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Employee theft is a major component of retail shrinkage. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of two methods, internal control and random inspections of the locations at which employees work, to deter employee theft. An inspection strategy is designed in which retailers try to minimize their costs while trying to prevent employees from stealing.

We employ an analytical approach. The employees are assumed to be strategic, i.e. they respond to the decisions made by the retailer, and likewise the retailer is strategic. Consequently, game theory is used to model their interaction, and to obtain the best decisions for both the retailer and employee after taking into consideration the other's actions.

The solution of the game depends upon various parameters such as the cost and effectiveness of random inspections and of the internal control system. The paper determines the optimal frequency of inspections, the total budget to be spent on inspections and the total expected retail shrinkage due to employee theft. The paper also shows the extent to which an effective internal control system and the recruitment of honest employees can benefit retail organizations in preventing losses due to employee theft.

The paper provides normative guidelines for decisions such as the frequency of inspections. Retailers can limit employee theft but eliminating theft altogether turns out to be too expensive if the goal is to minimize organizational losses. The retailer should try to reduce inspection costs and increase their effectiveness. Adding honest employees helps the retailer, but note that adding just a few is not beneficial because organizational losses remain unchanged, but adding a larger number qualitatively affects the equilibrium outcome and lowers organizational losses. The paper describes when investing in better internal control systems is appropriate.

The underlying assumption is of strategic retailers and employees. This gaming analysis brings a new perspective to examining retail crime problems than has been hitherto the case. This work follows in the tradition of the economics of crime literature, which views crime as a rational choice decision made by potential offenders. The study examines employee crime in the context of retail organizations, and provides several new insights. Although the idea of random inspections is not new, features of the retail environment such as internal control system, employee dissatisfaction and the ability to recruit honest employees have no direct parallels in the economics of crime literature, and are being touched upon for the first time.

This paper aims to present a longitudinal and visualizing study using scientometric approaches to depict the historical changes in the academic community, intellectual base and research hotspots within the business domain.

Two mapping methods are used, namely, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis. Both the co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis in this study are conducted using CiteSpace, a Java-based scientific visualization software.

This paper detects changes in academic communities in 24 business journals chosen by the University of Texas at Dallas as leading journals (UTD24) and identifies the research hotspots such as corporate governance, organizational research and capital research. Many authors and academic communities appear in two or even three periods, which indicates the lasting academic vitality of scholars in this field. This paper determines the evolution of scholars' research interests by identifying high-frequency keywords during the entire period.

This paper reveals a systematic and holistic picture of the developmental landscape of the business domain, which can provide a potential guide for future research. Furthermore, based on empirical data and knowledge visualization, the intellectual structure and evolution of the business domain can be identified more objectively.

Sustainability performances (SPs) are the most crucial performances for an organisation in today's world, and they can be measured by economic, social, and environmental metrics. Previous research has not been clear on the role of total productive maintenance (TPM) in the context of sustainability, which motivates the authors to investigate the relationship between TPM and various SPs of the manufacturing firm. Therefore, current research investigates the relationship between TPM and the overall sustainability of the manufacturing firm from the perspective of resource-based view (RBV) theory.

The current study proposed, tested and validated a conceptual framework using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). A total of 326 responses were received to validate the conceptual framework in smartsPLS 3.0 software.

The research outcomes indicate that TPM considerably impacts a manufacturing firm's economic, environmental and social performance.

This research demonstrates that outstanding shop floor behaviour, such as TPM, can become an important asset to offer competitive advantages in a manufacturing firm. Similarly, TPM might serve as a roadmap for leveraging overall sustainability for manufacturing companies. The study indicates the establishment of a sustainability-oriented training protocol while practising TPM.

No past investigation indicates that a shop floor activity like TPM could be used as an input to offer sustainability in a single index for a manufacturing firm from the perception of RBV theory.

The study aims to present demand chain management (DCM) modeling of Indian apparel retailers. This will result in a structured model presenting contextual interrelationship among DCM variables so that retailers can proactively manage their demand chain.

The research follows an exploratory research design. It initially involves identification and analysis of influential factors of the implementation of DCM practices through the review of literature. Then, these variables were analyzed using total interpretive structural modeling or TISM followed by a statistical verification and case-based validation of the model.

The major findings of the paper are: top-management commitment and support, information management and supply chain agility in supply chain are the most significant enablers with the highest driving power. The other apparel retail specific significant variables are assortment planning, category management and marketing orientation. The model also indicates that the firms that implement customer-centric DCM practices do well in terms of organizational performance and thereby achieve differential advantage over their competitors.

Because the literature on DCM is still in nascent stage, the study bases itself on interpretive method; that is, TISM of analysis with a limited number of experts. Future studies may consider larger sample with more advanced statistical tools such as structural equation modeling for further validation of the findings.

The novelty of the paper lies in the study of an emerging supply chain philosophy; that is, DCM and its key practices per se. It has rarely been studied from the theory building perspective hitherto. Moreover, TISM-based approach is applied for the first time to study the DCM practices and its drivers vis-à-vis dependents.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in reducing Infant Mortality in India. The study will help the government in deciding its future course of action regarding the infant mortality rate (IMR) reduction in India.

This paper adopts the interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) approach with a control group to study the role of NRHM in reducing the IMR in India. The authors examined infant mortality in rural areas of India for the level and trend change before and after the implementation of NRHM. The authors then applied a suitable ARMA model to estimate the coefficients of the regression model. From the estimated results, the study predicts the counterfactuals for both the rural IMR and urban IMR and plots the results.

The study found the evidence supporting the hypotheses that the NRHM has led to a reduction in the difference between urban IMR and rural IMR. The research shows that the rural IMR declined at steeper rates in the post-NRHM period (2005–2015).

None of the existing studies analyses the impact of a social scheme like NRHM on the reduction of IMR in India by applying the ITSA. The study is unique as it estimates the counterfactuals and plots the results which show the impact of NRHM on reducing IMR.

Of the global carrot production, 20–30% is outgraded as carrot rejects and waste (CRW) at the primary processing level, which is partially used toward animal feed and the remaining ends in the landfills. This study was undertaken to identify the hurdles and seek potential solutions for using CRW in food processing.

CRW were procured from the processing unit in Ontario, Canada, as (1) outgraded carrots (OGCs) and (2) processed discards (PDs). The physical parameters of CRW, imperfections responsible for their separation from the graded carrots and shelf-life studies were recorded.

A significant difference with p ≤ 0.05 was recorded for both the physical parameters and the nature of imperfections in CRW. Discolored carrots (42.37 ± 3.59%) and the presence of vertical splits (52.71 ± 3.18%) were among the top defects in the OGCs. In contrast, the presence of broken tips (54.83 ± 2.52%) and vertical splits (40.56 ± 2.65%) were among the primary cause for the generation of PDs. In total, five percent of CRW were initially infected, which later increased to 30% during the seven days storage period.

The limitation of the study was that only two varieties of carrots were considered and these were procured from one processor (the authors’ industry partner) at different time intervals of the year. Microbiological analysis could not be completed and reported due to prevailing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation but is included for future studies.

Development of specialized post-harvest packaging and handling protocols and separation of infected fragments are essential before suggesting the use of CRW in food processing.

Numerous studies report on the post-harvest management and processing of graded carrots, but limited to no studies are published on the usage of CRW in food processing.

Key success factors (KSFs) of total productive maintenance (TPM) have historically played a vital role in attaining economic and ecological sustainability but have overlooked social sustainability. Hence, this study analyses and ranks the most significant TPM KSFs for attaining social sustainability in manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The research employs a deductive methodology to identify the relevant TPM KSFs and social sustainability indicators and then uses Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank the TPM KSFs in order to achieve social sustainability, followed by a sensitivity analysis to assess the methodological robustness.

The findings indicate that the top five TPM KSFs influencing social sustainability are employee health and safety, organizational culture, top management commitment, employee engagement and effective communication and effective workplace management. In addition, the results indicate that effective equipment utilization is the least significant TPM key factor affecting social sustainability.

SME manufacturing managers do not need to worry about all of the TPM KSFs if they only concentrate on the ones that will have the most impact. If managers use the top 5 TPM KSFs as a starting point, they may create customized TPM training programs for their companies. As a result, this will facilitate the efforts of their personnel toward social sustainability.

In the existing literature, little emphasis has been paid to social sustainability and how SMEs may implement these practices. This research adds to the current theory of TPM and social sustainability and sheds light on how SMEs might use TPM to advance toward more socially sustainable operations.

This study revisits the discourse on the neoliberalization of business schools and explores how accreditation-linked institutional pressures catalyze cultural change that adversely impact academic labor and academic subjectivities in the Global South.

This study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with academics from elite business schools in India.

This study shows how academics encounter institutional pressures in Indian business schools. Three major themes emerged from the data: (1) the conception of the ideal academic that existed before accreditation, (2) how the conception of the ideal academic was fundamentally transformed during and after accreditation, and (3) the challenges academics experienced in achieving the performance targets introduced by accreditation-linked institutional pressures.

This study offers two contributions to the extant literature on business schools located in the Global South: (1) it illustrates how organizational changes within business schools in India are structured by accreditation-linked institutional pressures coming from the Global North, and (2) it adds to the growing body of work on neoliberal governmentality by highlighting the implications of accreditation-liked institutional pressures on academic subjectivities.