Contemporary organizations use projects and project based structures extensively because it increases flexibility and allows better and more efficient allocation of resources within an organization. It also brings focus to a set of activities and enables a more effective governance based on cost, time and schedules. Despite this focus, project failures are well documented and are known to impact organizational performance. Projects vary across several dimensions and these contingencies require different management styles and practices to deliver effective performance. Yet the dominant assumption in project management practices continues to be “One size fits all”. We draw on project contingency literature to understand how contingencies impact project performance. Another dimension that impacts project performance is the extent to which the project manager has autonomy in handling the managerial practices in the project.



In this study, our focus is to understand the interplay among project contingencies, impact of autonomy in implementing Human Resources (HR) practices (known as devolution) and project performance. Software services industry has been chosen as the context due to nature of industry being predominantly project oriented.



This thesis consists of three related essays. In the first essay, the relationship among the constructs namely project contingencies, devolution of HR practices and, project performance is explored. Using qualitative research methodology, with project managers as respondents, we arrived at a theoretical framework for project contingencies.



The theoretical framework has been tested for validity and generalisability in the second part. Literature review suggests HR support environment as an important factor that influences the relationship between devolution and organisational performance. Hence, this factor was added to the model. A survey about project experiences was designed and was administered to project managers. The analysis revealed that in case of projects with high uncertainty, devolution of HR practices impacts project performance positively. Also, the impact of HR environment is significant in the relationship between devolution and project performance.



We argue for higher devolution to project manager in cases of projects with high uncertainty. However, the extent of uncertainty is best assessed by the project manager. This information is not available to the same nuance and extent to the project owner or the central administration. This scenario is formulated analytically using principal agent model. Optimal contract that the organisation can offer to the manager in order to ensure profitability has been derived. The study has theoretical and managerial implications for the field of project management and human resources management.

http://repository.iimb.ac.in:8080/bitstream/2074/10051/1/DIS.IIMB-FPM.P19-04_Abstract.pdf

Consumer purchase decisions are influenced by the underlying preferences and the underlying consumption possibilities. A deeper understanding of the likely demand drivers would help manufacturers to promote, differentiate or reposition their offerings differently. Towards this end, this thesis examines some key unobserved drivers of household demand. In the first essay, we seek to understand the economies that may arise from shared consumption to analyze how households of varied compositions may respond to price promotions and constraint relaxations. The second essay examines the strength of consumer preferences for a focal product category (compared to outside goods) and the product characteristics, as well as their price sensitivity, to investigate how consumers may respond differently to price-based policy intervention versus product characteristics reformulation. The insights we get from the counterfactual policy simulations using the estimated drivers of demand would help manufacturers and policymakers in devising optimal strategies.



In essay one, we examine how the products are consumed and its impact on quantity decisions. Products that are individually consumed (e.g., food) provide value to the individual consuming member, while products that are jointly consumed by household members (e.g., household cleaners, light bulb) benefit multiple members as they are enjoyed in a non-rivalrous manner. In this research, we explore how households allocate expenditure across the product categories that are privately versus jointly consumed and how this impacts their responses to marketing strategies. We develop a structural model of household demand by incorporating household composition and consumption pattern. We estimate the model with panel data and recover preferences, satiation, and the economies of scale arising from joint consumption of private and shared products. We find that multi-member households enjoy higher economies of scale but are more price sensitive to private goods compared to single-member households. In contrast, larger households are less price elastic for shared products. We also find that larger households and households with children have a higher marginal utility for budget constraint relaxation. Based on the above insights, manufacturers/retailers contemplating promotional allocation across product categories can choose consumer segment who may best respond to such promotions.



In essay two, we examine consumer response to taxation vs. product reformulation in the context of policy intervention in the form of a “sugar tax”. The global epidemic of diet-related health concerns has induced policymakers to use taxation-based interventions (termed as sugar/fat/soda tax) to reduce the consumption of energy-dense processed food products such as Carbonated Soft Drinks, and high sugar Breakfast Cereals. The manufacturer of the taxed products may choose to pass on the sugar levy wholly/partly to the consumers or reformulate the products by reducing the taxed product attribute to avoid/lower sugar tax. In this research, we examine the manufacturer’s optimal response strategy to such policy interventions, by first investigating consumer’s potential response to a sugar tax versus product reformulation. Using a direct utility based structural model we recover consumer preferences for product attributes, variety seeking preferences, and preference strength to the focal category relative to the outside category. Conditional on the recovered consumer preferences, we find that sugar tax may reduce the demand in general, but, product reformulation may increase the demand for the focal category in the presence of heterogeneous consumer preferences, though the per-gram sugar consumption decreases. Our findings suggest reformulation as an optimal strategy for the manufacturer. We also find that policy-makers may find an incentive-based intervention that prompts the manufacturer to reformulate more effective in the long term in reducing the overall sugar consumption than direct tax-based intervention



Together, the essays contribute to the quantitative marketing literature that examines the behavioral aspects of demand drivers. Both the essays develop microeconomic theory-driven structural models which can be used in policy simulations to predict consumer response under changed external conditions. The models are estimated on a panel dataset using a Hierarchical Bayesian framework to recover household level demand parameters.

http://repository.iimb.ac.in:8080/bitstream/2074/10040/1/DIS.IIMB-FPM.P19-16_Abstract.pdf

The dissertation consists of four essays which can broadly be classified into the following research themes - investor attention, information diffusion, variability deviation, and consumer confidence. Each essay has an element of information based on Google search queries where either it forms the basis for modeling or illustration of the underlying/proposed methodology. The results or insights obtained in these essays have implications in various management and scientific disciplines. In the first essay, we study the memory and correlation structure of the Investor Attention Time Series (IATS) for energy stocks as measured by Google search queries. In the second essay, we look at information demand diffusion process and propose a stochastic differential equation model to capture when and how does this process peak. The model has a closed form solution and explains the diffusion even when there are parallel sets of information about an event. The third and fourth essays are theoretical and data-driven respectively. In the former, we propose a new measure to capture outlying variability deviations. The distribution of this measure is exact and parameter-free when the original random variable belongs to a class of distributions. In the final essay, we carry out an extensive data analysis to show over/under confidence in respondents of consumer confidence survey. We also propose an index to quantify the expectation gap and illustrate how Google search queries could be used to obtain more frequent estimates of Consumer Confidence Index.

We present three essays in the backdrop of the banking industry in India. In the first essay, we model and estimate the effect of task complementarity and external monitoring by the informed investors on the social and financial performance of banks. In the second essay, we examine further how task complementarity can be improved using Government-bank partnership in a development program so that it is incentive compatible for banks to lend to improve financial inclusion in the economy. For this purpose, we model two designs of programs using credit subsidies and study how mechanisms for incentive alignment embedded in the two programs affect the level of bank lending in the two programs. Finally, in the third essay, we study the problem of debt concentration and over-leverage in the economy to explore the relationship between over-leverage and natural resource curse. We empirically test whether natural resource sectors in India in particular and countries with an abundance of natural resource, in general, are prone to over-leverage in the economy. Together, the three essays seek to contribute to improve our understanding of the strategies and performance of banks in a developing economy.

Consumers, as they navigate online to buy products, along with average rating and text reviews, often use rating distributions (e.g., bar graphs showing % of reviews for each star rating on Amazon) in the process of evaluation. The dissertation proposes a model of customer rating based product evaluation. For a given level of average rating, the model predicts whether consumers will prefer alternatives with less risky (i.e., low variance) or riskier ratings. The proposed model is based on prospect theory’s principle of reference dependence. With its novel mechanism of reference point (target level of outcome) selection, the model explains important findings in the literature (e.g., consumers prefer riskier ratings when average ratings of alternatives are high) that existing reference dependent models cannot. Selection of reference point in the new mechanism, unlike in its counterpart in existing models, is informed by the modal probabilities of rating distributions. The proposed model’s predictions and its mechanism of reference point selection find support in the results of a series of experiments. Of theoretical relevance, the essay revises existing perspectives with a range of insights into the process underlying risk preference. Of managerial relevance, riskier ratings are likely to help sales at high positive (well above category average) and negative (very low) average ratings but hurt sales at average ratings in between.

While education has its own intrinsic value, its benefits extend beyond individuals who receive schooling directly. Other members of the society also gain through externalities (Basu et al., 2000). This alone provides justification for governments’ continued involvement in literacy for all and researchers attempts to understand what factors influence the demand and supply of education. Education is closely related to the quality of the human capital, which then translates into higher incomes for the people. Better income provides opportunities for achieving better health and education, thus feeding back into the cycle. In a globalized scenario, it is important that the poorest are nudged to be a part of this cycle, since their most important asset is labour. This alone can transform India by attracting better foreign direct investment and developing a pool of skilled workers with adequate technical knowledge. Primary education in India remains the domain of the state while higher education and technical education are increasingly being relegated to the market for efficient resource allocation and to reduce the demand-supply gap. However, the necessary conditions under which such initiatives of the government can succeed are often not met. That is the reason why despite many initiatives for universalisation of primary education in the past decades, India’s efforts achieved limited success till the early 2000s with 28.5 percent of all children aged ten to 14 being out of school (Census 2001). About 30 percent of students dropped out of primary schools in 2010-11 (MHRD, GOI).

In my first chapter, I examine whether age of entry into school could influence students’ educational performance and be correlated with school dropouts in a developing country setting. This question is important since unlike the developed countries, most students do not enjoy access to high quality pre-school or conducive learning environment at home in less-developed countries. The debate there is still confined to participation in education, and schooling comes at an opportunity cost of labour force participation of the child. In such a context, it is important to study if the age at which individuals start school matters for their school performance. An early entry into school is desirable, since it leads to a longer working span, but may also breed disinterest and disengagement if the child is not able to follow the curriculum. Determining the correct age for school entry has been a controversial topic among policy makers, with existing studies providing mixed evidence. I use the Young Lives Project data from the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh in India collected over 12 years to show that school meal programs can have unintended consequences, resulting in economically disadvantaged students entering school at a younger age1 . I find that an early entry increases the probability of dropping out of school, and negatively affects academic performance as measured by examination scores in standardized examinations for mathematics. Therefore, governments must ensure that admission into formal schools is age-appropriate and not rushed by providing for more robust and compulsory pre-school care.

A frequently cited explanation for lower human capital investment is household poverty. In my second chapter, I examine the relationship between increased consumption of addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco, opium and cannabis on components of human development, particularly education and health expenditure. I use the National Sample Survey (NSS) data to study the adverse implications of such a trade-off, since studies have found that those with the lowest level of education are most likely to be heavy smokers, heavy drinkers and the most physically inactive, thus leading the household into a vicious cycle of even greater consumption of addictive substances with ever increasing medical costs (Schnohr et al., 2004). The paper finds that intoxicant expenditures are a signicant component of total household expenditure and negatively correlated with investment in human capital, more so for the poorest households. This shows that individuals (and therefore households) tend to be myopic about consumption decisions. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions performed for each of the rounds separately indicate that economically better off households tend to spend more on human capital attainment. Rural households are constrained by their endowments, and hence invest lesser in human capital. However, even if addictive users had the same endowments, they would still spend lesser on education than non-users. Thus I find that addiction is not only unhealthy, it can also be very expensive in the long run. This nding may be explained by the higher time preference of addictive substance consumers who are myopic and therefore place a lower value on the future benefits of spending on education or healthcare. Decreased spending on education leads to increased poverty, greater reliance on addictives, greater medical expenditure, thus leading the household in a vicious poverty trap.

For India’s tertiary education sector, adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has emerged as a potential solution to reach out to a greater number of students, especially those who could not access education previously. With the aim of providing students and teachers with interactive tools and latest educational content for skilling, teaching and learning, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as one of the most widely adopted forms of ICT. However, with more universities opting to deliver courses online, there is a need to examine the impact of substitution of regular classroom programs by online courses on students’ academic performance. This paper compares student academic performance for two successive batches in one of the top business schools in India - where one batch was offered a traditional classroom preparatory course and the other an online lecture format through MOOCs. My study design uses the Difference-in-Difference estimation to assess whether the change in lecture delivery and pedagogy has an impact on subsequent performance of the student in the subject. The paper finds that students perform worse in subsequent examinations when offered a preparatory course online for both Managerial Economics and Financial Accounting, as compared to performance in a traditional in-person class setting. Additionally, I find that student performance is more varied and the negative effects are stronger for students with lowest academic ability.

The fundamental tenet underpinning the governance literature has been that good governance enables better decisions and improved corporate performance. For instance, decades of governance research using the lens of agency theory (Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Jensen & Murphy, 1990) suggests that affording greater equity compensation to corporate managers should lead to better decisions as there is greater alignment between the interests of corporate managers and those of the shareholders (Dalton et al., 2007). Likewise, a large volume of governance research (see Dalton et al., 2007 for a review) suggests that a greater proportion of independent directors on company boards should lead to better decisions. More independent directors enable better monitoring of the actions of corporate managers. Effectively, by enabling better alignment or better monitoring of managers, most of the prominent tools of good governance are aimed at mitigating the opportunism of corporate managers and thereby improving corporate performance (Misangyi & Acharya, 2014). In other words, extant governance research is driven by the premise that opportunism of corporate managers is the central governance challenge.

Empirical evidence, however, suggests that mitigating the opportunism of managers does not always improve performance (Dalton et al., 1998, 2003, 2007; Demsetz & Lehn, 1985). Indeed, most of the mechanisms for mitigating opportunism fail to improve performance (Dalton et al., 2007; Ghoshal, 2005). This limitation has prompted scholars to revisit the governance mechanisms to better understand how they can mitigate opportunism more effectively (cf. Attig et al., 2012; Dharwadkar et al., 2008; Filatotchev & Wright, 2011). Indeed, despite Hendry’s (2002) insight that opportunism may not be the central governance problem in the first place, governance research continues to lopsidedly focus on opportunism (Bebchuk & Weisbach, 2010), agnostic to other governance problems thus, at best searching for an incomplete solution to the challenges of governing the corporation, and at worst, searching intensively in the wrong place.

Against this backdrop, we take a different perspective one motivated by research on judgment and decision making (cf. Camerer & Hogarth, 1999; Larrick, 2004; Soll et al., 2010) on the central governance challenge facing organizations. We recognize that corporate insiders and corporate overseers alike may be overwhelmed by the complex nature of managerial work, and may not primarily know with confidence as to what constitutes a “better” decision. As a consequence, we focus on the uncertainty of the decision context rather than opportunism of decision makers as the central governance challenge.

The discussion on environmental sustainability has occupied the centre stage for managers and policy makers. Decades of research in this domain has shown that production processes are one of the major drivers of greenhouse gas emission. However, with value chain dispersed globally, managing supply chain to achieve true environmental sustainability remains a distant dream for most managers and policy makers. While there are multiple studies that has looked into this aspect, most studies conceptualize buyer-supplier relationship as simple linear relationship without recognizing the interdependencies in the chain. Consequently, the existing literature has failed to appreciate the nuances associated with multi-tier network structure and firm’s GHG emission. Probably because of this reason, despite decades of research on sustainability, there is lack of consensus among managers and academics to deal with the issues of environmental sustainability. The conventional doctrine of sustainability is also challenged by the fact that there is growing realization among policy makes that firm’s own emission is just the tip of the iceberg. To achieve true sustainability a firm must go beyond its direct emission and must be able to curtain the emission of the entire network. However, lack of availability of data has presented significant challenge for academic researchers to carry out empirical study and provide practitioners with any credible solutions. This work is aimed at overcoming such limitations by delving into role of multi-tier buyer-supplier network in reducing both firm’s own emission and emission of the network. We overcome the challenge of construction of a multi-tier network by collecting data from secondary sources. The multi-tier nature of our network not only looks at firm’s direct suppliers but also incorporates suppliers’ suppliers and customers. Therefore, we not only look at firms contractual relationships but also focus on non-contractual relationships as well. This makes our study more meaningful as it captures the intricacies of the supply chain. Our primary thrust is on GHG emission. In Essay I we focus on role of three important network characteristics density, betweenness centralization and average clustering co-efficient and its relationship with focal 2 firm’s GHG emission. The objective of this essay is to develop a more robust understanding of multitier network structure and GHG emission. We also focus on moderating role of average path length in our study. We find that for some network characteristics there is a linear relationship between network structure and GHG emission whereas for others there is curvilinear relationship. Again, direction of relationships is also different. While, density has an U shaped relationship, betweenness centralization has positive average clustering co-efficient has negative relationship with GHG emission. We collected data from 330 firms and from 28 different countries and tested our proposed model. Hence, for the first time in literature, we are able to unearth the role of buyer-supplier network structure in reducing GHG emission.

Essay II extends the findings of Essay I and focuses on emission of the entire network. While conversation in academia as well as industry has revolved around going beyond firm’s own emission, no empirical work exist in this domain. We overcome this shortcoming of existing research by focusing on the relationship between cohesiveness, centralization and modularity and GHG emission of the entire network. We find that while centralization and modularity have positive effect on GHG emission, cohesiveness has a negative relationship with network emission. Therefore, this essay for the first time focuses on network structure environmental performance at a network level.

While doing so, for the first time in literature, we are able to show empirically the relationship between buyer-supplier network structure and environmental performance of both focal firm as well as entire buyer supplier network. This research not only helps us to resolve multiple paradoxes but also helps us to provide a generalizable framework which is valuable for both academic research and practice.

"Automation, enabled by technological advancements, is transforming the nature of work in organizations. Although extant literature explores the implications of automation on work, this literature has, for the most part, dealt with rank and file work, considered work as static, and technology that is not developed by the organization. The literature has not fully examined the impact of internally-driven automation on the emergent social and contextual dimensions of work especially at positions other than the users of technology. The present study draws upon the sociopsychological system literature and role theory to advance understanding of implications of automation on work in organizations.

To study the above-mentioned phenomenon, I conducted a qualitative study of Bosch, a multinational manufacturing organization, across four major plant locations in India. These sites were engaged in substantial automation of their existing processes by developing solutions internally. As a part of data collection, I interviewed 42 organizational members across various hierarchical positions; attended 3 internal meetings in which multiple stakeholders conceptualized automation solutions; and attended 3 smart automation and Industry 4.0 training sessions that specific plants had organized for operators, engineers and external visitors. I also drew upon informal discussions, direct observations, and technology-specific artifacts to triangulate the findings.

As I analyzed the data, I identified three different forms of automation solutions that were deployed at the plant sites— elimination of an operation, reduction of idle machine time through continuous operating, and integration of multiple operations carried out a single person. The form of automation had implications for the work design characteristics at the technological and social Page | viii dimensions not only at the operator level where automation was introduced but also across other levels in the organization— those of supervisor, engineer and manager. The process of automating began with recognizing the needs like efficiency, accuracy or ergonomics that could be realized through automation. Financial viability and human indispensability were important tradeoffs that were considered for making automation related choices. The path between determining organization specific priorities and final automation form was mediated by sociopsychological mechanisms of synthesizing, appraising, leveraging and legitimizing. The findings highlighted changes in interpersonal interactions and interdependencies among various levels arising out of automating.

Overall, this study responds to calls for more field research regarding the changing nature of work in the wake of increased automation arising out of technological advancement. Present findings further prior research on work design by elaborating characteristics that underwent change due to automation across multiple levels in the organization. By describing the process of automating and highlighting the mediating sociopsychological mechanisms, the study contributes to understanding how automation choices are made and which relational aspects of work undergo change when automation is implemented. Based on the findings, I outline changes that can be initiated in human resource management practices."

Inter-regional inequality has long been considered inevitable with economic growth and the relationship between them has been assumed to follow an inverted U-shaped pattern (Williamson, 1965). However, a number of studies have also found that high levels of income inequality have a significant negative effect on subsequent economic growth (Alesina and Rodrik, 1994; Persson and Tabellini, 1994; Alesina and Perotti, 1996) and that such differences often persist over time. Increasing inter-regional disparity in India has been a cause of concern in policy circles. While, there is an overall decline in income based poverty in India over time, several studies have found that there are significant differences across states and regions in the success rates of poverty reduction (Datt and Ravallion, 1998; Deaton and Dreze, 2002). High level of regional inequality is not considered desirable because of the probable impact on subsequent economic growth and for equity and sustainability considerations. In this thesis, I look at three core aspects of regional development.

Democracies have been argued to have more stable long-term economic growth rates through their ability to better manage economic shocks and resulting conflict (Rodrik, 1997). The relationship between democracy and conflict, while much studied in the literature, is a contested one. In my first essay, I construct a new index of democracy motivated by the multidimensional approach of Alkire and Foster (2011). I argue that this index is more suited to capture the degrees of democracy and thus contributes towards eliciting the relationship between democracy and conflict more accurately. I use a relatively recent cross-country dataset on democracy from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project with more than 350 indicators for 173 countries and spanning the time period from 1900 to present. I find that my proposed index is able to accurately capture the quality of democracy in countries as it reflects the democratic upheavals that select countries have undergone quite reliably. I also find that while the linear relationship between democracy and conflict is not significant, the relationship between democracy and internal conflict is significantly negative when we use the log form of the explanatory variable. I also find a strongly negative relationship between democracy and internal conflict using Africa as a special case.

In the second essay, I conduct a sub-national analysis of poverty-inequality for India at the district level using NSSO consumption expenditure data from 1987 to 2012. Most of the related literature in India is limited to state level analysis barring few exceptions which conduct a district level analysis but for a specific year (Sastry, 2003; Chaudhuri and Gupta, 2009). I see an overall decline in poverty over the time-period studied, but a rise in the eastern region. I also find that inequality, while declining in the earlier decades, has increased recently. Due to the lack of data, the literature has used nighttime lights as a proxy for economic development especially for spatial comparisons. In this essay, I also compare the poverty and inequality estimates arrived at using consumption expenditure and luminosity data. I find that while the average economic development estimates have a significant negative correlation with poverty, the correlation with inequality is not present.

My third essay examines the impact of a particular policy, which aimed to promote balanced regional industrial development in India. However, the Freight Rate Equalization Policy has often been mentioned as one of the causes of underdevelopment of the mineral rich Eastern region of the country. In this paper, I try to assess the impact of the policy on inter-state disparity in India. Using a panel data set for 24 Indian states for the period from 1981-82 to 2012-13 and Difference-in-Difference estimation, I examine the impact of the policy on comparative economic growth rates of states of India. I find a statistically significant positive impact of abolition of freight rate equalization policy on overall Gross State Domestic Product of mineral rich states. Considerable heterogeneity is observed for the different states and I find that the positive impact on overall economic growth rate is largely driven by stronger effect in specific states."

The past 25 years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation in the number of PTAs (Preferential Trade Agreements) across the world. From about 23 PTAs (physical number of PTAs, counting goods & services together) notified to the WTO in 1990 (GATT, then), the number rose to 86 in 2000 and crossed 280 in 2016. This rise in the number of PTAs has been accompanied by an increasing diversity in the nature of their members and their scope in terms of inclusion of 'newer' and 'deeper' provisions. Over the years, the scope of PTAs has deepened, with the inclusion of chapters and provisions pertaining to areas such as investment, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, competition, services, IPRs, government procurement, e-commerce and labour mobility, among other issues. These 'deeper' disciplines, traverse well beyond the traditional PTAs which only covered goods trade and aimed at lowering tariffs.

Alongside the proliferation of PTAs is another phenomenon, the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) and international production networks (IPNs) as firms have fragmented their production process across geographies in order to exploit the competitive advantage of different locations. Against this backdrop of rising GVCs and IPNs, 'deeper integration' assumes importance. Multiplicity and non uniformity of rules and standards across borders increase the costs of trade and production and PTAs can play a critical role in standardizing rules and regulations across member nations.

Literature on the impact of PTAs on trade flows between countries is quite extensive (Tinbergen (1962), Aitken (1973), Trefler (1993), Frankel (1997), Klausing (2001), Hertel(2001), Zarzoso et al. (2003), Baier & Bergstrand (2007) etc,.). Most of these studies, however, treat the existence or non existence of PTAs between member states as a binary variable and do not focus on the nature of the PTA. There is a dearth of studies that analyze their impact taking into account the depth and breadth of PTAs as captured by their disciplines and provisions. Further, most of the earlier studies, only assess the impact of a PTA on trade in final goods and do not capture the extent of participation of countries in GVCs & IPNs.

This thesis attempts to address the aforementioned gaps in the existing literature by first understanding the nature of ""New Age PTAs"" in terms of their depth, breadth and geographic orientation and second by assessing the implications of the evolving nature of these arrangements for value added trade and participation in GVCs and for trade prospects in specific sectors. The thesis consists of three papers that are connected by the underlying theme of PTAs and their impact on value added trade and sectoral trade.

The first paper is descriptive in nature and provides a broad overview about the evolving landscape of PTAs and trade flows over the years. It tracks the 'waves of regionalism' (Bhagwati, 1999 & Carpenter, 2009) that have clustered the economies into regional (later inter-regional) blocs. It highlights the patterns of PTAs over time across various dimensions including the level of development of member countries (North-North, North-South and South-South PTAs); their regional composition; their scope in terms of coverage of issues such as services, investment, government procurement, etc. The discussion of the evolving nature of PTAs is juxtaposed with the evolving nature of trade flows among member and nonmember countries, among developed and developing countries, within and across regions, for goods and services, both.

Building on the global context of PTAs and trade flows highlighted in the first paper, in the second paper, we empirically estimate the impact of 'deeper' PTAs on trade in the context of value chains and production networks. For this, we use an intensive panel data set constructed by us, for value added trade and PTAs. The value added trade data set is based on the OECD's- TiVA (Trade in Value Added) Database, which covers 61 countries (accounting for 90 per cent of world trade, 2015) and 34 industrial sectors from ISIC Revision. To characterize the nature of PTAs, we use a dataset created by the WTO, which coded 55 PTAs, signed during the time period 1958-2010. We make additions to this existing dataset by replicating a similar coding scheme for 32 PTA texts, wherein we construct indices that measure the depth of PTAs. We use an augmented gravity equation, to study the impact at aggregated and disaggregated level for selected sectors, namely, textiles, automotives, basic metals and chemicals, to assess how industry-specific characteristics may shape the impact of a deeper PTA. We observe, that 'deeper' PTAs cause the value added trade between countries to rise by a higher amount. Also, 'deeper' and 'new age' PTAs have a much higher impact on value added trade in sectors such as automotives which have long and complex value chains spread across many firms and are intensive in innovation and investment. These results hold key implications for policy making for Governments as well as for firms in making investment decisions. We also assess if the impact of a 'deeper' PTA varies depending upon the level of development (North-North, North-South & South-South) of the member countries.

The third and the final paper, is qualitative in nature and specifically examines India's IT-IT enabled services trade with Japan and Korea. India has consistently performed well in this sector, experiencing a trade surplus, with exports rising from US $ 40 bn in 2000 to US $ 107 bn in 2016-17 (Electronic and Computer Software Export Promotion Council, India), highlighting India's competencies in this sector. The Asia-Pacific market came out to be experiencing highest growth at 7.8% in 2017(NASSCOM). However, trends in India's IT-IT enabled services trade with the Asia-Pacific region, indicate that it accounts for a very small share of India's exports. In particular, Korea and Japan, two developed Asian countries with which India signed trade agreements, in 2009 and 2011 respectively, continue to account for a negligible share. This points towards the inability to reap benefits from the existent synergies between India's globally acknowledged competence in knowledge and skilled based service industry, and Japanese and Korean expertise in innovation and manufacturing. This paper makes use of in-depth interviews and discussions with industry experts, industry associations as well as government officials in India, Japan and Korea to understand whether these PTAs have had any effect on the Indian IT-IT enabled services exports to these markets, the opportunities and challenges present in penetrating these markets and steps that can be taken with these partners as well as domestically, by the Governments and firms to strengthen bilateral business relations in this sector. Based on the findings, this paper aims to provide recommendations on how to better leverage deeper and broader PTAs and realize the expected benefits in sectors such as IT & IT-enabled services where India is competitive.

Public Service Motivation (PSM) entails belief, emotions, and values that tend to make one inclined to protect the interests of the society at large. Despite 25-year of research on PSM across the world, doubts remain about the construct per se and its measurement. In the research reported in this dissertation, the author conceptualizes PSM as tendency to place societal interests above other considerations and willingness to sacrifice for society in delivery of the services and presents evidence against the widely used 4-dimensional scale but for his new unidimensional scale.

In Study 1, civil servants (N = 314) working in various departments of the Government of India (GOI) anonymously responded to the 4- dimensional scale (Kim et al., 2012). Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFAs) of the responses failed to support a 4-, 3-, or 2-factor structural model and there were concerns of convergent and divergent validities.

Study 2 (N = 154) tested a 6-item unidimensional PSM scale developed as per the author’s conceptualization of PSM as societal interest and sacrifice for society. Results of reliability and validity seemed promising.

Study 3 (N = 450) tested the convergent and divergent validities of the PSM construct by correlating scores on the 6-item unidimensional measure with those of other existing measures of similar (altruism, work passion) and dissimilar (materialism) constructs. While evidence for convergent and discriminant validities seemed encouraging for the new measure, low reliability of the measure of altruism and high correlation between PSM and altruism left the relation between PSM and altruism rather ambiguous.

In the fourth and the final experimental study, participants (N = 256), varying in PSM read a vignette in which a public servant had acted in way that either helped an individual citizen or safeguarded the societal interests and judged whether the act of that decision maker, was driven by PSM or altruism. As hypothesized, participants scoring high, compared to those scoring low, on the PSM scale made sharper distinction between altruism and PSM. That is, the distinction between altruism and PSM was unclear among low scorers but sharp among high scorers.

These four studies are the first attempts to study PSM in the Indian context and collectively offer PSM as a unidimensional construct, present a 6-item scale, and show that PSM is distinguishable from altruism by only those high in PSM. While this research presents convincing evidence for construct validity of PSM, it leaves the challenge of establishing its criterion-related validity (i.e., concurrent and predictive) for the future.

In this thesis, we propose a unit root test based on Johnson SU density when the AR-coefficient is very close to one (local-to-unity) in the true data generating process. Through extensive simulations, we find that the proposed test, in finite samples, is as powerful as Dickey-Fuller test for normal errors and is significantly more powerful than many existing tests for non-normal errors. The proposed test has been applied on the Nelson and Plosser data set and on the nominal monthly interest rate of India. The proposed test performs better than several other tests available in literature.



A strategy has been developed for unit root test that helps practitioners to decide whether they should use time trend in the model or drift in the model. This strategy has shown pretty good small sample performance, especially for the case with asymmetric errors.

“The individual is always the basic strategic factor in organization.” - (Barnard, 1938: 139) Eighty years ago, Barnard highlighted the importance of individuals for organizations in his groundbreaking book, “The Functions of the Executive.” My dissertation builds on the body of research that focuses on human capital, and more specifically, star employees (“stars”) in organizations. Stars are recognized as rare and valuable due to their superior human capital that often results in high individual performance. Yet, the academic literature is ambiguous regarding the influence of star employees on colleagues. My dissertation seeks to deepen the understanding of how stars influence the performance of their colleagues—both fellow stars and non-stars—and hence of their organization. I develop my theoretical arguments using ideas from the social psychology literature on social comparison.



My dissertation departs from prior management research on human capital in two ways. First, prior research takes a star-centric view of the interactions between stars and non-stars ignoring the role of non-stars. While research shows that stars can have both positive and negative effects on non-stars, it does not offer compelling arguments for these conflicting findings. My dissertation reconciles these conflicting findings by shifting the focus from stars to non-stars. I depart from prior research by arguing that non-stars are agentic and heterogeneous; the assumptions in extant literature that non-stars in an organization are a passive and homogeneous group is rather simplistic. I argue that heterogeneity among non- stars and their behavior can help reconcile the conflicting findings of the influence of stars on non-stars. Exploring the implications of heterogeneity among non-stars, I ask: How do stars in an organization influence the performance of different types of non-stars? I argue that social comparison processes can explain whether a star’s peer effects on a non-star are positive or negative. Briefly stated, for non-stars who significantly lag in performance relative to stars, interactions with stars result in a positive impact on the former’s performance. For non-stars who are similar in performance to stars, the positive and negative impact of stars is contingent on the characteristics of both stars and non-stars.



Second, prior research suggests that beyond a point, more stars in an organization are counterproductive for organizational performance. The underlying mechanism is that stars fight for status and thereby create coordination challenges in team-based production. In contrast, I argue that stars are not self-centered. Instead, their objectives are aligned with those of the organization. Thus, I ask: How does the number of stars in an organization impact a focal star’s performance? I argue that stars have a positive influence on each other’s performance because they identify with each other and share organizational responsibilities.



Extrapolating from individual-level performance implications, I theorize about the impact of team composition on organizational performance. I ask the following questions: First, how does the distribution of different types of non-stars affect organizational performance? Second, how does the ratio of stars impact organizational performance? With respect to the first question, I argue for an inverted U-shaped relationship between the ratio of different types of non-stars and organizational performance. With respect to the second question, I argue for a positive relationship between the ratio of stars and organizational performance.



The dissertation uses the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) as the empirical setting to quantitatively test the hypotheses."

Agricultural information delivery comprises of communicating relevant agricultural technology, information and knowledge to farmers and is carried out with the intent that the information will be adopted by farmers and will lead to enhanced agricultural productivity. India has a huge institutional setup for delivery of agricultural information by public institutions to farmers and a large part of success of green revolution is attributed to effective delivery of input use recommendation to farmers using this setup. The most common method of information delivery is in-person delivery, in which extension agent visits farmers and suggests them on recommended practices.

In context of current agricultural situation in India, two relevant issues stand out. First issue is low access to information and the second issue is delivery of effective information. Currently, there is low access to agricultural information among farmers. A nationally representative survey shows that less than fifty percent farmers had access to any source of information on agriculture. Low access to agricultural information has contributed to sub-optimal agricultural practices such as mismatch between nutrient application and nutrient requirements and has resulted high yield gaps and low returns from agriculture.



Read More:

http://repository.iimb.ac.in:8080/bitstream/2074/10036/1/DIS.IIMB-FPM.P19-12_Abstract.pdf

Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing gives customers maximum control over the price they pay. Existing research acknowledges the growing importance of PWYW, but reveals contradictory findings about customer’s PWYW participation. Although prior research focuses more on buyer's payment motives, this thesis provides an additional motive for variations in PWYW payments. Five studies show that customer’s regulatory focus can resolve the PWYW participation ambiguity and explain the variability in PWYW payments. First two studies examine the influence of chronic regulatory focus on PWYW participation and payment behavior. Next two studies replicate the previous findings for situational regulatory focus. Results show that buyers with a promotion (prevention) focus have a higher(lower) intention to participate but pay less (more). Study 5 replicates studies 1-4 in a field experiment and provides perceived fairness as a mediator to explain the relationship between regulatory focus and PWYW payments. Results throw a surprising element for managers that buyers with high participation intention may end up paying less. This work enhances the theoretical understanding of PWYW pricing literature and presents some actionable intelligence for practitioners.

Marshall & Rossman (2016) suggest that the curiosity that inspires research often comes from observations of the real world. The 5th largest sector in the Indian economy is healthcare. Despite the advances made in the sector the bed density in India is 0.67 per 1000 people, which is well below the global average of 2.6 and the WHO benchmark of 3.5 (McKinsey & Company, 2012). This implies that there is a lack of infrastructure in the healthcare market. This should imply that hospitals in India have enough patients to survive. However, this is not observed in the case of Christian mission hospitals. In the past decade these mission hospitals have been shutting down. This is a paradox that seems interesting. In order to explain this paradox I use the lens of institutional logics.

Literature on institutional logics suggests that organizations adhere to logics to gain access to resources. If the logic does not provide resources organizations may substitue the logic. However, I argue that certain logics are core to the organization and these will not be substituted. In order to gain access to resources an organization may adhere to a combination of logics. This raises the question which combinations work? Additionally, combining multiple logics may also lead to tensions within the organization because the goals of the logics may be conflicting. Therefore, it is important to also understand how organizations deal with multiple logics.



In this study I use a multiple case study method to answer these questions. I find that Chrisitian mission hospitals do not get resources by adhering to the logic of religion. However, they adhere to this logic since it is central to their identity. I also observe that adhering to the logic of market helps the organization gain economic sustainability. However, adhering to the logic of market does cause tensions within the organization. The organizational structure and governance structure can be used to mitigate these tensions.



I also observe that organizations use multiple response strategies such as translation, blending, selective coupling simultaneously to deal with conflicting logics. This study has importance not only for literature but also for practice; specifically, for social enterprises.

Customer churn because of service failures has become a strategic challenge for managers across the globe. An examination of extant literature pertinent to the relationship between service failures and customer churn reveals paradoxical findings which raise reasonable doubts about the theoretical validity and practical utility of service recovery strategies. To mitigate these concerns and guide managers to deal with service failures, we develop a comprehensive framework that addresses service recovery and customer churn. We explore multiple contingencies that may impact the effectiveness of different recovery mechanisms. Specifically, our research delves into factors – failure-specific, market-specific, customer-specific and industry-specific, that scholars and managers must pay attention to in order to understand the relationship between service failures and customer churn. By doing so, we not only propose a new model of consumer behaviour but also address many of the existing paradoxes in literature. In Essay I, we focus on market-specific and failure-specific factors. Specifically, we explore whether service recovery strategies based on failure-specific factors used in emerging markets should be different from those used in developed markets. We find that the conventional wisdom that has governed recovery strategies for the last two decades may not hold up in emerging markets because the underlying consumer behaviour may be different. We use multiple methods to validate our hypotheses, to make our research more robust and representative of the reality in emerging markets. In Essay II, we look into customer-specific and industry-specific factors. We find that the effectiveness of recovery strategies changes based on types of service as well as frequency of occurrence of failures, that is, whether the customers have faced the failure for the first time or if it is a repeat failure. Both the essays are an attempt to understand theoretical boundaries of service recovery and present some actionable intelligence for practitioners.