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3846 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2017

An orchestrated negotiated exchange: Trading home-based telework for intensified work

George Mathew Kandathil and Dharma Raju Bathini

Journal of Business Ethics

In this paper, we explore a popular flexible work arrangement (FWA), home-based telework, in the Indian IT industry. We show how IT managers used the dominant meanings of telework to portray telework as an employee benefit that outweighed the attendant cost—intensified work. While using their discretion to grant telework, the managers drew on this portrayal to orchestrate a negotiated exchange with their subordinates. Consequently, the employees consented to accomplish the intensified work at home in exchange of telework despite their opposition to the intensified work in the office. Thus, whereas the extant studies consider work intensification as an unanticipated outcome of using FWAs, we show how firms may use FWAs strategically to get office-based intensified work accomplished at home. While the dominant argument is that employees reciprocate the opportunity to telework with intensified work, we show a discursively orchestrated negotiation that favors management. A corrective policy measure is to frame telework as an employee right.

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Journal Articles | 2017

A system dynamics simulation model of a blast furnace for project evaluation

Goutam Dutta and Medha Ashtekar

International Journal of Business and Systems Research

The manufacturing of hot metal in a blast furnace is one of the important parts of an integrated steel plant. In a blast furnace, the quality and productivity of the output (hot metal) depends on a large number of input and operating variables. In this paper, we simulate complex interactions of technological and financial variables. We chose system dynamics principles to simulate the blast furnace for project evaluation as a useful aid to managerial decisions. The model would be used to answer a number of questions related to investment decisions. We simulate the actual production of hot metal, accumulated hot metal production, net works cost and cost of hot metal per ton for a period of 36 months with real data.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Survey on revenue management in media and broadcasting

Shinjini Pandey, Goutam Dutta, and Harit Joshi

Informs Journal on Applied Analytics

Advertisements are a key source of revenue for companies in the broadcasting and web industries. However, because of increasing competition, advertisers and web publishers have been forced to find innovative ways to increase their profits and gain competitive advantages. Revenue management is a useful operations research and management science tool that may be used to do so. In this paper, we provide an updated review of revenue-management research conducted in the broadcasting and online advertisement industries, highlighting the strategies and techniques adopted to maximize advertising revenue. We also identify mobile advertising as an emerging revenue-management application and review current research on it. We conclude by identifying potential gaps that future research might address.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Institutional discourses and ascribed disability identities

Mukta Kulkarni, K.V.Gopakumar, and Devi Vijay

IIMB Management Review,

In the present study we asked: how do institutional discourses, as represented in mass media such as newspapers, confer identities upon a traditionally marginalised collective such as those with a disability? To answer our question, we examined Indian newspaper discourse from 2001 to 2010, the time period between two census counts. We observed that disability identities—that of a welfare recipient, a collective with human rights, a collective that is vulnerable, and that engages in miscreancy—were ascribed through selective highlighting of certain aspects of the collective, thereby socially positioning the collective, and through the associated signalling of institutional subject positions. Present observations indicate that identities of a collective can be governed by institutional discourse, that those “labelled” can themselves reinforce institutionally ascribed identities, and that as institutional discourses confer identities onto the marginalised, they simultaneously also signal who the relatively more powerful institutional actors are.

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Journal Articles | 2017

A Multi-tier linking approach to analyze performance of autonomous vehicle-based storage and retrieval systems

Debjit Roy, Ananth Krishnamurthy, Sunderesh S. Heragu, and Charles Malmborg

Computers & Operations Research

To improve operational flexibility, throughput capacity, and responsiveness in order fulfillment operations, several distribution centers are implementing autonomous vehicle-based storage and retrieval system (AVS/RS) in their high-density storage areas. In such systems, vehicles are self-powered to travel in horizontal directions (x- and y- axes), and use lifts or conveyors for vertical motion (z-axis). In this research, we propose a multi-tier queuing modeling framework for the performance analysis of such vehicle-based warehouse systems. We develop an embedded Markov chain based analysis approach to estimate the first and second moment of inter-departure times from the load-dependent station within a semi-open queuing network. The linking solution approach uses traffic process approximations to analyze the performance of sub-models corresponding to individual tiers (semi-open queues) and the vertical transfer units (open queues). These sub-models are linked to form an integrated queuing network model, which is solved using an iterative algorithm. Performance estimates such as expected transaction cycle times and resource (vehicle and vertical transfer unit) utilization are determined using this algorithm, and can be used to evaluate a variety of design configurations during the conceptualization phase.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Integrated fleet mix and routing decision for hazmat transportation: A developing country perspective.

Anand Kumar, Debjit Roy Vedat Verter, and Dheeraj Sharma

European Journal of Operational Research

In developing countries, truck purchase cost is the dominant criteria for fleet acquisition-related decisions. However, we contend that other cost factors such as loss due to the number of en route truck stoppages based on a truck type and recovery cost associated with a route choice decision, should also be considered for deciding the fleet mix and minimizing the overall costs for long-haul shipments. The resulting non-linear model, with integer variables for the number and type of trucks, and the route choices, is solved via genetic algorithm. Using real data from a bulk liquid hazmat transporter, the trade-offs between the cost of travel, loss due to number of truck stoppages, and the long-term recovery cost associated with the risk of exposure due to a hazmat carrier accident are discussed. The numerical experiments show that when factors related to public safety and truck stoppages are taken into account for transportation, the lowest total cost and optimal route choice do not align with the cheapest truck type option; rather, the optimal solution corresponds to another truck type and route with total costs significantly less than the total costs associated with the cheapest truck type. Our model challenges the current truck purchasing strategy adopted in developing countries using the cheapest truck criteria.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Tests of independence for $2 \times 2$ contingency table with random margins

Yuan Yu, Dhiman Bhadra, and Balgobin Nandram

International Journal of Statistics and Probability

Fisher's exact test is commonly used for testing the hypothesis of independence between the row and column variables in a $r \times c$ contingency table. It is a ``small-sample'' test since it is used when the sample size is not large enough for the Pearsonian chi-square test to be valid. Fisher's exact test conditions on both margins of a $2 \times 2$ table leading to a hypergeometric distribution of the cell counts under independence. Moreover, it is conservative in the sense that its actual significance level falls short of the nominal level. In this paper, we modify Fisher's exact test by lifting the restriction of fixed margins and allow the margins to be random. In doing so, we propose two new tests - a likelihood ratio test in a frequentist framework and a Bayes factor test in a Bayesian framework, both of which are based on a new multinomial distributional framework. We apply the three tests on data from the Worcester Heart Attack study and compare their power functions in assessing gender difference in the therapeutic management of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

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Journal Articles | 2017

Emergence of distributed coordination in Kolkata Paise Restaurant problem with finite information

Diptesh Ghosh and Anindya S. Chakrabarti

Physica: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

In this paper, we study a large-scale distributed coordination problem and propose efficient adaptive strategies to solve the problem. The basic problem is to allocate finite number of resources to individual agents in the absence of a central planner such that there is as little congestion as possible and the fraction of unutilized resources is reduced as far as possible. In the absence of a central planner and global information, agents can employ adaptive strategies that uses only a finite knowledge about the competitors. In this paper, we show that a combination of finite information sets and reinforcement learning can increase the utilization fraction of resources substantially.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Child labour and human capital in developing countries - a multi-period stochastic model

Indrajit Thakurta and Errol D'Souza

Economic Modelling

This study investigates the co-determination of child labour and human capital acquisition through a life cycle model. It explores three categories of households with zero, ten and fifteen years' education of household heads who also have differential access to financial markets. Results show that financially excluded, uneducated households prefer assets with negative returns over human capital investments in their offspring, and hence fall into an intergenerational poverty trap. Their educational investments begin only after an income threshold is reached and the same may be funded through transfers or withdrawal of educational subsidies from college educated households without lowering their human capital investments. Educational subsidies and higher access to educational inputs work best for middle educated households who have higher demand for education. For policy analysis, this study quantifies the contributions of income support, financial inclusion, lower uncertainty and subsidised education in reducing the supply of child labour.

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Journal Articles | 2017

Normative underpinnings of direct employee participation studies and implications for developing ethical reflexivity: A multidisciplinary review

George Kandathil and Jerome Joseph

Journal of Business Ethics

This paper seeks to join studies which have drawn attention to the ethical reflexivity of research and the research enterprise in the organisational studies’ field. Towards this end, we review OB, HRM, and IR studies on direct employee participation in organisations post-1990s to examine their normative underpinnings. Using Fox’s (Industrial sociology and industrial relations. Research Paper 3, Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, HMSO, London, 1966, Beyond contract: Work, power and trust relations. Faber and Faber, London, 1974) three frames—unitarist, pluralist, and radical—we compare the underpinnings within and across the chosen disciplines to bring ethical reflexivity to studies in this area of inquiry. Implications are drawn out to take forward the quest for more ethically reflexive employee participation research.

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