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The purpose of this research is to determine how supply chain management (SCM) might be less affected by COVID-19 by using innovative technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), eco-friendly corporate practices and other digital advancements. It strongly emphasizes the use of technology to improve supply networks’ and Omani firms’ performance.

Using a mixed-methods research strategy, this study integrates both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It involves a survey and interviews with supply chain and IT managers from various industries in Oman to gather data and evaluate the impact of technology on SCM.

This study finds that IoT capabilities, smart technologies (STs) and green practices significantly mitigate COVID-19 impacts on SCM. The performance of the supply chain and the business are both improved by these technologies’ positive effects on integrating various supply chain elements, such as suppliers, internal processes and customer relations.

The main constraint of this study is its concentration on businesses in Oman, potentially restricting the applicability of its findings to broader contexts. Future studies could investigate similar frameworks across various geographic and industry settings.

The findings suggest that incorporating STs into SCM is crucial for enhancing operational efficiency and resilience against disruptions such as COVID-19. This offers valuable insights for managers and policymakers in adopting technology-driven strategies for SCM.

This study highlights the significant role of technology in sustaining supply chains during pandemics, thereby supporting economic stability and societal well-being. It underscores the importance of technological advancements in maintaining supply chain continuity in challenging times.

By empirically examining the effect of emerging technologies on enhancing SCM in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in the Oman market, this research makes a unique contribution to the body of knowledge.

The police in India do not meet the standards of legitimacy. This chapter examines a significant question – why in the largest democracy police are deemed illegitimate and untrustworthy?

The chapter draws from the literature about police role and functioning in India. Data from the Crime in India and other publications is utilized to assess the nature of policing and interactions with the citizens. Since the police derive their legitimacy from that of the government, the nature of politics and its impact upon the police organization is assessed from various reports and publications.

There is significant evidence to suggest that in India, citizens distrust the police and fear the officers while the police too remain mired in corruption, brutality, violating the rights of citizens. Two arguments are made to explain the reasons for the illegitimacy of police system: first, that the police model is incompatible with the plural and diverse democratic framework of the country. Second, that the political leaders have vitiated the democratic polity itself, preventing the growth of independent public institutions that could hold them accountable. All these have serious consequences for the health and vitality of the largest democracy in the world.

This chapter provides evidence about incompatibility of colonial policing with liberal democratic order and argues that political leadership is largely responsible for the illegitimacy of police and other public institutions.

Advanced bibliometric methods have emerged as key tools in mapping the history and trends of a discipline. This paper aims to demonstrate on applying various bibliometric methods to track a journal’s impact and review its knowledge contribution. In doing so, the authors take the case of IIMB Management Review (IMR) journal focused on management discipline, in consideration of its 10 years of publication presence.

Using bibliometric and Scopus metric methods, the authors map and analyze the productivity of IMR Journal and map its knowledge contributions.

The authors identify the IMR journal’s impact, its growth, the most prolific authors/affiliations, key research hotspots, cross-country collaboration and emerging trends over the past decade.

A 10-year longitudinal review helps the target group identify the main themes. It also provides key empirical insights to the journal editorial board and library managers for future planning and growth of the journal.

The international academic literature agrees that principals act as change agents and are vital in creating and promoting an inclusive school culture. In this article, the authors proclaim that Indian schools lack school leadership to accomplish inclusive education (IE) characterized by local needs. The article emphasizes the importance of school principals and discusses how principal vacancies, insufficient training and lack of autonomy jeopardize inclusive and equitable quality education in Indian schools. Contextualized policies, professional standards for principals, research that highlights principals' perspectives and autonomy for principals are required to strengthen principals, who are the primary advocates for IE, to create a more democratic, equitable and just society.

The authors base their arguments and opinions on the latest National Education Policy (NEP, 2020), data/statistics from various educational organizations in India, and research findings of global scholars.

The data and statistics show that principals in Indian schools do not receive the essential assistance to implement IE successfully. A lack of adequate data regarding the subject of debate is another point made by the authors.

Understanding the hardships faced by Indian school principals would help readers recognize the leadership challenges for IE in India. Addressing these challenges is one of the best ways to fulfill the equity and inclusion goals emphasized in UN Sustainable Development Goal #4.

This article is the first to emphasize the importance of prioritizing principals in Indian schools, among other agents when trying to achieve inclusion.

The case study aims to provide students with an understanding of child labour in India and how the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) movement is facilitating the eradication of child labour in India. The key objectives are to understand the challenges of eradicating child labour in India, assess the approaches to rescue and rehabilitation for the protection of a child in India, analyse the personality traits of a leader and evaluate the charismatic leadership of a leader.

The case study discussed child labour and the movement started by Kailash Satyarthi to protect children through the BBA or Save the Childhood Movement in India. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his contribution to creating an environment to abolish child labour. Headquartered in New Delhi, BBA was established in 1980 to eliminate child slavery and violence against children (BBA.org.in, 2017). Satyarthi’s effort brought regulatory changes in the Indian constitution in the form of “Education as a fundamental right” (The Novel Prize, 2023). As per census 2011, more than 10 million children were involved in various industries in India (Drishtiias.com, 2019). Satyarthi and his BBA were far behind the mission they were to achieve. How should he move to eliminate child labour from India? Will he be able to create any impact on citizens, society and government through his new approaches?

The case study is ideal for courses on understanding strategy, leadership, personality traits and labour laws. This case study is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate early-stage programmes. The main purpose of this case study is to be used in programmes leading to a Master of Business Administration or a Bachelor of Business Administration. This case scenario focused on the BBA movement in India and its aim to eradicate child labour in India. It discussed the child labour scenario in Indian industries and how Satyarthi started the BBA movement to protect the future of underprivileged children in India. The case study discusses the challenges faced in rescuing and rehabilitation of children in India. The authors applied the big five model to analyse the personality of Satyarthi in the case context. The authors also used the concept and components of charismatic leadership to evaluate the traits of charismatic leaders from a case perspective. This case study will benefit students by focusing on traits related to personality and charismatic leadership concepts. Students will get the opportunity to explore the practical and theoretical concepts that interplay in this study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

The study uses the meaning transfer model to integrate celebrity advertising and branding under the broad paradigm of celebrity–brand communication. Specifically, the paper aims to examine the influence of celebrity attributes (authenticity and identification) on brand advocacy and purchase intention through brand personality appeal and brand identification.

The study adopts two scenario-based research designs (involving nonfictitious and fictitious celebrities) for a cross-sectional structural path analysis.

Celebrity authenticity, celebrity identification and celebrity–brand congruency significantly influence brand advocacy and purchase intention, with brand personality appeal and brand identification emerging as effective mediators.

The study highlights how vital brand personality appeal and brand identification are in transferring positive perceptions about a celebrity endorser into brand advocacy and purchase intention. These results will allow marketers to realize the relative influence of celebrity attributes on the partnered brand.

In Fiji, Indo-Fijians constitute the second largest community after Indigenous Fijians. Indo-Fijian women face gender and racial inequalities to access sports and Physical Education (PE) in Fijian high schools. To gain a comprehensive view of the sporting realities of these young women, an ethnographic study was carried out with 12 young Indo-Fijian women via participant observations and semi-structured interviews, which were driven by sporting experience-related photographs taken by the participants and participant-voiced free verses. This chapter extracts four young women's experiences from the larger set of data and weaves a one-act play to holistically present their lived sporting experiences. This non-fiction creative piece captures the young women's colloquial words and artistic writings, thus creating a space where the reader can hear their voices and feel their sporting experiences too. We employ intersectional lenses together with Critical Race Theory (CRT) to look at the social factors that influence their sporting lives. The findings reveal that factors such as traditional gender norms, racism, age, classism and internal migration from rural co-ed to urban co-ed schools intersect at various levels to determine the segregation of Indo-Fijian girls from ‘mixed racial’ (team) sports. Moreover, in high school PE lessons, iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) interests are maintained in sports where PE lessons are focused on dominant sports (rugby, soccer and netball) with emphasis on competition rather than inclusive participation for all. Therefore, this paper supports the opening of pathways for Indo-Fijian girls and women to participate in sports so that they can exercise their rights as Fijian citizens.

The study attempted to gauge the relative effectiveness of celebrity and product image match-up in comparison to non-celebrity attractive endorsers for two distinct high involvement situations. Also, due to the expected demographic diversity among target consumers, the study aimed at assessing the impact of respondent's age and gender on the effectiveness of image match-up.

Building on the three-order hierarchy model, two experiments were conducted (utilising celebrity and non-celebrity endorsers) for two high involvement hierarchies, i.e. standard learning and dissonance/attribution. Through fictitious print advertisement, the experiments assessed the effectiveness of the match-up in terms of consumer attitudes towards advertisement and brand and intentions to purchase.

The match-up consistently and significantly outperformed non-celebrity attractive endorser in case of standard learning hierarchy. The same conclusion was not established for dissonance/attribution hierarchy due to the lack of significant results. The findings also suggest that the match-up subdues the impact of consumer's gender and age on consumer attitudes only in case of standard learning hierarchy.

The study provides interesting theoretical implication by challenging a widely held postulation about the applicability of celebrity and product match-up under high involvement.

The research provides the practitioners with a better understanding of important issues, mainly, whether to use a celebrity endorser and selecting the right celebrity, especially if high involvement is expected.

Previous research concerning celebrity endorsements has largely considered consumer involvement as unitary, i.e. either high or low. However, the multifaceted aspect of consumer involvement is well established in the field of consumer psychology. The present research, therefore, is a pioneering attempt as it studies the effectiveness of match-up for two distinct high involvement situations. Moreover, unlike the majority of previous studies that have focused on the performance of “celebrity match” versus “celebrity mismatch”, the impact of match-up was studied in comparison to a non-celebrity attractive endorser.

The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of celebrity credibility (trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise) on risk perception and buying intention of Indian fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) consumers.

The present study adopted the survey method to know the influence of celebrity credibility dimensions on the perceived risk and purchase intentions of Indian FMCG consumers. This study has performed a survey on 250 respondents using the self-administered questionnaire consisting of 18 measurement scales.

The major findings of this study indicate celebrity trust and celebrity expertise are the most important dimensions of celebrity to influence the risk perceptions of Indian FMCG consumers. The risk perceptions positively influence the purchase intentions of Indian FMCG consumers.

This study was limited to the Indian context, but theoretical contributions in terms of justifying the relationship linking variables, which might affect success, as well as the failure of celebrity endorsements.

The research findings can assist the practitioners in selecting the right celebrity endorser as a spokesperson for promoting Indian FMCG brands based on three dimensions of celebrity credibility (trust, expertise and attractiveness).

The study has proposed and tested the new theoretical model considering the celebrity trust, celebrity expertise and celebrity attractiveness as the affective responses from the buyers of FMCG. Perceived risk is mainly cognitive responses influenced through celebrity credible sources. The study attempted to investigate the impact of both affective and cognitive responses on the purchase intentions of Indian FMCG consumers.