Maya Vimal Pandey, Arunaditya Sahay and Abhijit Kumar Chattoraj
The objective of writing this case study is to allow management students to engage with the complexities of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the insurance sector in an emerging…
Abstract
Learning outcomes
The objective of writing this case study is to allow management students to engage with the complexities of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the insurance sector in an emerging economy like India. Upon completion of this case study, the students will be able to critically evaluate the business environment of the insurance sector of a developing economy like India, analyse the impact of M&As on the insurance industry of India, appraise the post-merger consequences and strategies to deal with these consequences, assess the applicability of market power and growth theories in the context of M&As and develop a strategic action plan for handling post-merger challenges.
Case overview/synopsis
On 3 September 2021, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) approved the “Scheme” related to the merger of the non-life insurance division of Bharti AXA General Insurance Company Limited (“Bharti AXA”) with ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited (“ICICI Lombard”). Earlier, on 21 August 2020, the boards of the companies had approved entering into definitive agreements through a scheme of arrangement. The merger received approvals from different regulatory bodies as mandated (Gandhi et al., 2023). Bhargav Dasgupta, managing director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Lombard, stated, “This is a landmark step in the journey of ICICI Lombard, and we are confident that this transaction would be value accretive for our shareholders” (FE Bureau, 2020). However, the merger posed a dilemma for Dasgupta and the management regarding crop insurance owing to its impact on profitability. Crop insurance historically had high claim ratios nearing 135% for ICICI Lombard for financial year 2018. The company ceased to underwrite this product from 2019 onwards (TNN, 2019). However, ICICI Lombard had to fulfil the three-year commitment made by Bharti AXA to the state governments of Maharashtra and Karnataka towards crop insurance. It was a scheme initiated by the Government of India, covering farmers against losses due to cyclonic rains, rainfall deficits and other unforeseen calamities. Dasgupta faced a challenge in managing the interests of the farmers and the company’s shareholders while balancing profitability, which had already been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study delves into post-merger complexities in the financial sector non-life insurance industry in emerging countries like India.
Complexity academic level
This case study is suitable for undergraduate and post-graduate management students and executives from the insurance industry.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 11: Strategy.
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Maria Palazzo, Pantea Foroudi, Alfonso Siano and Philip J. Kitchen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between community of place and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lombard industrial districts in Italy.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between community of place and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Lombard industrial districts in Italy.
Design/methodology/approach
A brief literature review of international authors from the stakeholder approach and Corporate Community Relations (CCRs) field is presented. This paper refers to a survey of Lombard industrial districts conducted by ALTIS. The data were collected via a telephone survey from 834 firms.
Findings
The main finding is that managing CCRs is of major importance for company success. The results of the survey show that there are some tools and actions that Italian industrial district SMEs use to interact with their particular communities of place to develop effective and coherent relationships with their stakeholder groups. Moreover, although the survey shows that though SMEs do implement different CCR activities, they are not able to communicate these effectively through systematic communication strategies. However, the narrow sample includes only a sample of some Lombard districts. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that effective CCR seems to confer competitive advantage based on stakeholder responses and rewards sought.
Research limitations/implications
The framework could assist in supporting CCR developments between industrial districts as various players would know how to improve CCR activities. One further suggestion is that University and Research Centers could have a role to play in creating and communicating codified knowledge concerning community relations in industrial districts, while other public players still have to develop specific tasks in improving infrastructures.
Originality/value
This study is in line with the main focus of CCR, which is in striving to meet stakeholder and societal needs. However, industrial district SMEs have to learn how to communicate their CCR activities from the examples set by large Italian companies. The paper links the notion of CCR with tools and actions to develop meaningful relationships with both community of place and interest. Moreover, considering the survey results, a new framework for local player roles is proposed.
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Bianca Maria van Niekerk, Mornay Roberts-Lombard and Nicole Cunningham
This study aims to explore the impact of store atmospherics on urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ behavioural intentions to purchase apparel in an emerging African market…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the impact of store atmospherics on urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ behavioural intentions to purchase apparel in an emerging African market context. This study also considers purchase antecedents to attitude, perceived behavioural control and social norms as determinants of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ apparel behavioural intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Using non-probability sampling, specifically purposive and interlocking sampling, data collection was secured from 881 economically active Namibian urban bottom-of-the-pyramid respondents through interviewer-administered questionnaires. Covariance-based structural equation modelling assessed the significant relationships among all constructs in the conceptual model.
Findings
This study found that for favourable apparel behavioural intentions of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers to occur, apparel retailers should emphasise trust, perceived awareness and self-identity through apparel assortment and groupings, easy-to-read visible signage, together with competent, friendly and respectful sales personnel in their store atmospherics.
Practical implications
The findings of this study may guide apparel retailers in other emerging African markets to develop regional integration, market-based solutions and inclusive economic growth focusing on “non-essential” products, such as apparel, among urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers.
Originality/value
This study expands the intellectual boundaries of urban bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers’ behavioural intentions towards “non-essential” products. The theoretical framework supports the integration of both the stimulus-organism-response model and the theory of planned behaviour into one single model for empirical investigation. Additionally, adopting a novel theoretical framework helped identify the impact of store atmospherics from a bottom-of-the-pyramid perspective in an emerging African market context, such as Namibia.
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This paper aims to observe that strong policies on employee engagement helped the UK and international payment-systems provider VocaLink to introduce organizational change…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to observe that strong policies on employee engagement helped the UK and international payment-systems provider VocaLink to introduce organizational change smoothly and win Investors in People (IiP) gold for its human resource (HR) practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper describes the company’s HR policies and the advantages they bring.
Findings
The authors explain that to achieve Investors in People gold, the company should exceed the benchmark for a number of assessment categories including: business and people strategies, leadership and management strategies and effectiveness, involvement and empowerment, reward strategies, performance measurement and continuous improvement.
Practical implications
It is revealed that the company has strong induction programs, listens to feedback and puts a lot of energy into ensuring that leadership across the business is organized in a way that both deliver the corporate message and develop teams.
Social implications
This paper contends that by offering a great place to work where people can grow and develop, VocaLink can recruit and retain great staff.
Originality/value
This paper describes an organization where people are enthusiastic about the potential of the business and the opportunity it offers to further improve processes and relationships.
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Whereas the geography of a certain area is certainly linked in many ways to the ethnic group occupying it (or who used to occupy it), the link between the land and the language/s…
Abstract
Whereas the geography of a certain area is certainly linked in many ways to the ethnic group occupying it (or who used to occupy it), the link between the land and the language/s spoken (or that used to be spoken) can only become visible through the linguistic landscape, which not only asserts identity and ownership but can also help to reinforce prestige and vitality of the languages employed. The problem is that if the local heritage language is a minority or regional one, only in few cases can it be used to affirm the identity and ownership of its speakers. There are two sine qua non conditions for the local language to appear in the linguistic landscape: 1) The language must have gone beyond the 'threshold of literacy', i.e. it must have developed as a written language, with its own orthography and literature; 2) The language must be allowed to be used in the linguistic landscape and/or enjoy a degree of official recognition. This article presents five case studies on the presence of local minority/regional languages in the linguistic landscape based on the author’s research: two in Italy (Udine and Milan) and two in Southeast Asia (Kuala Lumpur and Bandar Seri Begawan, the capitals of Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam respectively). The very interesting situation in Macao will also be touched on, where the colonial language, Portuguese, has been given prominence in the linguistic landscape in spite of the fact that only a tiny percentage of the population can speak it. In this case, Portuguese is portrayed as a kind of heritage language (as well as an international language) that does not need to be mastered as its main function is symbolic, i.e. to help Macao retain its special status as a Special Administration Region of China.
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Nils Høgevold, Göran Svensson and Mornay Roberts-Lombard
This study explores a seller’s perspective in business relationships to validate whether the findings reported in previous studies based on buyer business relationships apply to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores a seller’s perspective in business relationships to validate whether the findings reported in previous studies based on buyer business relationships apply to seller business relationships. The purpose of this study is to test whether satisfaction functions as a connector between positive antecedents (trust and commitment) and negative postcedents (opportunism and conflict) in a business-to-business (B2B) relationship, based on a seller perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
A descriptive research design was applied and data was collected from Norwegian companies from the database of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. Respondents (Sales or Marketing Managers/Directors or Key Account Managers) were asked to identify one main business customer with whom they had interacted in the past year. A total of 213 responses could be used for data analysis. In addition, the measurement and structural models were assessed.
Findings
Trust was established as a positive alter ego of opportunism and opportunism as a negative alter ego of trust. The commitment was also determined to be a positive alter ego of conflict, with conflict being a negative alter ego of commitment. Furthermore, it was proven that alter egos are not opposites, but facets of antecedents and postcedents in relation to a connector, satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
The tested model endorses the hypothesised relationships between trust, commitment, satisfaction, opportunism and conflict in Norwegian B2B relationships. Satisfaction is linked to its two antecedents and its outcomes and the hypothesised relationship between opportunism and conflict is also endorsed from a seller’s perspective in B2B relationships.
Practical implications
The findings can assist the B2B industry to understand how trust and commitment foster satisfaction, how satisfaction influences opportunism and conflict, and how opportunism relates to conflict in a seller-business relationship.
Originality/value
No previous study has focussed on relationship marketing in B2B relationships from a seller’s perspective to establish whether satisfaction functions as a connector between trust and commitment and opportunism and conflict.
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This study aims to investigate how the commitment of Islamic banking customers is influenced by trust, relationship expectations and conflict management. In turn, the influence of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how the commitment of Islamic banking customers is influenced by trust, relationship expectations and conflict management. In turn, the influence of their commitment on future satisfaction is determined.
Design/methodology/approach
A descriptive research design was applied and responses were obtained from Islamic banking customers through the application of self-administered questionnaires. A total of 350 completed questionnaires were used in analysing the data. An exploratory factor analysis established the interrelationships of the scales used to measure the study’s constructs. In addition, both the measurement and structural models were evaluated.
Findings
Trust and relationship expectations significantly and positively influence customer commitment, while conflict management has no significant influence on the commitment of Islamic banking customers to their bank. In addition, commitment significantly and positively influences the satisfaction experiences of Islamic banking customers.
Research limitations/implications
The tested model validates the hypothesised relationships between the trust, relationship expectations, commitment and satisfaction of Islamic banking customers. However, the relationship between conflict management, commitment and satisfaction was not established. Commitment is linked to trust and relationship expectations, as well as its outcome, satisfaction. However, commitment could not be linked to antecedent conflict management.
Practical implications
The findings could assist retail banks servicing Islamic banking customers in offering in-depth knowledge of how trust and relationship expectations can foster customer commitment, eventually securing the positive satisfaction of customers.
Originality/value
The study focussed on Islamic banking customers and determined the interrelationships between commitment and related constructs. Few studies, however, have examined how commitment relates to its precursors and outcome from an Islamic banking perspective in an emergent African economy.
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Darshan Kumar and Mark Eshwar Lokanan
This paper aims to advance the professional knowledge, experience and expertise of anti-money laundering (AML) professionals by focusing on how money laundering (ML) impacts a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to advance the professional knowledge, experience and expertise of anti-money laundering (AML) professionals by focusing on how money laundering (ML) impacts a variety of financial institutions (FIs) and in what ways the FIs can retaliate to detect, prevent and mitigate the risk of ML.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper use data from secondary sources. Many FI cases have been included such as a bank money service business (MSB) and insurance companies.
Findings
There should be a culture of compliance in organizations. Upper management, such as a designated committee or board members, should set the tone of compliance. Money launderers take advantage of every possible opportunity to convert illicit proceeds into clean proceeds with any institution or profession.
Originality/value
This paper used a case study approach to study the nuances of money laundering activities in various jurisdictions.
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Raised floors — independent floor surfaces raised above the structural floor surface to create a surface void — were developed to solve the problems presented by cable…
Abstract
Raised floors — independent floor surfaces raised above the structural floor surface to create a surface void — were developed to solve the problems presented by cable proliferation in computer rooms. From this early, specialist application the technique has now spread far beyond the computer suite to cope with the increased servicing needs of the general office area. The first issue of Facilities covered the deeper, platform or jacked floor type: this article is concerned with the provision of a shallower void — commonly by means of some sort of batten and particle board system — and with the issue of cable management in general.