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Start-ups, entrepreneurship, innovation and innovative practices, risks, uncertainties, differentiation, internationalization, competition, business models, operationalizing and implementing strategy.

The case is suitable for MBA students.

Vinay moved to the capital city of a Northern Indian state, which also happened to be a commercial hub, after his family business failed. The family succumbed to living in a room without electricity and doors. Vinay had dreamt of establishing his own business empire by being a successful entrepreneur. Steered by this intent, he established a pharmaceutical company with the name of Ayuvayur Pharmaceuticals. The challenge was to establish an innovative Ayurveda-based pharmaceutical products-based firm and to build a leading business empire with a customer focus. Progress was not smooth and the challenges ahead multiplied. Despite his ability to cope with barriers, risks and uncertainties, Vinay and his business, was challenged to grow globally and emerge from its nascent structure. How should the business expand?

Students can discover the following key learning points: how an enterprise is born; the importance of entrepreneurial recognition and orientation; the lead characteristics of an entrepreneur; how a start-up is born despite the unfamiliarity of the entrepreneur with the field he enters; the role of innovation in a small enterprise; and the risks, barriers, uncertainties and challenges associated with entrepreneurial activity.

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Entrepreneurship, strategy, family business.

MBA, PhD (Mgmt)

DK Dies and Tools was set up initially as a tool room by its founder Krishna Verma. It manufactured machine parts, sheet metal tools, jigs and fixtures, plastic/rubber moulds and metal fabrications. The firm came to be known as DK Exports (henceforth DKX) when it was professionalized in the year 2003 for merchant exporting. Lately, after the founder's demise, professionalization had become a dire need when the firm faced with loss of customers, the market share was taken over by the Chinese, workers' expectations had risen, poor internal communications, search for dynamic capabilities and finally a need to diversify had arisen. Unexpected death of the founder had pushed the firm into doldrums. It was because of the founder's relationship and reputation in the market that the business prospered. Unfortunately, the tacit knowledge he possessed could not be handed over to his son Kunal, which led to complexes in business. Hence, there arose a need for internationalization for finding new customers and markets. Entrepreneurial orientation needed a change. The new Chairman, Kunal, had expertise in operations management, with his wife, Priyanka, looking after development via overseas collaborations. The firm had been struggling to create a two-tier top-level management to decide on operational issues, besides search for newer destinations for increasing the scale of operations.

To understand how multilevel entrepreneurship happens and the importance of translating tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, especially at times when the founder has to pass the baton to the second generation.

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This study/paper aims to create an understanding on how a firm develops dynamic capabilities in new strategic dimensions. Innovation in organizations is not an exclusive domain of large firms. Family-owned and -managed firms have aggressively integrated innovation. Focussed orientation towards product innovation combined with innovative capability and high levels of owner-manager motivation has helped translate technology-based family businesses into highly profitable and competitive ventures. Microlit, is a liquid handling product manufacturer producing high-quality, high-tech, cost-effective, single and multichannel micropipettes. Founded in 1988, by brothers Ajay and Atul Jain, it is based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. The key contributor to the firm’s success has been its strong customer-oriented product designs. The challenge lies in development of dynamic capabilities to gain competence in new strategic dimensions? Would the firm be able to leverage its innovation drive?

The case is based on primary and secondary testing of the case several times and filling the case gaps during the process. To authenticate information, multiple sources of information have been used.

Dynamic capabilities are essential for a firm’s growth. The challenge is in continuously harnessing and managing it within a family business.

The findings are based on observations of one company and research carried through secondary sources, which may limit the theory creation.

An enterprise largely competes on the basis of available talent, knowledge, competency and capability. Therefore, knowledge must be managed, and especially, from tacit to explicit.

The case is original with the business family in its second generation striving to perform amidst professionalization and internationalization.

The case aims to deal with multi generation entrepreneurship. Families are about people and businesses are about money, therefore, conflict between the two is inevitable. Family-owned businesses develop competitive edges when they align values, vision, strategy, investment and governance to make both family and business activities more professional and mutually supportive. It is a belief that “treating the business like a family”, driven by values and concern for human needs, creates an organization with motivated people working together to create long-term value. Jitesh Ghai is the MD of Panchamrit Asbestos Ltd (PAL), which stands for PAL. Jitesh has an “experiential learning” with the cement sheet business and has understood the nuances of the business. It is supposedly required that PAL ought to professionalize owing to market infeasibility. Shashwat, his son has diversified interests and therefore desires to spin-off to “Big Apple”.

The case is based on research and secondary information, which has been tested several times, while filling the case gaps during the process. To authenticate information, multiple sources (vendors and customers) of information have been used.

There is a dilemma between the father-son relationship and decision to professionalise or spin-off! It is understood that in multigenerational business, it is not necessary that the subsequent generation keep the same business, but must preserve wealth and traditions.

The findings are based on observations on one organisation and research carried through secondary sources, which may limit to theory building.

An enterprise largely competes on the basis of available talent, knowledge, competency and capability. Therefore, knowledge must be managed. For survival and growth, business transition must be handled effectively.

The case is original with the business family in its second generation striving to survive.

The case aims to deal with multigenerational entrepreneurship. The family business of sports goods was initiated by Yashpal Aggarwal and his friends in the 1950s. Yashpal acquired the art of doing business and started initially with trading of sporting goods in Mumbai. Yashpal had three sons, Ashok, Ashwini and Rajesh, who ventured into sports trading business as well. After the demise of Yashpal, Ashok shifted to Jalandhar and started a manufacturing unit, producing roller skates. Ashwini, being entrepreneurial and innovative, had always desired to professionalise the business and hence started with Okini Sports. Okini Sports emerged as the first organised professional sports mall in India.

Based on case research, individual interviews at different levels, testing the case several times and filling the case gaps during the process to authenticate information, multiple sources of information have been used.

Businesses largely compete on the basis of available talent, competency and capability. Family businesses must be open to induct competent people within the family with the required skills to lead the company. If a family nurtures a member with requisite skills, values, to keep shareholders, key customers, and suppliers loyal to the business, then family leadership is the best option. As the business grows in dimension, differential capabilities are required to run the business competitively, hence, inducting talented individuals as professionals is a better option. A family must be realistic about the talents available internally.

This case is restricted to sports family business entrepreneurship in the context of India, but has a great learning towards multigenerational entrepreneurship.

The case is original with the family in its fourth generation, the youngest looking to diversify and professionalize the business, set his family dreams of setting up the biggest sports mall in India.

Based on the conservation of resource theory and the affective events theory, the study aims to explore the role of workplace incivility in predicting work engagement through emotional exhaustion and how psychological capital moderates this relationship.

Using the questionnaire survey with a sample of 278 restaurant employees in Ghana and through process macro analysis, the hypotheses were tested.

The results depict the mediating role of emotional exhaustion on the workplace incivility–engagement relationship. Also, the level of an individual’s psychological capital buffers the impact of workplace incivility on engagement through emotional exhaustion. When psychological capital is high, the negative effect of workplace incivility on work engagement through emotional exhaustion weakens.

The findings suggest that organizations, particularly those in developing economies in Africa, can derive immense benefit from giving psychological capital training to employees to help buffer the effects of incivility on engagement through emotional exhaustion.

With a focus on a developing economy in Africa, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is novel in exploring the mediating and moderating mechanisms of the incivility–engagement relationship.

For achieving the profitable human activity recognition (HAR) method, this paper solves the HAR problem under wireless body area network (WBAN) using a developed ensemble learning approach. The purpose of this study is,to solve the HAR problem under WBAN using a developed ensemble learning approach for achieving the profitable HAR method. There are three data sets used for this HAR in WBAN, namely, human activity recognition using smartphones, wireless sensor data mining and Kaggle. The proposed model undergoes four phases, namely, “pre-processing, feature extraction, feature selection and classification.” Here, the data can be preprocessed by artifacts removal and median filtering techniques. Then, the features are extracted by techniques such as “t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding”, “Short-time Fourier transform” and statistical approaches. The weighted optimal feature selection is considered as the next step for selecting the important features based on computing the data variance of each class. This new feature selection is achieved by the hybrid coyote Jaya optimization (HCJO). Finally, the meta-heuristic-based ensemble learning approach is used as a new recognition approach with three classifiers, namely, “support vector machine (SVM), deep neural network (DNN) and fuzzy classifiers.” Experimental analysis is performed.

The proposed HCJO algorithm was developed for optimizing the membership function of fuzzy, iteration limit of SVM and hidden neuron count of DNN for getting superior classified outcomes and to enhance the performance of ensemble classification.

The accuracy for enhanced HAR model was pretty high in comparison to conventional models, i.e. higher than 6.66% to fuzzy, 4.34% to DNN, 4.34% to SVM, 7.86% to ensemble and 6.66% to Improved Sealion optimization algorithm-Attention Pyramid-Convolutional Neural Network-AP-CNN, respectively.

The suggested HAR model with WBAN using HCJO algorithm is accurate and improves the effectiveness of the recognition.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dark side of instant messaging from the technological and societal perspectives.

With the help of literature review and different theories, a model has been developed conceptually. Later the model has been validated using statistical method. The authors have used 304 responses from the survey method, and this sample has been used to statistically validate the conceptual model.

This paper has been able to explicitly investigate and identify how different instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat in the form of electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) are contributing toward increase of mob lynching cases. The paper also highlights the important to have effective and enforceable regulation to regulate instant messaging services to the citizens.

The findings cannot be generalized as the data is collected from India only. Moreover, the study is cross-sectional in nature. To get the comprehensive results, a longitudinal study needs to be conducted. This study considered seven constructs with one moderator. Having more predictors with other boundary conditions might have increased the explanative power of the model.

Instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat and so on are disseminating quick unverified information to the common people. This information sometimes is disseminated in inappropriate and exaggerated forms. This makes the instant messaging (WhatsApp) users' sentiment readily heated in some cases. They take such an action as mob lynching. This study determines the predictors of mob lynching along with the moderator impact of instant messaging in the society.

There are only a few studies those have explored the dark side of instant messaging. The proposed theoretical model is a unique model, which shows the predictors of mob lynching along with the negative consequences of the instant messaging (WhatsApp) in the society. From this perspective, this study can be considered as a unique study.

Prior research has proposed a number of scales measuring the customer experience (CX), which tend to conceptualize and operationalize CX differently, raising potential confusion among researchers (e.g. regarding which scale to use). Addressing this issue, this article conducts a systematic review to inventorize key CX scales and assess their theoretical rigor, with a focus on the identification of potential scale-related drawbacks or risks.

Drawing on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, 104 CX scale development studies published between 1996 and 2024 are identified and analyzed in terms of their respective CX conceptualization, dimensionality, itemization, and adopted theoretical perspective to evaluate their theoretical rigor.

The findings reveal the existence of five main risks associated with the adoption of specific CX or related scales, including (1) defining experience with explicit reference to other extant constructs, (2) failure to accurately and comprehensively capture the experience, (3) experience-based tautology and theoretical indeterminacy, (4) experience-based composite constructs, and (5) lacking robustness of experience-based conceptual models. Based on these observations, recommendations are offered for scholars to improve the rigor of their adopted, refined, or proposed CX or related scales.

This article assesses the benefits and potential risks inherent in the adoption of particular CX scales, equipping researchers with a CX roadmap.

This study intends to (1) systematically review methodological, theoretical and empirical aspects of dynamic capabilities (DCs) research in international marketing; (2) identify problematic areas and gaps in the reviewed literature and (c) provide directions to address problematic aspects and fill the gaps in future research.

The study applies a systematic literature review methodology and covers 97 articles published between 2001 and 2022 in peer-reviewed journals ranked 2, 3, 4 and 4* in the Academic Journal Guide 2021.

The content analysis shows that (1) methodologically, the literature is dominated by single-country studies conducted mostly in Asia and Europe on a cross-section of industries, mostly adopting survey-based approaches with a cross-sectional time emphasis; (2) theoretically, dynamic capabilities view is mainly accompanied by resource-based view, followed by institutional-, organizational learning- and internationalization theories; and (3) according to the nomological network, DCs are predicted by firm-characteristics, factors related to networks/relationship/partnerships and managerial characteristics, while they act as predictors of performance-related, strategy-related and operational change and renewal-specific outcomes. Several problematic aspects and gaps for each part of the review are diagnosed.

The authors provide a comprehensive assessment of current knowledge on methodological, theoretical and empirical aspects of the relevant literature, map a nomological network of variables surrounding DCs in international marketing research and offer future research directions capitalizing on the problems and gaps identified in the review.