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The purpose of the present study was to examine the choice of conflict management strategies made by servant leaders.

The present qualitative study uses the method of narrative enquiry within the framework of interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith et al., 2009) to capture the life experiences as lived.

The study suggests that the servant leaders manifest conflict management styles which are more persuasive, humane and participative. Their chief strategies for resolving subordinate-subordinate conflict are initial diagnosis of the situation; leader’s intervention in facilitating an amicable solution; and impartiality of the leader while effecting resolution of conflict. Diagnosis of the conflict situation, self-restraint, patience, composure and humility of the servant leader have emerged as major leadership characteristics, as well as strategies for dealing with any provocative employee behavior.

Insight provided by this study into alternate strategies for conflict resolution will guide the academicians, working managers and trainers to understand and practice the process of managing conflict in a more humane way.

Despite the presence of a few studies linking leadership style with the choice of conflict resolution strategies, an important gap till now has been the absence of leaders’ personal account of their experiences, reflections and analysis in their choice of conflict resolution strategies. This study seeks to investigate the approach of servant leaders when they handle subordinate-subordinate and superior-subordinate conflict.

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a type of additive manufacturing (AM) based on materials extrusion. It is the most widely practiced AM route, especially used for polymer-based rapid prototyping and customized product fabrication in relation to aerospace, automotive, architecture, consumer goods and medical applications. During FFF, part quality (surface finish, dimensional accuracy and static mechanical strength) is greatly influenced by several process parameters. The paper aims to study FFF parametric influence on aforesaid part quality aspects. In addition, dynamic analysis of the FFF part is carried out.

Interpretive structural modelling is attempted to articulate interrelationships that exist amongst FFF parameters. Next, a few specimens are fabricated using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic at varied build orientation and build style. Effects of build orientation and build style on part’s ultimate tensile strength, flexure strength along with width build time are studied. Prototype beams (of different thickness) are fabricated by varying build style. Instrumental impact hammer Modal analysis is performed on the cantilever beams (cantilever support) to obtain the natural frequencies (first mode). Parametric influence on natural frequencies is also studied.

Static mechanical properties (tensile and flexure strength) are greatly influenced by build style and build orientation. Natural frequency (NF) of prototype beams is highly influenced by the build style and beam thickness.

FFF built parts when subjected to application, may have to face a variety of external dynamic loads. If frequency of induced vibration (due to external force) matches with NF of the component part, resonance is incurred. To avoid occurrence of resonance, operational frequency (frequency of externally applied forces) must be lower/ higher than the NF. Because NF depends on mass and stiffness, and boundary conditions, FFF parts produced through varying build style may definitely correspond to varied NF. This aspect is explained in this work.

Paytm has become a popular method to make cashless payments in India. Be it for transferring funds through mobile numbers, online payment of utility bills, cabs, etc. or payment to offline merchants. This case elaborates on the position Paytm has attained in the market thus far and its ambitious future growth plans. It describes the strategies being adopted by Paytm’s competitors and the new developments in the payments business in India. The case finally narrates the challenges the Fintech firm faces at present and poses a pertinent question: is Paytm on a growth trajectory or committing suicide by leaping so fast?

The case collates secondary data pertaining to Paytm’s current position and recent developments in the Indian mobile wallet industry. It presents the facts and data published on websites, newspapers, and magazines in the form of a case study.

This case can be applied to strategic management at under graduate and introductory level in post-graduate marketing of digital products.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to assess Paytm’s share buyback in the context of conventional practices, especially for loss-making firms, analyze the influence of initial public offering (IPO) performance on market sentiments and the role of subsequent events in shaping investor confidence, explore the regulatory framework for share buybacks in India and its impact on Paytm’s decision, scrutinize Paytm’s post-IPO financials and evaluate the board’s rationale for the share buyback and examine the factors influencing Paytm shareholders’ decisions amid the buyback, considering market conditions and the company’s outlook.

This case study discusses the unorthodox choice made by Paytm, a leading Indian digital payments and financial services provider, to begin a share repurchase program just one year after its substantial IPO. Paytm encountered difficulties as its stock price experienced a sharp decline of 74% following the IPO, which raised concerns among shareholders and elicited mistrust from analysts. This case study explores the reasoning for the buyback, the legislative framework of share buybacks in India and the diverse viewpoints of analysts regarding the company’s financial strategy. This case study provides not only ample opportunity to discuss ethical issues around managers’ corporate actions but also brings investors a dilemma.

This case study is suited to Master of Business Administration/Master of Science/Bachelor of Business Administration/Bachelor of Science.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

To understand social entrepreneurship and a social entrepreneur; to identify a social problem and develop a business idea; to understand the theory of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition; and to understand microfinance and its impact in the lives of the poor.

The case traces the journey of its founder Chandra Shekhar Ghosh from being a small time entrepreneur in microfinance to being the owner of a universal bank named Bandhan. Bandhan bank started its operations on August 23, 2015 with 501 branches, 2022 service center and 50 ATMs across 24 states. It had 14.3 million accounts, around 105 billion loan book and 19,500 employees. The founder of Bandhan bank, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, an Ashoka fellow had won numerous awards such as Entrepreneur with Social Impact Award by Forbes (2014), Entrepreneur of the Year by Economic Times (2014), Skoch Financial Inclusion Award (2011), Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2014) by AIMA to name a few. In 2014, Bandhan was also recognized as Global Growth Company by World Economic Forum.

The case is suitable for analysis in a MBA level course on social entrepreneurship.

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

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter analytics for analyzing the startup ecosystem of India.

The paper uses descriptive analysis and content analytics techniques of social media analytics to examine 53,115 tweets from 15 Indian startups across different industries. The study also employs techniques such as Naïve Bayes Algorithm for sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm for topic modeling of Twitter feeds to generate insights for the startup ecosystem in India.

The Indian startup ecosystem is inclined toward digital technologies, concerned with people, planet and profit, with resource availability and information as the key to success. The study categorizes the emotions of tweets as positive, neutral and negative. It was found that the Indian startup ecosystem has more positive sentiments than negative sentiments. Topic modeling enables the categorization of the identified keywords into clusters. Also, the study concludes on the note that the future of the Indian startup ecosystem is Digital India.

The analysis provides a methodology that future researchers can use to extract relevant information from Twitter to investigate any issue.

Any attempt to analyze the startup ecosystem of India through social media analysis is limited. This research aims to bridge such a gap and tries to analyze the startup ecosystem of India from the lens of social media platforms like Twitter.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the association between transformational leadership and employee acceptance to change while establishing the mediating effects of innovative behaviour and the moderating effect of the use of information technology (IT) on this association.

In total, 378 employees of ten banks from Uttarakhand, India, participated in a questionnaire-based survey. The proposed hypotheses and the proposed conceptual model were tested using macro process (Hayes, 2013).

The results indicated that there exists a positive association between transformational leadership and employee acceptance to change. Furthermore, it was found that this association was mediated by employee innovative behaviour and moderated by the use of IT.

The findings of this study will help managers to comprehend the significance of the innovative behaviour of employees in moulding their acceptance towards change. This paper should encourage bank managers to perceive the significance of the working practice and the infusion of IT. Furthermore, this study accentuates the significance of an effective leadership style, i.e. transformational leadership, as an essential phenomenon to positively impinge on employee acceptance to change in a service-oriented industry, namely banking.

The present study enriches the extant research on transformational leadership and employee acceptance to change by demonstrating the use of IT and innovative behaviour as vital and the important factors that influence the level of persuasion that transformational leadership has on employee acceptance to change.

Big data challenges and opportunities on the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) have emerged as a transformative paradigm to change intelligent transportation systems. With the growth of data-driven applications and the advances in data analysis techniques, the potential for data-adaptive innovation in IoV applications becomes an outstanding development in future IoV. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on big data in IoV and to provide an analysis of the current state of research.

This review paper uses a systematic literature review methodology. It conducts a thorough search of academic databases to identify relevant scientific articles. By reviewing and analyzing the primary articles found in the big data in the IoV domain, 45 research articles from 2019 to 2023 were selected for detailed analysis.

This paper discovers the main applications, use cases and primary contexts considered for big data in IoV. Next, it documents challenges, opportunities, future research directions and open issues.

This paper is based on academic articles published from 2019 to 2023. Therefore, scientific outputs published before 2019 are omitted.

This paper provides a thorough analysis of big data in IoV and considers distinct research questions corresponding to big data challenges and opportunities in IoV. It also provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners in evolving this field by examining the existing fields and future directions for big data in the IoV ecosystem.

This paper aims to present a systematic approach in the literature survey related to metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes and its multi-physics continuum modelling approach for its better understanding.

A systematic review of the literature available in the area of continuum modelling practices adopted for the powder bed fusion (PBF) AM processes for the deposition of powder layer over the substrate along with quantification of residual stress and distortion. Discrete element method (DEM) and finite element method (FEM) approaches have been reviewed for the deposition of powder layer and thermo-mechanical modelling, respectively. Further, thermo-mechanical modelling adopted for the PBF AM process have been discussed in detail with its constituents. Finally, on the basis of prediction through thermo-mechanical models and experimental validation, distortion mitigation/minimisation techniques applied in PBF AM processes have been reviewed to provide a future direction in the field.

The findings of this paper are the future directions for the implementation and modification of the continuum modelling approaches applied to PBF AM processes. On the basis of the extensive review in the domain, gaps are recommended for future work for the betterment of modelling approach.

This paper is limited to review only the modelling approach adopted by the PBF AM processes, i.e. modelling techniques (DEM approach) used for the deposition of powder layer and macro-models at process scale for the prediction of residual stress and distortion in the component. Modelling of microstructure and grain growth has not been included in this paper.

This paper presents an extensive review of the FEM approach adopted for the prediction of residual stress and distortion in the PBF AM processes which sets the platform for the development of distortion mitigation techniques. An extensive review of distortion mitigation techniques has been presented in the last section of the paper, which has not been reviewed yet.

Gas metal arc-based directed energy deposition (GMA-DED) process experiences residual stress (RS) developed due to heat accumulation during successive layer deposition as a significant challenge. To address that, monitoring of transient temperature distribution concerning time is a critical input. Finite element analysis (FEA) is considered a decisive engineering tool in quantifying temperature and RS in all manufacturing processes. However, computational time and prediction accuracy has always been a matter of concern for FEA-based prediction of responses in the GMA-DED process. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of finite element mesh variations on the developed RS in the GMA-DED process.

The variation in the element shape functions, i.e. linear- and quadratic-interpolation elements, has been used to model a single-track 10-layered thin-walled component in Ansys parametric design language. Two cases have been proposed in this study: Case 1 has been meshed with the linear-interpolation elements and Case 2 has been meshed with the combination of linear- and quadratic-interpolation elements. Furthermore, the modelled responses are authenticated with the experimental results measured through the data acquisition system for temperature and RS.

A good agreement of temperature and RS profile has been observed between predicted and experimental values. Considering similar parameters, Case 1 produced an average error of 4.13%, whereas Case 2 produced an average error of 23.45% in temperature prediction. Besides, comparing the longitudinal stress in the transverse direction for Cases 1 and 2 produced an error of 8.282% and 12.796%, respectively.

To avoid the costly and time-taking experimental approach, the experts have suggested the utilization of numerical methods in the design optimization of engineering problems. The FEA approach, however, is a subtle tool, still, it faces high computational cost and low accuracy based on the choice of selected element technology. This research can serve as a basis for the choice of element technology which can predict better responses in the thermo-mechanical modelling of the GMA-DED process.