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3721 items in total found

Journal Articles | 2020

When the unknown destination comes alive: The detrimental effects of destination anthropomorphism in tourism

Hyokjin Kwak, Marina Puzakova, Joseph F. Rocereto, and Takeshi Moriguchi

Journal of Advertising

This research theorizes and empirically investigates the concept of brand anthropomorphism in the context of tourist destinations, namely, destination anthropomorphism. First, we demonstrate that anthropomorphizing a culturally distant tourist destination (e.g., Tokyo, Japan; Hanoi, Vietnam) leads to consumers’ lower intentions to travel to the destinations, whereas this negative destination anthropomorphism effect is attenuated for culturally close tourist destinations (e.g., London, United Kingdom; Sydney, Australia). In contrast, as anticipated, this research reveals that destination anthropomorphism leads to positive consumer reactions for destinations within the same culture (e.g., Seward, Alaska, USA). As such, we provide insights into the effects of anthropomorphizing in-group versus out-group entities in the realm of tourism and travel. Specifically, we show the negative downstream effects of anthropomorphizing entities that belong to a different group (i.e., out-group), which results in tourists’ heightened perceptions of a key perceived travel risk, social risk, that manifests as lower intentions to visit that destination. Finally, this research provides critical managerial recommendations that can be incorporated into advertising strategies not only to enhance communication effectiveness but also to avoid negative repercussions of destination anthropomorphism.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Did Indian federalism fail Punjab?

Pritam Singh, Sukhpal Singh, Shinder S Thandi, and Harpreet Kaur

Global institute of Sikh Studies

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Journal Articles | 2020

Institutional structure, participation, and devolution in water institutions of Eastern India

Vasant P Gandhi, Nicky Johnson, Kangkanika Neog, and Dinesh Jain

Water (Switzerland)

The paper examines the nature and development of the participatory water institutions in the eastern Indo-Gangetic plains of India, focusing on the aspects of structure, participation, and devolution. Though the physical development of irrigation has made considerable progress in India, the proper management and distribution of water has poised many difficulties. The consequences of this are poor efficiency in water use, inequity in distribution, disputes, high cost, and substantial under-utilization of the potential created. On the other hand, institutional initiatives that aim to improve water management and distribution are seen in some areas/locations, and show a process of arriving at better institutional arrangements. Water institutions are crucial for eastern India and though there are a few examples of spontaneous bottom-up initiatives, much of this development is driven by external interventions including laws, policies, and government programs. Even though under the government interventions, the guidelines and policies are usually uniform and top-down, the local uptake and adoption show substantial variation and divergence and this deserves study. The research is based on review of the literature as well as on six in-depth case studies, and also responses of 510 households involved with 51 participatory water institutions in the setting of the eastern Indo-Gangetic plains states of Assam and Bihar. The paper first takes a brief look at the literature on the foundations and experiences of participatory irrigation management (PIM), and then examines through the case studies and data, the development and variation in the PIM water institution in the given setting. It examines features such as laws, membership, structure, inclusion, participation/involvement and devolution. It finds that inclusion of various groups of people in the institutions is quite good except for women and youth. However, actual involvement of different people varies substantially. The issue of devolution/decentralization versus centralization in decision-making is very important to PIM, and varies across the structure and functions. The association of involvement and devolution to performance indicates that the active involvement of some functionaries and groups is very important, and that devolution in several decisions can considerably enhance performance. The observations provide many useful insights for policy and institutional design which can help improve water resource management in the eastern Indo-Gangetic plains.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Gender perspective in water management: The involvement of women in participatory water institutions of Eastern India

Varsha Khandker, Vasant P. Gandhi, and Nicky Johnson

Water (Switzerland)

The paper examines the extent, nature, and factors affecting women’s involvement in participatory irrigation institutions of eastern India. Effective participatory water institutions are urgently needed to improve water management in eastern India, and a significant aspect of this is the involvement of women. There is inadequate representation, participation, and involvement of women in most water institutions. From the participatory and social point of view, this is a significant concern. The relevant data are obtained from the states of Assam and Bihar through a focused survey administered to 109 women in 30 water institutions, and a larger farmer-institutional survey covering 510 households and 51 water institutions. The research examines the extent and nature of the involvement of women in these institutions, as well as in farm decision-making, and the factors that prevent or foster their participation. Additionally, it examines the gender congruence in views regarding water institution activities and their performance, and the perceived benefits of formal involvement of women. The results show that their inclusion is very low (except required inclusion in Bihar), and the concerns of women are usually not being taken into account. Women are involved in farming and water management decisions jointly with men but not independently. Findings indicate that the views of women and men differ on many aspects, and so their inclusion is important. Responses indicate that if women participate formally in water user associations, it would enhance their social and economic standing, achieve greater gender balance, expand their awareness of water management, and contribute to better decision-making in the water institutions.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Performance Behavior of participatory water institutions in Eastern India: A study through structural equation modelling

Nicky Johnson, Vasant P. Gandhi, and Dinesh Jain

Water (Switzerland)

The paper examines the nature and performance of participatory water institutions in eastern India using structural equation modelling. There is a crisis in the management of water in India, and this is often not about having too little water but about managing it poorly. It is now being widely recognized that engineering structures and solutions are not enough, and having effective water institutions is critical. These are urgently needed in eastern India for helping lift the region out of low incomes and poverty. However, creating good institutions is complex, and in this context, the fundamentals of new institutional economics, and management governance theory have suggested the importance of a number of key factors including five institutional features and eight rationalities. Based on this, a study was conducted in eastern India, sampling from the states of Assam and Bihar, covering 510 farm households across 51 water institutions. In order to understand and map the relationship and pathways across these key factors, a structural equation model is hypothesized. In the model, the five institutional features are considered determinants of the eight rationalities, and the rationalities are considered determinants of four performance goals. The performance on the goals determines the overall performance/success of the institution. Besides this, the institutional features and rationalities can also directly influence performance on the goals and the overall performance. The model is tested with data from the survey and different pathways that are robust are identified. The results can provide useful insights into the interlinkages and pathways of institutional behavior and can help policy and institution design for delivering more robust performance. The results show that one of the most important factors determining overall performance/success is technical rationality, and this deserves great attention. It includes technical expertise, sound location and quality of structures and equipment, and good maintenance. However, success is also strongly linked to performance on production/income goals, equity, and environment goals. These are, in turn, strongly related to achievement of economic, social, technical, and organizational rationalities, which call for attention to economic aspects such as crop choice and marketing, besides social aspects such as inclusion of women and poorer social groups, and organizational aspects such as member involvement and regular meetings. Further, the institutional features of clear objectives, good interactions, adaptive, correct scale, and compliance are important for achievement of almost all rationalities through various pathways, and should be strongly focused on in all the institutions.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Getting the measurement right! quantifying time poverty and multitasking from childcare among mothers with children across different age groups in rural north India

Laili Irani and Vidya Vemireddy

Asian Population Studies

Existing research suggests that women spend a disproportionate amount of time on unpaid housework and childcare compared to men. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on unequal time burdens due to childcare among women. This study analyses the quantum of time poverty and multitasking behaviours of 3623 rural women with children of varying ages across rural North India. Findings show that mothers with infants spend more time on childcare and less time on self-care and leisure, and employment-related activities as compared to mothers with older children; they also multitask with childcare more than mothers of older children across all their daily activities. Our findings suggest that interventions and policies need to be designed to raise awareness, identify/adopt novel approaches and technologies to reduce work burden of unpaid work on women’s time, provide accessible childcare and encourage a more equitable distribution of household responsibilities.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Engagement patterns of participants in an online professional development programme: An application of mixture modelling

Ketan S. Deshmukh, Vijaya Sherry Chand, Kathan D. Shukla, and Arnab K. Laha

Proceedings Of The Annual Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences

Unhindered communication capabilities, in the form of internet, led us to believe that the difficult goal of “Education for All” is within our grasps. Recent studies have shown mixed results for learning over the internet, indicating that we are still far away from our desired goal. Online environments provide freedom to large number of learners, to learn at their own pace. Understanding the various ways in which participants engage with online content could help explain the mixed outcomes. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on engagement patterns of 4567 elementary school teachers, in an online professional development programme. Using mixture modelling techniques, we identified five latent profiles of online engagement and seven latent classes based on off-platform activities. We present our findings followed by discussion and implications for online courses.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Geographical dissimilarity and team member influence: Do emotions experienced in the initial team meeting matter

Vishal Gupta, Prithviraj Chattopadhyay, and Elizabeth George

Academy of Management Journal

It is both important and challenging to gain influence within geographically diverse teams. We argue that the emotions team members experience in their initial team meetings moderate the effect of geographical dissimilarity on their perceived influence on team decisions over time. Specifically, we contrast social identity theory–based arguments that geographical dissimilarity negatively influences perceived influence with self-categorization theory–based arguments that there is a positive relationship between geographical dissimilarity and perceived influence. We argue that the emotions team members experience in their initial meeting determine which of these relationships eventuate over time. Across two studies, our data support our arguments. We find that for individuals experiencing pleasant high-activation emotions, their geographic dissimilarity was more positively related with perceived influence in the initial stage of a project; for those experiencing unpleasant low-activation emotions, their geographic dissimilarity was positively related with perceived influence in the later stage; for those experiencing unpleasant high-activation emotions, their geographic dissimilarity was initially positively and later negatively related with perceived influence.

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Journal Articles | 2020

Breaking “bad” links: Impact of Companies Act 2013 on the Indian corporate network

Mayank Aggarwal, Anindya Chakrabarti, and Pritha Dev

Social Networks

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Journal Articles | 2020

A constrained agglomerative clustering approach for unipartite and bipartite networks with application to credit networks

Samrat Gupta and Pradeep Kumar

Information Sciences

Researchers and practitioners have been interested in solving real-world problems through clustering. The clustering of nodes in networks with unipartite or bipartite structure is important to explore real-world complex networks present in nature and society. Bipartite networks form an important class of complex networks because they reveal the heterogeneity of nodes in a network. However, most extant clustering methods focus only on unipartite networks. In this work, a novel constrained agglomerative clustering method applicable to unipartite and bipartite networks has been proposed. Initially, the topology of a network is modeled according to set-theoretic principles. Subsequently, the concepts related to rough set theory and relative linkage are used to cluster the set of nodes. The utility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are demonstrated through offline experiments on unipartite and bipartite networks. A comparison against ten state-of-the-art similarity measures over two different partitional clustering algorithms reveals the effectiveness of the proposed relative linkage measure. Moreover, a comparative analysis with state-of-the-art network clustering methods reveals the viability of the proposed rough set-based constrained agglomerative clustering algorithm. Finally, the proposed method has been applied for the detection of cohesive subgroups of banks in a real bipartite network formed by mapping credit relationships between Indian firms and banks.

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IIMA