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Handloom products often fail to infiltrate the global or mainland market, resulting in small localized markets, limited demand and profitability. Recent times have also witnessed a decline in the weaving population of India. Assam, accounting for a third of all households engaged in the handloom industry in India, has been widely hit by unemployment, migration and demotivation among weavers due to lack of profitability in the sector. This research aims to study the case of Assam as an exemplar to identify the barriers and cognitive biases impacting the sales of such ethnic apparel and propose nudges as interventions to address such concerns.

A conjoint-based experimental study was used to understand and compare the cognitive biases of two study groups: an ethnic group from Assam and a non-ethnic group from various Tier I and Tier II cities of India. The groups were exposed to a variety of ethnic Assamese and ethnic non-Assamese products to understand their value perception using conjoint analysis.

Results indicate a potential lack of cognitive fluency when dealing with Assamese ethnic garments, triggering System II thinking among the non-ethnic (national buyer) group. The underlying cause may be the inability to attribute substitution of the given product for a more familiar product. The results suggest that exposure may lead to priming, which in turn can increase cognitive fluency.

Within the limits of the literature reviewed, designing a conjoint-based experiment and proposing the use of nudge to popularize certain ethnic garments are novel contributions of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a fresh perspective to effectively adopt leagility in supply chain. The research adopts Theory of Constraints (TOC) methodology and amalgamates it with design thinking process, people’s opinion and mathematical approach to help achieve supply chain leagility.

The proposed framework is a seven stepped approach to achieve supply chain leagility combination analytical and mathematical procedures. Data enveloping analysis (DEA) is used to identify high level constraint. The new designed thinking process is used to further evaluate the constraints. Nominal group technique (NGT) is used to help build the current reality tree and identify detail level constraints.

The framework application on a case supply chain improves various parameters of leanness and agility over a period of one year. Improvements include reduced rework, improved cash flow, reduced operating cost, reduced order backlog and better customer interaction.

This research opens up TOC application in a totally new area of leagility adoption in supply chain. The framework needs to be explored with more implementation in various business scenarios.

The proposed framework is extremely intuitive and pragmatic in approach. The case application demonstrates the framework can be easily adopted by supply chain managers to improve leagility.

The current study attempts to diversify the TOC application. Using thinking process, DEA and NGT in TOC parlance brings in objectivity and employees together for improvement.

Amalgamating the mathematical approach of DEA, design thinking process and NGT within the TOC framework for supply chain leagility is new and novel.

This paper aims to examine various factors affecting the pricing of audit services and the selection of auditors in the Indian audit market. This paper also aims to investigate the impact of financial distress conditions on the audit pricing and auditor choice decisions of a firm, particularly in the context of a developing economy.

The sample comprises 22,644 firm-years for 1,366 Indian firms from 1990 to 2015. The authors adopt ordinary least squares regression technique to model audit fee, and logistic regression technique to model auditor choice as a function of various factors relating to firm attributes and auditor characteristics.

This paper finds that auditors tend to charge an audit fee premium when they are affiliated to a Big 4 auditor, have industry specialization or jointly provide auditing and non-auditing services. Additionally, firms with larger boards, higher proportion of independent board of directors and CEO–Chairman separation are more likely to choose a Big 4-affiliated auditor. The results also suggest that financially distressed firms tend to pay significantly lower audit fees and are more likely to choose non-Big 4 auditors.

This paper is among the few studies which investigate how financial distress impacts the audit pricing and auditor choice decisions of a firm in the context of emerging economies. The findings of this paper raises serious concerns about the credibility of the audited financial statements and corporate governance mechanisms of firms undergoing financial distress. The empirical results of this paper have strong implications for practitioners, regulators and investors.