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The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of burnout during early career among knowledge workers in information technology (IT) services industry in India.

The grounded theory research design was used to explore the research phenomenon. The study was based on the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews from the employees, managers and human resource professionals in IT services industry in India. Purposeful and theoretical sampling designs were used to locate the participants for the study. Grounded theory analytical procedures – open, axial and selective coding – were used to analyze and interpret the interview narratives. Atlas ti version 5.0. was used for qualitative data analysis.

The analysis of the interviews with the young knowledge workers reveal the following as the reasons for their burnout during early career: poor integration with the job and the organization at large, underemployment, stressful job and exhausting work environment, fear and insecurity of replacement of talent and downsizing. Strategies are discussed to deal with burnout situations among the young knowledge workers for individual and organizational well-being.

The findings of the study are applicable to organizations such as the IT services industry and thus the research outcome cannot be generalized. The study includes lived experiences of employees only during their early career.

The findings are relevant and useful in the practice domain as they are grounded in field reality. It provides directions for managerial and organizational practices in preventing burnout in early career among knowledge workers.

The paper is original and the present study is among the first attempts to investigate the nature of burnout through qualitative inquiry.

Micronutrient malnutrition is a public health problem in many developing countries, especially in the poorest population segments. Fortification and other food-based approaches, such as using more nutritious ingredients in processing, could help to address this problem, but little is known about poor consumers’ attitudes toward nutritionally enhanced foods. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether poor consumers in Africa would purchase foods with more nutritious ingredients and the related willingness and ability to pay.

A survey and choice experiment were conducted with 600 randomly selected households in the poorest neighborhoods of Nairobi (Kenya) and Kampala (Uganda). Participants were asked to choose between various alternatives of porridge flour with different types of nutritional attributes. The data were analyzed with mixed logit models. Porridge flour is widely consumed among the urban poor, so that the example can also provide interesting broader lessons.

Poor consumers welcome foods that are micronutrient-fortified or include new types of nutritious ingredients. However, willingness to pay for nutritional attributes is small. New ingredients that are perceived to have little effect on taste and appearance are seen more positively than ingredients that may change food products more notably.

New nutritionally enhanced foods have good potential in markets for the poor, if they build on local consumption habits and are not associated with significant price increases.

This is among the first studies to explicitly analyze poor consumers’ preferences for nutritionally enhanced foods.