School of Management Studies

Labour unions unquestionably rely on member participation for their survival and ability to meet members' needs. However, there has been relative lack of participation by the membership in union activities. The present study is done with motive of identifying and developing a theoretical model depicting relationship between antecedents and consequence(s) of union participation, using systematic literature review as proposed by Tranfield, Denyer and Smart. While Demographic Variables, Union Commitment, Union Instrumentality, Union Ideology, Pro-union Attitudes and Union Support have been identified as the Antecedents of Union Participation, Human Effectiveness is the resulting consequence.  Index Terms-union participation, membership participation, conceptual model, antecedents and consequences, human effectiveness

The manuscript compares the relationship of stressors at 'work', 'family domains', and 'the work family interface' on the job satisfaction of male and female members of dual career teacher couples. The sample comprises of 254 dual career teacher couples from universities of the northeastern states of India, with at least one member from the couple teaching at the tertiary level of education. The results indicate that stressors related to work-role and work-family conflict negatively relate to job satisfaction of both the genders. Family role stresses positively relate to the female member's job satisfaction but have no relationship to that of their male partner's. The results also indicate that female members face more stress than the male members. Both genders with high workfamily conflict and work-role stress have lower levels of job satisfaction than those facing lower family conflict and work-role stress. Females facing high 'family roles stress' experience higher job satisfaction than those facing low 'family role stress'.

Employee retention is one of the most important factors in today’s time of the strong competition that the companies are facing. In such a scenario it becomes necessary to understand that employee can be retained only is their competencies are developed and utilized in the right direction. This study focuses on studying the factors related to competency mapping that help in retaining the talent and also help in the development of the organization. A combination of descriptive and conclusive research design was adopted to describe and report the related phenomena. The questionnaire developed has 6 constructs viz. Abilities, Skills Motives, Behaviour, Personal Characteristics and Commitment. This questionnaire was developed using 38 items and was given to 200 respondents from 11 IT firms. Correlations, regressions and descriptive analysis were carried out. AMOS was used for the SEM analysis. The findings of the research show that there are various factors which contribute to the emplo...

In recent years, mobile wallets (m-wallets), a special form of mobile payment, have garnered much attention in various emerging markets. M-wallets were designed to offer customers swiftness, ease of use, efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and accessibility. Despite these benefits, usage intentions and adoption of m-wallets in most emerging markets have been low, and they have not received widespread acceptance. Notably, existing research related to intentions to use (IUs) mobile payments has largely focused on developed economies and mobile payments in general. Additionally, few studies have examined intentions to recommend (ITRs), even though researchers have recognized that word-of-mouth is an important driver of consumer behavior. In the present study, we addressed the lack of specific findings on use and recommendation intentions in the context of m-wallets by conducting a large cross-sectional survey of 1256 smartphone users based on diffusion of innovation theory (DOI). Results revealed that relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, and observability were significantly associated with participants' intentions toward m-wallets. However, trialability had no association with participants' intentions to use and recommend m-wallets to others.

Competitive Industrial Organizations have realized the potential of training and development needs of employees for Human Resource value creation. However the employees perspective differ across manufacturing and service sector in India. The objective of the study is to do a comparative study of manufacturing and service sector in India with respect to employees 'perception of the training program regarding: its design, quality ofthe programme and its functions and role at various levels. An exploratory research is carried out on selected organizations amongst employees in both manufacturing and service organizations. It may be stated that in both manufacturing and services sector, though there exists a planned approach for employee training, the quality of training programmes needs to be improved. Manufacturing sector employees have betterpeception regarding the quality of training programs. Regarding functions and role of training program at individual level and role of training programme at the organisational level service sector employees have a better perception. Practical implications of these findings for manufacturing sector is that they need to review the objectives of the training prgrammes, which, it seems, need to be aligned with individual and organizational goals. Services sector needs to improve the quality oftraining programs.

With the focus on the circular economy, the online purchase of remanufactured products, especially refurbished smart phones, has surged drastically over the years. With varying benefits and challenges of refurbished products, it is important to understand the consumer concerns and refurbished product preference criteria. The present paper attempts to review customer opinions to identify the salient traits of their purchasing patterns of refurbished smart phones through online E-Commerce sites. The methods employ extracting customer reviews from the Amazon website and then processing them using the computer aided programming method such as cluster analysis. It attempts to identify the factors influencing consumer purchase behavior, identify various product flaws, and split the consumer groups based on their sentiments. The findings reveal six consumer groups based on their preference for features, quality, and overall value, less cost, camera, and good battery life. Among them, budget-friendly and quality seekers account for the most significant proportion who intends to buy refurbished electronic products. The finding can assist in resolving customer issues and serve as a basis for making suitable decisions for marketing refurbished products.

Purpose-The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between cultural intelligence (CQ) and cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) using meta-analytic methods. The paper serves a dual purpose as it critically examines the CQ-CCA literature and provides summary effects using meta-analysis to determine how CQ and its facets affect CCA and its three dimensions. Design/methodology/approach-A meta-analysis of 77 studies involving 18,399 participants was conducted to obtain the summary effects. The studies reporting the relationship of CQ and/or its facets with CCA or any of its dimensions were included in the analysis. Findings-Results revealed that CQ (overall) and all individual CQs were positively and significantly related to CCA and its three subdimensions. Although CQ (overall) had a strong effect on CCA and moderate to strong effects on all the subdimensions of CCA, the strongest effect size was measured for the relationship of motivational CQ with CCA. Not only this, when individual CQs' relationships were assessed with the individual adjustment dimensions, the motivational aspect of CQ happened to be the most influencing factor, having a close to strong effect on interaction adjustment. Research limitations/implications-Since the study combines the results from numerous empirical research conducted over time, it avoids the limitations that an individual study has, which is carried out at a single point in time and on a limited sample. Originality/value-This study adds to the academic research by critically reviewing the CQ-CCA literature. It also works as a guiding map for future research in the area. The study highlights the summary effects for each association between CQ and CCA and their dimensions, elucidating the mixed findings reported in previous research.

The phenomenal growth of retail in India is refl ected in the rapid increase in number of supermarkets, departmental stores and hypermarkets in the country. However, this unprecented growth trend has been challenged by the shadow of the current economic slowdown, which has raised a fear of dip in consumption and slowdown of growth for Indian organized retailers. At a time when consumer spending is on decline, success will lie with those retailers that can drive customer loyalty by responding to the demands of the discerning consumer. This study is an attempt to address issues related to store attributes and their relevance in the store selection process. Eleven variables (store attributes) have been identifi ed in this article based on theory and judgment. Factor analysis has yielded three factors: Convenience & Merchandise Mix, Store Atmospherics and Services. The factors identifi ed and recommendations made in the article would be of use to retailers in designing their outlets with store attributes that would meet the expectations of shoppers and thus motivate them towards store patronage decisions.

The construction of an optimal portfolio has become increasingly challenging in recent years, as investors expect to maximize returns and minimize risks from their respective investments. An investor needs to have proper knowledge of security analysis and portfolio theory for making correct investment decisions. In early 1950, Harry Markowitz developed a comprehensive model which stated that investors can reduce their risk through diversification In the present study Sharpe's Single Index Model (SIM) is used to construct an optimal portfolio. The reason for choosing SIM over the Markowitz Model is that it requires fewer inputs and is easier to calculate. It is named as Single Index Model as it uses only a single index for portfolio construction. Further, the proportion of investment of each stock included in the optimal portfolio was also computed.

The main focus of this research is to construct an optimal portfolio in Indian Market with the help of Sharpe Single index model. The construction of an optimal portfolio has become increasing challenging in recent years, as investors expect to maximize return and minimize risk from their respective investment therefore a good combination of portfolio will give maximum return for a particular level of risk. An investor need to have proper knowledge of security analysis and portfolio theory for making corrective investment decision. In 1950, Markowitz who was considered as the father of modern portfolio theory, mainly because he is the first person who gave a mathematical model for portfolio optimization and diversification. Modern portfolio theory (MPT) is a theory of finance that attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of risk, or minimize the risk for a given level of expected return. Markowitz theories advise investors to invest in multiple securities rather than pulling all eggs in one basket. In order to overcome the Markowitz Model, William Sharpe, tried to simplify the process of data inputs and reaching a solution, by developing a simplified variant of the Markowitz model. In the Sharpe"s model, the desirability of any securities inclusion in the portfolio is directly related to its excess return-tobeta ratio. The proposed method formulates a unique cut off point (Cut off rate of return) and selects stocks having excess of their expected return over risk free rate of return surpassing this cutoff point. Then they are ranked from highest to lowest order and then the Percentage of investment in each of the selected security is then decided on the basis of respective weights assigned to each security. In this research, all 50 stocks of NSE NIFTY 50 Index are taken into consideration and &Weekly data of all these stock for the period of September 14,2016 to September 15.2017 have been considered which further converted into annually. Further the proportion of investment of each 50 stock in the optima l portfolio was also calculated and along with risk and return of the selected stock are also been calculated with the help of Markowitz Model This study gains more importance as stocks included in Nifty 50 represent majority of market capitalisation of NSE.The Nifty 50 hold about 62.9% of the market capitalization of the stocks listed on NSE.

When a test is conducted in several sessions using distinct question papers, normalization of scores is required to have a fair assessment of the candidates. Several selection tests nowadays are conducted in multiple sessions (using multiple choice questions). In this article we discuss various normalization schemes used in India when an examination involving multiple choice questions is conducted across various sessions. We illustrate through simulation, that the percentile-based normalization scheme outperforms all the other schemes.