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The case “Evaluating Business Value of IT Requirements” addresses a software/information technology (IT) project management concern of assessing value of specified project requirements upfront.

This newly designed case is suitable for the students of an undergraduate programme, an MBA programme and practitioners. Assignment questions are designed from the perspective of teaching this case to a business student audience. The case is ideally suited for the IT strategy course where approaches to identifying business value of software investments are discussed.

Set in November 2011, the case begins with the dilemmas facing Mr Suneel as he tries to come up with an approach that could facilitate evaluation of business value of software at a relatively early stage of its development. Based on a review of available literary sources, he proposed a six-step approach that incorporates responses of both the project representatives and business representatives. The final result is a quantitative representation of business value that is expected to facilitate both the business and the project organisation to finalise on software features that contribute significantly in realising the intended business objectives.

To introduce the concept of business value and its associated dimensions; to introduce the concept of project scenarios and its constituents; to highlight the benefits of an early assessment of the business value; and to demonstrate how one can link software requirements to business value and the difficulties associated with the estimation process.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The study investigates the influence of managerial discretion over accruals on banks' financial reporting quality. Furthermore, it examines the role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives to manipulate banks’ reporting quality in a developing economy.

The sample includes 37 Indian public- and private-sector banks from the fiscal year 2001–2022. The discretionary LLP (DLLP) is used to examine various managerial incentives and accounting quality. The models are estimated using panel fixed-effect regression and the system generalized method of moments. The results survive several sensitivity checks.

The results exhibit a low quality of financial reporting in public-sector banks, which is evident through the higher use of DLLP for income smoothing and signaling. In contrast, the low-capitalized private-sector banks employ DLLP to manage capital.

The study’s sample size is relatively small and focuses on a single country. Future researchers can investigate other emerging economies to better generalize the findings of this study.

The study highlights the influential role of ownership in shaping managerial incentives in the banking industry. Moreover, the study is of utmost importance for governments, regulators and policymakers in devising policies that reduce agency conflicts and improve financial stability in emerging economies.

The study subscribes to the growing literature on the role of ownership in influencing the banks’ financial reporting quality. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the limited studies in the context of government-owned vs private-owned banks in an emerging economy.

This paper aims to examine the influence of sustainability reporting on bank performance. Furthermore, this study investigates the impact of the country’s economic development, financial system and crisis in moderating sustainability reporting and bank performance relationship.

The sample consists of 400 listed banks from 19 countries over the 2009–2022 period. Panel fixed-effect regression is applied, and System Generalized Method of Moments is used as robustness to address endogeneity concerns. The results are robust and survive several sensitivity tests.

The results, aligning with legitimacy and agency theories, suggest a negative relationship between sustainability reporting and bank performance. Based on further classifications, results suggest the negative (positive) impact of country’s financial system (economic development) in moderating the sustainability reporting and bank performance nexus. Finally, this study documents the positive influence of sustainability reporting on bank performance during the crisis period. Overall, the findings fail to support the reduced information asymmetry accruing from higher sustainability disclosures in developing and bank-based economies.

This study has important implications for regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders, especially in light of recent banking scandals that have deteriorated stakeholders' faith in financial institutions' reporting quality.

This study extends the scant literature on sustainability reporting in banking from a cost-benefit vantage point. Furthermore, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no previous research has examined the moderating role of the country’s financial structure and crisis in sustainability reporting and bank performance relationship.

The paper aims to provide business process designers a formal yet user friendly technique to evaluate the implications of a process design on process performance even before its implementation.

Based on practical experience, the paper has built on past research to hypothesize structural metrics for business processes that help assess the influence of process design on organizational goals.

This paper suggests a list of structural metrics that can be used to approximate common performance goals (i.e. soft goals) at the stage of process design. Distinct views for process depiction are discussed to explain how each metric can be calculated and what kind of performance goals it can approximate.

The paper has assumed an intuitive relationship between process structure and process performance which has to be validated empirically. There is scope for developing formal methods to translate changes in structural metrics to monetary value for business and also to refine the structural metrics further if required.

The suggested list of structural metrics and the corresponding process views can be used to compare process design alternatives to select a process design better aligned to organization goals.

A list of structural metrics based on practical experience can be easily applied by business process designers to create a formal yet user friendly approach for process design evaluation.

The ratio between share price and current earnings per share, the Price Earning (PE) ratio, is widely considered to be an effective gauge of under/overvaluation of a corporation’s stock. Arguably, a more reliable indicator, the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earning ratio or CAPE, can be obtained by replacing current earnings with a measure of permanent earnings i.e. the profits that a corporation is able to earn, on average, over the medium to long run. In this study, we aim to understand the cross-sectional aspects of the dynamics of the valuation metrics across global stock markets including both developed and emerging markets. We use a time varying DCC model to exploit the dynamics in correlations, by introducing the notion of value spread between CAPE and the respective Market Index from 2002 to 2014 for 34 countries. Value spread is statistically significant during the 2008 crisis for asset allocation. The signal can be utilized for better asset allocation as it allows one to interpret the common movements in the stock market for under/overvaluation trends. These estimates clearly indicate periods of misvaluation in our sample. Furthermore, our simulations suggest that the model can provide early warning signs for asset mispricing in real time on a global scale and formation of asset bubbles.

This paper aims to examine the impact of announcements related to 77 interventions by 46 listed Indian pharmaceutical firms during COVID-19 on the abnormal returns of the firms. The study also finds the variables which explain cumulative abnormal returns (CARs).

This study uses standard event methodology to compute the abnormal returns of firms announcing pharmaceutical interventions in 2020 and 2021. Besides this, the multilayer perceptron technique is applied to identify the variables that influence the CARs of the sample firms.

The results show the presence of abnormal returns of 0.64% one day before the announcement, indicating information leakage. The multilayer perceptron approach identifies five variables that explain the CARs of the sample companies, which are licensing_age, licensing_size, size, commercialization_age and approval_age.

The study contributes to the efficient market literature by revealing how firm-specific nonfinancial disclosures affect stock prices, especially in times of crisis like pandemics. Prior research focused on determining the effect of COVID-19 variables on abnormal returns. This is the first research to use artificial neural networks to determine which firm-specific variables and pharmaceutical interventions can influence CARs.

The complexity of citizenship behavior in organizations has long been a focus of research. Traditional methodologies have been predominantly used to address this complexity. This paper aims to tackle the problem using a cutting-edge technological tool: business process mining. The objective is to enhance citizenship behaviors by leveraging primary data collected from 326 white-collar employees in the Indian service industry.

The study focuses on two main processes: training and creativity, with the ultimate goal of fostering organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), both in its overall manifestation (OCB-O) and its individual components (OCB-I). Seven different machine learning algorithms were used: artificial neural, behavior, prediction network, linear discriminant classifier, K-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest and naive Bayes. The approach involved mining the most effective path for predicting the outcome and automating the entire process to enhance efficiency and sustainability.

The study successfully predicted the OCB-O construct, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach. An optimized path for prediction was identified, highlighting the potential for automation to streamline the process and improve accuracy. These findings suggest that leveraging automation can facilitate the prediction of behavioral constructs, enabling the customization of policies for future employees.

The findings have significant implications for organizations aiming to enhance citizenship behaviors among their employees. By leveraging advanced technological tools such as business process mining and machine learning algorithms, companies can develop more effective strategies for fostering desirable behaviors. Furthermore, the automation of these processes offers the potential to streamline operations, reduce manual effort and improve predictive accuracy.

This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a novel approach to addressing the complexity of citizenship behavior in organizations. By combining business process mining with machine learning techniques, a unique perspective is provided on how technological advancements can be leveraged to enhance organizational outcomes. Moreover, the findings underscore the value of automation in refining existing processes and developing models applicable to future employees, thus improving overall organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

After completing this case study, students will be able to understand the issues firms, brands and influencers face due to sponsorship disclosure regulation and the impact of self-regulation on firms engaging in influencer marketing, explain the challenges regulators face in ensuring compliance in an emerging market, explain Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI)’s challenges in adopting influencer guidelines from emerged markets and recommend ethical theory (or theories) and strategies to firms engaged in influencer marketing.

This case study centers on Mr Manish Chowdhary, co-founder of WOW Skin Science, who started the beauty and personal care business with his brother Karan Chowdhary in 2015 in Bangalore, India. The company successfully built its brand through influencer marketing but faced challenges after the ASCI implemented new influencer guidelines. On May 31, 2021, he expressed disagreement with ASCI guidelines during an interview with Akansha Nagar from Buzz in Content, particularly the requirement to label every product or service received by influencers as an advertisement. He expressed concern about certain rules, fearing they might harm organic content and reduce viewership and followers. Subsequently, ASCI registered noncompliance cases against the company and communicated with them about complaints regarding influencer guideline violations. In this situation, Manish needed to evaluate his decision on noncompliance with regulation and required an action plan to strategically manage its influencer marketing campaign by incorporating ASCI’s guidelines. Overall, this case study highlights the journey of WOW Skin Science and its challenges with self-regulatory authorities over its influencer marketing strategy in an emerging market. Additionally, students can gain insight into the marketing communication ethics of a startup operating in an emerging market by embodying the protagonist’s role.

This case study is suitable for postgraduate level students pursuing a Master of Business Administration program. The difficulty level ranges from moderate to complex. It fits well into integrated marketing communication and marketing strategy courses. This case study discusses marketing ethics, advertising and promotion regulation.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed consumer buying behavior across the world. COVID-19 crisis brought a behavioral change in consumers' attitudes toward health, financial and social well-being. The current research work highlights the factors influencing consumer buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic considering saving and safety perspectives.

This study attempts to understand the gap in buying behavior with reference to saving and safety. Survey-based study was conducted during the second phase of COVID-19, and the respondents were those who lived in highly affected COVID cities in India. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were carried out for testing the hypotheses.

Seven factors became the prominent factors in consumer buying patterns during the pandemic. Consumers in the times of COVID-19 pandemic spend only on essential items as compared to nice-to-have and non-essential items.

Respondents considered in the research were millennials aged 25–40. The current research is limited to specific geographic location.

The study assessed how savings and safety influence consumer buying behavior. The 2S framework model for consumer buying behavior during pandemic has been developed. The findings of the study provides a road map to the companies, policy makers, managers and consumers in understanding the consumer buying behavior during pandemic.

The current research work observe the changes in the behavioral patterns of consumers in the context of 2S framework, i.e. saving and safety. This study offer novel contribution as there is no available literature that examined the saving and safety aspects together for consumer buying behavior during crisis.