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This study aims to empirically investigate the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and corporate performance (CP), including financial, market and sustainability performance. The research also investigates the mediating role of earnings management practices (EM) in the IC and CP relationship.

The empirical connection between IC and CP for 795 nonfinancial listed Indian firms is examined for 17 years using industry and year-fixed effect panel regression models. The research has also used Baron and Kenny’s four-step model to examine the role of EM as a mediator between IC and CP.

IC plays a crucial part in improving the financial, market and sustainability performance of Indian firms. The empirical findings further claim that EM practices partially mediate the connection between IC and CP. However, the mediation effect of EM depends on its magnitude and direction, i.e. income-increasing (decreasing) EM practices. The study also claims that sustainability performance-oriented firms practice less EM.

Managers and policymakers can use the findings of this study to their advantage by focusing on the significance of IC in the Indian context and their efforts to improve financial, market and sustainability performance while limiting earnings management practices.

The research uncovers a novel facet of the IC–CP relationship where EM mediates between the two. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes the impact of IC on CP through the lens of mediation using both accrual and real earnings management.

The case explores information technology (IT) company Mindtree’s journey of 20 years from the time it was founded in 1999 to be different from others, and how it became a target for acquisition by an Indian diversified conglomerate in 2019. It offers insights into developing organizational culture and values in an organization, threats faced by a company when promoters dilute their shareholding, and the strategies followed by the acquirer and the target firm. It also deals with the challenges in the acquisition of a knowledge service digital firm. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to: identify the circumstances under which a company can become a target for hostile takeover; describe motivations of the acquirer firm in an acquisition; distinguish between acquisition and hostile takeover, and discuss salient features of Securities and Exchange Board of India (substantial acquisition of shares and takeover) regulations, 2011; list the defenses a target firm can adopt to ward off hostile acquirer; explore strategies followed by acquirer and target firms; analyze important ingredients of organization culture, and importance of cultural congruence in an acquisition; and discuss challenges faced by an acquirer in India, namely, legal, retention of clients and key people in the target firm particularly in hostile environment.

The case explores how ten IT professionals founded mid-tier IT services company Mindtree in 1999 in Bengaluru, India (home to Infosys and Wipro) to be different from others – by inserting themselves at a higher level in the value chain, being philanthropic as a part of broader business strategy to attract a certain kind of employee and customer. It developed a culture of equality, consideration and respect. Its attrition rate of 12 to 13 per cent was significantly lower than the Industries. Mindtree crossed annual revenue of US$1bn for FY 2019 and was growing at twice the industry’s growth rate. The most attractive part was that its proportion of revenue from digital services was about 50 per cent as compared to 25-35 per cent of other services vendors. With time, the share of promoters/founders declined and increased one investor’s shareholding of V. G. Siddhartha and his related entities. In early March 2019, the promoters’ stake was 13.32 per cent while Siddhartha had 20.32 per cent. Larsen and Toubro (L&T) one of India’s conglomerate entered into a share purchase agreement on March 18, 2019 with Siddhartha to acquire his 20.32 per cent stake. Immediately, L&T asked its broker to purchase up to 15 per cent of share capital of Mindtree at a price not exceeding INR 980 per share (each share of face value INR 10). This would trigger an open offer by L&T to purchase additional 31 per cent shares of Mindtree. The action of hostile takeover bid by L&T evoked emotional criticism from Mindtree founders. Mindtree efforts to defend itself could not materialize. L&T’s stake crossed 26 per cent on May 16, 2019. After Indian regulator SEBI’s approval, L&T’s open offer to buy shares from Mindtree shareholders commenced on June 17, 2019. The case examines motivation of the acquirer firm particularly when it is a conglomerate, and how a well-performing company became a target for hostile takeover. It looks at vulnerabilities of a target firm, and defensive steps a firm can take to fence itself against such takeover. The case also explores how organizational culture is built in a people-oriented business, namely, digital services, and what role it plays in a merger of two firms.

The case is suited for postgraduate students of management, as well as those undergoing executive courses in management.

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 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this study is to construct and analyze a parameter uniform higher-order scheme for singularly perturbed delay parabolic problem (SPDPP) of convection-diffusion type with a multiple interior turning point.

The authors construct a higher-order numerical method comprised of a hybrid scheme on a generalized Shishkin mesh in space variable and the implicit Euler method on a uniform mesh in the time variable. The hybrid scheme is a combination of simple upwind scheme and the central difference scheme.

The proposed method has a convergence rate of order O(N−2L2+Δt). Further, Richardson extrapolation is used to obtain convergence rate of order two in the time variable. The hybrid scheme accompanied with extrapolation is second-order convergent in time and almost second-order convergent in space up to a logarithmic factor.

A class of SPDPPs of convection-diffusion type with a multiple interior turning point is studied in this paper. The exact solution of the considered class of problems exhibit two exponential boundary layers. The theoretical results are supported via conducting numerical experiments. The results obtained using the proposed scheme are also compared with the simple upwind scheme.

Government employees have various challenges of adopting e-government which include administrative problems, technological challenges, infrastructural problems, lack of trust on computer applications, security concerns and the digital divide. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most salient factors that influence the employee adoption of e-government in India as perceived by government employees involved in e-government service delivery.

The paper first identifies different factors influencing the employee adoption of e-government on the basis of literature review and then finds their relative importance by prioritizing them using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool which combines all the factors into a hierarchical model and quantitatively measures their importance through pair-wise comparisons (Saaty, 1980). Eleven influencing factors of employee adoption of e-government have been identified, which are categorized under four main factors, namely, “employee’s personal characteristics”, “technical factors”, “organizational factors” and “trust”. The data pertaining to pair-wise comparisons of various factors and sub-factors related to the study is collected from ten senior government employees working with different departments and bodies of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Based on the results obtained, the findings reveal that “organizational factors” and “technical factors” are the two most important factors which influence the intention of government employees to adopt e-government. Moreover, “training”, “technical infrastructure”, “access speed”, “technical support” and “trust” in infrastructure are the top five sub-factors which are considered to be important for the employee adoption of e-government.

One of the limitations regarding the methodology used in the study is that the rating scale used in the AHP is conceptual. There are chances of biasing while making pair-wise comparisons of different factors. Therefore, due care should be taken while deciding relative scores to different factors. Also, some factors and sub-factors selected, for the model may have interrelationships such as educational level and training; computer skills and trust; etc., and these interrelationships are not considered by the AHP, which is a limitation of the present study. In that case, the analytic network process (ANP) can be a better option. Therefore, this study can be further extended by considering some other factors responsible for e-government adoption by employees and applying the ANP in the revised model.

The results of the study may help government organizations, to evaluate critical factors of employee adoption of e-government. This may help them in achieving cost-effective implementation of e-government applications by efficiently managing their resources. Briefly, the findings of the study imply that government departments should provide sufficient training and support to their employees for enhancing their technical skills so that they can use the e-government applications comfortably. Moreover, the government departments should also ensure fast access speed of the e-government applications so that the employees can carry out their tasks efficiently.

Most of the existing literature on e-government is focused on citizens’ point of view, and very few studies have focused on employee adoption of e-government (Alshibly and Chiong, 2015). Moreover, these studies have majorly used generic technology adoption models which are generally applicable to situations where technology adoption is voluntary. As employee adoption of e-government is not voluntary, the present study proposes a hierarchy of influencing factors and sub-factors of employee adoption of e-government, which is more relevant to the situations where technology adoption is mandatory. Also, most of the previous studies have used statistical methods such as multiple regression analysis or structural equation modelling for examining the significant factors influencing the e-government adoption. The present study contributes to this area by formulating the problem as an MCDM problem and by using the AHP as the methodology to determine the weights of various factors influencing adoption of e-government by employees.

The study finds the determinants of women empowerment measured in terms of domestic decision-making in a developing economy perspective by considering rural women in India. Women empowerment simply means giving opportunities to women to enable them to be socially and financially independent. Empowerment of women through investment in their education and health has a positive effect on economic growth. Almost 70% of Indian population lives in rural areas. If women in these areas are educated and empowered, they can contribute to the economic growth either directly or indirectly by improving health and education of the future generations. This study indicates that an employed woman, having her own income source, higher educational level, knowledge of legal rights, higher educational level of the mother of the woman, having property in her own name, more freedom of movement during her school days, having high self-esteem and belonging to a relatively affluent background, increases domestic making power of the women, and thus empowerment. Some possible policies are suggested for developing economies.

This study attempted to measure life satisfaction and developed a scale to measure its dimensions with the required psychometric properties (validity and reliability). In today’s scenario, organizations are focusing on life satisfaction by helping employees to maintain their work-life balance. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a robust scale of life satisfaction.

The methodology consists of three broad stages: item generation, scale development, and validity. Using the sample of 198 working executives, this study used the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and concluded the four dimensions of life satisfaction: work satisfaction, family satisfaction, societal satisfaction and self-satisfaction.

The results provide academicians and practitioners with new insight and dimensions of life satisfaction. The result of this study shows that life satisfaction has societal satisfaction, family satisfaction, job satisfaction and self-satisfaction dimensions.

This study will provide practitioners with new dimensions to measure life satisfaction. They can help employees achieve life satisfaction across four different factors. This will enable more employee satisfaction, an increase in retention rate and an increase in employee performance. Furthermore, this study provides implications from a policy perspective to design the business policy by considering life satisfaction as an important part of formulating and implementing human resource policies.

This study is unique in terms of exploring the dimensions of life satisfaction in a structured manner and establishing the psychometric properties as construct, content, and criterion validity along with reliability. This scale can be further used in future research to measure the life satisfaction construct.

This study aims to identify demographic characteristics, personal attributes and attitudes and social support factors that adversely or favourably affect the likelihood of career persistence amongst women workers of the Indian IT sector.

The research, grounded in the social cognitive career theory, analyses primary data collected from 850 women working in IT via a survey. Based on an original definition of career persistence, the sample was segregated into 427 persistent and 423 non-persistent women. Logistic regression was performed to test for the effect of various determinants on the likelihood of women being career persistent versus non-persistent.

Being married, having children, as well as high levels of belief in gender disadvantage and work–family conflict lowered the likelihood of career persistence amongst women. While being a manager, possessing high career identity, high occupational culture fit, positive psychological capital and family support boost the likelihood.

The study examines women's actual continuance in an IT career vis-à-vis exit from the workforce/IT field, rather than women's stated intent to persist/quit as previously investigated. It uses logistic regression to identify both hurdles and aids on the path of women's career persistence. The findings can help recognize women more likely to struggle, thus be a first step in targeted organizational interventions to plug a leaky talent pipeline.

This study aims to examine the patterns of and factors influencing agricultural diversification among farmers in the Kaithal district of Haryana, India.

The authors analysed the data collected from a sample of 400 agricultural households from five blocks of Kaithal, Haryana. Agricultural diversification is measured through the Herfindahl Index. Determinants of agricultural diversification have been evaluated using the two-stage least square method.

The average value of the diversification index among farmers in Kaithal is 0.51, indicating that there is room for diversification. In the study area wheat and rice are the dominant crops, while vegetables emerge as the most common non-staple crop. Regression analysis indicates that farmers of Scheduled Caste (SC) are more inclined to diversify crops. Factors such as larger land ownership, utilization of tractors, government subsidies, education and loans positively impact agricultural diversification. The availability of irrigation facilities, and employing labour negatively influence it.

Focus on SC within the diversification policies for equitable access to resources. Special programmes aimed at educating small landowners and casual labourers about diversified crops. Implementing an “Uberisation” model for tractors, providing subsidies on seeds and equipment, customized financing programmes tailored to the needs of small-scale farmers can contribute to boosting agricultural diversification.

This study contributes by providing insights into the farm-level determinants of agricultural diversification in Kaithal district, Haryana. It adds to the understanding of factors influencing agricultural diversification in developing economies at the micro level.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2023-0963.

Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has emerged as a key component at national and international policy-making agendas. The purpose of this paper is to examine and validate the antecedents of WEE for urban working women.

This study used a descriptive and exploratory research design. A total of 286 responses from women working in the formal sector of Delhi-NCR were collected through self-administered questionnaires on a five-point Likert scale using non-probability quota sampling technique. The sample was controlled for the employment sector, that is, healthcare, education and information technology. Exploratory factor analysis has been performed in the first step to test the data’s dimensionality with the goal of producing a set of items that reflect the meaning of the relative construct. Thereafter, confirmatory factor analysis has been used for data analysis.

Digital banking usage (DBU) has been identified as the most significant contributor to WEE.

Besides digital banking, government support has also emerged as a key indicator of WEE, necessitating a government policy review to improve WEE. Research findings indicate that, if WEE initiatives are to reach their full potential, they must individually address the extracted factors. This study offers a new framework for understanding and enhancing WEE for urban working women in India.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to use factor analysis to explore the multi-dimensionality of WEE using the novel dimensions of DBU, women’s agency and government support, in addition to the established variables of financial literacy, social norms and workplace human resource policies.