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3846 items in total found

Working Papers | 1999

Trade, Technology and Wage Effects of the Economic Policy Reforms on the Indian Private Corporate Sector

Kapur Deepak and Ravindra H. Dholakia

The economic growth achieved in India after 1991 bears an imprint of the economic policy reforms which were accelerated in 1991 with a shift in development strategy towards increasing liberalisation and globalisation of Indian economy. The present paper examines various hypotheses regarding trade, technology and wage effects of the economic policy reforms on the Indian private corporate sector. The analysis has been carried out using detailed annual financial statements of 563 non-government non-financial public limited companies for which a continuous time series data was obtained from 1980-81 to 1995-96. It has been found that not only is there a substantial increase in the number of companies engaged in export activity but there is also an increase in export intensity of the companies after the reforms. It is also seen that both the overall import intensity and raw material import intensity are higher on an average for the exporting firms than for the non-exporting firms after 1991. Technology related expenditure showed greater increase in the exporting firms which is consistent with the neo-technology theories of international trade. It was also found that for exporting firms there was a greater decrease in the salary/wage related expenditure whereas for non-exporting firms the decrease was more for employee welfare related expenditure though both salary/wage expenditure and welfare expenses have decreased for both exporting and non-exporting firms since 1980-81. It is also argued that the real wage bill in the exporting companies increased by a substantially higher rate than in the non-exporting companies. This could be on account of increase in employment or real wage rate or both.

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Working Papers | 1999

A Multi-Period Optimization Based Decision Support System for Strategic and Operations Planning

Robert Fourer and Goutam Dutta

We discuss how a generic multi-period optimization based decision support system (DSS) can be used for strategic and operational planning in a company with five fundamental elements, namely, Materials, Facilities, Activities, Times and Storage-Areas. This DSS which optimizes the company's activities over multiple-time horizon, having a multi-material, multi-facility, multi-activity system, requires little or no managerial knowledge of optimization techniques. This is the first reported attempt of an optimization based DSS in an integrated steel company in the USA with real world data. The result demonstrates significant profit and revenue improvement potential.

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Working Papers | 1999

A System Dynamics Simulation Model of a Blast Furnace

Medha Ashtekar and Goutam Dutta

In this paper, we present a simulation model of a blast furnace. In a blast furnace the quality and productivity of the output (hot metal) depends on a large number of input variables and operating variables. The complex interactions of technological and financial variables have been simulated with the system dynamics methodology. The model has been tested with the real data of one steel company in Southeast Asia.

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Working Papers | 1999

Operations Research for Developing Countries: A Different View

Goutam Dutta

In this paper, we discuss the recent success stories of operations research in developing countries. Personal experiences in developing two similar mathematical models for two steel companies (one in a developing country and another in a developed country) are discussed. Most interestingly and contrary to the common belief, the model used in he developing country was found far more successful than that used in the developed country. We conclude this paper with a list of action programs for making OR more useful in developing countries.

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Working Papers | 1999

An Application of Optimization Based Decision Support System in a Polymer Manufacturing Company in India

Goutam Dutta

In this paper we describe the application of the multi-period optimization based DSS in a polymer manufacturing company in India. This is probably the first attempt to use a mathematical programming model for operating and strategic decision making a polymer manufacturing company in India. The study demonstrates a (contribution to ) profit improvement potential of 2.67 per cent and unit contribution improvement of 0.237 per cent.

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Working Papers | 1999

Lessons for Success in OR/MS Practice Gained from Experiences in Indian and US Steel Plants

Goutam Dutta

I worked on modeling integrated steel plants in India (as an analyst) and in the USA (as a doctoral student). The following factors influence the successful OR/MS practice: positioning of OR/MS in Operations and not in Research and Development, selecting the right problem, emphasising on problem solving and not on model building, learning lessons from failure, right academic and practical training of OR teams, experiences of working in the shop-floor of a factory. Universities should give more emphasis in teaching OR as research in operations and to the process of implementation.

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Working Papers | 1999

A Non-Hausdorff Topological Space in which every Convergent Sequence Converges to A Unique Limit

Lahiri Somdeb

Does there exist a non Hausdorff topological space, such that every convergent sequence in it converges to a unique limit? Considering the obvious scarcity of such spaces we were compelled to construct one by ourselves.

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Working Papers | 1999

Quasitransitive Rational Choice and Monotonic Preference for Freedom

Lahiri Somdeb

We consider a finite universal set of alternatives and the set of all feasible sets are simply the set of all non-empty subsets of this universal set. A choice function assigns to each feasible set a non-empty subset of it. In such a framework we propose and study necessary and sufficient conditions for various types of quasi-transitive rationalizability of choice functions generated by monotonic preference for freedom.

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Working Papers | 1999

Organizational Change and Perceived Role Efficacy

Sayeed-uz-Zafar, Pestonjee D M, and Mukherjee D

A number of studies have been carried out in the recent past on change management. The authors and scholars have made in depth studies of the inner dynamics of the organizational structure, organizational culture, organizational learning, managerial behaviour and resistance to change and suggested various measures in negotiating the complex facets that change is likely to bring in the organization. With this in view, a study on Role Efficacy was carried out on an organization from banking industry which had undergone restructuring. It was primarily affected on the senior management level while the structure of the middle and junior management levels remained unaltered. A comparison was thus made using the instrument developed by Pareek (1980). A total of 125 questionnaires were administered to these officers and 89 responses were received of which only 71 were complete. Out of the 71 responses chosen for evaluation, 27 belonged to the senior management level while 44 belonged to the middle and junior levels.

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Working Papers | 1999

A Perspective on Farmer-Market Interface - Results of a Revisit to Selected Villages from West Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra

Samar K. Datta

Markets do not operate in vacuum. They need an institutional structure for them to function competitively and efficiently. This revisit study based on intensive study of eight villages-six from West Bengal and one each from Gujarat and Maharashtra-shows that cooperatives or cooperative like autonomous and democratic organisations are an important tool to perfect the market. With historically determined institutional imperfections given from the past, neither the so-called free market system nor government-initiated process of intervention and development nor even exclusive reliance on the cooperative route can really achieve sustainable growth and equity in the countryside. Cooperatives too need supporting background rules and structures to make them function property. In the absence of the necessary supporting structure, cooperatives tend to be parastatal and inefficient organisations, and hence totally irrelevant organisations in the process of development. There is no short-cut to achieve development. This study therefore favours promoting multiple organisations including NGOs, which can act as competitive check on one another. The country has a lot of bad experiences in development, but at the same time it has enough good experiences too to see and learn from. There is no better way to achieve dissemination of knowledge than providing to out villagers, their leaders and Panchayats a direct exposure to worthwhile experiences.

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