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In the present work, the authors carried out siliconizing, chromizing, aluminizing and chrome‐aluminizing of mild steel in a pack cementation process with a view to evaluate the optimum experimental conditions to obtain satisfactory coatings which possess high resistance to oxidation. It is visualised to adopt some of the experimental conditions in later experiments where diffusion coating treatments are carried out using pastes containing the various diffusion elements. Some of the findings of the authors in siliconizing, chromizing, aluminizing and chrome‐aluminizing of mild steel in pack process are reported. It was observed that there is excess grain growth during siliconizing by the pack process and the coatings are porous and lack good oxidation resistance compared to coatings in the gas phase carried out by other workers. Chromized, aluminized and chrome‐aluminized samples are superior to 18/8 stainless steel and even Inconel in their oxidation resistance. Chromizing followed by aluminizing makes the coating layer less brittle as observed by the micro hardness measurements across the layer and hence chrome‐aluminizing will improve the spoiling resistance of the coatings.

Aluminium diffusion treated steel by pack process using ferroaluminium was studied for its heat exchanger tube applications properties. The laboratory and inplant corrosion studies reveal that the diffusion treated low carbon steel is extremely resistant to hot corrosion due to sulphurous gases encountered in heat exchanger tubes of sulphuric acid plants at the operating temperatures. The diffusion treated tubes have shown adequate physical properties for heat exchanger tube bundle fabrication.

Child immunization is widely recognized as a cost-effective preventive medicine. Unfortunately, in India about 50% of the eligible children aged 12–23 months miss some essential vaccination. Though a positive association between maternal education and markers of child health like immunization has been long established, the literature has struggled to find a causal relationship, mainly because education is inextricably correlated with other socioeconomic variables like income. In this chapter, I propose a new instrument for women’s education in India using the following facts. First, due to lack of sanitary facilities in schools, particularly rural schools, large number of girls drop out of school once they reach puberty. Second, age at menarche is largely determined by biological factors and not social factors. Together, age at menarche can explain variations in schooling, yet be independent of outcome variables like child immunization. I find that additional years of maternal schooling (conditional on strictly positive years of schooling) do increase the probability of complete immunization of children.

The growing prominence of disaster research has also prompted vibrant discussions about the motivation and ethical conduct of disaster researchers. Yet, the individual researchers' aspirations and aims, together with the challenging and changing circumstances under which one undertakes disaster research have received relatively scant attention. Drawing on the author’s personal experience of becoming a disaster researcher under the unexpected humanitarian crisis following the 2015 Nepal earthquakes, this paper seeks to contribute to the debates surrounding the role of reflexivity and ethical sensitivity in doing disaster research under the climate of uncertainty.

The paper draws on the author’s reflections and vignettes to highlight the author’s experience of becoming a disaster researcher, and my trajectory of navigating the complex terrain of fieldwork.

The paper underscores how the process of becoming a disaster researcher was closely intertwined with and shaped by my concerns and care for the disaster-affected communities. The paper argues that doing contextually relevant and ethically sensitive research is not a static target. It demands constant reflexivity and improvisation, in response to the unpredictable real-world conditions of disasters. Instead of aiming to tame such uncertainty, disaster researchers may benefit from appreciating and embracing uncertainty as a major facet of its epistemological distinctiveness.

The paper contributes to the ongoing efforts in advancing methodological reflection and innovation in disaster research. In so doing, the paper is expected to aid early-career researchers who are often faced with ethical and practical dilemmas of doing fieldwork.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nexus among public expenditure allocated to education, educational attainment at secondary level and unemployment rate in India for the period 1987–2017.

The study employs autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) bound testing approach suggested by Pesaran et al. (2001) to find the long-run relationship among the variables. The causal linkages are investigated through block exogeneity test based on vector error correction model.

The empirical results indicate that educational attainment proxied by gross enrolment ratio at secondary level of education negatively affects unemployment rate in long run as well as in short run. However, public expenditure on education is ineffective in influencing both educational attainment and unemployment rate.

The study is the first empirical effort to identify the causal nexus among public expenditure on education, educational attainment and unemployment in the context of India.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2019-0396

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review and critically examine the international marketing and innovation management research on new service development (NSD) in the context of emerging markets (EM). Research on services in EM, a heterogenous set of countries with an increasing contribution to global economic output, is sparse. This paper attempts to underscore the academic and managerial relevance of the field.

A systematic review of published empirical literature from peer-reviewed journals focusing on an 11-year period, 2010–2020, was undertaken. Further, bibliometric and text mining analyses were conducted using VOSviewer and Leximancer software programmes.

This analysis of 36 journal articles reveals that NSD research is a dynamic field with an increasing number of quantitative, multi-country and multi-method studies encompassing a variety of geographical settings and industries.

Doing justice to this vibrant field of research and its managerial importance, the authors create an overview of existing empirical studies to serve as a repository of knowledge on NSD for both academics and practitioners. Further, the authors offer a thematic and temporal overview of the content of existing studies. Drawing upon the abovementioned, the authors suggest some promising avenues for future research.

Within the literature of global mindset there has been much discussion of antecedents. Few attempts have been made, however, to analyze the outcomes of a global mindset. Our chapter undertakes a thematic analysis of global mindset antecedents and outcomes in the 1994–2013 literature. Adopting an inductive approach and borrowing methods from international business and managerial cognition studies, we map, assess, and categorize 42 empirical and 10 theoretical studies thematically. We focus on the antecedents and outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. We conceptualize corporate global mindset as a multidimensional construct that incorporates global mindset at the individual level and is dependent on a robust communications infrastructure strategy for its cultivation throughout the organization. Our study categorizes antecedents and outcomes by level and identifies the gaps in global mindset outcomes and firm performance for future researchers to address.

Today's businesses are facing a world that is more complex, turbulent and unpredictable than in the past with increasing levels of environmental complexity. Rather than proposing environmental uncertainty as a mediator/moderator of the relationship between agility and performance as others have done, the authors offer an alternative view where supply chain agility is seen as mediating the relationship between environmental uncertainty and supply chain performance.

The authors propose that supply chain agility is a response to the effects of environmental uncertainty and, as such, environmental uncertainty should be seen as a driver of supply chain agility. Few studies test the direct relationship between uncertainty and supply chain performance, and none simultaneously test for agility's mediation and moderation effect between environmental uncertainty and agility.

The model was statistically assessed using partial-least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS/SEM) by analyzing survey data from manufacturing managers in 136 US firms. The study results did not indicate a significant relationship between environmental uncertainty and supply chain performance. However, the authors did find a significant positive relationship between agile manufacturing and supply chain performance using measures that were primarily operations-centered rather than financial. Additionally, the authors found that agile manufacturing fully mediates the relationship between environmental uncertainty and supply chain performance.

The authors’ model, though simple, provides a base for future research for them and other researchers who can incorporate other impacting variables into the model. The study results show that uncertainty can be a force for good and that utilizing agile manufacturing can be a new source of opportunity.

Cross-border acquisitions play an important role in corporate strategic development and international expansion. During the past decades, mergers and acquisitions have been intensively researched through the lenses of strategic management, corporate finance, behavioral finance, etc. Despite the intense effort, the progress made is still fragmented and lacks unifying theories that approach the entire acquisition process on the one hand, and in-depth research of critical factors on the other. The intent of the research paper is to establish a vital link between academic research and practice of mergers and acquisitions, especially regarding the pre-acquisition evaluation.

In detail, the research paper investigates critical factors – and their inclusion in the pre-acquisition due diligence, before decision about acquisition is made. Pre-acquisition due diligence theoretically conforms to organizational learning theory, which proposes the more the acquiring firm learns about the acquisition target, the higher the probability of a successful acquisition. The central hypothesis states that due diligence, including the critical factors, in the pre-acquisition phase is related to acquisition success.

Using a multidimensional measure of critical factors, the empirical evidence is based on 85 cross-border acquisitions that took place between 2007 and 2013 in the European automotive industry. The quantitative analysis finds positive association between the Choice of Strategic Partner, Business Capabilities and HR Knowledge, and Financial Factors and Acquisition Premium as critical factors of due diligence and acquisition success. The strongest relationship is between business capabilities and knowledge transfer as the main asset for realization of synergy values and successful acquisition. In this context, the valuation of the business capabilities of the acquisition targets is classified as the main challenge for reflecting suitability of the acquisition price and establishing value generation from the combined firms in the post-acquisition phase.

By studying acquisition risk and critical factors – both success and failure reasons – this research tested and proved theoretically sound framework for successful acquisition. From a practical standpoint, the research results provide acquisition management with a proven model for pre-evaluating acquisition candidates by means of comprehensive due diligence.

The authors report on a study that examined how academics in two faculties (Business and Science) at a large, research-focused university use information about student diversity to inform their teaching. Ninety-nine Science academics completed an online survey regarding their knowledge of their student cohort’s demographic, cultural, language, and educational backgrounds at the beginning of semester. They then received a concise two-page, course-specific document, Knowing Your Students (KYS) report, summarizing aspects of their students’ diversity. At the end of the semester, 44 of the same staff completed a second survey with open-ended questions regarding how they used the report information in their teaching and curriculum design. The report was new to Science while Business academics had received the reports for three years. To compare Science with Business, Business academics also completed the second survey. Academics across both faculties had a very positive response to the reports and engaged with the information provided. Provision of the report to Science academics brought their self-assessed knowledge of their student cohort’s diversity to a level comparable with that of Business. This chapter shares how KYS reports improved academics’ knowledge of student diversity, and challenged them to respond with suitable curriculum and pedagogical changes.