It is with great pleasure that I would like to introduce Professor Nagasimha Balakrishna Kanagal, the new Editor-in-Chief of IIMB Management Review. Professor Kanagal is an accomplished academic with expertise in marketing. This issue is in some sense, my farewell issue. The last few years have been very eventful: our subscriptions have more than doubled, we have cemented a very fruitful publishing collaboration with Elsevier, the round table and interview features have been redesigned, and last, but perhaps the most important, we have a rigorous refereeing process in place. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues in our office: K R Usha, the Managing Editor, and Janhavi, the Assistant Editor for their professional approach, Vilasini and Shashikala, for their efficiency in handling the office, and Divya for all the technical support she provided. And as I bid farewell, I am very happy to bring to you the fourth and final issue of the journal for the year 2011, with its mix of features and articles.
A formal performance review system is considered one of the essentials of an organisation. However, studies in organisation theory attempting to measure the complexity of the performance review system have generally limited themselves to the appraisers' cognitive complexity, and not that of the appraisees. Identifying this gap, Senthil Ganesh and Jerome Joseph present a model to study experiential perceptions of performance review system complexity from the appraisee perspective and explore its mediating effect on the relationship between formalisation and alienation. This would be of help to managers in designing and implementing performance review systems.
We have two studies pertaining to supply chain management review in this issue. Jabbour et al survey the factors affecting the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practices in the Brazilian electro-electronic sector and find evidence that the adoption of SCM practices is customer driven. Given the current threat to the environment from human activities, there is a serious need for governments and organisations to review how the earth's resources are being consumed, and designing sustainable supply chains is an integral part of the solution. Sudheer Gupta and Omkar D Palsule-Desai provide an integrative framework of the literature and research in the field with a view to providing an understanding of the issues and trade-offs involved in making decisions related to sustainable supply chain management.
Through their study of women directorships on the boards of companies, Anitha Kurup, S Chandrashekar and K Muralidharan examine the professional and personal challenges faced by women in entering the hallowed 'boards' of companies, and the factors that facilitate or hinder such progress. An interview with Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman & MD, Biocon Ltd, a first generation woman entrepreneur, animates many of these issues. In our round table feature, 'Exploring the Role of Business in Society', Trilochan Sastry and a panel of well-regarded representatives from civil society and corporate India debate the question that has been brought into sharp focus by recent developments on the national and international front e to whom does the wealth created by business belong?
Looking forward to your feedback on this issue and with best wishes to all readers for the New Year.
V. Ravi Anshuman, Editor-in-Chief,
IIMB Management Review, India
E-mail address: anshuman@iimb.ernet.in
