Volume 21, Number 1 Article by V Ravi Anshuman March, 2009
It is my pleasure to bring you the first issue of IMR for this year.
This issue has articles and features that cover several topics of academic and practitioner interest. Dealing with aspects of Policy are articles on the evolution of the participatory approach to Joint Forest Management in India and how the measurement of poverty varies with the choice of price index, this being brought out in a study of urban poverty in Chattishgarh. With the modern consumer becoming more health conscious, one of the papers surveys organic food buyers in Delhi and suggests how retail marketers may make effective use of channels of communication and innovative consumers. Forecasting financial market trends is a major preoccupation with researchers and a paper from IIT Madras compares the effectiveness of machine learning methods in this regard, making a case for Support Vector Machines and the Random Forest Method. In the same vein, in our Educators’ Forum, a feature that explores issues and approaches in management pedagogy, Prof T Krishna Kumar observes that despite the potential of business analytics to provide businesses with a competitive edge through data warehousing and macroeconomic modelling, investment in statistical research by the business sector has not been forthcoming because the routine approaches to statistical modelling do not meet the rigours of efficient modelling. He suggests the more relevant and credible ‘robust modelling’ approach, which should be incorporated in the teaching of econometrics and research.
Our Round Table feature,anchored by Prof Suresh Bhagavatula sees a panel of entrepreneurs discussing the importance of networks for entrepreneurial success,and how imperative networks are for the identification of opportunities,resource mobilisation and even moral support
The IMR Conference on Global Supply Chain Management held in December 2008 was a great success and we hope to bring out a special issue based on the papers and discussions in the Conference later this year.
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