Search results

The study is prompted by the fact that most SMEs may not have the wherewithal or the willingness to devote time and resources to strategy formulation but are focused to reconsider this position by the pressures of globalization.

Through a literature survey, a model suitable for SMEs is identified. An application of the selected model is presented. Applicability of strategic tools such as ERP in SMEs is examined. A case of a company, which has implemented ERP is analyzed.

SMEs need strategy but the strategy depends on the complexity of the process. The case study points to the need for top management support and commitment.

It is difficult to get financial data from individual SMEs as most SMEs are proprietorship concerns.

For countries, which are labor surplus, study on SMEs which are not capital intensive but create employment, has practical and social implication.

This paper attempts at filling research gaps on competitive strategies for SMEs.

India is a diverse country in which the development of services for children with disabilities presents many challenges. There is evidence that progress towards the provision of educational and therapeutic services has been considerable in the metropolitan cities, with reports of many examples of good and innovative practice. Rural communities are often less well served, and families living in some areas continue to face challenges when attempting to gain support for their children with disabilities. This chapter interrogates the situation for families in districts in southern and central India. The authors draw upon recent research to consider how the challenges of providing a multi-disciplinary support mechanism can be delivered to those living in these areas. Issues related to co-ordination of services, recruitment and retention of professionals and allocation of resources are considered through an examination of the socio-economic conditions confronted by families and professionals. Case study evidence from projects aimed at providing effective services are presented and discussed.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the sequence of forces acting as barriers in the usage of drones in the construction industry using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). The usage of drones in the construction industry is brought out phase-wise with the help of literature and live cases. Barriers to the usage of drones in construction and steps to derive the interaction between them are described in detail.

The extraction of barriers to the usage of drones in construction is done through cases and supported by the literature. The identification of the interaction between the barriers is done through multi-criteria decision models, namely, ISM and Matriced Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classement (MICMAC) and the results are presented in the form of a hierarchical structure. The paper highlights the potential for the usage of drones in every phase of construction across three stages of construction and eight different applications.

The findings on the interaction between barriers show that technical and research and development-related barriers have a higher driving power, ultimately influencing negativity among stakeholders in drone usage for construction. By analysing interrelationships between barriers, management can frame suitable strategies to adopt drone usage in projects. Awareness about the strength of certain barriers can help management take steps to mitigate the same.

By analysing interrelationships between barriers, management can frame suitable strategies to adopt drone usage in projects. A major limitation is a restriction of the study area to the Indian subcontinent. However, the authors believe that the results can be applied across countries where drone technology is at the nascent stage.

Awareness about the strength of certain barriers can help stakeholders take steps to mitigate the same.

The results of this research also give some inputs to the government’s drone policy for wider usage of drones in the construction industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, most studies on drones in construction industry bring out a list various challenges to their adoption. In this study, the authors have gone further to perform a hierarchical sequencing of barriers to drone adoption based on challenges faced in an emerging economy like India.

Family planning (FP) services through the lens of human rights are not well known in Nepal. This study aims to assess Family Planning 2020: Rights and Empowerment Principles for Family Planning and identify factors affecting contraceptive use among HIV-infected women living in rural Far Western Nepal.

This study conducted a cross-sectional survey using self-designed proforma. To assess the association between contraceptive use and independent variables, this study calculated adjusted odd ratio (AOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) V.20.

Only 37.8% of participants had access to full range of contraceptive methods, and only 57.5% of participants received proper counseling. Agency/autonomy, transparency/accountability and voice/participation were practiced by 43.7%, 23.4% and 19.7% of participants, respectively. Husband’s support (AOR = 4.263; 95% CI: 1.640–11.086), availability of FP services in their locality (AOR = 2.497; 95% CI: 1.311–4.754), employment (AOR = 3.499; 95% CI: 1.186–10.328) and postpartum period (AOR = 0.103; 95% CI: 0.023–0.475) were significantly associated with contraceptive use.

Health-care providers’ and program managers’ perspectives were not examined.

Findings of this study will be useful for making strategic plan on human rights-based approach to FP.

Expanding access to contraceptive information and services and strengthening autonomy, accountability and participation are key to human rights-based approach to FP.

This study identified that inadequate counselling, nonavailability of full range of contraceptive methods, low level of autonomy, accountability and participation were key bottlenecks in fulfilling human rights-based approach to FP.

The role and performance of a teacher is central to the teaching and learning process in any educational system, but they are often misinterpreted in the context of educational monitoring and quality assurance. Although efforts to relate teacher quality to educational quality are rarely challenged, establishing linkages between teacher quality and student performance have proven to be complex and inconclusive. This holds true especially in the Indian context wherein teachers experience diverse working conditions that may make traditional measures of teacher quality seem impractical and speculative. Teacher roles and performance, apart from being subjected to contrasting realities in schooling systems, are influenced by cultural capital, systemic forces, and teacher education programs. This chapter attempts to unravel the complexities of an Indian school teacher and highlight some of the issues that teachers are likely to face and grapple within their work situations. Nevertheless, the role of a professional and humane teacher will stand paramount in building the future of India.

Several countries in South Asia face the challenge of ineffective educational reforms manifest in increasing rates of school failure and poor learning outcomes after embarking along education for all. Critical voices from the South have questioned the relevance and appropriateness of ideas that have shaped these reforms. Narratives from the region tell us that importation of educational concepts and policy orientations have led to the dismantling of existing structures and processes of education, creating new forms of inequities and disadvantage. The sheer scale and diversity of populations within the region poses formidable challenges and opportunities for contextual innovation. The construction of national imaginaries in the diverse societies of South Asia has the potential to provide new discourses to educational reform; going beyond the abstract goals set by disconnected international experts and the institutional processes they represent. This chapter deliberates on the need to establish a persuasive critical perspective that can influence and shape the trajectories of policy and practice, research and theorization, within the field of comparative education in South Asia, and the global south.

Universal human values, hereafter referred to as UHVs, have become a new Phenomenon. In Higher Education of India under the provision of National Education Policy 2020. Higher education has a set of new approaches in pedagogical techniques and the content delivery stem. All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) is now working in tandem with the University Grant Commission (UGC) to reach the college and university teachers so that the content can easily percolate to the students of higher education in India. Pedagogical dynamics are visible in the planning, procedure, and method of content design and the content delivery design as well as the follow-up process design. The present article is a critical analysis of all the related aspects using value-based pioneering research in conflict management and for sustaining economic development in modern times. The learned readers are requested to use the Endnotes for connotative and denotative meanings of a few technical terms (Gaur et al., 2009) used hackneyed words in phrasal meanings based on the parlance of UHV contents for a better understanding of this chapter.

This chapter looks at the experiments of the Aam Aadmi Party led government’s initiatives in building teacher quality for its government schools in the capital city. Outlining the contours of neoliberal influence on Indian education policy and its consequences on teacher quality, the chapter explores the political rationality that governs the case of Delhi. It does this by understanding the changing subjectivities of the school teachers within the educational reforms. The government schools in Delhi have been blamed for worsening school performance especially in student learning outcomes through basic educational tests conducted by various assessment and evaluation surveys. Among other reasons, poor teacher quality has been identified as one of the major causes of this poor performance of government school children. Therefore, gaps were identified in the teacher support system and efforts were made to revamp the system. The chapter brings out in detail how the state’s initiatives in educational reforms have produced paradoxical situations and unintended effects in practice as the state has retained a controlling role even though the reform strategies show a shift toward increasing autonomy and deregulation.

The paper critically examines the program on Education for All (EFA) in India, namely Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in a financing and development framework. In doing so, the paper identifies a number of policy and implementation gaps in the program. A fine-tuning of the existing matching shares by discriminating the matching shares in terms of need for, ability to provide matching shares and to strengthen the absorptive capacity could go a long way in attaining the horizontal equity in terms of every child completing elementary schooling in India. This would also ensure the other desirable principles of intergovernmental transfers such as predictability, transparency, and incentive mechanism besides improving utilization.

Further, it clearly emerges that only after ensuring the basic minimum levels in terms of physical and human infrastructure, and ensuring equal access to all the child population of age group of 6–14, quality is given priority. Thus, the challenge is both improving the qualitative and quantitative targets of UEE with enhanced resource allocation to education. Hence, Center is to ensure release of funding for SSA through special efforts as the program requires enormous funding and serious commitment of both central and state governments.

On the developmental aspects, the scheme not only widens social inequity but also perpetuates the declining quality of public provision by encouraging alternate schools and para teachers, besides the financing norms. These low-cost options will result in serious ramifications on equity, quality, balance, and sustainability of the basic education structure.