Many developing countries across the world are allocating a significant share of their budgets for e-government initiatives. Common service centers (CSCs) are e-government initiatives that aim to increase access to public services and promote easy and direct interaction with the government. These e-government initiatives are largely underutilised, especially in rural areas in developing countries. This study attempts to identify the key challenges facing CSCs and determine their hierarchical relationships in the context of rural India. A set of 15 challenges was identified through a rigorous literature review and by surveying experts and CSC owners. Data were collected on the identified challenges and were analysed using interpretive structural modeling (ISM)-MICMAC-fuzzy MICMAC analysis. Subsequently, we developed a hierarchical model of challenges. The findings revealed that “longer travel time and transaction cost”, “low digital literacy”, and “low awareness” of e-government services are among the key challenges CSCs face in rural India. This study suggests several recommendations to all the stakeholders involved in the management of CSCs to improve the delivery of e-government services in rural India. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.

This study estimates that stock market entry costs of around 31–35% of income can explain the observed level of non-participation in developing countries. Employing a two-generation, multi-period model with income risk, borrowing constraints and flexible human capital investment options in the offspring, the study numerically computes the possible improvements in consumption and human capital if households participate in the financial markets. The study extends the portfolio choice literature by endogenizing human capital investments and compares the optimal portfolio choice graph of a parent with that of a single worker. Results show that a parent's portfolio should contain more bonds when educational investments are inflexible and more stocks when they are flexible. Lower asset levels of a parent also tend to increase stock holding percentage. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.

Shared leadership among school principals and teachers has been touted as a means to enhance student achievement. Using grounded theory, we interviewed six principals and 20 urban elementary school teachers, in Pennsylvania, to examine their perceptions about federal and state mandates on shared leadership. Results indicate that although teachers desire to participate in shared leadership the pressures they encounter regarding state testing mandates, their expressed aversion to this accountability, and their lack of autonomy affected their capacity to participate in shared leadership. Principals viewed improving standardized test scores as best for students, but many teachers do not. Teachers believe they should make instructional decisions regarding students, but feel they cannot due to the mandates around standardized testing. Understanding the perceptions of principals and teachers regarding the impact of federal and state mandates on sharing the leadership role and the connection between accountability, shared leadership, and students’ best interest may assist policymakers and practitioners in the field to make decisions more attuned to the concerns of stakeholders, and thus are potentially more likely to succeed. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

We examined faculty perceptions of invisible labor at a large, urban, multi-campus community college. Semi-structured interviews with 16 faculty of various ranks, ages, gender, disciplines, and minority statuses were conducted and then later transcribed using NVivo. Open coding and constant comparison revealed 19 concepts, which were further grouped into five categories: academic, administrative, engagement, self-presentation, and adjunct versus full time. Secondary research questions examined the effort needed for invisible labor, what made labor invisible, and if demographic factors played a role in invisible labor. Participants highlighted time and volume of work as factors for invisible labor. Reasons for invisibility included location, lack of understanding, and unacknowledged labor. Faculty status was the only demographic factor identified by the participants as affecting invisible labor. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Purpose: This study aims to explore how career self-efficacy shapes an individual’s career decisions and how learning and development interventions, including participation in education abroad, might play a role in career choice. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used the following databases to review the literature on career self-efficacy: Academic Search Premier, Education Resources Information Center and ProQuest. The following key search terms were used in the search: career self-efficacy, career choice and education abroad. The titles of the identified articles were first reviewed for relevance, followed by the abstract, before further review for inclusion suitability. Findings: Findings suggest career self-efficacy plays a vital role in career decision-making, generating interests and deciding career goals. By improving career self-efficacy among college students, career interests can be reshaped. Findings evidence a relationship between education abroad and career competencies and career development. Research limitations/implications: The review offers an invaluable pathway to breed ideas and thoughts about research in the career self-efficacy domain. While education abroad itself may be a useful intervention in the development of a student’s career self-efficacy, among other characteristics and skills, a further empirical study is necessary to determine the extent to which this is true. Using or creating an accurate scale for the measurement of career self-efficacy among undergraduate students is critical to determine a reliable and valid measure, as is controlling for potential differences in self-efficacy between students who self-select for high impact endeavors such as education abroad and those who do not. Practical implications: Noting that practices in international education support collaboration between career services offices and study abroad offices, the authors point to the importance of interventions that intentionally and explicitly incorporate the career self-efficacy construct. Originality/value: Findings evidence a relationship between education abroad and career competencies and career development, through research examining connections to career self-efficacy and education abroad is noticeably scarce. The paper explores the above relationship. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The accelerated expansion of markets and intense competition have motivated firms to collaborate closely with vendor firms by outsourcing critical aspects of the business, including Information Technology services. We analyze the interaction between a service provider and a client in which they collaborate to deliver services. We assume that revenue generated from the service depends on their efforts. The client determines retail price and marketing efforts while the service provider decides on quality improvement efforts in the services. We analyze the impact of revenue share proportion on the effort exerted by both firms and the impact of the capability of the service provider on the retail pricing of the service. We develop an analytical framework to characterize the actions of the service provider and the client. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze six learning theories, beyond those presented in an earlier article by the authors, and discuss their relevance and application in online instruction. Design/methodology/approach: The following databases were used to review the literature on adult learning theories: Academic Search Premier, ERIC and ProQuest. The following key search terms were used in the search process: online instruction, cognitivism, connectivism, heutagogy, social learning theory, transformative learning theory and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. The titles of the identified articles were first reviewed for relevance, followed by the abstract, before any further review for suitability for inclusion in this article. Findings: The theory comparison revealed that it is critical to ascertain which learning theory best matches an instructional situation and the background of the learners. The selected learning theories differ in several parameters. The theories were critiqued for their contributions to identified elements in promoting learning. The discussed theories suggest ways to improve online learning environments. Research limitations/implications: Many adult perspectives about learning, while called theories, are largely lacking in evidence leading to them becoming theories. Thus, there remains a need for empirical evidence of these theories and their roles in online instruction. Comparisons of the application of these theories for adult learners in online instruction would also be useful in establishing the effectiveness of the various learning theories in different adult learning situations. Practical implications: This paper provides a theoretical lens for adult instructors and instructional designers in incorporating these adult learning theories appropriately in improving online instruction. Originality/value: This literature review uniquely critiques and compares common adult theories as they apply to adult online instruction. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: Public service motivation (PSM) is a universal construct, but indigenous traditions and culture of a country are known to influence its measurement. Currently, no research on PSM in India is available. To facilitate PSM research in India, this article compares the two most used measures of PSM (PSM-14 and PSM-16) to identify the most suitable scale for further exploration. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a cross-sectional survey research design. Data were collected from 387 employees working in the public sector. ADANCO, a PLS-SEM package, was used to analyze the data. Findings: Contrary to expectations, it was found that the older PSM-14 exhibited better psychometric properties than the newer PSM-16. The PSM-14 also exhibited greater predictive validity than PSM-16. Practical implications: The study demonstrates that PSM is a valid construct in India and can be measured adequately by existing instruments. However, certain sub-dimensions of the scale (such as compassion) may be reworded/changed to reflect Indian cultural ethos better. Originality/value: The findings will be tremendously helpful to researchers interested in examining the correlates of PSM in the Indian context by making it easier to select the appropriate measurement instrument. The study also provides a careful examination of each of the sub-dimensions of the construct to enable the development of more robust PSM measures in the future. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically establish the boundary conditions of the guilt mitigation process that consumers resort to in justifying consumption under contextual ambiguity, with respect to consumers' discomfit with ambiguity. While well observed, the process of guilt mitigation is less articulated with respect to contextually relevant consumers’ personality trait(s) (such as, discomfort with ambiguity) that may affect decision-making idiosyncratically. This gap is addressed herewith. Design/methodology/approach: Three experiments were conducted across two studies to establish the boundary conditions of guilt mitigation in the specific context of transactions involving trade-ins. In doing so, consumers' direct price imputation or, indirectly, their relative preference for financially equivalent, but structurally distinct, price structures was measured. Guilt was induced among consumers by directly manipulating consumers' degree of attachment with their old product (the trade-in). Findings: Results indicate that consumers resort to guilt mitigation in justifying consumption more extensively when they harbor higher levels of discomfort with ambiguity, not otherwise – the moderating effects of consumers' discomfort with ambiguity or the boundary condition under study. Research limitations/implications: Hypothetical buying scenarios, albeit constructed based on field information and subsequently tested for realism, were used to conduct the experiments, versus field experiments using real consumers. Further, the respondent pool comprised of Indian nationals only. These remain the primary limitations of this research. Practical implications: The findings indicate that managers may be able to construe deals in a manner that promotes self-segmentation by consumers, especially when consumers harbor greater discomfort with ambiguity. This, in turn, implies reduction in consumer heterogeneity and a concomitant increase in marketing efficiency. Originality/value: By considering consumers' discomfort with ambiguity in this research, the efficacy of the guilt mitigation process was established with respect to a contextually relevant individual difference factor. While the fundamentally constructive nature of guilt mitigation necessitates such considerations, this research gap, thus addressed, remained unaddressed hitherto. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the dividend payout behavior of Indian firms and test whether the three prominent dividend policy theories (signaling, life-cycle and catering) explain the dividend policy of Indian firms. Design/methodology/approach: The authors test the three theories using the methodology based on the studies of Nissim and Ziv (2001), DeAngelo et al. (2006) and Baker and Wurgler (2004). For testing the signaling theory, the authors regress the change in earnings on the rate of change in dividends using the pooled and Fama–Macbeth regressions. The life cycle theory is tested by running a logistic regression of the dividend payment decision on two proxies of life-cycle measured by the ratio of earned to total equity. Finally, the catering theory tests the relationship between the decision to pay a dividend and the dividend premium. Findings: The results based on a sample of Indian firms from 1992 to 2017 show that the dividend policy of Indian firms can be explained using the life-cycle theory. However, there is no evidence in support of the signaling and catering theories. Originality/value: It provides insights into the dividend policy of Indian firms. Though there have been a few studies examining the dividend payout in India, none of the existing studies tests these theories of dividend payout. The existing research using the Indian data provides indirect evidence about the life-cycle theory. This study is the first one to test the application of these theories for Indian firms. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

In this paper, we call for a re-examination of the self-reliance ideology based on a neoliberal perspective to make policies for refugee women's (self-)employment and integration. We use a social constructionist perspective to conduct a narrative analysis of data from the lived experience of twelve women refugee entrepreneurs. Three prominent themes emerge from the women’s own narratives of their entrepreneurial journey – self-reconstruction, social capital, and resilience. Our findings reveal the complexities of self-reconstruction and socialization as experienced by refugee women entrepreneurs – for whom “push” factors take precedence over “pull” factors with the explicit understanding that the onus is on them to survive with their own resilience. We argue that offering people hope of a new life means offering them meaningful choices, built on forms of economic activity whose sustainability over the long term is evidenced by the positive supports available to make sure economic activity succeeds. © 2020 The Authors. International Migration © 2020 IOM

Extant literature has shown that authenticity is positively related with life satisfaction and psychological well-being. Nonetheless, most of the previous research has been conducted in Western and European individualistic countries. The association of authenticity with life satisfaction and psychological well-being in the Asian collectivist context remains unexplored. In addition, previous research has not investigated the psychological processes that link authenticity to life satisfaction and well-being. To void these gaps, the current research investigated the association of authenticity with life satisfaction and psychological well-being, while examining the mediating role of emotional expressiveness in these associations. For the present study, data were collected from 254 employees from India, a predominantly collectivist culture. Standardized measures were used to assess the research constructs. The results of the study show positive associations between authenticity, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being. Specifically, the results show that the greater the individuals’ authenticity, the higher their life satisfaction and psychological well-being. In addition, the research shows that individuals high on authenticity are more emotionally expressive than individuals who are low on authenticity. This research provides evidence regarding the implications of authenticity for individuals’ psychological health and well-being in Asian collectivist context. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study employee engagement in higher education by examining full-time non-tenure track faculty members’ perceptions at a North East US state public university. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used semi-structured face-to-face personal interviews with 11 non-tenure track full-time university faculty. Using a phenomenological approach, thematic analysis was conducted for employee interview data. The data was further refined through first and second cycle coding. The primary eight coded clusters were further reduced to three data clusters, each representing an evolving unit of meaning. Findings: The analysis revealed three themes relating to how full-time non-tenure track faculty experience and understand engagement: required institutional engagement, perceived necessary engagement and relational collegial engagement. Originality/value: The study adds to the limited research available on non-tenure track faculty members within higher education organization and their perceptions of engagement. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: Performance management systems (PMS) are integral to an organization's human resource management but research is ambivalent on their positive impact and the mechanism through which they influence employee behavior. This study fills this gap by positing work engagement as a mediator in the relationship between perceptions of PMS effectiveness, employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses a survey-based design. Data were collected from 322 employees in India attending a management development program at a premier business school. Partial least squares–based structure equation modeling package ADANCO was used for data analysis. Findings: Positive perception of PMS effectiveness was found to enhance employee work engagement. This increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover intentions among employees. Thus, work engagement mediated the relationship between PMS perceptions and job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Practical implications: The results suggest that organizations need to focus on three characteristics of PMS, namely its distinctiveness, consistency and consensus. These characteristics determine the effectiveness of PMS in engaging employees and influencing their job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Originality/value: Prior studies on performance management have largely been limited to aspects of justice and focused disproportionately on the appraisal aspect of performance management. This study takes a systems view of performance management and addresses prior shortcomings by examining the role of clarity and horizontal fit between PMS practices in determining employee engagement. The study also provides much needed empirical support to theoretical studies which have argued that PMS is a driver of engagement in organizations (Gruman and Saks, 2011; Mone and London, 2014). © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: This paper aims to review organizational studies literature and related fields to explore the parallel between organizations and organisms in dealing with change. Design/methodology/approach: The authors reviewed the literature to explore organizational change theories. Additionally, they referred to biological studies to explore the connection between organizations and organisms. Findings: To cope successfully with change, organizations need to be aware of the critical, vulnerable points that may endanger their survival. These vulnerabilities can arise from external or internal factors or both. Organizational leaders, being aware of these criticalities, can act swiftly to deal with threats while keeping an eye on available opportunities. Research limitations/implications: Future research could be conducted on understanding the elements of biological transformations through an in-depth study focused on species that have undergone frequent mutations and adaptations. It is hoped that HRD researchers, especially organization development (OD) theorists and practitioners, can build upon the ideas presented in this article. Practical implications: The review and analysis can open doors for HRD practitioners to seek a better understanding of biological transformations, while enabling them to borrow ideas to be used in leading organizational change and design successful organizational change. Originality/value: In this paper, the authors selected organizational theories to outline parallels between organizations and organisms to emphasize what organizations can learn from the success of organisms changing over billions of years. Thus, this paper uniquely contributes to HRD literature by encouraging OD researchers to conduct more interdisciplinary research. Most importantly, this paper contributes to understanding the underlying theories in HRD/OD. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose of the study is to analyse the retrograde effect of mercury on Indian stock indices, i.e., Nifty50 and BSE Sensex. This paper presents and probes, whether the usually described phenomenon of the retrogratory effect of planets in Indian astrology persists in Indian stock indices. This research utilizes secondary data retrieved from Bloomberg from 1998 through 2018 of Nifty50 and BSE Sensex on a daily closing basis. Further, the study employs EGARCH (1,1) models to inspect the leverage effect in the market returns and the impact of the retrogratory movement of mercury on market returns. The interdisciplinary studies relating to Indian astrological concepts and financial trading strategy are very scant, wherefore, this study helps to unearth an anomaly-based trading strategy for the individual and institutional investors in the capital market. The study culminates that Indian stock indices observe the presence of asymmetry or the leverage effect during the retrogratory movement of Mercury, and a positive impact of Mercury retrograde movement on market returns. The scope of the study is limited to major stock indices of India and considers only the retrogratory movement of mercury to trace the evidence of behavioral bias in the financial market. This paper furnishes a unique empirical approach to investigate the influence of cultural variable on behavioral bias in Indian stock indices under the influence of the retrograde movement of mercury inciting asymmetric information and market anomaly. © 2020, Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature.

The paper examines the extent, nature, and factors affecting women's involvement in participatory irrigation institutions of eastern India. Effective participatory water institutions are urgently needed to improve water management in eastern India, and a significant aspect of this is the involvement of women. There is inadequate representation, participation, and involvement of women in most water institutions. From the participatory and social point of view, this is a significant concern. The relevant data are obtained from the states of Assam and Bihar through a focused survey administered to 109 women in 30 water institutions, and a larger farmer-institutional survey covering 510 households and 51 water institutions. The research examines the extent and nature of the involvement of women in these institutions, as well as in farm decision-making, and the factors that prevent or foster their participation. Additionally, it examines the gender congruence in views regarding water institution activities and their performance, and the perceived benefits of formal involvement of women. The results show that their inclusion is very low (except required inclusion in Bihar), and the concerns of women are usually not being taken into account. Women are involved in farming and water management decisions jointly with men but not independently. Findings indicate that the views of women and men differ on many aspects, and so their inclusion is important. Responses indicate that if women participate formally in water user associations, it would enhance their social and economic standing, achieve greater gender balance, expand their awareness of water management, and contribute to better decision-making in the water institutions. © 2020 by the authors.

Purpose: Faced with dynamic and challenging environments, organizations today expect all their leaders, including their women leaders, to be highly intrapreneurial. However, intrapreneurship is traditionally perceived to be a masculine activity. In order to appear intrapreneurial, women leaders consciously behave like men and suppress their feminine characteristics. This results in “emotional labor” that causes undue stress, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. Organizations can help intrapreneurial women leaders succeed by a combination of gender-related sensitization, focused training, setting up sharing and communication platforms, encouraging self-support groups and providing formal and informal mentorship to their women employees. Design/methodology/approach: We carried out qualitative research which involved 31 in depth semi-structured in-person interviews (including 11 repeat interviews) with 20 women leaders from seven large organizations from the Indian IT industry. The interviewees had 15 years of average work experience, were in the 35-50 years age group, and held senior management functional or project management responsibilities. The interviews were typically 60 minutes each. The researcher took detailed notes, and subsequently, manually carried out multiple levels and multiple rounds of coding (initially open-coding followed by focused coding) to identify and abstract the themes and categories. Findings: Our study identified that women leaders who are expected to behave as intrapreneurs, face “emotional labor” which results in stress, emotional exhaustion and burnout. To help women leaders succeed, a well-defined set of organizational interventions including gender sensitization, training, sharing & communication platforms, self-support groups, and formal and informal mentoring are useful. Research limitations/implications: To increase the generalizability of our study beyond the Indian cultural context and beyond the IT industry, future researchers may carry out both qualitative and larger sample quantitative studies in other countries, and draw upon data from multiple industries. The issues arising out of emotional labor of women intrapreneurial leaders are likely to be present in a wide range of industries and cultural contexts. However, there may be nuanced contextual differences that need further exploration. Future research can build on our findings and explore moderators, contingencies, and boundary conditions that affect the suitability of organizational interventions that we have suggested. Practical implications: Emotional well-being of women intrapreneurial leaders would help them take innovative organizational initiatives, and make the organization strategically agile. To help women leaders be intrapreneurial, organizations need many interventions and need to provide the required supporting infrastructure. Social implications: Ways to resolve gender-related issues in workplaces are suggested. Originality/value: Our study is valuable as it simultaneously considers two strategic organizational objectives of intrapreneurship and gender diversity of leadership teams. The paper provides useful prescriptions for organizations to help women intrapreneurial leaders succeed. This will help organizations that are facing dynamic external environments become innovative and strategically agile. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

This paper explores the strategic success factors of fast-growth women entrepreneurs, explicating how their gendered strategies influence their growth paths. Drawing on social feminist theory, our qualitative study posits that a conscious choice of female perspective can be the central principle behind women’s entrepreneurial behavior and positively associated with growth. Our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of how women entrepreneurs weave together (economic) growth with personal and social outcomes, while shaping their key strategic success factors–client relationship and branding, organizational values and culture, networking behavior, and leadership and management–with female attributes and values attained through socialization. © 2019, © 2019 International Council for Small Business.

High natural background radiation is a constant presence in the lives of those inhabiting some coastal regions of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. While there is agreement about the existence of radiation, some studies claim that it has no impact on the health of the population, while others disagree. There is a need to examine these findings critically, because of implications for public health, and to understand some of the technical reasons for why some papers appear to find no support for evidence (lack of statistical significance) of impact on health due to high levels of background radiation. © 2020 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.