Search results

This study aims to delve into the perspectives of educators on integrating ChatGPT, an AI language model into management education. In the current research, educators were asked to talk as widely as possible about the perceived benefits, limitations of ChatGPT in management education and strategies to improve ChatGPT for management education. Also, shedding light on what motivates or inhibits them to use ChatGPT in management education in the Indian context.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis commonly uses purposive sampling. In this research, the purpose is to delve into educators’ perspectives on ChatGPT in management education. The data was collected from the universities offering management education in Uttarakhand, India. The final sample size for the study was constrained to 57 educators, reflecting the point of theoretical saturation in data collection.

The present study involved educators discussing the various advantages of using ChatGPT in the context of management education. When educators were interviewed, their responses were categorized into nine distinct sub-themes related to the benefits of ChatGPT in management education. Similarly, when educators were asked to provide their insights on the limitations of using ChatGPT in management education, their responses were grouped into six sub-themes that emerged during the interviews. Furthermore, in the process of interviewing educators about potential strategies to enhance ChatGPT for management education, their feedback was organized into seven sub-themes, reflecting the various approaches suggested by the educators.

In the qualitative study, perceptions and experiences of educators at a certain period are captured. It would be necessary to conduct longitudinal research to comprehend how perceptions and experiences might change over time. The study’s exclusive focus on management education may not adequately reflect the experiences and viewpoints of educators in another discipline. The findings may not be generalizable and applicable to other educational disciplines.

The research has helped in identifying the strengths and limitations of ChatGPT as perceived by educators for management education. Understanding educators’ perceptions and experiences with ChatGPT provided valuable insight into how the tool is being used in real-world educational settings. These insights can guide higher education institutions, policymakers and ChatGPT service providers in refining and improving the ChatGPT tool to better align with the specific needs of management educators.

Amid the rising interest in ChatGPT’s educational applications, a research gap exists in exploring educators’ perspectives on AI tools like ChatGPT. While some studies have addressed its role in fields like medical, engineering, legal education and natural sciences, the context of management education remains underexplored. This study focuses on educators’ experiences with ChatGPT in transforming management education, aiming to reveal its benefits, limitations and factors influencing adoption. As research in this area is limited, educators’ insights can guide higher education institutions, ChatGPT providers and policymakers in effectively implementing ChatGPT in Indian management education.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the social and economic disparities across social groups in rural Uttar Pradesh. The paper demonstrates that the structure of the rural economy in India is characterised by deeply ingrained prejudices and social discrimination. The four-village study undertaken in one of the most populated states in India, Uttar Pradesh, clearly reveals that there is a huge disparity in terms of various social and economic indicators and that the so-called high growth has hardly helped in bettering their lives.

The paper is based on primary data collected from the Census survey of villages exploring socio-economic disparities across social groups by using decomposition models.

The results evidently lend credence to the postulations that a large proportion of the disadvantaged groups are prone to multiple deprivations, both in the society and in labour markets. The inquiry reveals this phenomenon clearly.

From the policy point of view, it is therefore imperative to ensure the direct and focussed provision of basic human requirements in terms of education, employment and income of the state. The implementation of direct policy interventions is an absolute necessity if the state has to guarantee convergence and the inclusive growth process on a sustained basis.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the inequality among the social groups in terms of education, employment, income and livelihood opportunities in selected villages of four districts of Uttar Pradesh.

The purpose of this study is to bring about an exhaustive measurement instrument of employee engagement and validate the same in Indian settings.

This descriptive and cross-sectional study initiates with reviewing the available literature in the field of employee engagement to identify factors affecting and the corresponding items defining them. Following the discussion with experts and industry professionals, an instrument was, thus, obtained to administer the primary data from employees working in public and private power companies in India. The study used Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) 3 to demonstrate employee engagement as a first-order reflective and second-order formative construct. Thereafter, reliability and convergent validity were assessed to validate the instrument.

This paper conceptualized employee engagement as a multi-factor construct (nine in numbers). The factors are “Respect”, “Supervisor's support and recognition”, “Growth and development”, “Creative and challenging job”, “Job significance”, “Perceived self-worth”, “performance evaluation and recognition” and “Organizational bureaucracy”. These factors are exhaustive and collectively define employee engagement. Distortion or omission in any of these items may distort the nature of construct as well.

Previous studies have defined the concept of employee engagement as unidimensional and thus observe serious lacunas. This study identified employee engagement as a multi-factor construct that incorporates the exhaustive nature of the organizational setting. Not only this study adds value to the existing body of knowledge in the field of employee engagement but also specify the measurement model as a formative one concerning employee engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between working capital management (WCM) efficiency and exogenous variables of the Indian manufacturing sector along with its sub-industries that are involved in export activities.

Panel regression (fixed effects) was used on a sample of 563 Indian manufacturing firms involved in export activities, covering a time period from 2008 to 2018.

Industry-wise results showed a significant relation of leverage, net fixed asset ratio, profitability, asset turnover ratio, total asset growth rate and productivity with cash conversion cycle (CCC).

Firstly, having taken a sample from a developing economy, the results of our study may be generalizable only among developing contexts. Secondly, the time period taken in this study (2008–2018) has witnessed several economic fluctuations such as recession and demonetization which might differ for the firms or countries in normal conditions.

An improved working capital model could advance the firms' performance by reducing the CCC of the firm, thereby creating efficiency in WCM. In addition, the results of this study could be helpful for many stakeholders such as working capital managers, debt holders, investors, financial consultants and others for monitoring the firms.

This study contributes to the existing literature in the relation between WCM efficiency and exogenous variables of the Indian manufacturing firms engaged in the export activities. Moreover, this study is one of the few research studies to investigate this relationship among Indian export firms in different industries, thus filling the gap in similar work done in other countries.

The current fire protection measures in buildings do not account for all contemporary fire hazard issues, which has made fire safety a growing concern. Therefore, this paper aims to present a critical review of current fire protection measures and their applicability to address current challenges relating to fire hazards in buildings.

To overcome fire hazards in buildings, impact of fire hazards is also reviewed to set the context for fire protection measures. Based on the review, an integrated framework for mitigation of fire hazards is proposed. The proposed framework involves enhancement of fire safety in four key areas: fire protection features in buildings, regulation and enforcement, consumer awareness and technology and resources advancement. Detailed strategies on improving fire safety in buildings in these four key areas are presented, and future research and training needs are identified.

Current fire protection measures lead to an unquantified level of fire safety in buildings, provide minimal strategies to mitigate fire hazard and do not account for contemporary fire hazard issues. Implementing key measures that include reliable fire protection systems, proper regulation and enforcement of building code provisions, enhancement of public awareness and proper use of technology and resources is key to mitigating fire hazard in buildings. Major research and training required to improve fire safety in buildings include developing cost-effective fire suppression systems and rational fire design approaches, characterizing new materials and developing performance-based codes.

The proposed framework encompasses both prevention and management of fire hazard. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified, and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework.

Fire represents a severe hazard in both developing and developed countries and poses significant threat to life, structure, property and environment. The proposed framework has social implications as it addresses some of the current challenges relating to fire hazard in buildings and will enhance overall fire safety.

The novelty of proposed framework lies in encompassing both prevention and management of fire hazard. This is unlike current fire safety improvement strategies, which focus only on improving fire protection features in buildings (i.e. managing impact of fire hazard) using performance-based codes. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Special emphasis is given to cost-effectiveness of proposed strategies, and research and training needs for further enhancing building fire safety are identified.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a numerical analysis on the static and dynamic behaviors of beams made up of functionally graded carbon nanotube (FG-CNT) reinforced polymer and hybrid laminated composite containing the layers of carbon reinforced polymer with CNT. Conventional fibers have higher density as compared to carbon nanotubes (CNTs), thus insertion of FG-CNT reinforced polymer layer in fiber reinforced composite (FRC) structures makes them sustainable candidate for weight critical applications.

In this context, stress and strain formulations of a multi-layer composite system is determined with the help of Timoshenko hypothesis and then the principle of virtual work is employed to derive the governing equations of motion. Herein, extended rule of mixture and conventional micromechanics relations are used to evaluate the material properties of carbon nanotube reinforced composite (CNTRC) layer and FRC layer, respectively. A generalized eigenvalue problem is formulated using finite element approach and is solved for single layer FG-CNTRC beam and multi-layer laminated hybrid composite beam by a user-interactive MATLAB code.

First, the natural frequencies of FG-CNTRC beam are computed and compared with previously available results as well as with Ritz approximation outcomes. Further, free vibration, bending, and buckling analysis is carried out for FG-CNTRC beam to interpret the effect of different CNT volume fraction, number of walls in nanotube, distribution profiles, boundary conditions, and beam-slenderness ratios.

A free vibration analysis of hybrid laminated composite beam with two different layer stacking sequence is performed to present the advantages of hybrid laminated beam over the conventional FRC beam.

This study aims to add to the growing literature on the trade–finance nexus by exploring the interplay between a country's level of financial development, the external finance dependence of firms and their exporting decisions.

The study first develops a theoretical model to motivate the idea that a firm's liquidity (financial) position and its home country's level of financial development act as substitute factors in its export market entry decisions. It then empirically tests whether an improvement in a country's financial development level enhances the number of entrants in the foreign markets and boosts the exports of incumbent exporters using firm-level data of manufacturing firms in India for the period 1993–2020.

Empirical results suggest that a higher level of financial development helps increase the exporting probability of firms that rely more on external finance for their operations. Further, the study finds that the sunk costs-induced hysteresis effect plays a major role in firms' exporting decisions and financial factors don't play a significant role in the exporting activities of incumbent exporters.

The findings suggest that a well-developed financial market is necessary to help more and more firms initiate their foreign market operations. The results underscore that trade-liberalisation measures alone may not increase India's exports and the government must complement them with financial sector reforms.

Studies highlighting the role of financial sector development in helping financially-constrained Indian firms overcome the entry barriers associated with exporting are extremely limited. This study contributes to this nascent literature by conducting an empirical investigation on an extensive database of Indian manufacturing firms. Moreover, in contrast to the previous firm-level studies in this area, this empirical analysis uses the actual values of external finance raised by the firms as a critical factor in determining their extensive and intensive margin of exports instead of the usual balance sheet variables such as liquidity and leverage.

This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and trade performance for the Indian economy through a time-series analysis with annual data over the period 1980-2016.

The study uses new econometrics techniques such as unit root tests in the presence of endogenous structural breaks and autoregressive-distributed lag bounds test for the analysis.

Empirical results reveal that the level of financial development has a significant positive impact on the exports, imports and trade balance of manufactured goods for the Indian economy.

The findings suggest that the positive effect of financial development on trade performance is a potential mechanism through which the former may affect overall income and growth rates. It also implies that standalone trade liberalisation policies are insufficient to increase Indian exports. Indian policymakers should, therefore, consider the implications of the next set of financial sector reforms on the country’s trade flows, besides their positive impact on the economic performance. The findings are particularly relevant in the present scenario when the export growth is decelerating and there is a marked slowdown in private credit flows because of the problem of non-performing assets.

This study is the first of its kind which provides a holistic analysis of the relationship between financial development and trade performance for the Indian economy and also investigates the direction of causality between financial development and international trade by considering the possible presence of multiple endogenous structural breaks in the data. Moreover, in contrast to the available literature, the present study focuses on net exports as a key indicator of trade performance rather than trade openness.

Reinforced concrete structural frames with masonry infills (infill-frames) are commonly used for construction worldwide. While the behavior of such frames has been studied extensively in the context of earthquake loading, studies related to their fire performance are limited. Therefore, this study aims to characterize the behavior of infill-frames under fire exposure by presenting a state-of-the-art literature review of the same.

Both experimental and computational studies have been included with a special emphasis on numerical modeling (simplified as well as advanced). The cold behavior of the infill-frame and its design requirements in case of fire exposure are first reviewed to set the context. Subsequently, the applicability of numerical modeling strategies developed for modeling cold infill-frames to simulate their behavior under fire is critically examined.

The major hurdles in developing generic numerical models for analyzing thermo-mechanical behavior of infill-frames are identified as: lack of temperature-dependent material properties, scarcity of experimental studies for validation and idealizations in coupling between thermal and structural analysis.

This study presents one of the most popular research problems connected with practical and reliable utilization of numerical models, as a good alternative to expensive traditional furnace testing, in assessing fire resistance of infill-frames. It highlights major challenges in thermo-mechanical modeling of infill-frames and critically reviews the available approaches for modeling infill-frames subjected to fire.

Quality education is a key requirement of a burgeoning country, like India as it aims to establish a sustained growth. However, the current situation of Indian education system is extremely poor. Although efforts are being made nationwide to improve the present situation, it is incontrovertible that different complications ail different Indian states. Some states suffer from a poor gross enrollment ratio, while others have an extremely high student-teacher ratio. The purpose of this paper is to compare the educational performance of 28 Indian states in order to identify those which require immediate attention.

For fulfilling this objective, a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework utilizing preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations and geometrical analysis for interactive aid methods is adopted.

The results indicate that the educational performance of Goa is the best amongst all the considered alternative states, while Bihar is the laggard in this direction.

From the results, the states which fare to be the worst can easily be identified along with the specific areas/criteria, where they are falling behind. Based on these findings, necessary remedial actions can be undertaken so as to improve the educational performance of the ailing states.

This paper employs a novel geographic information system (GIS) method and a hue-saturation-value color coding scheme in order to determine the influence of individual criterion on the overall state rank, thereby representing an integration of MCDM and GIS which has never been applied before for educational performance evaluation.