While there is much emphasis on authentic green practices, there is rising concern about the common practice of "greenwashing" or unsubstantiated claims about good environmental policies. Consequently, tourism businesses need to provide tangible evidences to create trust in their green claims. This paper, building on a sequential mixed method approach of data collection, proposes a potential green service encounter (GSE) framework by which hotel management can reassure customers and secure long-term patronage. Moderating role to two key contextual variables, travel purpose and environmental values of travelers, is investigated. Practical implications indicate that hotels should offer guests opportunities for enhanced involvement in GSE that help build consumer trust. The trust building process is dependent on a traveler's environmental values but independent of trip purpose. The GSE framework conceptualization included interviews with 25 green hotel guests and a panel of experts while empirical validation involved a sample of over 500 respondents.

This paper proposes a new mathematical model for locating k-obnoxious facilities Here a vertex covering k-obnoxious facilities location problem on a plane has been modelled by combining it as a combination of three interacting criteria as follows: 1) maximise the minimum distances between any existing point and any variable point as well as between any pair of variable points; 2) maximise the number of existing points covered by various respective variable points; 3) minimise the overall importance of the various existing points associated to the various variable facility points. A nonlinear programming iterative algorithm for locating k-obnoxious facilities has been developed. The algorithm developed here is a generalised iterative algorithm. It has been proved that the optimal solution obtained by the algorithm is the non-dominated solution of the original multi-objective problem. Rectilinear distance norm has been considered as the distance measure as it is more appropriate to the various realistic situations.

Returns of risky assets and their time-dependent volatility are often jointly modelled by stochastic volatility models (SVMs). Over the last few decades, several SVMs have been proposed to adequately capture the features of the relationship between the return and its volatility. The earliest SVM considers a hierarchical model, with current return as a function of the current latent volatility, which is further modelled as an auto-regressive process. In an attempt to make SVM more appropriate for complex realistic market behaviour, leverage parameter was introduced, which however led to violation of martingale difference property of the risky part of return (a necessary mean-zero condition that prevents arbitrage opportunities under mild regularity conditions). Subsequently, alternative SVMs had been developed and are currently in use. In this article, we propose mean-corrections for several generalizations of SVM with leverage that capture the complex market behaviour as well as satisfy martingale difference property of returns. We also establish a few theoretical results to characterize the key desirable features of these models, and present comparison with other popular competitors. Furthermore, three real-life examples (CITI bank stock price, euro-USD rate and S&P 500 index returns) have been used to demonstrate the performance of this new class of SVMs.

Content analysis has become a popular method for qualitative and quantitative analyses in management and international business (IB) research. It is increasingly used in literature reviews to assess extant knowledge and understand intellectual structures. However, it is often poorly understood and incorrectly applied. In this article, we identify benchmark criteria and develop coding schemes that IB scholars can use in review studies. We also demonstrate the application of content analysis through a review of content analysis-based articles, published in the top eight IB journals from 1991 to 2015.

Purpose: Archival research is a much under-rated and under-utilized method of research in management studies. Yet multi-disciplinary undertakings being observed in recent times, such as in knowledge management (KM) systems, business history and social network studies, among others, indicate that there is a lot of potential to be explored. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this point and make a case for its inclusion in the researcher's toolkit in the future. Design/methodology/approach: The authors follow a two-stage method here: the first stage being an improvised process to benchmark articles for this review; while the second stage involves content analysis and synthesis of the same. Findings: The authors have dealt with the intricacies of the archival research methodology by minutely examining the fieldwork steps, proxies generation, other related processes of triangulation, etc. With the discussion on multi-disciplinary undertakings, the authors offer not only a selective bibliography of works that have effectively harvested this family of methods, but also critique the nuances involved. Finally, coming into more contemporary concerns and developments, the authors undertake an in-depth look at technological applications in the domain of KM, in case study mode. Methodological richness leads to substantive granularity. As such, the authors argue that archival methods contribute to the robustness, contextuality and holism of any research endeavor, more so in the study of business and organizations. Research limitations/implications: This paper is based on the literature review. Practical implications: This paper makes a case for archival methods contribution toward the robustness, contextuality and holism of any research endeavor, more so in the study of business and organizations. Originality/value: This paper re-positions the method of archival research as a viable and sophisticated tool for researchers to employ effectively in singular or mixed method studies.

The goal of this research is to study jointly physician prescription decisions and patient drug request behaviours. We have adopted a binary logit model and a multinomial logit model to study patient drug request data with excessive zero requests and a multinomial logit model to capture physician prescription decisions. These models are further joined by a flexible non-parametric multivariate distribution for their random effects. We also adopt an analytically consistent expression for interaction effects in our non-linear and joint modelling framework. We apply our model to a unique physician panel data set from the erectile dysfunction category. Our key empirical findings include that the triggering of drug requests by direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) is complex with category level DTCA reducing patients' probabilities of making drug requests and drug-specific DTCA driving drug requests for the drug advertised, patients' characteristics may play a role in both the influence of DTCA on drug requests and the influence of patients' requests on physicians' prescription decisions, patients' drug requests have a positive effect on physicians' prescription decisions and patients can be consistent with physicians in choosing a drug based on their diagnosis levels and some unobserved factors, and there are significant correlations between physician level random effects that drive both patients' drug requests and physicians' prescription decisions, which validate the joint modelling approach.

Brand names have become verbs and entered in the consumer vocabulary, as doing words that are synonymous to consumer actions. Synonymity brands are observed to be prototypical and consumer-perceived brand leaders by planting a word not only in the consumer minds, but also in the lexicon. Corporate attorneys have ignored this fact by labeling such words as potential candidates to brand genericide and projected risk of trademark loss. The 3-part study aims to explore the concept, define brand synonymity, identify the dimensions, and measure the degree of synonymity—in the first part. The second study empirically tests the relationship between brand synonymity and leadership. The study three brings practical use to address the legal concerns by outlining a continuum to plot brands in safe and risk zones, thereby segregating the marketing play (in safe zone) and attorney's role (in risk zone). The findings show synonymity brands scoring high in four vital brand dimensions and demonstrate positive relationship with brand leadership. The authors explore this new area of brand research that is not adequately covered by extant literature, to benefit marketing scholars, brand managers, and legal attorneys. copyright @ 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature

Prepaid purchase instruments (PPIs; e.g., prepaid transit cards, and mobile phone credit, among others) based prepaid services involve an emerging and innovative mode of transaction. PPI based prepaid buyers make advance deposits in prepaid instruments for making retail payments against multiple purchase. Like prepaid services, advance selling involves advance payment for future consumption. Advance selling models are based on the following two constraints: capacity and consumption timing constraints. However, PPI based prepaid services do not involve above-mentioned constraints. Therefore, to address the problem, this paper proposes time value of money and transaction cost as two underpinning factors to model prepaid services. The paper shows that: (i) it is profitable for a buyer to increase the prepaid purchase amount, but within a limit imposed by the time value of money (ii) it is profitable for a seller to promote higher amounts of prepaid purchases through discounts, but within a limit imposed by the rate of marginal cost of servicing, and (iii) the above two will provide an equilibrium position, which will result in purchase-amount-stickiness behavior of buyers. In sum, the paper distinguishes the concepts of advance selling and prepaid selling of services, presents an approach to model PPI based prepaid selling of services, and provides tool for planning enhanced benefits from prepaid selling of services. copyright @ 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Western State Electricity Regulatory Commission (WSERC) was a Government Regulatory Firm in India and worked in the areas of electricity and power. Its scope of work had significantly expanded after a decade of existence and the organization needed to keep pace with the changing requirements. There was a need for agile functioning in a market driven power economy in the areas of power generation, transmission and distribution. The firm needed to transition from being a regulator to being a change agent to support the reforms in the power sector. The firm was operating with a skeletal support staff and key areas of expertise had been outsourced. The case presents the challenges of operating with an outsourced model and the need to move towards self-sufficiency. The firm wanted to now rely on internal expertise instead of depending on external consultants. The change of hiring practice would also need to be supplemented by change in the style of functioning. The case ends with the chairman pondering on how best to enable this change. copyright @ 2018, copyright @ 2018 Lahore University of Management Sciences.

We regularly use communication apps like Facebook and WhatsApp on our smartphones, and the exchange of media, particularly images, has grown at an exponential rate. There are over 3 billion images shared every day on Whatsapp alone. In such a scenario, the management of images on a mobile device has become highly inefficient, and this leads to problems like low storage, manual deletion of images, disorganization etc. In this paper, we present a solution to tackle these issues by automatically classifying every image on a smartphone into a set of predefined categories, thereby segregating spam images from them, allowing the user to delete them seamlessly. copyright @ 2017 IEEE.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the interesting dynamics of image transfer when multiple brands get together to sponsor a property, referred to as concurrent sponsorship, and its effects on the consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) of the sponsor or the sponsored property, in the context of Indian Premier League of cricket. Design/methodology/approach: Two pre-tests, for identifying the sponsored property and sponsors, were followed by the main experiment, involving 500 respondents. A general linear model was used for data analysis. Findings: The findings reveal that for brands with high CBBE, investment in concurrent sponsorship leads to larger benefits, especially if they have similar associations to the sponsored property. This study also shows that image of the sponsored property is strongly dependent on combined CBBE of the sponsors. Finally, it is found that brands with high (low) CBBE are benefited more in concurrent (solo) sponsorship conditions. Originality/value: This paper is an original contribution in this field, with limited works studying the impact of concurrent sponsorship on the brand equity of sponsors or the sponsored property. copyright @ 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

This study addresses the recent concerns in the capital structure literature about the reliability of tests of the target-following behavior. Using a novel testing strategy, we examine whether and to what extent firms' financing choices-rather than the movement of their debt ratios per se - concur with the target-following behavior. We find that firms' financing decisions are not generally consistent with systematic target-following. Our results remain similar when we examine an extended period of time and also when we consider that firms may have a range of target debt ratios rather than a unique target or varying financial constraints. Our results are also robust to different target specifications and our methodology can reliably distinguish the target behavior from random financing. Further tests also confirm our results by suggesting that the firms' financing decisions are not primarily driven by deviations from the firms' target debt ratios. copyright @ 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the volatility in commodity futures and spot markets. The study starts with a few questions: first, the effect of seasonality on the volatility is studied. Thereafter, the presence of structural breaks in the variance is identified. At last the seasonality, structural shifts and spillover effects are examined together to find out their effects on volatility. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology heavily employs econometric tools and techniques. The monthly seasonal dummies are incorporated to identify the effects of seasonality on volatility. Then, the presence of break in volatility is tested by cumulative sum of squares (CUSUM test), followed by generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastictity and EGARCH models are measured by including seasonal dummies, break dummies and the residuals of other market in the variance equation to determine spillover effects. Findings: It is found that the effects of seasonality on volatility cannot be ignored as the effects are significant. The presence of asymmetry is detected in all the commodities. The presence of seasonality and structural breaks in the variance equation are statistically able to reduce the volatility but the magnitude is very negligible with an exception in cumin futures markets. Bi-directional volatility spillover between futures and spot markets is observed in all the commodities and the effect of spillover is more from spot markets to the futures markets. Research limitations/implications: This study is limited to a few agro commodities which are well traded. This study could have been extended to the other thinly traded commodities. This study has also taken only near month futures contracts as it contains more information but the same could have been studied by taking far month contracts also. Originality/value: The present study attempted to understand the conjugated effects of seasonality, structural breaks and spillover on volatility of commodity markets which is not apparent in the previous studies. This study has also employed methodological rigor to identify the breaks in the variance equation. In addition to this it has also investigated whether Indian commodity futures markets are informationally more efficient than the spot markets. copyright @ 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Banks' ownership and their performance form two important dimensions of the entire gamut of banking function. This article strives to establish a link between the two by studying commercial banks in India. Conducting a panel data analysis of 89 commercial banks over the period from 2008-2009 to 2012-2013, one could observe that ownership indeed mattered when net interest margin (NIM) or per-employee profitability was considered, but when return on assets (ROA) was considered, there was not much of a difference among banks when differentiated on ownership basis. copyright @ 2018, 2018 Institute of Financial Management and Research.

This article examines the relationship between investor sentiment and stock returns using the data from Indian stock market. We investigate the relationship using a broad set of implicit sentiment proxies and value-weighted market indices. The wavelet method has been used to decompose sentiment variables and stock returns into different timescale frequencies. We find a strong effect of sentiment on return both in the short-and long-run by employing decomposed returns and sentiment proxies at different time-scale frequencies, The study lends support to the fact that whether investors are short-term or long-term traders, their investments activities cannot be delinked from sentiment. copyright @ 2017 Elsevier Inc.

This article examines the relationship of Shariah index returns with sentiments, risk and macroeconomic factors in the Indian stock market. The wavelet method has been used to decompose stock returns, sentiment and macro variables into different time series frequencies. Along with linear causal relationship, the present study also attempts to uncover the effect of non-linearity on causal relationships based on Péguin-Feissolle and Teräsvirta (1999). The results indicate that risk-based explanation is more relevant for Sharia index return behavior in the emerging Indian stock market. This study reports significant relationship between macro variables and Sharia index returns. For Shariah indices, investor sentiments are more likely to affect short-term returns, i.e., high frequent timescales. However, we do not find significant sentiment pricing after controlling the effect of systematic risk factors in an asset-pricing framework. Thus, Shariah-compliance stocks might hedge against waves of investor sentiment during unprecedented market movements. copyright @ 2018 Elsevier B.V.

This study examines the relationship between the value of the firm and unanticipated changes in exchange rate. Using a sample of 651 Indian firms over the period from 2001 to 2013, this study finds that unanticipated changes in exchange rates are more appropriate than actual changes to discover statistically significant and economically important exchange rate exposure. Using a vector error correction model (VECM) to generate unanticipated exchange rate changes, this study provides new evidence that the intervention by central bank has a major impact on the level of Indian firms' exchange rate exposure. copyright @ 2018, copyright @ 2018 Institute of Financial Management and Research.

This essay discusses the phenomena of amalgamation of two prominent technologies: Internet of Things (IoT) and Social technologies. IoT devices are primarily used for connectivity between physical objects while Social technologies are responsible for collaboration and social interaction. The domain of Social Internet of Things (SIoTs) points toward social interactions of IoT devices. This phenomenon will further enhance the collaboration capabilities of IoTs to deliver huge amounts of human-computer interactions with very limited interventions from humans. Thus, high degrees of human-computer interfaces can be created among physical objects by enabling them with human-like capabilities and social interactions. In this context, we discuss relevant research developments, contextually analyze the drivers and challenges of SIoTs, and describe some interesting business use cases along with suitable recommendations going forward. copyright @ 2018 Subodh Mendhurwar and Rajhans Mishra.

This study attempts to find the existence, execution and outcome of emotional labour in the work of community healthcare workers. Through a ten-month field study comprising in-depth interviews with 26 accredited social health workers (ASHAs), we found that their work requires emotional labour. Our study shows that they use 'attached approach', which is similar to deep acting, and 'detached approach', which is similar to surface acting, to perform emotional labour. We also found that surface acting resulted in minimal negative effect in case of negative situation and in well-being due to attenuation of work benefits in case of positive situation at the workplace. Deep acting in a positive situation led to emotional permeability between work and personal life, whereas in the event of a negative situation, it led to stress. Furthermore, deep acting decreases their effectiveness and efficiency due to associated stress that could have detrimental effects on the beneficiaries of healthcare. Copyright copyright @ 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Prominent e-commerce platforms allow users to write reviews for the available products. User reviews play an important role in creating the perception of the product and impact the sales. Online reviews can be considered as an important source of e-word of mouth (e-WOM) on e-commerce platforms. Various dimensions of e-WOM on product sales have been examined for different products. Broadly, studies have explored the effect of summary statistics of reviews on product sales using data from various e-commerce platforms. Few studies have utilized other review characteristics as length, valence, and content of the reviews. The sequence of reviews has been hardly explored in the literature. This study investigates the impact of sequence of helpful reviews along with other review characteristics as ratings (summary statistics), volume, informativeness, and valence of reviews on product sales. Hence, a holistic approach has been used to explore the role of summary statistics, volume, content and sequence of reviews on product sales with special emphasis on sequence of reviews. Relevant theories such as message persuasion, cognitive overload and belief adjustment model have also been explored during the construction of the model for review data. The proposed model has been validated using the helpful reviews available on Amazon.in website for various products. copyright @ 2018 Elsevier Ltd