Editorial
We are happy to bring you the final issue for the year 2019. This issue contains seven research papers, a round table feature and a book review, broadly covering the areas of Finance, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources, Strategy, and Information Systems.
Following the work by Fama and French (1993), there has been a growing body of research on the impact of value premium and size on portfolio returns. The paper “A new insight into value premium and size premium”, by Soumya Guha Deb and Banikanta Mishra, analyse Indian equity data from 1995 to 2014, using a modified version of the Fama and French (1993) approach, and two of their own approaches, to explore value premium and size premium in relation to the median portfolio.
In “Variation and determinants of financial inclusion and association with human development: A cross country analysis”, Soumyendra Kishore Datta and Krishna Singh analyse financial inclusion and its relation with human development across several developed and developing countries, for the years 2011 and 2014.
The paper, “Viability and practices of interest-free microfinance in the state of Kerala: An analytical study based on customers’ perceptions”, by Muhammed Shafi M K and M Ravindar Reddy is an empirical study on Interest-Free (Islamic) Microfinance (IsMF) which is based on the Profit and Loss Sharing (PLS) financial mechanism. This paper investigates the different interest free products and services, to identify the different operational methods of IsMF and to analyse the perceptions of customers towards all these factors.
In the paper, “SR-BLITS: Sharpe ratio’s backward-looking improvement as a trading strategy”, Mohammed Shahid Abdulla proposes a new metric, the backward-looking Sharpe ratio (SR) to maximise the internal measures. Numerical experiments on Geometric Brownian Motion series, the NSE Nifty, and NASDAQ indices reveal more than 30% improvement in average SR for an episode of trading, when compared to a buy-and-hold strategy.
Mousami Prasad, Trupti Mishra, and Varadraj Bapat examine the welfare aspect of CSR, using economics of environmental CSR in their paper, “Corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability: Evidence from India using energy intensity as an indicator for environmental sustainability”. While they find no significant association between CSR and energy intensity, they observe a negative relationship between social responsibility expenditure and energy intensity for firms belonging to pollution intensive industries.
Against the background of the climate of recurring industrial unrest, Jatinder Kumar Jha and Manjari Singh explore the interesting relationship between ethical leadership and industrial relations, in “Exploring the mechanisms of influence of ethical leadership on employment relations”.
In the article, “Supplanting critical discourse with mute narratology in Indian commercials: Framing new communications for emerging markets”, Pragyan Rath and Apoorva Bharadwaj observe that most of the instances of socio-political communications in India are characterised by overt directive style of instructive messaging. They propose a newer form of communication strategy which is based on consumer segments of the Capital Hierarchy Matrix for Emerging Markets (CHEMEM), a model postulated by the authors from the existing theories of Maslow’s needs hierarchy, Prahalad & Hart’s Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) model and Bourdieu’s “forms of capital”.
The Round Table article, “Engaging with startups: MNC perspectives”, by Shameen Prashantham and K. Kumar, builds on the notion of “division of entrepreneurial labour” (Buckley & Prashantham, 2016) to examine the perspective of multinational companies (MNCs) in relation to partnering with startups.
This issue carries Vigneswara Ilavarasan’s book review of the title, “The rise of the hybrid domain: Collaborative governance for social innovation”, by Aoyama, Y., & Parthasarathy, B., Edward Elgar Publishing.
The IMR Doctoral Conference, is scheduled on 27th and 28th December, 2019. We look forward to your participation.
Wishing all readers a very happy and prosperous new year 2020!
Ashok Thampy
Editor-in-Chief
IIMB Management Review
E-mail address: eic@iimb.ac.in