The notion of a circular economy (CE) has recently gained significant attention, both in research and practice, due to increasing sustainability concerns and legislative requirements. Despite extensive research having been undertaken in this area, there is a paucity of research in developing decision-making models, which may consider life-cycle span of product returns while selecting an appropriate reprocessing option for value reclamation in CE. In this research, we have contributed to the CE literature in three ways. Firstly, we have developed a comprehensive decision-making model that makes a trade-off between different recovery alternatives while considering a wide range of significant criteria to determine the most optimal recovery option. Secondly, we propose a two-phase mathematical model combining the Interval 2-Tuple Linguistic (ITL) model and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to overcome issues related to uncertainty and incomplete information in decision-making. Thirdly, it is one of the first studies to investigate and compare the implementation of product recovery in CE for short life cycle (SLC) vs. long life cycle (LLC) electronic returns. We validate the industrial applicability of the proposed model using real-world data collected from the Indian electronics industry. Our results provide managerial insights, including a focus on repair strategy for SLC returns and on remanufacturing strategy for LLC returns for efficient and effective product recovery in CE. © 2022

In the last two decades, online and real-time interactions have grown significantly between individual buyers and sellers. Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electronic-commerce (e-commerce) has been increasingly adopted by the people as a direct interface for buying and selling products or services. This research focuses on identifying the key determinants for adoption of C2C auction marketplaces, especially online auctions. Rogers’ (2003) diffusion of innovation (DoI) theory has been used as the guiding framework for this study as C2C e-commerce falls into the category of technological innovation. Research methodology involves quantitative survey of 278 consumers of C2C auction marketplace in India and the application of logistic regression to determine the impact of DoI attributes on C2C e-commerce adoption. Research findings indicate that relative advantage, observability, perceived security, age, and gender influence the adoption of C2C auction marketplaces. However, compatibility, complexity, and trialability do not significantly influence the adoption of C2C auction market places. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The study explores the impact of cultural differences on social media fan engagement depending on the post content shared on social media. The differential impact on fan engagement with regard to team performance is also explored. Around 1,500 Facebook posts across four cricket teams from the cricket leagues of Australia and India were evaluated. Analysis of variance was used to test the effect of the post content, team performance, and cultural differences on affective fan engagement. First, fans are likelier to have higher engagement with posts that deal with individual sports person than the team and this effect is more pronounced in countries with higher power distance. Second, our study has established that fans are likelier to have higher engagement with better performing teams and this effect is more pronounced in countries with higher collectivism. This is the first study to explore the cultural differences and the impact of player versus team-related content types on social media engagement metrics in sports fan engagement. The study results have direct implications on developing the social media content strategy for sports clubs across different cultures. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Data analytics in small and medium enterprises (SME) is an emerging area of research and practice. Despite of growing importance of SMEs and increasing research in data analytics, the existing literature lacks an integrated view of the phenomena. To bridge this gap, a systematic literature review of 42 published research studies from peer-reviewed journals from 2010-2021 related to data analytics and SMEs is performed. After classification, categorisation, and synthesis, four broad themes are addressed, namely enabling factors, restraining factors, investing SMEs, and performance indicators. Further, research gaps identified in thrust research areas and insights for future research directions are presented. © 2022, IGI Global

Purpose: The paper aims to explore how Porter and Kramer’s “Creating shared value” (CSV) framework supports the multinational corporation’s business model to turn social problems into business opportunities in two contextually different international markets. Design/methodology/approach: Conceptually, the paper uses the CSV framework to argue that evaluation of business models in different societal contexts (geographically, culturally and economically) might be able to shed more light on the firm-societal needs. Empirically, the paper conducts a comparative content analysis of the business models of an international brand of a three-wheeler vehicle – Piaggio Ape – in Italy and India since its launch right after World War II. The content for qualitative analysis was identified using the Nexis Uni database. Findings: Findings reveal that CSV outlines the strategy for firms to integrate societal concerns uniquely into their business models, rather than solving them in isolation. However, the business model performances resulting from these firm–society linkages may vary in an emerging market and a developed market. Regulatory fit is yet another factor that decides how well CSV could be applied. Research limitations/implications: Given CSV’s contradictory perception in corporate governance literature, the study empirically establishes its theoretical value in explaining the actions and success of strategic decisions that large multinational firms take. The interactions between the underlying attributes of four CSV strategies, the regulatory fit and business model success are articulated in the form of propositions and an integrated CSV framework. Given the paper’s two-case comparative analysis, the generalizability of the identified attributes of the four CSV strategies is limited and therefore calls for future research using larger samples of firms practicing shared value perspectives. Practical implications: Corporate and international business managers can use the study findings and the proposed framework to comprehend scenarios beyond business systems and to apply CSV as a tool to address market needs in concurrence with addressing environmental and societal concerns. Originality/value: The paper is one of the initial attempts to evaluate and extend the “CSV” perspective in the international business context and, thus, promises a broad future research scope. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Lithium-ion battery (LIB), a prime residual energy source for electric vehicles (EVs), entails a market showing exponential growth with the rising global push towards electric mobility. However, such an increase leaves us with ‘big battery waste problem’ as these LIBs approach their end-of-life (EoL). Moreover, despite the availability of technologies for complete recycling of used LIBs, the lack of authorized recycling facilities and poor policy framework would hinder sustainable mobility. This study focuses on a multi-stakeholder perspective in compiling and synthesizing the key barriers and enablers of LIB recycling within the PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal) framework. The barriers and enablers are identified using a systematic literature review and a 3-stage Delphi study on various experts from the LIB recycling industry in India. Grey theory is blended with DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory) technique to evaluate interdependencies among the constituting factors. It is followed by a comparative assessment that highlights the essence of different stakeholder perspectives. The results indicate inadequacy in recycling regulations in government policies and take-back schemes in the stakeholder business model as the most significant barrier and enabler, respectively. The current work proposes a decision-making framework defining multi-stakeholder roles for effective LIB recycling in an emerging economy. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

A generalized MATLAB scheme is developed to analyze and design heat exchanger networks (HENs) in process industries. This scheme has been checked for various industrial problems from the literature. The results produced by the proposed scheme are in exact agreement with the literature. The proposed scheme is user-friendly and less time-consuming. It will be helpful for industry persons, process engineers, and budding chemical engineers, involved in modeling and simulation studies in order to minimize the energy requirements of industries as well as for academic purposes. The proposed scheme just needs a MATLAB package which is easily available and cheaper than other commercially available heat exchanger network design packages. © 2022 Wiley-VCH GmbH

Purpose: The study aims to understand enterprise social media usage at work and explore its impact on employee outcomes, particularly learning behaviors. The scope of the paper is limited to organizationally facilitated enterprise social media (ESM) used internally for workplace communication and draws upon ESM affordances highlighted by the theory of communication visibility. Design/methodology/approach: The study used a qualitative research design based on Miles and Huberman framework (1994) as the research question was exploratory in nature. Thematic analysis was conducted using QSR-NVivo to arrive at the dominant themes and to understand their relationship between enterprise social media use at work. Each emergent theme was generated from the behavioral indicators labelled as nodes. Drawing on qualitative data, the study explored the lived-in experiences of employees using enterprise social media for workplace interactions. Findings: The thematic analysis using QSR-NVivo provided qualitative evidence for the phenomenon of enterprise social media use in the form of four emergent themes: patterns of enterprise social media usage by employees, employees' informal learning behaviors, employee social capital and organizational learning capability. Research limitations/implications: The study provides theoretical insights into the lived-in experiences of employees using ESM at work and unravel thematic behavioral impact on their learning, social capital and organizational learning capability. The findings of this study support recent research work on impact of ESM on knowledge sharing behaviors (see Sun et al., 2019) and other significant work on co-creation of knowledge (see Wagner et al., 2014). Thus, adding to the body of knowledge management literature. Practical implications: This study provides evidence for the role of enterprise social media in developing organizational learning capability by offering support and platform for employees' informal learning and building their social capital. Thus, organizations should leverage enterprise social media not only a social networking tool but more as a strategic learning resource. Hence, organizational leaders must encourage employees to be involved on such platforms in order to promote their informal learning. Also, this study captures the role of employee social capital in explaining the enterprise social media, informal learning and organizational learning capability relationship. This shows that enterprise social media can help employees to learn informally when they have good relationships. Hence, this study provides implications for both HR and IT managers and consultants who plan to implement technology for collaborative purposes, should not undermine the importance of building employee social capital. Only then can they utilize the potential of ESM as a learning tool. Last, this research may also influence the general attitude towards social media use at work and further impact the design and implementation of organizational social media policies. Originality/value: The paper is novel as the qualitative investigation offers deeper insights into the impact of ESM usage on employee and organizational learning behaviors. The paper draws on theoretical underpinnings to present useful linkages between emergent concepts and makes valuable contribution to the literature on enterprise social media use and learning at work. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Land tenure and land use dynamics are causally linked to pandemics, including the current COVID-19 crisis. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated the vulnerabilities of urban and rural population living with land tenure informalities. Drawing upon long-term migration data, this article argues that land and housing tenure requires sustained attention. For tenure security and reforms, governments must design and implement post-revival and resilience strategy across industrial, urban, and rural land uses and economic landscapes. © 2022 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.

Social media message boards have become a critical source of information during mass emergencies/disasters, leading to appropriate human action. The use of platforms like Twitter to share information about unfolding crises and social media adoption by governments for communication has increased interest in developing rounded disaster management strategies. Although scholarly works exist for modeling human-traits as social media usage predictors, seminal works on using social media as a predictor for human behavior are rare. This paper aims to identify pertinent information communicated amidst a disaster to unearth linguistic and thematic features that make tweets popular and attract human involvement. This research is based on the calamities during the last decade in the Indian subcontinent. We apply computational intelligence to identify features that make a tweet popular during a disaster. Our research suggests that Tweet popularity attracting human action in a disaster is affected by communication style over social media. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper investigates the possible nexus between the 'risk-return paradox' and corporate-governance of firms in a cross-country cross-cultural setup. We use corporate governance as well as accounting risk and return data for a large dataset of 45,322 firm-years from 27 countries and show that the firm-level risk-return association may be a non-linear one, contingent on the firm performance. Firms which are below the industry median in terms of operating performance, exhibit an inverse relation in line with Bowman's (1980) ‘paradox' while those above-median exhibit a positive risk-return association. Further, we establish empirically that such risk-return association could be due to the rent-seeking actions of managers and that strong corporate-governance in a firm substantially moderates and reverses these effects. Our results are robust and hold strong through a number of robustness tests. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

The rising usage of electric vehicle batteries (EVBs) has led to the unprecedented accumulation of battery waste—creating environmental problems and raw material shortages as the batteries approach their end of life (EOL). This article examines the critical enablers of EVB recycling adoption. Using a theoretical lens for technology adoption, the article further explains the enablers of EVB recycling by extending the technological, organizational, and environmental framework. The present article adopts a hybrid Delphi approach to explore the interdependent cause-and-effect relationships of the enablers. The integrated framework has been tested by obtaining data from multiple stakeholder groups consisting of academic researchers, practitioners, and policy planners in India. The framework is followed by a comparative assessment of the multiple stakeholder perceptions, highlighting the similarities and differences. A consensus among all stakeholders is observed regarding the significance of a business model with take-back systems to enable EVB recycling adoption. This article shows how organizational factors strongly enable favorable decisions more than the technological and environmental counterparts. Differences were observed between the practitioners favoring technological enablers over other dimensions, while the policy planners equitably considered all dimensions, and the academic researchers showed an intermediate perspective for EVB recycling innovations. The findings offer theoretical and practical insights to help managers, organizations, and policy planners prioritize their efforts to promote EVB recycling adoption. IEEE

Adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 and its subsequent ratification through Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) marked, among other things, India’s commitment to reduce the emission intensity of its GDP by 33–35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 level. The transport sector, being the prime conduit of production value-chain, has been a major contributor to global energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this context, it is critical production research study that needs to evaluate the linkage of NDC with freight transport. The proposed framework consists of goal setting, seeking expert opinion and driving insights into the field of freight transport. First, goal and criteria or attribute for achieving NDC through the freight sector are identified. Next, expert opinions from transport and climate change specialists  are sought. Lastly, results and insights related to the most feasible alternatives, such as heavy road, heavy rail, hybrid, heavy waterborne, and heavy air with regard to the select attributes and its sub-attributes viz, slower growth, structural changes in sector and economy, strategic and operational choices, technology and innovation and regulatory and economic instruments with the help of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) are drawn. The strength of the proposed methodology is that it uses FAHP to prescribe definitive solutions to climate change policymakers and logistics and supply chain managers who otherwise would have found difficulties  with such an arcane subject having partial and little quantified information. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) research has gained considerable traction in the last decade. Researchers have shown significant interest in assessing the users’ continuance intention for m-commerce by using the Expectation-Confirmation Model (ECM). The ECM has been applied across varying contexts and hence, comprehensive conclusions cannot be drawn. Hence, the present study conducted a meta-analysis of the extended ECM in the context of m-commerce by reviewing 61 publications from the last decade. The study found support for all the relationships in the extended ECM. It further uncovered the partial moderating impact of culture type (individualistic vs collectivistic) and user type (students vs non-students) on the relationships of extended ECM. Finally, the study also discussed the valuable implications for theory and practice. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In this digital era, it is important for service providers to gain insights from the customer-generated data and act accordingly for gaining a competitive advantage over competitors. However, there are few studies that have attempted at utilising the online user-reviews in structural-models for examining the factors affecting user-behaviour. Additionally, there is a paucity of studies that have utilised the sentiment and emotional aspects to understand the motives affecting usage intentions. This study attempts to address this gap by exploring various uses and gratifications valued by users for different e-learning providers in India, namely, Coursera, Lynda, Udemy, Udacity and Byjus, by analysing the tweets posted by users using various official handles. Utilising a Natural-Language-Processing (NLP)-based approach (sentiment and opinion-mining) and 5868 tweets, the customer motives were analysed and mapped to the various gratifications. Results of the natural language processing-based structural-equation-modelling (NLP-SEM) technique show that consumers of different companies value gratifications differently. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

[No abstract available]

The study investigated the availability, access and management of electronic information resources in Federal University of Agriculture library Abeokuta, Nigeria. The study adopted quantitative approach as research paradigm; with survey as research methods. Questionnaire was used as the primary instrument for data collection in which the researcher took 1.8% of the entire respondent population= 1447= 26. Twenty six (26) copies of the questionnaires were given to the respondents. Twenty three (23) copies were retrieved and analyzed; representing 88.50%. The entire non-academic staff was used as population of the study. From the findings of the study therefore, the influence of demographic variables (gender, age, education and professions) about the management of electronic information resources was not significant at the surveyed university library. Thus, the study recommended increased investment in electronic databases such as AGORA and African Journals, others include, MEDLINE, PubMed, Biomed Central, Online and HINARI, CAB Abstracts, BEAST CD, VET CD, and TEEAL etc ICT facilities, staff training and development at the surveyed university library to promote increase in the management of electronic information resources to satisfy the needs of users as ultimate goal of any library and information center. © 2021, Library Philosophy and Practice. All rights reserved.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the awareness and use of databases by undergraduate students of FUAM one hundred students was randomly selected out of twenty thousand three hundred and twenty four (21324) in the study. A specifically designed questionnaire was administered to gather information about the awareness and use of databases by students. Results showed that the vast majority of the participants used Internet search engines rather than specialized databases and full-text resources. Only 6.8% became familiar with electronic resources by attending the library training programs. The main problem associated with the non-use of resources was lack of adequate searching skills. The above findings suggest limited use of databases by graduate students, mainly due to absence of basic skills, awareness. In order to exploit the full potential of information resources in the databases, university library should undertake a more active role in informing, promoting, and educating the members of the academic community. © 2021, Library Philosophy and Practice. All rights reserved.

This paper studies the impact of board composition and ownership structure on accounting as well as market performance of Indian firms in presence of certain unique statutory provisions relating to independent directors and limits on ownership concentration. The study uses a sample of 265 non-finance, non-banking and non-PSU Indian companies of S&P 500 index and applies OLS models initially. Having identified evidence of a possible feedback loop, the study then employs instrumental variables and 2 SLS models to explore how firm performance is impacted by ownership concentration and board composition after controlling for firm-level and industry-level characteristics. A series of robustness tests are used to substantiate the findings from the main analysis. A two-way relationship and ‘nonlinearity’ are recorded between market performance and ownership concentration. The study shows that a moderate-to-high ownership concentration between 25 and 75%enhances firm performance and very low level of concentration adversely impacts the same. Performance is positively impacted by board size but not by board independence. The findings of the study become particularly important for legislators and investors in the backdrop of SEBI’s regulations fixing a maximum limit on promoter’s shareholding and existence of a minimum external directors in the board for listed Indian companies that might have an implication on firm performance from liquidity, agency and information asymmetry perspective. The study documents that an optimal shareholding concentration and large board size with internal directors rather than a high percentage of independent external directors leads to value creation in Indian context. The paper provides new insights onto the relationship between board composition, ownership structure and firm performance in the backdrop of regulations brought out by SEBI in this behalf. The findings of the study have varying degree of application in common law origin countries with strong regulatory framework for investors’ protection. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited part of Springer Nature.

The study aims to assess patients’ preferences regarding physicians communicating bad news of COVID-19. Based on the data collected from 74 patients with COVID-19 in India, this study assesses “how” patients want bad news to be delivered. Key aspects of the physician–patient interaction were identified from the literature. Regression tests proved that three main constructs contribute significantly toward patient outcomes. Content of the message and facilitation were most crucial, however too much emotional support was not desirable by patients. Also, the patient’s gender and educational background should be considered before breaking bad news. Thus, to increase patient compliance full disclosure and patient-centered methods of communication can be used. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.