With the presence of fake reviews on e-commerce platforms, the reliability of reviews becomes questionable. The extant literature demonstrates the impact of fake reviews on product sales and proposes several algorithms to prevent fake reviews from being displayed on the platform. However, what has largely remained uninvestigated is how customers perceive reviews present on the e-commerce platform. Based on the speech act theory, we develop a theoretical framework that explains how the linguistic style (both at the word and the structural level) acts as a cue for assessing a reviewer's (in)sincere intentions. We evaluate the framework on a corpus of 120 online product reviews – each examined by at least 50 customers – using the fractional logit model. Results suggest that the communication style of a speaker reflects his/her intention. Reviews with less contextual embedding, argument structuring, and flattering through non-verbal cues trigger customers towards perceiving a review as deceptive. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Successful new product development projects and extant research literature advocate for inclusion of inputs pertaining to the supply chain at early stages of product development to proactively identify risk averse product design concepts. To this end, we devise an analytical framework to converge upon product design concept(s) that would be associated with lesser supply chain risks, usually function of both technical and commercialization considerations. The high-level and constituent lower-level supply chain risks are represented by parent and root nodes respectively within the devised Bayesian network driven research framework. Thereafter, a quantitative measure denoted as SCRI (supply chain risk index) is evolved that yields overall composite risk numbers corresponding to respective design concepts at different risk states. Validation and comparison of the devised method with an extant study illustrates the consistency and reliability of the study. It is found that the risk propensity of a particular design concept is inversely related to the probabilistic utility of that particular concept. The case of a construction power tool of a global firm is used to demonstrate the methodology. Our research addresses an important future research pathway as argued by Hosseini et al. (2020) that extant research literature is devoid of decision-making frameworks focused on measurement and analysis the propagation of risks on complex networks. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The significance of sustainability is continually expanding among researchers, policymakers, and decision makers. To improve the efficiency of value chain activities such as manufacturing, distribution, and consumption, an innovative research solution has been proposed: ‘Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) through Information and Communication Technology (ICT)’. Sustainability through ICT is significant for the industry in terms of its sustainable effects on production processes, environment, and community. This research seeks to gauge ICT—as knowledge management—for industries in the successful adoption and execution of SCP. In so doing, potential key ICT-based factors to SCP are identified from the literature and experts’ feedback. The present work suggests a decision framework for assessing the interrelationships among and between the ICT oriented factors by utilizing graph theory and matrix approach. Data for this work derives from three automotive companies operating in India. From findings, ‘Governance and Management’, is the topmost factor for the adoption of sustainable consumption and production in value chains. The relationship among the index values is further evaluated using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. This research can facilitate practitioners, government agencies, and customers for a better understanding of ICT-driven factors in managing resources, reducing waste, and improving cost, which would further help in meeting sustainable development goals of the United Nations of responsible consumption and production and innovation, industry, and infrastructure. © 2021 IGI Global. All rights reserved.

The objective of making an organization ‘sustainable’ needs development on the economic, environmental, and social fronts. Indian Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises are facing the competition posed by rising technological advances in the market. Thus, Industry 4.0 intervention shall be highly useful in this context. This study assesses the barriers involved in implementing Industry 4.0 for sustainable production, and it attempts to find causality among the barriers using the ‘Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory’ method. The study considers eight barriers to implement Industry 4.0 for sustainable production. These barriers are inter-related and have causal relationships among them. This causality is represented graphically. The applied method delineates barriers under consideration for causality into two groups, namely; ‘influencer’ and ‘influenced.’ It also illustrates the strength of the influence of one barrier over the other through numerical values. The prime contribution of this study is to not only find the influencing barriers but also to mitigate them by allocating scarce organizational resources. Mitigating the influencing barriers would help in managing the influenced challenges. ‘Technological upgradation’, ‘lack of policy frameworks’ are the top two barriers that find its place in the hierarchy of importance established by this study. These barriers are also classified into the ‘cause’ group. Also, this study establishes that ‘difficulty in access to credit’ and ‘non-readiness of the workforce’ in adopting Industry 4.0 are ‘influenced’ barriers. This study shall be of importance to the small business practitioners and government analysts in evaluating barriers in implementing sustainable production initiatives using Industry 4.0. With this, Indian Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise needs to upgrade by upskilling young working population for the forthcoming technological revolution of Industry 4.0. Finally, we suggest several important implications for managers and policymakers. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

With high speed internet, the retailers are continually engaged in upgrading mobile apps that facilitate shoppers in shopping anywhere-anytime and arousing their sudden urges to buy impulsively. The present study endeavors to decipher the antecedents of mobile app-based impulsive buying behavior and determining their relative significance in triggering impulsive urges. Using structural equation modeling, causal analysis was undertaken to identify the role of effort expectancy, price and discounts, atmosphere and layout of app, and user experience and satisfaction in creating impulsive buying intentions. It was observed that price and discounts and user experience didn’t have any influence in stirring the consumer for impulsive buying. To determine the relative significance of remaining four, artificial neural network modeling was undertaken. Effort expectancy was noted to have highest influence in creating impulsive urges, followed by atmosphere and layout of an app. User satisfaction had minimum impact. The paper concludes with practical implications for m-commerce players. Copyright © 2021, IGI Global.

In recent years, municipal authorities especially in the developing nations are battling to select the best health care waste (HCW) disposal technique for the effective treatment of the medical wastes during and post COVID-19 era. As evaluation of various disposal alternatives of HCW and selection of the best technique requires considering various tangible and intangible criteria, this can be framed as multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this paper, we propose an assessment framework for the selection of the best HCW disposal technique based on socio-technical and triple bottom line perspectives. We have identified 10 criteria on which the best HCW disposal techniques to be selected based on extant literature review. Next, we use Fuzzy VIKOR method to evaluate 9 HCW disposal alternatives. The effectiveness of the proposed framework has been demonstrated with a real-life case study in Indian context. To check the robustness of the proposed methodology, we have compared the results obtained with Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution). The results help the municipal authorities to establish a methodical approach to choose the best HCW disposal techniques. Our findings indicate that incineration is the best waste disposal technique among the available alternatives. Even if the dataset indicates ‘incineration’ is the best method, we must not forget about the environmental concerns arising from this method. In COVID time, incineration may be the best method as indicated by the data analysis, but “COVID” should not be an excuse for causing “Environmental Pollution". © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Natural products, including food, cosmetics, and other fast-moving consumer goods, are becoming increasingly popular, and their health-related benefits are widely recognized. Despite the growing awareness and use of natural products, little is known about the enablers and barriers that influence consumers' brand love toward them. The present study attempts to address this gap and better explain consumer behavior toward natural products by utilizing the stimuli-organism-response (S–O-R) theory. The study rests on the premise that certain stimuli influence the internal state of consumers (i.e., the organism), which, in turn, shape their response to products and services. This study uses health consciousness and environmental concern as the stimuli, both facilitators (natural content and regional product) and inhibitors (usage and image barriers) as the internal state of the ‘organism’, and brand love as the response. Based on analysis of 720 responses, the study empirically reveals that health consciousness and environmental concern significantly influence the consumers' internal state, as represented by the identified facilitators and inhibitors . Three of these, namely, regional product, image barriers, and usage barriers, are found to shape brand love for natural products. The moderating role of household size on brand love is also confirmed.The findings of the study contribute to the literature on consumer behavior and practice. © 2020 The Authors

We conduct a comparative assessment of the spillovers of three types of Fed's monetary policy surprises, i.e., Fed funds rate (FFR), Forward guidance (FG), and Large-scale asset purchases (LSAP) on monetary autonomy in the periphery economies (PEs). We find these shocks to be significant in causing loss of monetary autonomy in the PEs. We also find that the macroprudential tools mitigate the degree of such impairment. This holds for two types of macroprudential policies, i.e., borrower-targeted and financial institutions-targeted. We find both of them to be most effective against the FFR shocks. Comparing the macroprudential tools, we find the financial institutions-targeted tools to be more effective than the borrower-targeted ones in mitigating the degree of impairment against all types of Fed shocks. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

We respond to calls from business schools (B-schools), apex education bodies, regulators, activist groups and researchers for more rigorous research to understand the future strategies of B-schools in India. We specifically examine the challenges posed by the current COVID-19 pandemic (and possible future similar eventualities) and the current and long-term strategies being planned to combat such crises. Design/methodology/approach: To reveal the real-life scenario, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 academic leaders (Deans and Directors) of B-schools in India. These respondents were from both public and private institutions across the country. Open-ended questions were framed for exploration to help the authors understand the way forward in the Indian B-school context. Findings: Findings reveal that B-schools in India are preparing themselves to overcome short-term challenges faced due to COVID-19 as well as transforming themselves through long-term strategies. Originality/value: The study outlines strategic plans for some imaginative reassessments that B-schools may consider as a reaction to a pandemic-like emergency. The focus is on distinguishing the imperatives, creating a key guide for meeting immediate requirements, allotting assets in a prudent way to update educational course curricula and teaching methods and building the required academic infrastructure. The ability to focus on enduring changes (e.g. creating an e-learning framework and providing a safe and secure learning environment to students as per government mandates) will provide B-schools with a new lease of life in the future. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

With the advent of cellular manufacturing systems and consequent evolution of configuring methodologies, researchers proposed several multi-objective techniques, besides others, to handle different types of cell formation problems. This paper presents a systematic review on types of cell formation by using multi-objective techniques. It also delineates the type of objectives, production factors and datasets used for testing the efficacy of methodologies, considered by researchers along with the scope and direction of future studies. Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Purpose: The study examines the antecedents of responsible financial management behavior among young adults in India and explores the role of financial risk tolerance as a moderating variable. Design/methodology/approach: The sample includes young adults in the age group of 18–35. The analysis uses a two-step approach via standard partial least squares structural modeling (PLS-SEM) and ordinary least square (OLS) regression. Findings: Structural modeling results show that financial attitude fully mediates the relationship between financial knowledge and responsible financial management behavior, and locus of control influences responsible financial management behavior. Financial risk tolerance moderates the relationship. Among demographic factors, age and occupation influence responsible financial management behavior. Research limitations/implications: The financial knowledge used in the survey are based on self-reported responses. The future study can include participants from both developed and emerging countries to assess similarities and differences. Practical implications: Despite the growing focus on improving financial literacy, there are growing concerns regarding responsible financial behavior. Since financial services is related to fiduciary responsibility, managers and policymakers need to ensure that financial knowledge results in improving financial attitude, which further leads to responsible financial behavior. Originality/value: The present study from an emerging country will add value to the literature. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Well-anchored inflation expectations play an important role in the achievement of price stability. The (de-)anchoring of long-term inflation expectations in the US has been under debate since the sub-prime crisis. This paper assesses and explains the evolution of the degree of (de-)anchorage of households’ long-term inflation expectations in the US during the period of 1990 to 2019, in a time-varying framework. We find the long-term inflation expectations to be de-anchored during the entire study period. The de-anchorage was greater in the first half of the 1990s. Subsequently, it has declined but has not yet anchored. An increase in inflation perception reduces the degree of de-anchorage in a (persistently) low-inflation perception period, whereas it causes a rise in the degree of de-anchorage when inflation perception is around its long-term average or is persistently high. Further, a rise in economic policy uncertainty also increases the de-anchorage of households’ long-term inflation expectations. This suggests that the Federal Reserve System (Fed) may find it beneficial to pay more attention to households’ inflation perception. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.

In recent years, countries have been competing with each other to attract tourists due to of the unprecedented growth in new tourism destinations. Consequently, these countries have been taking several initiatives to improve the competitiveness of their destinations in comparison to those of other countries. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for destinations to become the most popular and preferred choice among tourists. Previous literature has highlighted the need for examining the association between the culture of a particular destination and their competitiveness with respect to tourism. Little is known, however, about these associations at the present time. This study offers a cultural explanation of the travel and tourism competitiveness (TTC) of a country by investigating the relationship between destination competitiveness, as measured by TTC, and national culture. The study investigates these relationships by analysing data from 73 countries. Multiple regression was used to examine the relationships, and cluster analysis to segment the countries. The findings indicate that individualism, long-term orientation, and indulgence dimensions of national culture were significant in influencing the TTC of a country, whereas power distance and masculinity were insignificant. This study emphasises the importance of developing culturally congruent policies to improve destination competitiveness. © 2020 The Authors

Although the impact of job demands and work–family conflict (WFC) on burnout has been extensively discussed and analysed in the past literature, the role of WFC as a generative mechanism has been neglected. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effects of WFC between job demands and burnout. The studied sample consisted of 713 Indian primary school government teachers who completed a self-report questionnaire assessing job demands, WFC and burnout. The results confirmed that WFC partially mediates the adverse association of job demands with burnout. Primary schools should, therefore, be encouraged to provide effective practices to manage work–family interfaces. © 2020 SAGE Publications.

Purpose: Considering the limitations of supply chain collaboration (SCC) literature, the purpose of this paper is to develop SCC framework and analyze the SCC practice based on the framework. The framework incorporating internal and external knowledge sharing under a collaborative culture (CC) and problem-solving environment preceded by preparedness is required. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve successful collaboration, this paper encompasses problem-solving and performance measurement, preparedness, culture, relationship strength (RS) and gives resource sharing and planning as internal and external focused perspectives. Exploratory methods are used to analyze the data from industries. Findings: CC, RS and preparedness are crucial that reflect the health of collaboration. Three levels of collaboration practice – good, moderate and weak – are prominent where the extent of SCC practice seems weak. Collaborative activities that matter more are identified. Market-based knowledge sharing is important for good and moderate SCC, while weaker collaboration does not focus on it. Interestingly, this paper finds an increasing level of collaboration may not always result in increased performance. Firms from the pharmaceutical, automobile and electrical/electronic industry tended to practice higher collaboration as compared to other industries. Originality/value: By integrating market-driven management, resource-based view, and contingency theory, the SCC framework gives a new perspective. Joint planning and resource sharing are categorized as internal and external focused functional areas. The paper identifies three profiles of collaboration and discusses the importance of SCC activities in achieving performance. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

This study conceptualizes and tests a framework to understand consumers’ intention to use environment-friendly ethical transportation medium. It primarily uses ethical decision-making model and extends it under the purview of self-consistency theory. Based on the survey of 158 respondents and analysis of the framework using structural equation modeling and process macro, this study establishes the mediating role of moral judgement, self-accountability and perceived consumer effectiveness in forming moral intention to use ethical transportation medium. It is one of the first studies to provide insights on consumers’ intention to use environment-friendly ethical transportation medium using the ethical decision-making process. It also contributes to the literature on ethical decision-making in view of additional factors like self-accountability and perceived consumer effectiveness. The overall findings suggest new perspectives on consumers’ ethical decision-making process in the context of choice of transportation medium. The study provides some valuable guidance to the service providers and policymakers dealing with environment-friendly ethical transportation mediums. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The relationship between CSR and cash holdings is not conclusive from prior studies due to the endogeneity issue. In this study, we use a natural experiment setting, i.e., the implementation of mandatory CSR spending regulation in India in 2015, to test the relationship between CSR and cash holdings. Our results show a positive relationship between CSR and the value of cash holdings. As a result of such positive valuation, we observe that the firms which are required to spend on CSR activities under the Act, increased their cash level in the post-regulation period. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.

Our study investigates corruption and its effects on capital structure in 16 emerging markets using panel quantile regression method. Using a data of 4236 firms during 2002–2015, we find a heterogeneous relationship between corruption and leverage across quantiles. The relationship between corruption and leverage is positive and significant, except at the 10th quantile, with the effects being strongest at the higher quantiles. The results also hold in various robustness checks. Overall, the result indicates that firms prefer debt financing in order to safeguard its assets from getting appropriated. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

The global crude oil market has experienced a significant downturn following the novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) in December 2019. Thereafter, all the major oil markets have become extremely volatile, and investments in these markets could lead to substantial losses. This paper empirically investigates the time-varying correlations between gold and oil markets to examine whether gold is a safe haven asset for the international crude oil markets during the COVID-19 period. For the purpose of comparison, the safe haven property of Bitcoin is tested as well. The results of the time-varying correlations obtained through the DCC-GARCH model suggest that gold is a safe haven asset for global crude oil markets. Bitcoin, on the other hand, acts only as a diversifier for crude oil. The results further show that the portfolio risk is minimized when investors include oil and gold in their portfolio rather than holding assets in oil and Bitcoin markets. Given that financial downturn, terrorist attacks, pandemics and similar global events often play a crucial role in portfolio risk analysis, our results could be of interest to those who invest in oil, gold and Bitcoin markets. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd