It is my pleasure to present the final issue of 2018 which has seven full research papers along with an interview and a book review. Of the seven research papers, four papers are in the broad area of Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources, one on Supply Chain, one paper that examines service quality perceptions of Internet banking, and one on commodity markets.
The paper, “Discursive Work within Weak Field Mandate Events: The Case of a Conference on Assistive Technologies for Persons with Disabilities,” by Mukta Kulkarni, focusses on the question: What is the nature of discursive work when an event has a weak field mandate? While prior research has primarily focussed on outlining discursive work within events that have enjoyed a strong field mandate, this study uses a discursive perspective anchored in the critical discourse tradition and indicates how actors without specific positional power within institutions or who lack the explicit support of elite institutional players attempt to alter the broader processes of institutionalisation.
In their paper, “A Burnout Model of Job Crafting: Multiple Mediator Effects on Job Performance,” Vijayalakshmi Singh and Manjari Singh examine the role of job crafting as a proactive coping mechanism in reducing stress and burnout, and also increasing psychological availability or resourcefulness of individuals. They also examine the extent to which proactive coping through job crafting explains job performance through multiple mediating effects of role stress, burnout and psychological availability. The study was grounded in the context of knowledge workers and was undertaken in two organisations operating in the IT management consultancy sector located in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India. They find that job crafting was significantly and positively related to psychological availability and performance, indicating higher psychological availability and higher performance among employees crafting their jobs. The paper extends the job crafting theory, adds to the stress and proactive behaviour literature, and contributes to an integrated vision of occupational health.
In the paper “High Commitment Human Resource Management Practices and Employee Service Behaviour: Trust in Management as Mediator,” Mohammad Rabiul Basher Rubel, Nadia Newaz Rimi, Yusliza Mohd Yusoff, and Daisy Mui Hung Kee study the impact of High Commitment Human Resource Management (HCHRM) practices on the service behaviour of line managers of private commercial banks in Bangladesh, through their trust in the management. The study makes a case for organisations to identify, develop and implement HCHRM to enhance employees’ sense of trust in management, which in turn should lead to desirable outcomes in individual and organisational performance.
The rapidly changing and highly competitive business environment has influenced the nature of Human Resource Management (HRM), with organisations empowering their employees by providing them participation opportunities in decision making processes and autonomy, and expecting from them a more flexible role orientation (FRO) or willingness to go beyond the formal job descriptions. In the paper, “Employee Empowerment Leading to Flexible Role Orientation: A Disposition Based Contingency Framework,” Amit Shukla, Shailendra Singh, Himanshu Rai, and Abhijit Bhattacharya study how FRO develops in response to empowering HRM initiatives and individual dispositional characteristics. The study which was conducted in three Indian service-based organisations specialising in banking, telecom and software obtained results suggesting that employee empowerment initiations themselves cannot lead to flexible orientation in employees and there must be concomitant development of psychological ownership.
Warehouses are very important links in supply chain networks and warehouse location, which determines the efficiency and speed of supply chains, has become a strategic decision for top management. In their paper, “Selection of Warehouse Location for a Global Supply Chain: A Case Study”, Rajesh Kumar Singh, Nikhil Chaudhary, and Nikhil Saxena consider the case of an Indian auto components manufacturing organisation, which is expanding its supply chain in Iran, and wants to find the optimal location for a warehouse out of four alternative sites in Iran. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to compare the four location alternatives. Normalised priority weights were calculated for each location, on the basis of which the final decision for warehouse location was taken. To check the robustness of the developed framework, sensitivity analysis was also performed. The authors suggest that this framework may be useful for developing warehouse facility for use by Indian organisations to facilitate international trade.
“Perceptions of Internet Banking Users - A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) Approach,” by Ajimon George, attempts to study the perception of Internet banking users in the state of Kerala in India, using the technology acceptance model (TAM) by incorporating service quality (SQ) as the external variable. As with other studies, antecedent variables were added to the twin TAM constructs, namely perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU). A total of 406 responses from retail Internet banking users in Kerala who used personal Internet banking for at least one year, were taken for final analysis. The respondents were located from the ATM outlets of selected public sector banks, old private sector banks and new private sector banks. The finding that PU has a direct effect on Internet banking use signifies that customers use Internet banking for the benefits they get in comparison to other banking delivery channels which suggests that banks should highlight the benefits of Internet banking among their customers. The author suggests that the TAM model used in the study can be employed for adoption of other online services such as online-shopping, electronic commerce or mobile banking.
Globally, commodity as an asset class has gained significance in recent years. Commodity prices in India have experienced significant volatility in recent years due to several domestic and global factors. The most prominent and widely used technique for measuring price or market risk is the value-at-risk (VaR) method. In the paper, “Do VaR exceptions have seasonality? An empirical study on Indian commodity spot prices,” Apoorv Gupta and Prabina Rajib compare the model effectiveness of three models, namely, RiskMetrics’s Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA), ARMA-GARCH with normal and Student’s t-distribution, and APARCH with normal and Student’s t-distribution. They apply the three models to the spot prices of seven commodities - three non-agricultural commodities namely, aluminium, copper and gold, and four agricultural commodities namely, soya bean, guar seed, chana and cardamom. The paper finds that ARMA-GARCH model with Student’s t-distribution is the most preferred model to forecast 1-day VaR for five commodities except gold and guar seed. For gold, ARMA-APARCH (t-dist) model performed better compared to ARMA-APARCH (z-dist) as well as ARMA-GARCH models. However, for guar seed, both ARMA-APARCH (z-dist) and (t-dist) models fail to have superior performance over ARMA-GARCH models. Volatility of guar seed is too high to be captured by any of the models considered for the study. Analysis of VaR exceptions and seasonality of the commodities indicates that VaR exceptions for cardamom, soya bean, guar seed and gold seem to be occurring during seasonal months while for chana, copper and aluminium, maximum numbers of VaR exceptions have occurred in non-seasonal months. Hence it can be summarised that VaR exceptions have some relationship with seasonality in commodities, specifically for agricultural commodities. The study suggests that commodity exchanges may consider levying additional margins on futures contracts expiring on seasonal months as compared to non-seasonal months.
While the Indian pharmaceutical industry has grown steadily in recent years, with a significant impact on the Indian economy, managing it in the present complex environment has become challenging. There has been an increased focus by pharmaceutical companies on their sales and marketing activities. The highly competitive environment, along with the availability of similar competing products has made it challenging for sales professionals to promote the prescription of their products. In the Interview feature titled “Pharma Selling: In conversation with Melvin D’Souza, Vice President and General Manager, Novo Nordisk India Pvt Ltd.”, Sridhar Guda and Teidorlang Lyngdoh seek to understand the current state of the Indian pharmaceutical sector, and the sales and distribution challenges faced by its players. The interview brings forth the significance of personal selling in assisting the decision-making process of physicians, as well as the building of long-term relationships which is crucial for the success of pharmaceutical companies.
In this issue, the book, “An Autecological Theory of the Firm and its Environment,” by Colin Jones and Gimme Walter, Edward Elgar Publishing, is reviewed by Tanushree Haldar of MYRA School of Business, Mysore.
With best wishes to all our readers for a happy and prosperous 2019.
Ashok Thampy
Editor-in-Chief
IIMB Management Review
India
Email address: eic@iimb.ac.in
