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Decisions pertaining to working capital management have pivotal role for firms’ short-term financial decisions. The purpose of this paper is to examine impact of working capital on profitability for Indian corporate entities.

Both classical panel analysis and Bayesian techniques have been employed that provides opportunity not only to perform comparative analysis but also allows flexibility in prior distribution assumptions.

It is found that longer cash conversion period has detrimental influence on profitability. Financial soundness indicators are playing significant role in determining firm profitability. Larger firms seem to be more profitable and significant as per Bayesian approach. Bayesian approach has led to considerable gain in estimation fit.

Observing the highly skewed distribution of dependent variable, Multivariate Student t-distribution has been considered along with normal distribution to model stochastic term. Accordingly, Bayesian methodology is applied.

Analysis of working capital for firms has been performed in Indian context. Application of Bayesian methodology is performed on balanced panel spanning from 2003 to 2012. As per author’s knowledge, this is the first study which applies Bayesian approach employing panel data for the analysis of working capital management for Indian firms.

The study aims to conceptualise, develop and validates a scale to measure an employer brand(ing) (EB) based on the opinion of existing and potential employees.

A total of 431 student-respondents from B-Schools across India were surveyed in a cross-sectional study using a 70-item scale generated through literature review and expert interviews. Through exploratory factor analysis, six EB dimensions were derived. These were further validated using confirmatory factor analysis on data of 120 employees of the power sector.

A new 20-item EB scale- “EmBran” covers six dimensions of EB, namely, good human resource (HR) practices, business impression and work conditions, financial compensation, work-life balance, passive culture and standard HR policy. The paper posits EB as a second-order factor determined by six first-order factors.

The EB scale can be used by talent acquisition teams to derive meaningful insights into designing a policy for hiring and attracting young talent. It, thus, makes a significant contribution towards talent management. The scale also provides researchers with a fresh conceptualisation of the concept of the EB.

This study is unique as it considers the opinions of both existing and potential employees. Additionally, dimensions of passive culture and business impression and working conditions, emerged in the study.

In this chapter, I explore two media texts, Imtiaz Ali's Highway and Alankrita Shrivastava's Netflix original series Bombay Begums (2021). I contend that recent filmmakers have begun to arguably reframe the narratives of rape victim-survivors and disrupting the cultural of silence described above. They offer progressive and multi-faceted representations of these experiences, such that there is an opportunity for a dialogue within both private and public spheres. What I mean when I say that they are ‘progressive representations’ is that the rape victim-survivors are not merely reduced to helpless women in distress, nor painted as vengeful, aggressive characters. Instead, their characterisation shows that they have agency and autonomy, but at the same time struggle with the repercussions of speaking out against their perpetrators in a society that does not support them wholly.

The learning outcomes of this case study are as follows: It presents an opportunity for the instructors to introduce the concept of decision-making on matters involving risk (like scaling the business) using in-depth market research techniques. The case’s central idea is to make the students understand the growth of the online service delivery model, with a specific example of home-cooked food that also improves social welfare. It is expected to provide the participants with an opportunity to understand the decision-making by the leaders in newly established companies. It enables future managers to analyze a venture’s pros and cons before deciding to expand.

Chef Junction is an online food delivery platform that allows customers to order hygienic home-cooked food prepared by handpicked home chefs in Bhubaneswar. This city in eastern India is one of the fastest-growing metros, is regarded as a study hub, and provides ample employment opportunities making it one of the sought-after destinations for the migrant youth population. The idea behind Chef Junction is to cater to the healthy food needs of the young by utilizing the culinary productivity of the home cooks, empowering the latter by opening up an extra source of income. These chefs prepare delicious healthy food, usually not listed for sale with online food delivery apps. Chef Junction earned revenues by adding an order-dependent commission on the price quoted by chefs and accepting a flat delivery charge from the customers. This offer was very lucrative for home chefs who could join the platform with zero investment and flexible working hours. The customer’s pockets were also handled when several offers and discounts were rolled out through an attractive pricing strategy. Chef Junction expected to improve its patrons’ health quotient by ensuring the nutrition of the home-cooked food, thus contributing to social welfare. With food being delivered from home to home amalgamated with social welfare and empowerment of home chefs, especially women, this case study is an apt example of a sustainable work-from-home model that has proved effective in crisis times. The pertinent question is: “How feasibly can CJ’s business model grow towards an expansion as the demand increases?”

This case study has been prepared keeping in mind the teaching pedagogy for graduate and postgraduate management programs in strategic management, operations research, entrepreneurship and marketing management. It is also expected to be useful for training courses such as management development programs, faculty development programs and executive programs, in discussing service operations in general and online delivery logistics, in particular for working executives and industry practitioners.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This study aims to analyse the synchronization sustainability has with coolness and how promotion of sustainable fashion can be dealt in an ameliorate way. It also provides insights to the fashion brands on how they can engage customers through brand coolness and romance for meliorated bottom and top lines.

It employs a mixed-method approach through the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. For qualitative part, data are garnered through in-depth interviews (n = 23) with sustainable brand owners, marketers, academicians, bloggers and influencers having different roles to play in the strategizing sustainability, slow fashion and consciousness amongst Gen Z. On the other hand, quantitative data are collected from apparel shoppers (n = 688) through structured questionnaire.

The qualitative data transcribed are analysed through NVivo, and findings received in this regard limns that sustainable fashion to be embellished as cool. Moreover, brand coolness has a relationship with sustainable fashion, emotional attachment factor such as brand romance affect purchase intention of sustainable fashion clothing. Furthermore, brand romance is identified as a mediating variable between brand coolness and purchase intention of sustainable clothing.

Limitations of the study is that with a structured interview, the respondents could not be asked to freely associate “anything related to cool”, rather they were directly asked to “define cool” and tell whether “they think sustainability in fashion can be stated as cool”. Without this constrain, the result could have been possibly being different. Moreover, the participants for the quantitative study were from developing countries which leads to limited generalizability of research findings.

This research attempts to develop an understanding of sustainable fashion so that brand managers can face the present challenges in a better way. The findings in this attempt of ours suggest that the sustainable fashion can be better employed only when both customers and brands are acting responsible. To make customers purchase the brands, the organizations must connect consumers through coolness and romance towards their brand.

When there is dearth of literature on the association sustainability has with coolness, the present study holds originality in adding to the literature on the pertinent aspect. Besides this, the present study addresses the lack of an academic understanding of literature on sustainable fashion in its own way through conduct of in-depth interviews with experts working in the area of sustainable fashion and then validating the same by surveying the Gen Z buyers of sustainable clothes.

This paper aims to report on signs of public awareness and empowerment among the general public that are presumed to determine the viability of the smart contracting (SC) approach and identifies prevailing concerns regarding individual transactional experiences.

A mixed approach was followed to explore perceptions of self-regulation and transaction friendliness by using an interpretative multiple case study method and by presenting a descriptive summative analysis of the data.

On self-regulation, the study reveals spread awareness, empowerment, contractual competences and responsibility. Regarding transaction friendliness, subject matter influences transaction experiences the most, and trust and engagement are the most problematic factors. The findings support the viability of SC, endorsing the application of proactive perspectives in legal and managerial practice.

The study confirms the foundational assumptions of SC, identifies key transactional issues that should be further addressed to improve the functionality of digital trade environments and contributes to the consolidation of the legal design research field on transaction usability.

The findings point to the viability of SC. Organizations and practitioners are given indications on transaction upgrade priorities and invited to adopt and help disseminate the proposal.

The expansion of a collaborative transactional culture can reduce legal disputes, improving the legal environment of business and strengthening private governance regulatory models.

This is the first empirical study on the viability conditions of the SC-approach, identifying transactional usability testing and intervention priorities.

The transformation of firms from resource-based-view to knowledge-based-view has extended the importance of organizational learning. Thus, this study aims to develop an organizational learning model through transformational leadership with indirect effect of knowledge management process capability and interactive role of knowledge-intensive culture.

Different statistical analyses were done to check the direct, indirect and interactive effects on 204 valid responses.

The results are clearly depicting that transformational leadership has significant positive impact on organizational learning and knowledge management process capability, and partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational learning. Additionally, knowledge-intensive culture has strengthened the relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge management process capability.

This is an overarching and unique conceptual model. After examining the importance of organizational learning in the context of innovative ability, competitive advantage, creativity and organizational performance, management has to initiate steps to induct transformational leaders, develop knowledge-intensive culture and introduce knowledge management processes to boost learning environment in organizations.

Using the lens of the natural resource-based view (NRBV) theory, this study investigates the effect of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices such as green manufacturing (GM), eco-design (ED), green purchasing (GP) and investment recovery (IR) on the carbon-neutral supply chain (CNSC) performance of firms through the mediating influence of logistics eco-centricity (LE).

A conceptual framework that hypothesizes the relationship between GSCM practices, LE and the CNSC performance of firms is developed. Key GSCM practices are then identified using experts’ opinions. Furthermore, we collected responses from logistics companies to validate the conceptual framework using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method.

Through this study, we found that GSCM practices significantly improve a firm's CNSC performance, and the relationships between GSCM practices and CNSC performance are positively mediated by LE.

The implications of the study suggest that logistics managers can benefit from the findings of this study to comprehend the impact of various GSCM techniques on LE and CNSC from the viewpoint of the NRBV paradigm.

This research provides valuable perspectives for managers and supply chain (SC) practitioners in their quest for sustainable and environmentally responsible SC operations through an extensive and novel analysis of the connection between GSCM practices, LE and CNSC performance.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the behavior patterns of different quality cost categories to enable us to take the right decisions in allocating resources for reducing quality costs.

Costs of quality, existing in a small‐scale industry in India, in the financial year 2006‐2007, were found out. At the start of the financial year 2007‐2008 a quality cost program was implemented in that organization and more resources were allocated for prevention and appraisal cost activities. Subsequently, the costs of quality related to the financial year 2007‐2008 and 2008‐2009 were found out. Based on the quality cost data of three years, co‐relation co‐efficient between the different quality cost categories were calculated.

The co‐relation co‐efficient between different quality cost categories suggest that by increasing the efforts towards prevention and appraisal activities, costs of non conformance decrease. Furthermore, there exists positive co‐relation within costs of conformance and between costs of non conformance.

In the competitive modern world, small scale organizations have limited resources. They do not have funds to hire consultants. So, the behaviour patterns of quality cost categories help these organizations to allocate precious resources more effectively and result in the reduction of quality costs thereby improving profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the green lean approach and highlight its limitations; examine the compatibility of the green, lean and Six Sigma concepts; and propose Six Sigma, and specially its problem-solving methodology DMAIC, as an approach to help enhancing the effectiveness of green lean initiatives. Historically, profitability and efficiency, and more recently customer satisfaction, quality and responsiveness objectives have been the prevailing interest for organisations. However, the move towards greener operations and products has forced companies to seek alternatives to combine these with green objectives and initiatives. Green lean is the result of this combination. Thus, the paper conceptually proposes Green Lean Six Sigma.

To do this, a systematic literature review (SLR) of the subjects under investigation was conducted.

The SLR indicated that the green lean integration may have inherited the same limitations as the individual green and lean approaches, but these may be overcome through the integration of Six Sigma. It also identified the similarities of some of the main attributes of green, lean and Six Sigma, which suggest their compatibility to be unified as an integrated approach.

The paper allows scholars to develop a deeper and richer knowledge on the simultaneous deployment of green and operational improvement initiatives and help practitioners in formulating more effective strategies for their deployment.

The paper is one of the very first researches that investigate the potential benefits of integrating green lean and Six Sigma.