Greetings from IIMB Management Review (IMR). It is my pleasure to bring you the first issue of the journal for the year 2017.
The year 2016 saw many changes and developments. In October 2016, we transitioned to an enhanced editorial platform, EVISE, which promises improved functionality in the submission and review process. The upward trend in the number of submissions peaked in 2016, with the journal receiving the highest number of submissions as compared to the last few years. Our rates of rejection continue to be around 85%, with all articles undergoing due review processes. IMR is listed as a category ‘B’ journal on the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List and is listed on other international listing databases, including Scopus and Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities. The electronic version of the journal, available through ScienceDirect®, is seeing an increasing number of downloads, year on year. We invite you to view our journal metrics at https://www.journals.elsevier.com/iimb-management-review/.
The annual IMR Doctoral Conference (IMRDC), the flagship event for doctoral students in management and associated disciplines, organised by IMR in partnership with the Office of the Fellow Programme in Management, IIMB, was held on January 11th and 12th, 2017. IMRDC 2016-2017 received around 80 full paper submissions from doctoral students in India and overseas, of which 12 were selected for full paper presentations and 20 were invited to make short presentations in the Fast Track session. Senior researchers and faculty from eminent schools in India and abroad were invited as Discussants to critique the selected papers and provide feedback for enrichment. The SBI Life Keynote Lecture was delivered by Professor K. Sudhir, James L. Frank Professor of Marketing, Private Enterprise and Management, and Director of the Yale China India Insights (CIIP) Program, Yale School of Management, and Editor-in-Chief, Marketing Science, and was titled “Academic Business Research in a Big Data World”. Professor Sudhir also led a workshop on “Managing Salesforces in CRM Settings”. The conference featured invited talks by Professor Debasis Mishra, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, on "Recent Developments in Auction Design", and by Professor Sathyajit Gubbi, University of Groningen on "Academic Research: From Inspiration to Publication". You will find more details about IMRDC 2016-17 at our website http://www.iimb.ac.in/publications/review/imr-doctoral-conference .
IMR provides some of the papers selected for presentation at the IMR Doctoral Conference a publication opportunity in the journal. Many of the papers presented at previous IMR Doctoral Conferences have been published in different volumes of the journal, after successive rounds of revision.
Following is a bird’s eye view of the papers and features appearing in the March 2017 issue.
In their paper, “Inclusive Management of Ex-Servicemen in India: Satisfaction of Air Force Veterans from Resettlement Facilities with Special Reference to Tamil Nadu”, Professors Maharajan Kari and R. Krishnaveni underscore the importance of efficacy in ensuring inclusive management of the existing systems for resettlement of ex-servicemen (veterans) of the armed forces. The authors study the satisfaction level of PBORs (Personnel Below Officer Rank), of the Indian Air Force, from 10 resettlement facilities mostly provided by the Central Government. The stratified sample (400) covers the districts of Coimbatore (280) and the Nilgiris (120), which respectively represent the relatively developed and underdeveloped regions of Tamil Nadu, and in turn that of India. Data for the study has been collected by administering a questionnaire to the respondents, as well as from focus groups and ex-servicemen associations. The analysis techniques includes t-test, ANOVA, and discriminant analysis.
Results revealed disparity in satisfaction scores with the facilities, with pension disbursement scoring the highest, and all others falling below the “satisfied” benchmark. There is significant disparity in satisfaction levels between veterans in developed and underdeveloped regions. The analysis indicates the adequacy of the discriminant model between low satisfaction and high satisfaction with facilities for resettlement; the predictor variables namely residence locale, present age of ex-servicemen, perceived effect of resettlement and years of service put in the IAF, in that order were important in discriminating between veterans with lower satisfaction scores and veterans with higher satisfaction scores. The paper provides suggestions for improvement of the functioning and reach of resettlement facilities and emphasises collective efforts by all stakeholders in the resettlement process, that include the defence establishment, Central Government, State Governments, the private sector, the corporate sector, voluntary associations, and the ex-servicemen.
One of the prominent and persisting inconsistencies challenging the efficient market hypothesis has been the volatility anomaly which suggests that low volatile stocks tend to provide significant positive abnormal returns over high volatility stocks, and a long-short strategy can be adopted by traders to make riskless profits out of it. In their paper, “Volatility Effect and the Role of Firm Quality Factor in Returns: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market“, Professors Asheesh Pandey and Sanjay Sehgal aim to test if the volatility anomaly exists for the Indian equity market, to evaluate if such an anomaly can be explained by asset pricing models, and to verify if the firm quality factor can explain the volatility effect in the absence of empirical success of risk models. Two measures of firm quality have been used, namely profitability (ROA), and cash flow variability. The data for the study comprises 493 companies belonging to the BSE 500 Index for the period July 2000 to November 2013.
The findings first suggest that no volatility anomaly is observed in India. Second, that though prominent asset pricing models such as CAPM, Fama French (F-F) Three Factor model, and the authors’ versions of augmented F-F models are not able to fully explain the returns on volatility sorted portfolios, it can be summed up that there is a strong volatility effect in stock returns, which is explained by the augmented F-F model in the Indian context. Third, profitability and cash flow variability measures of firm quality seem to be two different dimensions, with cash flow variability a better measure. The firm quality factor is able to fully absorb volatility patterns in returns for India, unlike international evidence where it plays an important role but still leaves some possibility for arbitrage opportunities. The author draws implications for global fund managers, policy makers, investors, and academics.
In their paper, “Capital Budgeting Practices in Indian Companies”, Professors Roopali Batra and Satish Verma study a sample of 77 Indian companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. They seek answers to the research questions: (i) what is the extent to which newer theoretical developments in capital budgeting as advocated by academic theory have been adopted by Indian corporate practice? (ii) what are the main risk factors considered by Indian companies and incorporated in capital budgeting decisions? (iii) what is the degree of association of organisational variables such as firm size, CEO education, and age of the company with the level of capital budgeting sophistication? (iv) what are the non-financial considerations most relevant in the firm’s capital budgeting decisions? The study then draws implications for corporate practitioners, academicians and other stakeholders.
The paper “Joint Planning and Problem Solving Roles in Supply Chain Collaboration”, by Professor Gopal Kumar, Professor R N Banerjee, Dr. P L Meena and Dr. Kunal K Ganguly attempts to uncover joint planning and problem solving roles in developing culture in supply chain collaboration. The main purpose of collaboration is to make internal functions effective and efficient, and to retain/expand market share or to make market oriented strategies. As such, the research views collaborative activities as internal and external focussed functional areas. Drawing upon various theoretical perspectives—resource based view, knowledge based view, and relational view— the study develops and tests a conceptual model and associated hypotheses to investigate inter-relationships of collaborative activities and their mediation effects. The model consists of four collaborative activities influencing collaborative culture (CC): (i) market potential (MP), (ii) joint planning for increasing market share (JPIMS), (iii) joint planning for executing schedule (JPES), (iv) joint problem solving and performance measurement (JPSPM). The survey developed a questionnaire which was sent via email to 812 medium and large firms in India, yielding 77 (9.5%) usable responses.
The results find that joint problem solving and measurement are critical in developing collaborative culture and executing effective planning; joint planning at operation level is very important in culture development. The research contributes in developing collaborative culture and making SCC effective, and gives culture a new perspective by distinguishing it from culture in terms of relationship strength involving trust and commitment.
The Round Table, “Organising the Unorganised: Role of Platform Intermediaries in the Indian Real Estate Market” by Professor R Srinivasan, IIMB explores how emerging platform business models mitigate the problem of the unorganised sector and contribute to formalising the sector, taking the Indian real-estate intermediation market as a case. A typical real estate intermediation process undergoes four stages – discovery, matching, transaction, and special services, and is faced with three problems of informality namely adverse selection in the discovery phase, moral hazard in the matching phase, and poor contract enforcement in the transaction phase. The panel discussion is with founders and CFOs of four most promising startups that have significantly contributed to organising the unorganised real estate market with their platform business models – Mr. Vikas Malpani, Cofounder and VP, CommonFloor.com; Mr. Gaurav Munjal, Founder and CEO, Flatchat; Mr. Ganesh Vasudevan, CEO of IndiaProperty.com; and Mr. Azeem Zainulbhai, CFO, Housing.com. The panelists first talk about different aspects of the real estate business including leveraging the power of data in connecting buyers and sellers; connecting buyers and sellers, and helping buyers through assisted property searches through end-to-end service, and find as well as close deals; helping flat buyers find flat mates and how to get flat-mates and owners together. A discussion follows.
This issue carries a book review by Mr. Sridhar Ramanujam, Founder & CEO, Integrated Brand-Comm Pvt Ltd, of “The Future of Branding”, edited by Rajendra K. Srivastava and Gregory Metz Thomas, Sage Response, 2016.
With best wishes to all readers,
Nagasimha Balakrishna Kanagal
Editor-in-Chief
IIMB Management Review
India
Email address: eic@iimb.ernet.in
