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The effectiveness of independent directors in making autonomous decisions for better corporate governance in organizations has often been questioned. This paper aims to investigate their role in company’s decision making in India and the reasons behind their ineffectiveness.

This paper examines the regulatory environment and ongoing reforms in which independent directors operate. It identifies crucial factors such as ownership patterns, the appointment and selection process that affect their autonomy. The analysis draws from newspaper articles, blogs, India’s regulatory requirements, The Companies Act and relevant related literature.

The findings reveal that the independence of directors remains largely in form but not in function. This paper recommends a fair and more robust selection through an independent authority, and disclosure of the resignations of independent directors. Independent directors should be given more powers and their risk-reward scheme should be analyzed.

The paper emphasizes the need for independent directors to be truly independent from the senior management, promoters, and other existing directors. It calls for tighter and more transparent appointment procedures to ensure that independent directors are not influenced by senior management and can bring objectivity to the company board.

Although the Net Promoter Score (NPS) index is simple, NPS has weaknesses that make NPS's interpretation misleading. The main criticism is that identical index values can correspond to different levels of customer loyalty. This makes difficult to determine whether the company is improving/deteriorating in two different years. The authors describe the application of statistical tools to establish whether identical values may/may not be considered similar under statistical hypotheses.

Equal NPSs with a “similar” component composition should have a two-way table satisfying marginal homogeneity hypothesis. The authors compare the marginals using a cumulative marginal logit model that assumes a proportional odds structure: the model has the same effect for each logit. Marginal homogeneity corresponds to null effect. If the marginal homogeneity hypothesis is rejected, the cumulative odds ratio becomes a tool for measuring the proportionality between the odds.

The authors propose an algorithm that helps managers in their decision-making process. The authors' methodology provides a statistical tool to recognize customer base compositions. The authors suggest a statistical test of the marginal distribution homogeneity of the table representing the index compositions at two times. Through the calculation of cumulative odds ratios, the authors discriminate against the hypothesis of equality of the NPS.

The authors' contribution provides a statistical alternative that can be easily implemented by business operators to fill the known shortcomings of the index in the customer satisfaction's context. This paper confirms that although a single number summarizes and communicates a complex situation very quickly, the number is ambiguous and unreliable if not accompanied by other tools.

The metaverse is reshaping the fashion industry, offering new insights into innovation diffusion. This study aims to examine how perceived innovation characteristics influence unrestrained buying behavior, using flow as a mediator. By integrating innovation diffusion and flow theory, it explores how technostress and self-control moderate the impact of innovation characteristics on flow.

A cross-sectional, quantitative study was conducted using multistage sampling to examine unrestrained purchase behavior. Data from 457 Asian consumers were collected via surveys and analyzed using SPSS 22.0, AMOS V.24 and MACRO PROCESS.

This study indicates that although the metaverse website’s perceived characteristics of innovation increase user flow and encourage unrestrained buying behavior, technostress and self-control weaken the relationship between how users perceive innovation (in terms of its benefits like relative advantage and compatibility) and their ability to experience flow. However, when it comes to complexity, both technostress and self-control do not significantly moderate the relationship between complexity and flow.

This study reveals how metaverse innovation is reshaping Asian consumers’ views of the fashion industry. It helps marketers and advertisers understand the metaverse’s impact on unrestrained buying behavior and its growing importance for the fashion sector.

This study offers a framework for understanding how Asian consumers’ adoption of metaverse technology is transforming the fashion industry. It adds to the literature by assessing innovation attributes and their impact on unrestrained purchasing in virtual worlds.

El Metaverso está remodelando la industria de la moda, ofreciendo nuevas perspectivas sobre la difusión de la innovación. Este estudio examina cómo las características percibidas de la innovación influyen en el comportamiento de compra sin restricciones, utilizando el flujo como mediador. Al integrar la Teoría de la Difusión de la Innovación y la Teoría del Flujo, explora cómo el tecnostres y el autocontrol moderan el impacto de las características de innovación sobre el flujo.

Se realizó un estudio cuantitativo y transversal utilizando muestreo por etapas múltiples para examinar el comportamiento de compra sin restricciones. Se recolectaron datos de 457 consumidores asiáticos a través de encuestas y se analizaron utilizando SPSS 22.0, AMOS V.24 y MACRO PROCESS.

El estudio indica que, aunque las características percibidas de la innovación del sitio web del metaverso aumentan el flujo de los usuarios y fomentan el comportamiento de compra sin restricciones, el tecnostres y el autocontrol debilitan la relación entre cómo los usuarios perciben la innovación (en términos de sus beneficios como ventaja relativa y compatibilidad) y su capacidad para experimentar flujo. Sin embargo, en lo que respecta a la complejidad, tanto el tecnostres como el autocontrol no moderan significativamente la relación entre la complejidad y el flujo.

El estudio revela cómo la innovación en el Metaverso está remodelando las percepciones de los consumidores asiáticos sobre la industria de la moda. Ayuda a los profesionales del marketing y la publicidad a comprender el impacto del Metaverso en el comportamiento de compra sin restricciones y su creciente importancia para el sector de la moda.

Este estudio ofrece un marco para comprender cómo la adopción de la tecnología del metaverso por los consumidores asiáticos está transformando la industria de la moda. Aporta a la literatura evaluando los atributos de innovación y su impacto en las compras sin restricciones en mundos virtuales.

元宇宙正在重塑时尚产业, 并为创新扩散提供了新的见解。本研究探讨感知创新特征如何影响无节制购买行为, 并将“心流”作为中介变量。此外, 研究融合了创新扩散理论与心流理论, 进一步分析技术压力与自我控制如何调节创新特征对心流的影响。

本研究采用横断面定量研究方法, 并运用多阶段抽样策略以考察无节制购买行为。通过问卷调查收集了来自457名亚洲消费者的数据, 并利用SPSS 22.0、AMOS V.24和MACRO PROCESS进行数据分析。

研究结果表明, 元宇宙网站的感知创新特征能够增强用户的心流体验, 从而促进无节制购买行为。然而, 技术压力与自我控制削弱了用户对创新的感知（如相对优势和兼容性）与其心流体验之间的关系。然而, 在复杂性维度上, 技术压力与自我控制对复杂性与心流之间的关系并未表现出显著的调节作用。

本研究揭示了元宇宙创新如何重塑亚洲消费者对时尚产业的认知, 为营销人员和广告商提供了关于元宇宙如何影响无节制购买行为的见解, 并凸显了其在时尚行业日益增长的重要性。

本研究构建了一个分析框架, 以理解亚洲消费者对元宇宙技术的采纳如何推动时尚产业的变革。研究通过评估创新特征及其对虚拟世界中无节制购买行为的影响, 进一步丰富了相关文献。

Sarcasm is a linguistic expression that usually carries the opposite meaning of what is being said by words, thus making it difficult for machines to discover the actual meaning. It is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken, with an undercurrent of irony, and is largely dependent on context, which makes it a difficult task for computational analysis. Moreover, sarcasm expresses negative sentiments using positive words, allowing it to easily confuse sentiment analysis models. This paper aims to demonstrate the task of sarcasm detection using the approach of machine and deep learning.

For the purpose of sarcasm detection, machine and deep learning models were used on a data set consisting of 1.3 million social media comments, including both sarcastic and non-sarcastic comments. The data set was pre-processed using natural language processing methods, and additional features were extracted and analysed. Several machine learning models, including logistic regression, ridge regression, linear support vector and support vector machines, along with two deep learning models based on bidirectional long short-term memory and one bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT)-based model, were implemented, evaluated and compared.

The performance of machine and deep learning models was compared in the task of sarcasm detection, and possible ways of improvement were discussed. Deep learning models showed more promise, performance-wise, for this type of task. Specifically, a state-of-the-art model in natural language processing, namely, BERT-based model, outperformed other machine and deep learning models.

This study compared the performance of the various machine and deep learning models in the task of sarcasm detection using the data set of 1.3 million comments from social media.

Personality profiling in today’s business world has become an essential organisational development practice targeted at identifying a set of employees' traits, which differentiate an employee from one another. Given the assumption that personality traits form an essential indicator of developing the potential of an individual workforce, possible to establish how employees function in a certain job role and their suitability for the particular tasks in an organisation. This study aims to explore the relationship between personality traits, assessment centres (ACs) quality and management development in Nigeria telecommunication organisation among its managers.

The study employed multi-stage sampling techniques and further stratified the hierarchy of the management and finally used a simple random sampling strategy on each stratum. A combination of 482 managers in Nigerian telecommunication organisations participated in this study. The study investigated 12 hypotheses and 1 mediating postulation. Multiple scales were adapted to measure dimensions of endogenous and exogenous variables along the path of mediating variables of the study. The study employed a cross-sectional survey approach to administering the research instrument across all the departments among the managers of the organisations. A structural equation model of assessment was used to analyse the data collected from managers of the telecoms organisations.

The outcome of the study was significant, 10 of the postulated hypotheses were found to be significant while 3 were not significant. The study revealed that a combination of openness to experience, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion personality have no significant relationship with the AC. Also, employees who are high in neuroticism like being emotionally unstable did not find a significant relationship with the AC. In a similar situation, the combined effect of all the big-five personalities was not significant in management development among the managers of the telecommunication industry. The AC is discovered to mediate between personality traits and management development. Individually, the big-five model finds a significant relationship with AC and management development, respectively.

The study is restricted to managers of the Nigerian telecoms industry alone and not all the entire workforce. It adopted cross-sectional analysis to make an inference on all the managers of the organisations. The implication is that the period of the view of a particular point in a sequence of the event may not be representative. Another implication is that the results from the cross-sectional design are for the relationship, and they do not indicate causation.

In practice, this study has shown that personality profiling is important to managing organisational behaviour to highlight a set of traits of employees suitable for peculiar roles. This study implies that personality elements constitute a vital signal of the potential development of the workforce. It helps to illuminate an individual functioning style in a certain task situation, therefore determining both professional and managerial suitability in performing a given role.

This study aims to measure and further compare the countries in terms of the achievement in the degree of financial inclusion over the study period and between income groups considering 26 nations from Asia for the period 2013-2017.

While measuring the degree of financial inclusion, the study prepares an index using weighted arithmetic mean and the inverse of the Euclidean distance method. Further, comparison between the study period and between the income groups has been made using the dependent samples t-test as well as the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and independent samples t-test, respectively.

The study extends empirical insights by laying out the ranks for the countries considered for each of the study periods individually as well as in terms of mean financial inclusion scores for the study period. Further, comparison in terms of mean financial inclusion scores shows significant differences between the income groups, whereas the differences between the study periods turn out to be non-significant.

Less availability of intended variables over time restricts the predictive capability of sketching the phenomena in a true sense and claims further an exhaustive research to pursue in the future.

With the declining trend except for 2016-2017 in the achievement of financial inclusion scores over time, the study suggests emphasizing the initiatives targeted to include the excluded within the ambit of the formal financial system, which somehow seems unstable.

The novelty of the study lies in the portrayal of a measure that seems representative of the scale for development with deeper insight.

Shadow banks or non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) are facilitators of credit, especially in emerging market economies (EMEs). However, there are certain risks associated with them, such as their unchecked leverage and interconnectedness with the rest of the financial system. In light of this, the present study analyses the impact of the growth of shadow banks on the stability of the banking sector and the overall stability of the financial system. The authors further examine the effect of the growth of finance companies (a type of NBFIs) on financial stability.

The study employs data of 11 EMEs (monitored by the Financial Stability Board (FSB)) for the period 2002–2020 to examine the above relationships. Panel-corrected standard errors method and Driscoll–Kray standard error estimation are deployed to conduct the analysis.

The results signify that the growth of the shadow banking sector and the growth of lending to the shadow banking sector are negatively associated with the stability of the banking sector and increases the vulnerability of the financial system (overall instability). This implies that the higher the growth of the shadow banks, the higher the financial fragility. Finance companies are also found to negatively affect financial stability. These findings are validated by different estimation methods and point out the risks posed by the NBFI sector.

The extant study builds a composite index (Financial Vulnerability Index (FVI)) to measure financial stability; thus, the findings contribute to the evolving literature on shadow banks.

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent of climate change awareness among the rural farmers of Northern Cross River state, investigate the gender role analyzes of some daily routine activities carried out by these rural farmers, ascertain the difference in workload burden of the impacts of climate change between men and women, identify the strategies adopted by these rural farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change in their agricultural activities and investigate the roles Environmental Education (EE) can play in helping the rural farmers to design and adopt sustainable adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce or completely eradicate their vulnerability to climate change effects.

The research design adopted for this study is the cross-sectional survey method. Five research questions guided the study. Two sets of instruments were used for data collection, a sample of 1,258 respondents (0.1%) were selected for the study. The researchers personally administered the instruments and collected the same back, two instruments were not properly filled, so they were rejected.

The finding of the study revealed that rural farmers have some level of climate change awareness, which they got from radio, newspapers, awareness campaigns, flyers, billboards, among others. Six out of the nine strategies listed were adopted by the rural farmers to mitigate climate change effects among these rural farmers. There is a significant difference in gender workload burden between women and male in the area, the result is positively skewed toward women, implying that the burden of workload for women increased over those of men. The result also shows that EE can influence their attitude toward climate change through awareness creation, knowledge provisions and also encourage members participation in climate change effect mitigation, prevention and adaptation.

With this result, EE can be used as a tool for the creation of knowledge, awareness, attitude and encourage the participation of these rural farmers toward mitigating and prevention climate change effects among these rural farmers. It was recommended among others that deliberate policies should be designed to make EE help create the needed awareness on climate change, beginning from the causes, effects and mitigation strategies among rural farmers in their community.

Already, most Environmental Educators have been trained, the government should design and formulate practical policies to use them as extension agent on climate change effort to go to these rural communities and create the needed awareness, knowledge, skills and attitude to help them combat climate change effects including trees and cover crops planting and also re-introducing the use of irrigation agriculture in these farming communities.

With the creation of awareness, social groups and individuals can also make a social investment from these activities and also improve their social capitals, thereby reducing social burdens and improving their living conditions within the rural settings.

This research is an original research paper from the effort. the purpose is to assess the extent of climate change awareness level and how the effects of climate change increase or reduces the burden of gender workload among rural farmers and the strategies which can be used by these rural farmers to prevent, mitigate and adapt to climate change effects and the roles EE can play. This study has an original value in the sense that in the course of the study, the study hardly saw articles on these specific variables in whole research, hence the resolve to assess these variables.

The organic food market is gaining momentum in advanced and developing economies. This study aims to unfold the determinants explicitly associated with consumers and organic food products (OFPs) that influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions in a developing economy.

The stimulus–organism–response (SOR) is modified to examine the reasons behind the consumers’ purchase intentions of OFPs. Consumer-specific and product-specific stimuli are considered to find their influence on the orgasmic state of the consumers in the form of attitude and, finally, their purchase intentions in the form of response. A simple random sampling procedure was used during January and February 2024 to obtain the study-related responses from the participants from six major cities in India. Three hundred eighty-two questionnaires were deemed suitable for the study after excluding any outliers and incomplete responses from the completed survey. After screening and validating the collected data in IBM SPSS statistics 23, Amos version 23.0 was used to analyze the study’s hypotheses.

The findings showed that consumers’ specific stimuli, such as environmental concern, health consciousness and food safety concerns, positively motivate consumers’ attitudes. Also, product-specific stimuli such as nutritional content and awareness of OFPs positively affect the attitude of the consumers. Surprisingly, price fairness is revealed to have no substantial impact on the consumers’ attitudes. Finally, it is revealed that the consumers’ attitude positively impacts their purchase intentions of OFPs.

The study’s findings will assist OFP marketing professionals in comprehending the significant impact of consumer-specific and product-specific aspects of the products in shaping consumers’ attitude towards OFPs. The research discoveries are expected to offer valuable insights to aid decision makers in marketing OFPs to consumers in developing economies like India.

The present work has uniquely modified the SOR model by considering the consumer-specific and product-specific aspects of OFPs and empirically validated that both aspects are significant in shaping consumer attitudes, especially in developing economies like India.

El mercado de alimentos orgánicos está ganando impulso en economías avanzadas y en desarrollo. El presente trabajo busca desentrañar los determinantes explícitamente asociados con los consumidores y los productos alimenticios orgánicos que influyen en las actitudes e intenciones de compra de los consumidores en una economía en desarrollo.

Se modificó el modelo de estímulo-organismo-respuesta (SOR, por sus siglas en inglés) para examinar las razones detrás de las intenciones de compra de productos alimenticios orgánicos. Se consideraron estímulos específicos del consumidor y del producto para analizar su influencia en el estado orgánico de los consumidores en forma de actitud y, finalmente, sus intenciones de compra como respuesta. Durante enero y febrero de 2024, se utilizó un procedimiento de muestreo aleatorio simple para obtener respuestas relacionadas con el estudio de participantes en seis ciudades principales de India. Trescientos ochenta y dos (382) cuestionarios fueron considerados adecuados para el estudio después de excluir valores atípicos y respuestas incompletas. Tras depurar y validar los datos recopilados en IBM SPSS Statistics 23, se utilizó Amos versión 23.0 para analizar las hipótesis del estudio.

Los resultados mostraron que los estímulos específicos del consumidor, como la preocupación por el medio ambiente, la conciencia sobre la salud y las preocupaciones sobre la seguridad alimentaria, motivan positivamente las actitudes de los consumidores. Asimismo, los estímulos específicos del producto, como el contenido nutricional y la conciencia sobre los productos alimenticios orgánicos, afectan positivamente la actitud de los consumidores. Sorprendentemente, se reveló que la equidad en los precios no tiene un impacto sustancial en las actitudes de los consumidores. Finalmente, se evidenció que la actitud de los consumidores influye positivamente en sus intenciones de compra de productos alimenticios orgánicos.

Los hallazgos del estudio ayudarán a los profesionales del marketing de productos alimenticios orgánicos a comprender el impacto significativo de los aspectos específicos del consumidor y del producto en la formación de actitudes hacia los productos orgánicos. Los resultados se esperan que ofrezcan información valiosa para ayudar a los responsables de la toma de decisiones en el marketing de alimentos orgánicos a consumidores en economías en desarrollo como India.

El presente trabajo ha modificado de manera única el modelo SOR considerando los aspectos específicos del consumidor y del producto de los alimentos orgánicos, y ha validado empíricamente que ambos aspectos son significativos para dar forma a las actitudes de los consumidores, especialmente en economías en desarrollo como India.

随着有机食品市场在发达经济体和发展中经济体中持续增长, 本研究旨在深入探讨消费者及有机食品相关因素对消费者态度与购买意愿的影响, 尤其是在发展中经济体背景下的作用机制。

本研究对刺激-有机体-反应（Stimulus–Organism–Response, SOR）模型进行了修正, 以分析消费者购买有机食品的意愿形成机制。研究分别考察了消费者特定刺激和产品特定刺激对消费者心理状态（即态度）的影响, 并进一步探究态度对消费者购买意愿的作用。本研究采用简单随机抽样法, 于2024年1月至2月期间, 在印度六个主要城市收集调查数据。最终, 共回收并筛选出有效问卷382份, 剔除异常值及不完整数据后, 利用IBM SPSS Statistics 23进行数据筛选和验证, 并采用Amos 23.0进行假设检验和数据分析。

研究结果表明, 消费者特定刺激（如环境关注、健康意识和食品安全关注）对消费者态度具有显著的正向影响。同时, 产品特定刺激（如营养成分和有机食品认知）也对消费者态度产生积极作用。然而, 研究发现价格公平性对消费者态度并无显著影响。此外, 研究进一步验证了消费者态度对其有机食品购买意愿具有正向影响。

本研究结果可为有机食品市场营销人员提供重要的实践指导, 有助于理解消费者特定因素和产品特定因素在塑造消费者对有机食品态度方面的关键作用。此外, 本研究的发现可为发展中经济体（如印度）市场决策者提供有价值的洞见, 以优化有机食品营销策略, 提高消费者接受度。

本研究在现有SOR模型的基础上进行了独特的修正, 综合考虑了消费者特定因素和产品特定因素, 并通过实证研究验证了这两类因素在塑造消费者态度方面的重要性, 尤其是在印度等发展中经济体中的适用性。