With the intensification of Globalization, customers’ environment-friendly attitude and stringent environmental regulations, the manufacturers have been orienting their manufacturing and other value additive processes towards the development of more environment-friendly products and use of relevant processes including taking back of used products after their end-of-use or end-of-life from the end users. Remanufacturing is one of the prominent and popular options. Remanufacturing perhaps has drawn maximum attention because of its economic viability and environmental cleanliness. The remanufacturing operation depends upon the quality and quantity of the used. Better the quality lesser the remanufacturing cost. A remanufacturer is unaware about the condition of used product before its acquisition. It may also be noted that the remanufactured product may be taken after a period of its use by users. So it is really difficult to judge how many cycles does the product go for remanufacturing. This has drawn the attention of the authors and the problem is studied with developing some mechanism on the possible frequency of the remanufacturing of a new product. This paper is a study report on this area of research which is expected to contribute immensely to the remanufacturing business. © 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.

This investigation seeks to explore the effectiveness of alternative approaches to supply chain management for developing the base of the pyramid (BoP) community. Using case research methodology, we investigate the issue of supply chain alignment when the supply base consists of BoP producers. We consider the handloom supply chains in Odisha, India, as the context of our analysis. The study analyzes the supply chains of four handloom retailers. The retailers represent cooperative and private organizational systems with varied levels of operational integration. In light of the insights from these case studies, we theorize factors contributing to operational cost-effectiveness and conceptualize approaches and considerations for improving the BoP community. Specifically, we clarify the usefulness of alternative supply chain alignment practices in promoting efficiency, innovation, and equitability among the BoP constituents and advance a set of propositions linking the motivations, strategies, practices, and performance in handloom supply chains. Limitations, theoretical and managerial contributions, and future research directions are discussed. © 2019 Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the application of vendor rationalization strategy for streamlining the supplies and manufacturing cycle time reduction in an Indian engineer-to-order (ETO) company. ETO firms are known for a large number of vendors, co-ordination hassles, rework problems and its impact on cycle time and operational excellence. Design/methodology/approach: The research demonstrates the case-based application of Kraljic’s matrix for supply and leverages items, on-the-job observations, field visits, discussions and analysis of supplies reports. Findings: The study guides on the rationalization of supplies and the necessary strategic alignments that can significantly reduce supply risk, costs, manufacturing and delivery cycle time along with co-ordination hassles. The study depicts the challenges of ETO environment with respect to supplies, and demonstrates the effectiveness of vendor rationalization application for the case company and weaknesses of commonly practiced vendor management approaches. Practical implications: To be competitive, companies should rationalize supply items and vendors based on the nature of items and their subsequent usage by applying Kraljic’s matrix-based classification. The immediate implication of vendor rationalization is misunderstood as reducing supply base, but it does much more and includes review of supplies, nature of items and strategic alignments, leading to win-win situation for company and suppliers. Originality/value: For the rationalization of supplies, while procuring and dealing with vendors, executives should envisage engineering nature of components, considering cross-functional requirements and integration of components in context to ETO products/projects environments. There is a dearth of studies focusing on vendor rationalization aspects in ETO setups in fast-developing country context. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The aim of this study is to examine customers' perceived 'service quality', 'customer satisfaction', 'positive word of mouth' (+WOM) and 'problems encountered' at automated teller machine (ATMs) of Indian retail banks. It also attempts to propose a modified and refined Parasuraman's SERVQUAL scale relevant for the Indian context as also suggests a comprehensive model for measuring automated service quality at bank ATMs. A structured questionnaire, drawn together from literature, was used to collect data from a total of 219 ATM customers. The proposed refined scale has been tested for dimensionality, reliability, and validity and the research model was tested for validation through structural equation model (SEM) using LISREL 8.50. Research results indicate that expectations of ATM patrons in India were not being fully met. The highest gap score was observed for 'convenience' dimension followed by 'tangibles'. Results also show that service quality and customer satisfaction effect WOM positively and significantly while problems encountered had a negative impact on customer expectations. Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

We attempt to demonstrate the value of big data to enterprises by interweaving the perceptions, challenges, and opportunities of big data for businesses. While enterprises are aware of the value of big data to their businesses, there are challenges of exploiting big data in terms of data quality and usage. Executives might lack knowledge on how applications are related to one another in the big data ecosystem and the business benefits to reap. We summarize the results of a research study that explores emerging business perceptions of big data. We examine the current practice in 20 large enterprises, each having an annual revenue of more than USD 0.5 billion and present our findings related to executive perceptions. We provide insights on how firms can develop their big data expertise along various dimensions and identify critical ideas to be further investigated to better understand the issues that practitioners and researchers might be equally grappling with. © 1973-2011 IEEE.

[No abstract available]

Increasing demand of automotive products and over-consumption of natural resources compel the manufacturers to implement the Extension of Useful Life (EUL) methodology of automotive products through remanufacturing. Remanufacturing is a process in which the original functionality of End-of-Use (EoU) or End-of-Life (EoL) product is restored and the remanufactured product is treated as good as a new product. In spite of these advantages, remanufacturing is still not so popular and organized in developing countries like India. The developing countries encounter several problems in strategic, tactical and operational level of management while implementing the remanufacturing business option. In this paper attempts have been made to identify both the enablers and the barriers in managing business of EUL products through remanufacturing in India. Subsequently the structural relationships among the enablers and barriers have been modelled in this paper. Initially an extensive literature review is carried out to identify the factors depicting the enablers and barriers. Then, Fuzzy Interpretive Structural Modeling (FISM) is applied to develop and evaluate the structural relationships among the identified factors. The application of FISM helps in understanding the effect of major enablers and barriers in extending useful life of automotive products through remanufacturing. The outcome of FISM based analysis shows that low cost, price sensitive market, cheap labour cost, and fast turnaround are the major enablers for OEM in initiating EUL business practice through remanufacturing, whereas the major barriers are lack of proper design of product, stringent foreign trade policy, cannibalization of new product, lack of proper remarketing strategies, lack of reverse network design, lack of proper maintaining the database of the customers, seller reputation and identity. The analysis is further enriched by MICMAC technique, which leads to getting an insight on the significance of the dependence and driving power of both the enablers and barriers. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Marketers are increasingly adopting the branded app as a strategy to communicate with, engage with, and sell a product to consumers. This study assesses this emerging research theme and its future research directions by adopting the systematic literature review approach and identifying 40 peer-reviewed research papers published since 2008. Using content analysis, the authors highlight several trends and insights, such as field of research, research design, and sampling technique, along with various prevailing constructs, underpinning theories, and research outcomes. The authors’ contribution lies, first, in categorizing branded app extant research into five subthemes: branded app design, branded app adoption, consumer usage and retention, consumer–brand engagement, and consequences of adoption; second, in describing the branded app by breaking it down into four marketing concepts (product, service, media, and marketing tool) to show the integration of existing theories in branded app research whereby 25 existing theories have been used 37 times in branded app research. Further, as its original contribution, the authors conceptualize a new framework on branded app strategy and identify future research directions. © 2019, © 2019 American Academy of Advertising.

This pioneering study comprehensively analyzes display advertising spends for large and medium-sized advertisers in the US market, the most evolved advertising and display advertising market in the world, unlike some other academic studies in the domain focusing solely on media spend trends, without focusing on the advertisers. The research objective of this study was to explore the impact of relevant variables during the growth of display advertising spend from its infancy till recent times in the US by analyzing the data on other measured media spend, product categories, US sales of advertisers, HQ Continent of advertisers, and unmeasured media spend among others. This study analyzed media data on 78 large advertisers in 12 product categories for the year 2000 to 2016 in the US market. The plm package used allowed the study to run the major types of models used for panel data like pooling, between, fixed, first differences, and random models. It analyzed a significant amount of real-world cross-sectional and longitudinal data on media spend and sales in the US market and might be relevant to senior marketing executives. Further, it gives guidance for media buyers and sellers and mentions four cases which are in line with this study. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The occurrence of natural disasters has become a major global problem. It poses serious threats to the concept of sustainable development. Over the last two decades, more than 1.3 million people and nearly two trillion dollars have been lost due to natural disasters. The paper discusses the status of disaster mitigation information systems during the Uttarakhand disaster of June 2013. The researchers have discussed the status of such actions taken by both Government and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) from a qualitative perspective. The Software Package for Social Science (SPSS) software was used for the analysis and the results are presented in descriptive statistical format. As many as (n = 1500) respondents were interviewed, out of which 80% respondents were ill-informed. Over 80% respondents were found to be untrained to respond in a disastrous situation. Hence, the researchers have proposed the use of better information and communication mediums with the assistance of public and private partnership (PPP model) to deal with disastrous situations in the future along with some indigenous methods. © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

This paper explores the role of heterogeneity and leverage effect on the predictability of the AddRS volatility estimator (Kumar & Maheswaran, 2014a) using daily, weekly and monthly volatility components. Similar to the model setting of heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model (Corsi, 2009), we introduce the frameworks (HAR – AddRS and HAR – AddRS – L) to incorporate the impact of heterogeneity and leverage effect in modeling the AddRS volatility estimator. We find that the heterogeneity and leverage effect significantly impact the volatility prediction and when taken together produce a better in-sample fit. To evaluate the out-of-sample performance of our new volatility models, we compare the forecasting performance of our models with that of other traditional benchmark models forecasts using the error statistic approach and Hansen (2005) superior predictive ability (SPA) test. The results show that the HAR – AddRS and HAR – AddRS – L models provide more accurate volatility forecasts for the out-of-sample. We also undertake the economic significance analysis to highlight that a substantial economic gain is achieved when the volatility forecasts based on the HAR – AddRS – L model are used to implement various trading strategies, however, the same is not true when the volatility forecasts are based on the traditional returns-based conditional volatility models. © 2019 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to measure the business value of IT (BVIT) and illustrate the relationship between IT practices and BVIT. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses a case study approach to collect the subject firm data over a period of one year. The data are about various IT systems used in the firm and their associated capital and operational cost components. The derived data are then compared with industry benchmarks. Findings: The IT practices employed by the firm enable it to achieve a BVIT which is higher than the industry norm, from both strategic and operational perspectives. Research limitations/implications: In this study, a year’s worth of data from a single firm is considered. The temporal frame of the research data limits the generalization of the results. To improve the generalizability, data from many years and across many firms may be used. Practical implications: The paper provides insights to managers to identify the measures of BVIT. Further, managers can make necessary interventions based on IT practices to derive IT capabilities which, in turn, impact the firm’s performance. Originality/value: The contribution of the work is manifold: illustration of the relationship between IT practices and BVIT; illustration of a methodology to evaluate firm-level BVIT; and an approach to collect IT expenses – both capital and operational level. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Cloud computing has transformed the decision-making processes involved in the procurement of information-technology services. Not only has it brought about tremendous speed-ups to computing jobs, but also, the flexibility it provides in terms of availability and pricing options now enables a consumer to make trade-offs between price and time, based on the situation on-hand and the turnaround-time requirements. These price-time trade-offs have been studied in the behavioral-economic literature, but have not been considered formally in the procurement and the cloud-system bodies of literature. We fill this gap, by taking up the question of how the impatience characteristics of the procurer (and in turn his/her procurement decisions) get affected by two behavioral factors, namely, delay horizon and situational involvement. We test the model using a factorial experiment with 180 participants and find that impatience degree and type are affected by delay horizon and situational involvement. We discuss practical implications for a cloud-service provider, as well as implications for the intertemporal and IS literature. © 2019, Springer Nature B.V.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between ethical leadership and employee learning orientation in organizations. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses a quantitative methodology to analyze data collected from 160 faculty members from universities, using a survey questionnaire. Findings: The finding of this study reveals that ethical leadership has a positive effect on learning orientation of faculty members in universities. Originality/value: This study adds to the field of ethical leadership by investigating the influence of ethical leadership on learning orientation of faculty members in universities. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The study reexamines the issue of informational efficiency of Bitcoin using data at different frequencies (15, 30, 60 and 120 min and daily data). In particular, we test the martingale hypothesis in Bitcoin returns using different variance ratio tests. We also examine the evolution of informational efficiency of Bitcoin using non-overlapping and overlapping moving window analysis. The study provides evidence of the presence of informational inefficiency in the Bitcoin market at higher frequency levels. The daily Bitcoin returns which appear to be following a memory-less stochastic process are in fact otherwise when we move to the higher frequencies of Bitcoin prices. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Purpose: Despite the established significance of absorptive capacity, there is a worrying lack of research that empirically examines its antecedents. With a call for investigation guided by the knowledge-based theory, the purpose of this paper is to bridge any probable gap by exploring the effect that an organization’s knowledge stock and its knowledge integrating mechanisms have on the development of its absorptive capacity. Design/methodology/approach: On the basis of a survey administered to a sample comprising owners of small Indian automotive firms, this paper empirically examines the direct effect of an organization’s knowledge stock (including knowledge breadth and depth) and the moderating role of its structure-related mechanisms (e.g., formalization) on its potential and realized absorptive capacities. The study uses survey data from 226 small business owners and multiple linear regression analysis to examine the significance of its hypotheses. Findings: The results show that knowledge stock has a statistically notable influence on a small firm’s absorptive capacity. The enabling role of formalization in the relationship between knowledge stock and absorptive capacity is also evident. Practical implications: Given the handicap of small firms vis-à-vis large firms to deploy internal R&D capabilities, business owners must ensure not to confuse absorptive capacity with the pre-existence of R&D capabilities. Originality/value: The unbundling of knowledge stock into breadth and depth of knowledge enables business owners and researchers to understand how any particular knowledge stock can relate to an organization’s absorptive capacity. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Using the high-frequency data of Bitcoin, this paper investigates the long memory characteristics of the unconditional and conditional volatilities of Bitcoin at different time scales using the local Whittle (LW) estimator, the exact local Whittle (ELW) estimator and the ARMA–FIAPARCHmodel. The results show that the long memory parameter is significant and quite stable for both unconditional and conditional volatility measures across different time scales. This paper also examines the long memory characteristics of the unconditional and conditional “realized” volatilities of Bitcoin at different time scales using the local Whittle (LW) estimator, exact local Whittle (ELW) estimator and the ARFIMA model. Long memory is found to be significant and stable also in case of unconditional and conditional “realized” volatilities. The study also undertakes quarterly non-overlapping rolling window analysis to develop deeper insights into the evolution of long memory parameter, d, over the period. The results indicate high persistence in the Bitcoin market. This study has useful implications for different investors and market participants having varying exposures in the Bitcoin market depending on their trading horizons. The findings can help them in forecasting the expected volatility in the Bitcoin market and thereby in developing and implementing trading strategies. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

During the past few years, many of the financial markets have gone through devastating effects due to the crisis in one or the other economy of the world. The recent global financial crisis has triggered dramatic movements in various stock markets which may arise from interdependence or contagion between the markets. This article attempts to measure the contagion between the equity markets of Asia and the US stock market. The countries considered in the Asian group are China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan. Most of the Asian economies have experienced drastic higher volatility and uncertainty in the financial markets. If the markets are contagious, then the investors will be unable to reap benefits through international diversification of the portfolio. In such a case, the policymakers will further frame policies so that they can insulate themselves from inflicting heavy damage from various crises. To achieve our goal, we make use of the time-varying copula approach which helps us to study the joint behaviour of the series based on their marginal distribution. Time-varying copula approach can also capture the non-linear dependence in the series and exhibits a rich pattern of tail behaviour. Our findings support the contagion between the Asian stock markets and the US stock market during the global financial crisis. This article also highlights that the increased tail dependence is an important factor for the contagion between the Asian stock markets and the US market. © 2019 International Management Institute, New Delhi.

The study investigates the volatility transmission from developed markets (the United States [US], the United Kingdom [UK] and Japan) to the major Asian emerging markets (India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia) during a period from 1996 to 2015. We make use of the opening, high, low and closing prices to estimate unbiased extreme value volatility estimator and implement heterogeneous autoregressive distributed lag (HAR-DL) framework to study the spillover effects. Based on time-varying spillover analysis, we observe sudden changes in the spillover effect during the periods of major crises. Initially, we find evidence of contagion during the period of global financial crisis of 2007–2009. However, after accounting for conditional heteroscedasticity, we observe a decline in the strength of volatility transmission from developed markets to the Asian emerging markets. Moreover, the initial evidence of contagion is not detectable anymore. We also test the economic significance of the findings by implementing three trading strategies based on risk averse and risk-taking investors that make use of the forecasted variance based on HAR-DL specification. Our findings indicate that substantial average annualised gains in returns can be earned based on the lagged volatility components of the USA and the UK. JEL Classification: C32, C58, G01, G15. © 2019 Institute of Financial Management and Research.

Managing supply chain risk is a big challenge for any organization. The purpose of the paper is to provide a methodology for assessing supply chain risk using the Fuzzy based Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP). This study presents a comprehensive study to identify the Risk Factors (RFs) in supply chain and evaluate them. In this paper, sixteen risk factors were identified based on extensive literature survey. To limit the scope of the work, focus was on transaction and infrastructural risk and avoiding the demand risk. The RFs are formulated as hierarchy structure and Fuzzy AHP as a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) tool applied to judge the viable candidates. A revised risk matrix with a continuous scale was proposed to assess the RFs classes. The result classifies the RFs in different categories (Extreme, High, Medium and Low). Based on this result, some management implications and suggestions are proposed. The revised risk matrix with continuous scale for risk assessment in supply chain is a novel approach. © 2018 China Anti-Cancer Association. All rights reserved.