empirical findings support negative impact and other support positive impact. In this paper, we argue that ambiguity in results could be due to the context specificity of the nature of this relationship. In some contexts, agency theory might be more valid than other theories and in others stewardship theory or resource dependence theory might be more valid. Building on this context specificity, we look at the relationship between board and CEO characteristics on firm's performance in a longitudinal sample of Indian firms. Our findings suggest that none of the above mentioned theories are completely valid in the India context because we get mixed support for these theories. This calls for a mid-range theory to explain the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and firm's performance.

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Working Papers | 2016

Understanding Coefficient Alpha: Assumptions and Interpretations

Dheeraj Sharma

A procedure is developed for determining appropriate levels of scale reliability by examining coefficient alpha in conjunction with the standardized regression coefficient for each variable. Present study aims to examine the effect of addition and deletion of items on coefficient alpha. Also, necessary assumptions for appropriate interpretation of coefficient alpha are examined. Present research suggests that deleting scale items to increase coefficient alpha may result in an under specification of the construct the scale attempts to measure. Furthermore, this research offers prescriptive and descriptive insights for appropriate use of coefficient alpha.

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Working Papers | 2016

A THEORY OF TAX EVASION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Errol D'Souza

The literature on tax evasion assumes that taxpayers wish to evade their taxes entirely and the only reason they do not do so is that there is some non-zero probability of being caught by the government. Also, it is assumed that government uses the taxes and fines from caught evaders on goods that it consumes which produce no utility to taxpayer-citizens. In a developing country, however, we argue that taxpayers use tax evasion to compensate for imperfect financial markets as well as government expenditure patterns that do not benefit them. We demonstrate that imperfect financial markets result in situations where when individuals find the chance of earning high returns from investments, it causes them to overcome their aversion to risk and participate in actuarially unfair tax evasion gambles. Also, tax evasion increases when either public goods are underprovided, or the government is sufficiently predatory , or the government directs policies at groups that the taxpayer is not a member of. In such a situation tax evasion is viewed by the taxpayer as a means of shifting the allocation of his income in favor of investments and away from government expenditure policies that give little benefit to him.

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Working Papers | 2016

Impact of Independent Directors' Resignations on Firm's Governance

Preet Deep Singh and Chitra Singla

Directors are liable for any act of omission or commission. They have a reputation to protect. While Independent directors might engage in passive monitoring; when apprised of a decision where the probability of detection of negligence is higher, they might prefer to abandon ship rather than suffer consequences. Under such circumstances, directors' resignations could lead to some consequences on firm's governance. We test this using a sample of more than 2300 resignations during 2006-2014 from firms listed on National Stock Exchange, India. We specifically identify clustered resignations, i.e., when 2 or more people leave the board within the same year for company-specific reasons and see its association with earnings management in the following year.

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Working Papers | 2016

Ownership Structure and Internationalization of Indian Firms

Chitra Singla, Rejie George, and Rajaram Veliyath

This paper examines the relationship between ownership structure and the firm internationalization, in a longitudinal sample of Indian firms. Drawing from principal-principal (PP) agency theory and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, we argue that divergent motivations among the firm's owners affect the firm's inclination to pursue internationalization, while resource heterogeneity among the firm's owners affects the firm's capability to pursue internationalization. Since both motivation and capability are required for a firm to pursue any strategic initiative, we argue that differences in ownership, which influences both the motivation and the capability of firms, impact firm's internationalization strategies in different ways. In addition, through examining two modes of internationalization, i.e., outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports from a prominent emerging economy, we uncover an interesting dichotomy. While family and other domestic owners favor exports (and not FDI), foreign owners favor both exports and FDI. Further, we find that family owners have a dominant influence on internationalization and their preferences appear to supersede those of the other owners.

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Working Papers | 2016

Incorporating gender and age in genetic algorithms to solve the indexing problem

Diptesh Ghosh

In this paper we propose new genetic algorithms for the tool indexing problem. Genetic
algorithms are said to be nature-inspired, in that they are modeled after the natural process of
genetic evolution. The evolution process that they model is asexual in which individuals can
potentially live forever. In this paper, we propose a genetic algorithm in which solutions are of
two genders, reproduction happens by a combination of solutions with dierent genders, and
each solution has a nite life. We compare our genetic algorithms with the best known genetic
algorithm for the tool indexing problem and report our computational experience.
Keywords: Genetic algorithm, permutation problem, crossover, mutation

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Working Papers | 2016

Auditors' Consideration of Material Income-increasing versus Material Income-decreasing Items: Are Conservatism and Risk affected by Company Level Information?

Naman Desai

Auditors tend to focus more on income-increasing items compared to income-decreasing items because they are trained to be more conservative and also because the risk of litigation is significantly higher for failing to detect material income-increasing items compared to material income-decreasing items. Auditors' consideration of transaction level items is also affected by their evaluation of company level information. In this study we examine how the interaction between company level information and sign of the material items affect auditors' evaluation of income-increasing and income-decreasing items. The results indicate that in the absence of company level information, auditors intuitively associate a higher risk and audit effort to income-increasing items. When the company level information indicates that management is under pressure to inflate earnings, auditor conservatism and risk associated with income-increasing items gets amplified leading to an increase in the difference in assessed risk and audit effort between income-increasing and decreasing items. However, when the company level information indicates that management is not under pressure to inflate earnings, there are no significant differences in assessed risk and audit effort between income-increasing and income-decreasing items. These results indicate that auditor conservatism is affected by company level information

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