Editorial

Over the last year, we have put in place a comprehensive review process for all submissions to our journal. To put it in a nutshell, we have sharpened some of our processes and each article now goes through various layers of screening. The net effect is that our Associate Editors (and reviewers) can now focus on a smaller but more promising set of papers rather than spending their valuable time on less promising papers. I am glad to report that our efforts are bearing fruit. Not only has the turnaround time improved, the quality of feedback to authors has also moved up a notch.

This issue of IMR brings our regular mix of articles and features. The article on “Productivity and capital investments: An empirical study of three manufacturing industries in India” discusses how productivity achievements translate into investment growth in the auto, chemical and electronics industry in India. The authors find that factors related to capital or labour productivity account for a large amount of variation in investment growth within firms. In another article, “To Push for Stardom or Not: A Rookie’s Dilemma in the Tamil Movie Industry”, the authors employ a decision-theory based analytical model to analyse optimal strategies of rookies in the Tamil movie industry. Their model and empirical analysis shed light on when rookies are likely to adopt more aggressive strategies to pursue stardom. Finally, the role of job satisfaction and job involvement in employee turnover intentions and organisational effectiveness are examined in the “Relationship between psychological climate and turnover intentions and its impact on organisational effectiveness: A study in Indian organisations”.

The economic changes over the past few decades, particularly the acceleration of globalisation and liberalisation, have led to a re-evaluation of the roles of the state and business in development. Prof Ananya Mukherjee Reed and Prof Darryl Reed conduct a round table discussion on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of businesses in India. The panel discussion examines how multiple stakeholders within and outside the corporation can redefine the goal of the corporation for societal benefit.

Growing at over 11% in the last few years, the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector is considered a vital part of the Indian economy. However, one of the major bottlenecks to the growth of the SME sector is its lack of adequate access to finance despite government policies that establish priority sector lending by banks. Prof Ashok Thampy interviews Ranjana Kumar, Former CMD, Indian Bank on the challenges in financing of SMEs in India. This interview explores major issues such as the classic information asymmetry problem that banks face when lending to potentially ‘bad’ customers, the role of transaction lending versus relationship lending, the use of ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ information measures, the role of credit scoring systems in project appraisal, the effects of size and origin of the bank, the impact of the legal environment, and the introduction of international norms such as the Basel capital standards.

I look forward to your inputs to raise the standards of our journal.

V. Ravi Anshuman
E-mail address: anshuman@iimb.ac.in
Available online 13 August 2010