Krishnan Mysore, Konstantinos Kirytopoulos, Seungjun Ahn and Tony Ma
Adverse situations negatively impact project stakeholders’ engagement. Past research has sporadically investigated adverse situations affecting stakeholder engagement but lacks a…
Abstract
Purpose
Adverse situations negatively impact project stakeholders’ engagement. Past research has sporadically investigated adverse situations affecting stakeholder engagement but lacks a thorough empirical investigation. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
A web survey was designed to address the knowledge gap of the identification of the impactful adverse situations during multi-stakeholder engagement. The research yielded 144 completed responses from multi-stakeholders engaged in globally distributed ICT projects.
Findings
Exploratory factor analysis revealed eight factors that underpin 26 adverse situations. The top factors, ranked in terms of importance according to their Relative Importance Index (RII) are: dysfunctional conflicts, dearth of reasoning, glitches in project governance, clash of personalities.
Research limitations/implications
This research reveals the factors that can impact engagement in the form of meaningful clusters and dimensions and opens-up a future research agenda toward causation and mitigation studies related to adversarial stakeholder engagement. The study focuses on globally distributed ICT projects and has not explored generalizability in other sectors.
Practical implications
This research enables project managers and stakeholder analysts to get an understanding on the importance of different dimensions of adverse situations in the way stakeholders think, act and emote.
Social implications
Awareness on the potential adversarial stakeholder engagement helps in effectively managing the sustained stakeholder relationships and mental well-being of project stakeholders.
Originality/value
This research contributes to project management practice, as it reveals the underlying factors of adverse situations occurring during multi-stakeholders’ engagement, provides clarity on their components and ranks them in terms of importance for their overall effect on stakeholders’ engagement.
Details
Keywords
Lakshmanan Ramanathan and Sundaresan Krishnan
The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence of outsourcing on open-source software (OSS) and further investigate the factors that impact the adoption of OSS in global…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence of outsourcing on open-source software (OSS) and further investigate the factors that impact the adoption of OSS in global information technology (IT) outsourcing organizations serviced by Indian IT services organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors developed a conceptual model that describes the factors influencing the OSS adoption by using the technology-organization-environment framework. This quantitative explanatory study used self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 482 middle and top management employees of Indian IT services organizations. The authors analyzed the data using partial least squares to test this conceptual model.
Findings
The proposed conceptual model identified the factors which play a significant role in OSS adoption such as reliability, legal concern, software costs, management support, OSS support availability and software vendor. In contrast, this study did not find enough evidence that IT outsourcing was a significant determinant of OSS adoption.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of the research is that it is focused on global IT outsourcing organizations (clients) serviced by Indian IT services providers (vendors). Hence, the authors cannot generalize the finding to other regions. Also, the analysis is based on the view point of employees in vendors. Views of clients’ employees must be analyzed and triangulated with current evidence.
Practical implications
IT services providers can offer “OSS as a service” for its clients and help them address the gaps in support availability and achieve reduction in total cost of ownership of software.
Originality/value
IT services providers can use this research model to increase their understanding of why some IT outsourcing organizations choose to adopt OSS, while seemingly similar ones facing similar market conditions do not.
Details
Keywords
Neelima Madugula, Srikanth Allamsetty, Abhinav Sinha, Subhendu Mishra, M.V. Satya Sai Chandra and Dhanya Krishnan
With the current COVID-19 outbreak, the majority of the higher educational institutes (HEI) are conducting online examinations to assess their students, where both teachers and…
Abstract
Purpose
With the current COVID-19 outbreak, the majority of the higher educational institutes (HEI) are conducting online examinations to assess their students, where both teachers and students are facing various constraints. Under these circumstances, it is very important to understand the perspectives of teachers and students towards online examinations in higher education institutions and the factors affecting their perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
This study has been conducted with the mentioned objective through online survey responses and rigorous statistical analysis of the data. The data analysis has been performed and presented using self-explanatory bar graphs, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and sentiment analysis.
Findings
While the students responded diversely for items in one of the constructs: scope for malpractice, the teachers agreed with the items, indicating that the online exams are not sufficiently effective in dealing with cheating and malpractice. Few more issues related to Internet connections, short time duration for uploading answer scripts are identified as problems and need attention while framing the rules to conduct the online examinations in future.
Originality/value
A new questionnaire was drafted to measure the effect of different constructs. An attempt is made to understand the perspectives of both the teachers and the students towards online examinations with respect to each of these considered constructs with a rigorous statistical analysis.
Details
Keywords
Vijayshankar Krishnamurthy and M.R. Suresh
The learning outcomes are as follows: develop an understanding of challenges faced by organizations regarding strategic planning; examine the strategies formulated by…
Abstract
Learning outcomes
The learning outcomes are as follows: develop an understanding of challenges faced by organizations regarding strategic planning; examine the strategies formulated by organizations that can enable wider adoption of a service offering; analyse service quality gaps that will provide new insights; and evaluate the strategic choices that would impact the growth of the organization.
Case overview/synopsis
Peter Bushwash International (PBI) was an organization that managed 60 tennis centres in 25 countries. With a staff of 100 tennis coaches worldwide, over 3 million students participated in PBI’s tennis programs. Cesar Morales was appointed the Technical Director on a two-year contract for the PBI’s new tennis centre in Bangalore (India). Morales had to decide if a decentralized strategy (hub-and-spoke model) would create broader growth for the PBI tennis program instead of operating as a premium hub with fewer students.
Complexity academic level
The case was written for organizational strategy, marketing and service quality courses for undergraduate business students (BBA).
Supplementary material
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 7: Management Science.
Details
Keywords
Remya Lathabhavan and Moovendhan V.
Knowledge management during the pandemic has been a challenging task due to the sudden intervention of technology in the organisational environment and the unexpected shift to the…
Abstract
Purpose
Knowledge management during the pandemic has been a challenging task due to the sudden intervention of technology in the organisational environment and the unexpected shift to the work-from-home culture. This study aims to investigate the role of technology intervention in the relationship between knowledge diffusion and knowledge application.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional study was conducted and data were collected from 541 employees who were working from home during the pandemic in India.
Findings
This study found significant relationships between knowledge diffusion and technology intervention. This study also observed the mediating role of technology intervention in the relationship between knowledge diffusion and knowledge application.
Originality/value
Tis study stands with other pioneering studies that have explored the role of technology intervention in the knowledge diffusion–application relationship using the job demand-resource model.
Details
Keywords
Freddie Holmes, Manish Shukla and Ram Kumar Dhurkari
This study tries to identify important criteria and sub-criteria for the evaluation of suppliers for effective management of supply chain sustainability risks (SCSR). This study…
Abstract
Purpose
This study tries to identify important criteria and sub-criteria for the evaluation of suppliers for effective management of supply chain sustainability risks (SCSR). This study also demonstrates the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method in a specific case of a company that is managing a short food supply chain and facing difficulty in ranking the suppliers on three dimensions of sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature reviews and expert opinions are used to identify and assess the sub-criteria for each of the three dimensions of sustainability, followed by pairwise comparison as per the AHP methodology. Finally, the proposed framework is used to evaluate the three suppliers that represent approximately 70% of the total tea sourced by the case company.
Findings
None of the three suppliers is best on all three dimensions of sustainability. The rank order of suppliers together on the three dimensions is different than the rank order with respect to each of the dimensions separately. The results obtained are useful for the case company to understand the risk associated with each of their suppliers. Also, it helps them develop a proactive plan to address those risks. The results also show that the overall country-level indices may not accurately reflect the individual supplier level, and specific information may help to make better judgements.
Research limitations/implications
The study only demonstrates the evaluation of tier-one suppliers. There are various suppliers in the supply chain (tier two and tier three), and there could be missing or inadequate information about these next-level suppliers that augments SCSR substantially. The study focussed on the countries of three specific suppliers, and sustainability parameters are highly contextual and vary from country to country.
Practical implications
This study proposes a multi-criteria decision framework to evaluate and analyse suppliers based on their performance against SCSR. Using the AHP method, a case application is demonstrated for sustainable supply chain risk management. By considering SCSR in the evaluation process, the case company is able to prioritise prevailing risks, analyse suppliers’ positions against these risks and initiate appropriate risk management strategies. The proposed framework provides a powerful tool for making SCSR decisions in similar contexts.
Social implications
The results helped the company to effectively and efficiently prioritize SCSR and rate suppliers using the proposed framework. It is also observed from the results that the social criterion related to human rights (0.161) was highest in the case company’s priority, followed by child labour (0.118). This fact adds value to the proposition that although social sustainability has featured less in academia, it is unclear whether this is apparent in practice.
Originality/value
The study uses experts from a case company based in the UK which is in the business of procurement and supply of tea and is managing a short food supply chain. The framework is the first of its kind using all three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, social and economic.
Details
Keywords
Abstract
Subject area
Strategy.
Study level/applicability
This case can be used on a strategic management course in the second year of an MBA programme, any special elective course on the media and entertainment industry and in executive education programmes to demonstrate the application of strategic management concepts and frameworks.
Case overview
The Indian film industry was the largest in the world and the seventh largest in terms of revenue. Significant number of movies were made in languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, with Hindi commanding the highest number. The film industry in Karnataka made movies in the Kannada language. The industry was plagued by a host of issues with the industry contributing just 2 per cent of the revenues and box office success rate at just around 25 per cent. The state government had set up Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy with the objective of promotion and development of the movie industry in Karnataka. The Chairman of the academy, Shailesh Singh, was extremely concerned about the poor success rate of Kannada movies and was contemplating various options of reviving the ailing Kannada movie industry.
Expected learning outcomes
The expected learning outcomes are as follows: application of strategic management frameworks in the context of the movie industry; analysis of industry issues from the long-term and short-term perspectives; study of different entities in the movie industry and the roles they play and their interdependence; applying learning to suggest survival strategies in an extremely competitive market; and insights into the role of government in the media/entertainment industry.
Supplementary materials
Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.
Subject code
CSS 11: Strategy.
Details
Keywords
It was December 13, 2010. The Government of Uttar Pradesh announced their plan to urbanize the entire area along the Yamuna Expressway (YE) in order to prevent haphazard growth of…
Abstract
It was December 13, 2010. The Government of Uttar Pradesh announced their plan to urbanize the entire area along the Yamuna Expressway (YE) in order to prevent haphazard growth of urban sprawls on the flanks of the YE. The YE was conceived in 1997 as a dream project of Ms Mayawati, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, with the idea of reducing the travel time between Delhi (and the larger National Capital Region) and Agra. It was a 165 km long expressway and was proposed to run from Greater Noida to Agra via Mathura. Amidst issues concerning land acquisition, and various protests and litigations, the deadline for completion of the project had extended beyond its original completion date of February 8, 2010 to April 2013. Meanwhile, the project cost had escalated from Rs 2500 crore (cr) in the year 2000 to about Rs 10,000 cr as of December 2010. By then, about 80% work on the expressway had been completed. The project was finally expected to be completed around April 2011. This was, however, subject to the pending court judgements and mitigation of risks as perceived by Jaypee Infratech, the concessionaire of the project.
Details

Keywords
The following are the learning objectives of the case study: to address the problem of urban food insecurity. To facilitate the generation of more employment opportunities and…
Abstract
Learning outcomes
The following are the learning objectives of the case study: to address the problem of urban food insecurity. To facilitate the generation of more employment opportunities and women empowerment through self-help groups (SHGs). To understand the transition from the founder to new leadership provided by Ms J Jayalalithaa. To understand consumer perception and preferences for “Amma canteens”. To appreciate how the case study has added to the historical role of soup kitchens. To address the challenges faced by the government on the sustainability and viability of “Amma canteens” post the death of its founder Ms Jayalalithaa.
Case overview/synopsis
“Amma Unavagam” is a food subsidisation programme operated by the State Government of Tamil Nadu in India. Under the scheme, municipal corporations of the state are required to run canteens that serve subsidised food. The canteens were first launched by the then Chief Minister of the state Ms Jayalalithaa, who was widely acknowledged as “Amma”. These low-cost canteens will be announced as part of government schemes aimed to support economically disadvantaged sections of society. The scheme had been able to generate employment for thousands of women. However, the success of the scheme lies in the low prices and the cooperative management of all the outlets by the SHGs. The SHGs have been able to run the canteens based on self-governing norms, mutual reciprocity and shared responsibilities. This case study evaluates the role of state-sponsored mechanisms to ensure food security, alleviate food inflation and empower more women in the workforce. Yet, several concerns continue to remain unaddressed. Considering the huge amount of subsidy provided by the state government, the sustainability and economic viability of the scheme are uncertain.
Complexity academic level
This case study can be used for management students studying the basics of management such as teamwork, motivation, leadership and good governance. They may also study government policies and community intervention programmes for the benefit of society. The present case study will help the students to analyse the concept of women empowerment and social inclusion. The students, before discussing the case, may study and read the socio-economic theory of “community engagement and participation”, the “self-help model” and the related “theory of reasoned action/planned behaviour”.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 6: Human resource management.