Rural development can be understood as the process of enhancing people's quality of life in the rural regions along the economic, social, cultural and political dimensions (Desai, 1987; Singh, Pandey, & Goswami, 2018). It attempts to address people's pressing issues in the rural regions and remains at the core of overall development in India (Singh, Pandey, & Goswami, 2018). While early approaches to rural development were synonymous with agricultural development, scholars suggested the need to investigate other rural problem domains in order to do justice to the plurality of rural life and unleash the full potential of people in the rural regions (Haggblade, Hazell, & Reardon, 2010). In response, researchers have inquired into problem domains like the cottage industry, forestry, fishing, education, infrastructure, among others. Such interventions were enacted by different actors like policymakers, NGOs, NPOs, social enterprises, private sector and individuals (Mohanty, 2020).nWhile significant results have been achieved over the years like improved access to education, improved attention to craftwork through geographical indication tags, among other things, research suggests that there is still a lot left to be done to bridge the rural-urban divide in India (Mohanty, 2020). In this regard, scholars discuss the limitations associated with social innovations and digital innovations and then highlight the requirement for a hybrid approach to solve rural development problems (James, Kriss, & Dale, 2008). Hence, we explore the emerging concept of digital social innovations (DSI) that attempts to achieve a balance between using the power of digital technologies, with the need to embed them in a contextually entrenched manner, so that it would be locally useful to the communities (Qureshi, Pan, & Zheng, 2018).nDSI is defined as the design, development and deployment of innovative products, services and other activities in which digital technologies play an important role and are aimed at improving the well-being of disadvantaged groups or are aimed to address social issues concerning inequality, social exclusion and marginality (Qureshi, Pan, & Zheng, 2018). In this thesis, we study DSIs in the context of the rural artisan industry and rural education. We first problematize the context of rural education and rural artisan industry and thereby motivate the need for DSI based approaches. In the context of rural education, building from the literature, we synthesize the problems associated with the rural education ecosystem into five pillars, namely, environment, subject-matter, processual technique, student and learning outcomes (Dey, 2020; UNICEF, 2007). Subsequently, we leverage the theoretical lens of market separations developed by Bartels (1968) to synthesize the market development issuesnfaced by the artisans, where we explicate the spatial, temporal, informational, financial, capability and capacity separations.nUsing DSI as the conceptual foundation, the research objectives in this thesis are two-fold: i) to understand the mechanisms through which DSIs enable development in the quality of education for rural children and livelihood enhancement for artisans and ii) understand the role of digital social intermediaries1 in enabling DSIs in this context. To achieve this, we inquire into the DSIs by a digital social intermediary over a prolonged period of over twenty-four months (using both qualitative and quantitative research designs) in the context of rural education and rural artisan industry. The data collection effort in the context of rural education involves a case study approach, wherein we study CommunityLink's (a pseudonym for a social entrepreneurial venture) DSI based interventions in the rural education space in West Bengal, India. We rely on participant observations, semi-structured interviews, field notes and archival data, collected over thirty-one months.nIn the context of the artisanal industry, we conduct two studies. The first study is a preliminary investigation using a survey design with three groups of rural base of the pyramid (BoP) artisanal women (N=135): 1) group C1-women had no smartphones, 2) group T1- women had their own smartphones and 3) group T2-who received smartphones and digital social intermediary support over two years. We collect data using a survey instrument developed through items in the literature. The second study involves a more in-depth inquiry into the artisan industry through a case study approach. We study the case of CommunityLink and conduct online and offline participant observations, semi-structured interviews and gather different forms of archival data over twenty-four months.nOur findings in the context of rural education revealed how CommunityLink's DSI leveraged the 'complementarities' between the two institutional voids2 present in its context in order to fill each void with the help of the other. Specifically, we find how CommunityLink used the dormant knowledge capital of the urban elderly (retired citizens) that is often ignored by the society, to provide holistic education to the rural children from the marginalized communities. We also find how CommunityLink employed an ICT based platform to connect the two communities and overcome the issue of physical distance. Further, in our findings, we elucidate CommunityLink's ICT centred institutional work that was performed to overcome various institutional challenges it had faced. Building on these findings, we theorize the concept of complementary voids and outline the theoretical dimensions of institutional work that may enhance the success of ICT based interventions in these contexts.nSubsequently, our preliminary inquiry using a survey design with rural BoP artisanal women suggests how access to community technologies (e.g. public Wi-Fi) may be difficult for them due to the gendered public spaces in rural regions (Mudliar, 2018). We find that access to consumer technologies (CTs) like smartphones may be the means through which such rural BoP women may be able to access the digital world (Mudliar, 2018; Venkatesh, Tho, & Xu, 2012). We demonstrate how access to CTs can enhance their socio-economic well-being through increased structural social capital (SSC), freedom of movement and entrepreneurial intent (Gigler, 2011). We then demonstrate how interventions by a digital social intermediary could further enhance the impacts of access to CTs. We also suggest that infrastructural elements like access to roads may deter the impact of access to CTs on the entrepreneurial intention of rural BoP women.nWe then conduct a deeper inquiry into the artisan industry over a prolonged period using a case study approach wherein we study CommunityLink. Our findings revealed that the DSI by CommunityLink enabled ICT-mediated value co-creation between rural artisans and urban micro-entrepreneurs that enhanced value-added to the craft products. Specifically, we find that value is added through 'awareness creation' and 'repeated engagements'. Further, we find that the impact of value addition to craft products through the above two dimensions depended on the complexity of the product co-created. We suggest that the awareness dimension is most useful when the complexity of the product co-created is low, while repeated engagement is most helpful when the complexity of the product co-created is medium.nBuilding on our study, we use the lens of value co-creation to suggest how awareness creation and repeated engagements act as two dimensions that enable ICT-mediated value creation in the artisan industry context. Further, we provide two propositions on the impact of the identified dimensions on value creation. We then leverage theories on media richness (Carlson & Zmud, 1999) to contribute to theory-building by outlining a conceptualization of ICT mediated joint value creation for spatially separated actors. In this thesis, we also highlight the pivotal role played by digital social intermediaries in driving DSIs and make contributions to the DSI and social intermediation literature (Kistruck et al., 2013) by unearthing the key activities conducted by them in the context of rural development.nBuilding on the findings from this thesis, we also provide contributions to policy and practice. We then outline our limitations and then advance some directions for future research. Finally, we urge the information systems scholars to extend the work in this thesis on DSI and leverage under-used theoretical lenses like institutional work (Lawrence et al. 2009), to explore resource-constrained contexts which are rarely considered but widely prevalent in the world, to provide important theoretical and practical contributions.

Research on marginalized groups and employment outcomes has picked up since the mid-2000s. This dissertation is an attempt to understand certain labour market outcomes in India that are important, yet relatively under-researched. The questions that arise in this context are dealt with in four independent chapters.nThe first essay attempts to address the question: does women’s participation in non-wage work promote their empowerment? In this context, this chapter further analyses the role of women’s business ownership in India as a means of improving their decision-making power in the household. The second essay focusses on another issue that is important in the context of growing inequality, and one on which relatively few detailed studies exist - the topic of occupational mobility in India. This chapter analyses the link between the occupational status of fathers and their sons and also examines the factors associated with occupational mobility among men in India. The third and fourth essays in this dissertation are an effort to understand certain aspects of self-employment in India. The third essay examines the differences in the earnings of Muslims and other social groups in self-employment. The fourth essay highlights descriptive evidence related to female self-employment in India and how it compares to men’s self-employment. A brief outline of the chapters in this dissertation is provided below.nThe first essay, using the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data, empirically examines the effect of different categories of women’s employment status on their empowerment, defined by their decision-making power in the household. Female employment, especially paid work outside the home, has often been claimed to provide a means to women’s empowerment. For women working inside the home, however, mobility is limited. Given that unwaged or home-based work is a less visible form of work, it would be interesting to explore the relation between women’s participation in non-wage work (family farm/household business) and their empowerment. The results in this chapter suggest that the effect of women’s employment status on empowerment is strongest in case of wage/salaried work. Controlling for endogeneity, we find that in rural areas there is no significant impact of women’s participation in non-wage work on their empowerment. A striking aspect of self-employment in India is the high proportion of women as unpaid family workers in both rural and urban areas. Women’s business ownership is often put forth as a way of promoting women’s empowerment. The results provide support for this claim; women’s business ownership is seen to be associated with a higher empowerment score, compared to that of contributing family workers. Policies promoting women’s business ownership have the potential to increase their empowerment.nThe second essay focusses on occupational mobility among men in India. There has been extensive research on occupational mobility in the context of developed countries. The study of social mobility is important in the context of developing countries, especially India, given the growing inequality in recent decades. Yet, there has been a dearth of such studies in the Indian context. Compared to studies on inequality in India, there have been fewer studies on intergenerational occupational mobility. In this chapter, an empirical framework is used to examine the link between the occupational status of fathers and their sons, using thennationally representative IHDS data. The analysis highlights that sons of fathers employed in higher ranked occupations are more likely to be employed in such occupations. Further, a multinomial logit specification is used to examine how individual, household and village characteristics are related to occupational mobility outcomes among men in India. The results in this chapter suggest that improved village transport infrastructure has implications for mobility outcomes in rural India. The results also indicate that fluent English speakers in urban areas are significantly more likely to be upward mobile. Given the importance of English language skills and the costs associated with acquiring these skills, policy makers should consider this when making investment decisions for schooling.nIn India, self-employment accounts for more than half of the total workforce. Bulk of the academic work, however, has focussed on wage employment in India. While the ethnic and racial character of self-employment in the context of the United States has been studied fairly extensively, existing literature in the Indian context could not address these issues empirically until recently, due to the unavailability of earnings data. The third essay, based on the IHDS data, examines the differences in returns to self-employment by religion, based on the earnings of household non-farm businesses in India. An important feature of the labour market scenario in India, as revealed by survey data, is that Muslim workers are mainly engaged in self-employment activities, particularly in urban areas. The motivation for this study is twofold. First, most studies on the relation between religion and earnings have focussed largely on countries such as the United States and Canada. Second, a shortcoming of the rather limited literature on the relation between religion and earnings in the Indian context is that empirical studies so far, have excluded self-employed individuals. It is generally argued in literature that on several counts, Muslims are a disadvantaged minority group in India. It would be interesting to investigate whether the relative disadvantage for Muslims, ifnany, extends to self-employment. The analysis in this chapter suggests that after controlling for various characteristics, there is a significant earnings difference between Hindu Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs) and Muslims, with the former faring worse. Further, we find that membership in networks is positively associated with the income of Muslim-owned businesses. Quantile regressions indicate that the effect of many covariates is not uniform across the entire earnings distribution. The results suggest that there is no significant difference in the earnings of the self-employed Muslims and Hindu upper castes, in favour of the latter, except at the top end of the earnings distribution.nA notable feature of female employment in India is the importance of self-employment; it accounts for a large proportion of the female workforce. The share of the self-employed category and female work participation rates in India have followed a similar pattern; it has been observed that when the proportion of the self-employed has risen (declined), women’s work participation rates have risen (declined). Over the years, there have been several government initiatives to promote self-employment among disadvantaged castes and women. For female self-employed workers, therefore, an analysis of distinct groups of the self-employed becomes important. Accordingly, the descriptive analysis in the fourth essay, primarily based on an examination of unit-level data of the quinquennial rounds of the employment-unemployment situation of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) and the recent Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, is an attempt to further our understanding of women’s self-employment along with its caste/religion dimension. This chapter also compares women’s and men’s self-employment in terms of certain characteristics including the educational profile of workers and the extent of underemployment. According to NSSO reports, the proportion of usual principal status workers who report themselves as available for additional/alternative work, provides an idea about the prevalence of underemployment.nAmong self-employed women, an analysis across social groups indicates that the proportion of workers seeking or being available for additional/alternative work is the highest among Muslims. The analysis in this chapter suggests that self-employed women who are primarily engaged in domestic duties express a willingness to accept work if suitable work opportunities are made available. Further, a large proportion of these women across most social groups report lack of initial finance as a major constraint in taking up their preferred activity.

With the expansion of computing and the internet revolution, two-sided markets are fast becoming ubiquitous across all spheres of the 21st-century economy. To highlight its relevance, three of the five most valued companies in the world have adopted the same as their business model; Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Also, seven of the ten most valued start-ups have adopted this business model, including the likes of Uber and Airbnb. At first, the phrase ‘two-sided market’ sounds like a tautology, i.e., by default, all markets have two sides, a buyer side and a seller side. Formally, it is defined as a market in which the volume of transactions between end-users depends on the structure and not only on the overall level of the fees charged by the platform.nThese businesses need to address the ‘chicken-egg problem’ and successfully get both sides on board. While these new forms of business have, on the one hand, reduced transaction costs, there is empirical and experimental evidence of these markets being highly concentrated, with a tendency to lean toward ‘winner takes all’ owing to network effects. Regulators across the globe are attempting to strike a balance between not curbing innovation on the one hand and, at the same time, protecting consumer welfare.nIn this context, in Essay 1, I analyze 25 antitrust cases about two-sided markets in the Indian context to understand the jurisprudence in the country in the backdrop of a decade of existencenof the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The cases traverse several industries, namely radio taxis, online marketplace, real estate, healthcare, entertainment, stock exchange, broadcasting, online search, and academic publications. I argue that CCI, with its non-interventionist policies, reflected by the number of acquittals at the prima facie stage, coupled with instances of high discretion and low predictability, falls in the ‘Market Discretionalists’ category.nThe next two essays focus on one side of these markets, i.e., labour or the service-providers. I focus on understanding aspects of labour in the Indian Radio Taxi Industry due to its ease of access and its characteristic of being a prototypical example of the “sharing economy.” The sharing economy can be described as being mostly market-based, ensuring optimal utilization of assets, where crowd-based “networks” operate rather than centralized institutions or hierarchies and where there are blurred lines between fully employed and casual labour, between independent and dependent employment, between work and leisure.nOn the one hand, the sharing economy is said to provide ‘flexibility’, autonomy, and enhanced incomes to labour. On the other hand, it has been a hugely contested space for corporations circumventing prevalent regulations. The status and working conditions of labour in this sector has also come under question, with certain scholars referring to drivers in the radio taxi market as “sweated labour”. As part of the second essay, I analyze prominent case laws from the US and EU jurisdictions, addressing the central question of whether drivers in the radio taxi market be legally considered independent contractors or employees and draw vital lessons for India. To understand the ground realities of labour in this sector, I undertook a primary survey of 251 Uber and Ola drivers in Kolkata between November 2019 to February 2020. Innovative contractual arrangements had emerged in the country to tap into the surplus labour that exists. Findings reveal that about 90% of the sample reported working for 9 hours or more in a day, thereby implying a lack of flexibility for labour in the sector. About 60% of the sample reportednaspiring for an “employee” legal status, while about 30% wished to remain “independent contractors”. Drivers who multi-homed and “attached” themselves to more than one app reported higher weekly net-incomes than single-homers. Also, owners of assets (cars in this case) who drove in the radio taxi segment reported weekly net-incomes lower than drivers who were merely hired by asset owners.nComponents of subjective well-being, viz., life satisfaction, worthwhileness, happiness, and anxiety are intricately intertwined with individuals' income, employment, and work-patterns. Despite this fact, there is a considerable dearth in understanding workers' subjective well-being in the emerging forms of employment of Industry 4.0. As the world keeps pace and adapts to newer business models, the notion of “work” and “labour” as we know it is undergoing a dynamic transformation.nEssay 3 attempts to understand the determinants of subjective well-being of workers in the sharing economy in India. While there is scanty literature about understanding the underpinnings of subjective well-being in developed countries, such work is non-existent in developing countries like India. We obtain data from a primary field survey in Kolkata, an Indian city, between September 2019 to February 2020. The survey was administered on 251 radio taxi (Uber and Ola) drivers.nThis study is the first of its kind in providing evidence for "sharing economy specific factors" like car segment, nature of the contractual arrangement, and multihoming impacting subjective well-being. We have three key findings from this essay; firstly, a higher car segment enhances life satisfaction and aggravates anxiety; the latter could potentially be connected with loss-aversion. Secondly, renters report lesser levels of worthwhileness than their driver counterparts, potentially owing to the opportunity cost of losing out on investing in their own assets. Thirdly, multihomers report higher levels of anxiety attributable to higher search and information costs.

Advanced forms of technology have enabled digital platforms that facilitate online correspondence between management, workers, and customers (Kallebarg and Dunn, 2016). Such dynamically interactive platforms' upsurge allows individuals to share their assets, time, and labor for remunerative tasks or jobs (Cherry, 2016; Sundararajan, 2016). This form of business model has furthered the opportunities for gig work, thereby resulting in an increasing base of the gig economy (Donovan et al., 2016). The gig economy mediated via digital platforms is characterized by short-term peer-to-peer transactions, remunerated per task or job, and consists of a high degree of autonomy and flexibility (De Stefano, 2015). The upsurge in the gig economy's phenomena due to extensive technologization has been discussed in the academic, media, and political realms. Yet, it remains under-theorized in the mainstream academic literature. The present dissertation focuses on how gig work is facilitated by advanced digital platforms such as app-based companies and the emergent labor-management dynamics associated with the ascent of app-based companies.nThe growth of app-based companies connecting users with service providers has been unparalleled. App-based cab companies such as Uber stand out as an epitome of such a model that connects drivers with the customers through its app. For the dissertation, a three-essay format focussing on the context of app-based cab companies has been followed. The first essay offers insights into how app-based cab companies in the gig economy deploy entrepreneurshipnrhetoric to gain institutional capital and highlight the implications of the rhetoric for the app-based cab drivers. The second essay explores the different forms of direct and indirect control mechanisms leveraged by the company to regulate the distributed and fragmented gig workforce. The third essay examines how these gig workers collectivize and resist the organizational control to exert their agency.nGiven the broad research objectives, the interpretive research approach was undertaken. Following this, we adopted a flexible and open-ended research design in this dissertation. For the research work, both secondary and primary data were collected. The secondary data included press releases issued by Uber and Ola, news articles published in Times of India (TOI), and Hindustan Times (HT) in the Indian context. Archived data was also collected from drivers' app and phones (including messages, schemes, and other information conveyed by the companies) and drivers' social media groups such as Facebook and WhatsApp after taking permission from the group admins. Primary data involved interviews with 52 app-based cab drivers, 28 app-based cab companies' management executives, 19 active union members, and 12 union leaders. These interviews were conducted in different cities, including Kolkata, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai.nIn the first essay, we examine different aspects of entrepreneurship rhetoric deployed by the app-based cab companies and inquire how it is leveraged by the companies to gain institutional capital. We also explore how this rhetoric compares with the app-based cab drivers working experience. This essay contributes to the literature of cultural entrepreneurship by explicating the mechanisms that leverage the entrepreneurship rhetoric, and critical audiences' role in deploying the rhetoric to enhance institutional capital. In this study, we also observed a huge gap between the entrepreneurship rhetoric and the workers' experience that resonated with the arguments of Doody et al. (2016). The companies continued to deploy entrepreneurship rhetoric despite the glaring gap in matching the reality in other contexts (Mishra and Bathini,n2019). The intentional deployment indicates the rhetoric to be a legitimacy lie that is ethically wrong from both the perspectives of deontology and utilitarianism (Hannafey, 2003; Rutherford et al., 2009) because of its adverse consequences for the workers. The present study has policy implications as there seem to be dire repercussions of deployment of entrepreneurship rhetoric in developing countries.nThe second essay offers insights into the direct and indirect mechanisms of control deployed by app-based cab companies. This study contributes to the literature challenging the neutrality of app-based cab companies' digital platforms (see Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Gandini, 2019) by unraveling the nuances of control mechanisms leveraged by these companies. The study identifies algorithmic management as a direct mechanism of control capable of directing, pacing, monitoring, constantly evaluating workers, and making decisions, and implementing it with minimal managerial intervention. Further, nudge (see Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) is identified as an indirect mechanism of control that targets the workers' mental processes to push them towards certain choices that would be profitable for the companies. This essay also contributes to the literature of organisational control by identifying algorithmic management as an advanced form of technocratic control and nudge as another dimension of normative control that targets mental processes rather than mental content. The study suggests that unlike the neutrality claims of app-based cab companies, they leverage strong control over workers, further augmented by the workers' economic compulsion.nConsistent with the argument that control and resistance are dialectical and co-constitutive (Mumby 2005), the third essay explores how the app-based cab drivers collectivize and resist to exert their agency. In the context of gig economy characterized by a fragmented, isolated, and dispersed base of workers (Lehdonvirta, 2018), the possibility of collectivization has been either written-off (Ketchell, 2019; Tronsor, 2018) or have been claimed to be happening on social media (Aloisi, 2015; Woodcock, 2017). The present study challenges these claims bynhighlighting the ‘phygital’ form of collectivization where physical meeting places and digital space reinforce each other to enable faster and constant connections, enhancing a sense of community-hood. The study contributes to the literature on unionization by suggesting phygital collectivization as an alternative to the traditional unionization process, pointing towards the scope of labor movements in the gig economy. The study also augments the literature on workers’ resistance (see Mumby et al., 2017) by highlighting the different covert and public forms of resistance mechanisms at the individual and collective levels. Further, it delineates the role of phygital inclusion in translating individual-level resistance mechanisms to the collective level and shows the dynamics between individual and collective level resistance mechanisms.nOverall, the dissertation offers theoretical and empirical insights about the dynamics existing at the level of management, workers, and the role of broader social-political processes in the context of the gig economy mediated by digital platforms. This dissertation augments the literature of cultural entrepreneurship, management control, and extends the arguments about the scope of labor movements and resistance in the given context.

In India, malnutrition is a problem that has perpetuated for several decades and is argued to be a manifestation of social and economic deprivation. It is located in extreme and chronic forms among tribal communities mostly living in and around forests. Recent studies argue that there is a need to make other developmental programs and policies nutrition sensitive especially those related to agriculture in order to improve conditions of chronic forms of malnutrition. Furthermore, past scholarly works and government reports on tribal population suggest that these communities have been confronted with political struggle related to the acquisition of land which has led to changes in not only social and economic conditions but has also affected the local ecology. It is in this backdrop that this dissertation examines the problem of malnutrition.nThe dissertation is motivated by the existing literature which argues that change in control over environmental resources may have deep resonance on the health and well-being of the tribal communities. This is because livelihood, as well as food practices in tribal communities, are dependent on forest. Several tribal communities in the country are confronted with developmental programs that might lead to loss of access to land and forest further exacerbating their situation. While tribal culture and identity have been the anchor for some of the social and environmental movements resisting land acquisition, it has been argued that within these movements, culture has been understood as a constant entity or an artefact and hence, such an understanding provides limited scope to analyse the tribal community as subjects. This has also stymied the development of a concrete political understanding of tribal communities. Therefore, this dissertation builds a political understanding of the tribal community witnessing tensions within, and with external actors of development, while also struggling with alarming conditions of malnutrition.nThe objective of this dissertation is to recognise the tribal community as subjects. It proceeds with an understanding that tribal culture is a changing idea determined through discursive politics. Tonunderstand this politics this dissertation analyses the policies and discursive practices of State, market and NGOs acting on the community as well as the way in which the community members develop their views and exercise their choices as subjects. The change in choices studied here are in relation to food production and consumption which is understood to be impacting nutrition, as expressed by the people in preliminary interactions. For the purpose of analysing the political processes changing the material conditions of living and discursive understandings of nutrition and health in the community, this dissertation adopts the framework of Political Ecology of Health and Body. This enables to look at nature-society-health interrelationships as a political process that shapes subjectivities in a tribal community.nThe analysis is done based on finding from fieldwork done in the kondha community in the Niyamgiri forest area in Odisha. Fieldwork was conducted over a period of 17 months during which semi-structured interviews were conducted with community members- farmers (n=40), mothers (n=28), adolescent children (n=8), senior citizens (n=5) and non-tribal families (n=13) in two villages. In addition to this government officials at the village, block and district level of agriculture (n=3), health (n=3), nutrition (n=5) and forest (n=7) department were interviewed to understand the state initiates and plans at the local level. Also, elected members (n=4) at different levels were interviewed. In addition to this, NGO functionaries from two NGOs (n=7) were interviewed to know about their interventions in the area. Focusing on the case of two villages with high levels of malnutrition that are also encountering changes in their environment in different ways, as implied from the extent of State and NGO intervention and market forces, this dissertation explores two things:n• How do changes in access to forest resources and farming practices translate into dietary changes and impact both nutrition outcomes and perceptions of such outcomes in the community?n• How does the representation of the problem of malnutrition in multiple discourses (civil society discourse, official nutrition policy etc.) shape the subjectivity of the community members with regard to food and health?nThis dissertation uses the concept of ‘place’, ‘landscape’ and ‘body’ within the political ecology ofnhealth and body framework to locate health experience in a changing tribal landscape and examines the role of discourse in shaping food-body relations. In doing so, it first builds a place-based understanding of health and nutrition as it uses a relational understanding of place to help understand the structural context that might be producing malnutrition. It analyses the impact of the food production and consumption changes on relations between State, market and community and community and ecology, giving rise to a new tribal landscape, within which experiences of health are situated. It is argued within the dissertation that these changing relations lead to further marginalization of tribal communities making them vulnerable to malnutrition in the long run. Bringing out the conflict between the goals of State policies related to forest, agriculture and health, this dissertation analyses the barriers to effective linkage between policies across multiple sectors that impact malnutrition.nFurthermore, using the concept of ‘body’, Foucauldian discourse analysis is done to understand the ways in which different perceptions related to health are created. Using the Foucauldian understanding of bio-power in the dissertation, State policies and practices in the area of forest, agriculture and nutrition along with development programs of the NGOs are analyzed as part of a discursive field in which power operates. It is demonstrated how the strategically linked discourses by way of dominance or resistance, impact both at the level of individual body- through the creation of new food preferences and at the level of social body-by changing ways in which local ecology is valued. This dissertation brings out the complex capillary forms in which power functions as multiple State policies, NGOs and industry strategically link together to shape the social fabric and lifeworlds of communities based on the dominant understanding of food and forest that also drives the State policies. As it develops a political ecology analysis of health and body using the case of a tribal community this dissertation contributes to the existing understanding of malnutrition by bringing out the policy conflicts and examining an alternative understanding of food and nutrition. Furthermore, by analysing the subjectivity formation process through changing choices of food consumption, this dissertation provides platform to examine the tribal community as subjects in transition as they encounter several developmental programs of the State and NGOs.

In this dissertation, we try to understand the implications of anticommons property (multiple exclusion rights and no exclusive use privileges) on the governance of natural resources. We evaluate how anticommons influence conflicts around resource-use and how they get created and transformed in both policy design and implementation. This relatively new, but intensely debated, category of property, has come to characterize a wide range of resource contexts. Posited as symmetrically opposite to the commons property (multiple use rights and no exclusion right), anticommons are typically analyzed in terms of a tragedy – that of resource underuse. The dominant characterization of the anticommons property is one of “phantom tollbooths”, where robber-barons (holders of exclusion rights) extort and loot value from legitimate resource users bringing ruin to the economy. Consequently, a reassignment of rights to the most valuable resource-use is usually proposed as a solution.nThis dissertation offers a fresh understanding of the anticommons problematique. We argue that like the “tragedy of commons”, the “tragedy of anticommons” too is a false problematic premised on a uni-dimensional view of natural resource, absolutist notions of property, and monolithic conception of the State. The narrow focus of the current scholarship on efficiency considerations fails to explain the ubiquitous existence, creation, and persistence of anticommons. Further, most of the existing policy prescriptions prove conceptually problematic and practically untenable. We argue that the very persistence of anticommons in the form of disaggregated rights (exclusion and use rights) and departmentalized governmental decision-making points to the inescapable multiplicity of use-values of a resource. These get valued differently a) by different individuals / groups of individuals within the local context, and b) at different scales by local, regional, national, and global communities. Once we acknowledge the multidimensionality of the resource, it is imperative to recognize the intrinsic conflict among the multiple use-values of the resource. Consequently, the fragmentation of rights in an anticommons emerges as an institutional responsento mediate such conflict. We, thereby, present a radical rethinking of the role of anticommons in resource governance – rather than a problem of excess institutions that introduce unnecessary inefficiency in resource-use, they represent an institutionalized contestation necessary in the modern economy and society. In this dissertation, we undertake a conflict based analysis of the various processes that lead to creation, persistence, and navigation of the anticommons - at the scales of both policy design and policy implementation. In the process, we hope to displace the theoretical construct of anticommons from its current conceptual moorings (in efficiency-based analysis) to, what we believe, is a more useful frame of analysis (conflict).nThe empirical support for our work comes from the analysis of anticommons in India’s forest governance architecture. We develop and analyze two inter-linked case studies – a) a critical review of policy design of the Go/No-Go and the Inviolate policy that sought to “objectively” demarcate India’s forests across mining and conservation purposes, and b) the analysis of resource contestations in a chosen field site of Hasdeo Aranya forests in Chhattisgarh in central India. Our data collection and analysis involved a mix of qualitative methods comprising of a close critical reading of several thousands of pages of government documents, primary interviews with senior-level bureaucrats and policymakers, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Hasdeo Aranya forest region of north Chhattisgarh.nThe core contribution of this dissertation is in displacing anticommons from the efficiency to the conflict paradigm. We argue that the domain of existence and persistence of anticommons is in the conflict-ridden Machiavellian world of resource contestations, rather than the Coasian world of mutually beneficial exchanges. We explicate the nature of forces that lead to the creation and navigation of anticommons – both de jure and de facto. We also make the first attempt to develop the intellectual framework, conceptual vocabulary, and methodological tools to carry out a conflict-based analysis of anticommons. Our secondary contribution is to the literature on policy design, where we demonstrate that conflict and negotiation – inter-ministerial conflict in our case - offer useful frames for analyzing the policymaking process. We also develop a rich empirical base and a robust theoretical foundation for an understanding of trade-offs involved in India’s forest governance, especially in the context of recent policy debates.

With the growing need for digital disruption of the online shopping environment using emerging technologies, Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as the relevant immersive technology incorporating product trials and augmentation of sensory abilities in product evaluation. It empowers the consumers with the ability to overlay the physical environment with virtual elements such as three-dimensional (3D) virtual representation of products. The virtual elements interact with the physical environment in real-time, thereby transcending the online product presentation into fun, interactive, and contextual experience resembling physical shopping environment.nThe evolution of web 2.0 to web 3.0 is characterized by the increased use of smartphones and smartphone applications (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Ström et al., 2014) as well as the integration of immersive technologies with the smartphone applications (Dacko, 2017). In various sectors such as gaming, retail, entertainment, education, AR is enabling smart devices with an enhanced (or augmented experience) of digital services. Particularly, in the domain of mobile commerce, AR applications facilitate smart retail environment by transforming the shopping experience. For example, retail giants such as IKEA and Amazon have introduced mobile AR applications to revolutionize digital commerce and how consumers view products online. The potential of AR lies in providing enough of a “direct experience” with the product that generates an immediate impact on the consumer. Though the research related to the impact of established interactive technologies on consumers is abundant (Agarwal & Karahanna,n2000; Javornik, 2016a; Jiang & Benbasat, 2007; Nah et al., 2011; Suh & Lee, 2005), the potential impact of emerging AR technology on consumers is relatively scant (Huang & Liu, 2014; Javornik, 2016a).nKim and Forsythe (2009) stated, “up to 78 per cent of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to uncertainty about the consequences of the purchase”. A lack of sensory experience (similar to the direct product examination) has been attributed to this problem. As a result, online retailers are gradually turning to sensory experience enabling technologies. Such technologies generate sensory inputs through interactive product visualizations (visual support) and haptic interfaces (tactile support) in the online shopping environment. These sensory inputs serve as a proxy for the sensory experience encountered during direct product examination. AR, with its ability to imitate the direct product experience, is undoubtedly a sensory experience enabling technology. However, AR, as an information artefact, has not been explored in the extant literature for its ability to impact the consumers’ sensory systems and ameliorate the feeling of uncertainty.nStudying the novelty of AR in augmenting sensory experience and its scope in transforming online product presentation is a broad research gap that needs to be addressed (Dacko, 2017; Yim et al., 2017). More importantly, for AR to be a valuable tool in digital commerce, it is essential to address how the novel affordances of AR can benefit online retailers and product marketers. In this dissertation, we try to address the above gaps by defining immersive technology and its various types (i.e., the virtual reality and augmented reality), elaborating the technological affordances of AR in e-commerce and subsequently investigating their potential in uplifting the online retail value. We focus particularly on mobile AR. The dissertation is divided into three studies, as follows.nThe first study gives a brief introduction of AR and its contemporary applications in online retail. Then, using a natural experimental study of the sales history of a popular retail platform,nwe investigate the influence of AR-based presentation of different products in online stores on consumer purchase behaviour. Our findings indicate that the immersive experience in AR significantly influences product purchases under the condition of high product uncertainty. Therefore, this implies that AR affordances are useful for online retailers to enhance sales when there is a great degree of uncertainty associated with product purchase.nTo corroborate our findings in the first study and unpack the black-boxed relationship between immersive interfaces and consumer behaviour, we conduct a randomized controlled experiment in the second study. Using the second experimental study, we test hypotheses involving various psychological constructs as the dependent variables to understand how AR affordances influence the consumers’ internal states and facilitate the product evaluation process. We find that an immersive interface enhances the consumers’ feeling about the effectiveness of shopping experience in product understanding and reduces the risk perception associated with the online product purchase. Consistent with our first study, the effects are found to be higher under the condition of high product uncertainty. Therefore, AR-based product presentation stimulates the sensory experience which caters to enhanced cognitive information processing to mitigate the concerns of product uncertainty.nIn the third study, we attempt to understand user interaction behaviour during AR experience and its relationship with human emotion. AR transforms the online product presentation from the pictorial representation to virtual interaction with the products. The virtual product interaction facilitates online retailers to detect product-related emotion through affective computing. We use an observational study to analyze user-interface interaction (in the AR environment) and develop predictive relationships for product-related emotion. We observe that the various characteristics of the touch gestures during mobile AR-based product interaction can infer the emotion associated with it. This study highlights how AR affordances can be exploited to improve the overall valuation of the e-retail settings.nOur research contributes to the expanding body of knowledge studying the impact of immersive technology on customer experience. In particular, this dissertation contributes to the nascent and growing body of work exploring the promise of AR technologies for online retailing (Dacko, 2017; Hilken et al., 2017; Javornik, 2016b; Yim et al., 2017). The findings delineate the potential of AR affordances to improve the online product presentation and emphasizes its role in e-commerce. They support the theoretical aspects of AR affordances and reify the understanding of the diverse forms of immersive technology. Our research offers several practical insights for the product marketers, the online retail managers, and the e-commerce platform designers to devise strategies that leverage the potential of AR technology in online retailing.

Patrons are widely recognized to be instrumental in the nourishment of creative endeavors like art, music, etc. But the role of a patron and the phenomenon of patronage have never been explored in the context of technology. Many individuals enthusiastic about technology demonstrate interest in non-profit supporting technology research and development through donations, crowdfunding, etc., and thus significantly impact the emergent technologies ecosystem. For instance, individuals have donated approximately 0.8 billion USD as funding for 40 thousand technology projects on just a single reward-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Even with such a large scale of growing technology patronage activities in the world, there is hardly any research on them. To study these behaviors should, therefore, be a significant contribution to the research on human-technology interactions, and to technology entrepreneurs, especially by using the well-known concept of patrons. Hence, the primary aim of the thesis is to initiate a general discourse on technology patrons and patronage, and derive relevant empirical insights specifically in the crowdfunding context.nThe thesis begins with a brief background on some of the topics relevant to understanding the context (Ch.1). The introduction narrows down from general crowdfunding to reward-nbased crowdfunding of technologies. We describe four key research motivations for exploring this new field of non-profit supporting of technology – a) economic and innovation impact, b) opportunity to shift academic discourse (from consumer to non-consumer roles, technophobia to technophilia, profit to non-profit), c) practical implications for start-ups, developers and platforms, and d) an uncharted territory, in terms of roles, concepts, theories, etc. Based on an extensive analysis of past literature (Ch.2) we present several fundamental gaps, using which we identify four key research objectives – 1) define the role of a technology patron, 2) build a theoretical foundation for the patronage domain, 3) highlight the importance of technology in patronage, and 4) investigate creation of patrons from consumers. We further develop precise research questions to address these objectives, which are each tackled separately in the four different chapters (Ch.3 to Ch.6).nIn the first of the core chapters (Ch.3), we introduce the role of ‘Technology Patron’. We begin with a review and classification of all existing techno-centric roles studied in recent Information Systems literature (limited to MISQ and ISR journals) to understand the landscape of technology roles. We define technology patron as ‘a technophile who provides financial or other support to the research and development of technology without any financial incentive’. We also create a more parameterized definition in terms of member, support, and return (intrinsic and extrinsic) to fit it within the landscape and clearly differentiate with other similar roles like technology investor. In the next chapter (Ch.4), we attempt modelling the phenomenon of technology patronage using the key human and non-human actors and their inter-relationships. We use the research methodology of Actor-Network Theory to this end. We first identify all the key actorsn(patron, beneficiary, technology, platform, community, portfolio, and environment), then propose elementary actor-networks at the micro and macro levels of the phenomenon, and finally combine them into an integrated descriptive model named as the Technology Patronage Model (TMP). In Ch.5 we apply the TPM to the real world. Using TPM, we empirically investigate how certain broad technology characteristics can not only influence patron contribution behavior directly, but also indirectly through various aspects of beneficiary behavior and peer group behavior. We apply Seemingly Unrelated Regression for analysis on real crowdfunding data from Kickstarter.com.nOur narrative shifts to the pre-patronage phase in Ch.6, more specifically to how patrons can be created from ordinary consumers. We use the Elaboration Likelihood Model to investigate the role of reward, risk, and affective cues (invoking altruism, technophilia, and recognition) in enticing potential consumers to donate and provide referrals. We conduct a 2 x (2x2) mixed-factorial experiment using the three factors and several control variables, and analyze the data using a general linear mixed-effects model. Our findings show that donation and referral likelihood of potential consumers were positively impacted by reward value and negatively by perceived risk. Interestingly, affective cues only helped in raising the likelihood of referral, and not donation.nWe conclude with a discussion on academic and practical implications of this study, along with some limitations, and an agenda for future research in this domain. We hope this thesis would serve as a solid foundation for many more studies on technology patrons and patronage.

Career studies was disrupted by the boundaryless careers discourse. However, due to itsninability to withstand the criticism of several scholars who pointed out the unclear definitionnof boundaries and the over-emphasis on agency, boundaryless careers remained an incompletenconception of careers. It was pointed out that boundaryless careers research was ignoringnstructural constraints that limited the agency of an individual, sometimes even nullifying it asnfar as career is concerned. Scholars recognized that careers now must be studied as phenomenanthat are shaped by the interplay of environmental constraints and individual choices. In thisnstudy I attempt to investigate academic careers in the context of business schools in India andndiscuss various underlying themes that influence them.nFollowing the constructivist grounded theory method, I conducted in-depth interviews ofnthirty-seven faculty members across four Indian Institutes of Managements (IIMs) andncollected relevant additional data in the form of the government’s review committee reports.nFour themes emerged from the analysis of data, namely, a conflict between the ideals ofnausterity and the neoliberalizing business school, desire for autonomy, a discomfort with thencommercialization of education and a contentious relationship between merit and privilege.nUsing interview data, and with the help of the vast literature on caste, I argue that in a societynlike India that is reconciling tradition and modernity, pre-modern identities such as caste persistnthrough avenues that allow for re-articulation of such identities in a modern setting. This isnachieved through secularization of caste as an identity, which is performed privately and isnshunned in public. The business schools under study are exalted for their adherence tonmeritocracy, however, the historicity of said merit in the Indian context is often obscured. Onnthe other hand, the role of occupational prestige in the construction of caste makes academia ancaste-d space. These caste-d notions of occupational prestige not only draw individuals intonacademic careers but also inform their conduct of said careers. Individuals who are subjects ofna macro-structure such as caste exercise their agency in finding a space for themselves in anrelatively newly legitimated institutional structure.nI also present a discussion of neoliberalization of management education in India, and itsnimpact on how academic careers are conducted. The normalization and internalization ofnneoliberalist logic has resulted in a discursive shift among younger/early career academics,nsuch that the managerialist policies are rationalized and research ‘output’ is viewed as a definitenindicator of ‘performance’. This has also resulted in a rearrangement of constituents ofnacademic work, and research has replaced teaching as the primary task, and teaching isnincreasingly viewed as an obligation. I present a few contrasting perceptions of the ‘newnregime’ between younger and older faculty members to demonstrate the same. However, thendesire for career autonomy, intellectual freedom and ideals of austerity (whether practiced ornnot) persist through generations in the face of a major paradigm-shift affected bynneoliberalization. Early career academics enable the persistence of aforementioned ideals bynadapting to the language and rules of the ‘new regime’.nWhile neoliberalization has resulted in a change of the institutional structure, caste is a structurenthat has persisted, and I argue that individuals have navigated both, by internalizing as well asnby manipulating structural forces to conduct their careers, and have moved on with their worknlives.

From 1980s onwards and especially after economic reforms of 1991-92 private corporate sector played an important role in driving investment in the Indian economy. In the 1st decade of 21st century when gross investment became the driver of aggregate demand, private corporate investment became the most important component of overall investment activity. Further, in the downturn that followed the global financial crisis of 2008-09, private corporate investment saw its share in overall investment fall. In this context we analyze four separate but interrelated aspects associated with private corporate investment in the post-reform Indian economy using demand-side frameworks.nA quick glance at the balance sheets of modern non-financial Indian corporates reveals that they hold a large amount of financial assets along with physical capital stock. For non-financial corporates whose major business is manufacturing, mining, providing technological and other kind of services etc. there is no intuitive reason for holding large amounts of financial assets. These financial assets include investments in equity shares, preference shares, debentures, bonds, mutual funds, and bank balances. In this context, we explore the possibility that for Indian manufacturing firms accumulation of financial assets and physical assets are negatively related, as is suggested by the theory of financialization. Theory of financialization provides a framework to critically view the increasing importance of financial assets in corporate balance sheets. Using data from Indian manufacturing sector firms we establish that, for the small non-group firms, financial income as well as financial accumulation have a positive impact on physical capital accumulation. For largest firms, both group and non-group, however the relationship between financial income andnphysical capital accumulation turns negative but is statistically insignificant. We also do not see any negative impact of financial payments on physical capital accumulation. We feel accumulation using debt and existence of business groups and companies owned by or affiliated to them at least partially explain these results which run counter to the financializaion hypothesis. Our work therefore suggests that, whereas accumulation of financial assets has certainly increased substantially, ownership structure of a firm might be an important determinant of whether or not it has a negative impact on physical capital accumulation.nAs we have noted earlier an interesting aspect of investment behavior at macro level is the growing importance of private corporate investment especially after economic reforms of 1991-92. We establish that private corporate investment, which from the 1970s onwards has been growing rapidly, is characterised by cyclicality. Most of the recent work on investment behaviour in India uses a neoclassical accelerator framework that does not allow for the possibility of cycles. We use a post-keynesian demand-side framework that uses elements from Kalecki and Minsky to study cycles in private corporate investment behaviour. Kalecki provides a simple framework, which suggests a possibility of endogenously generated cycles pertaining to the investment activity in an economy dominated by the private sector. Minsky explains role of debt in amplifying upturns in investment cycles. Following these theoretical insights, we find a strong positive relation between lagged value of private corporate profits and investment. Further, we clearly show cyclicality in both profits and investments. Finally, we find preliminary evidence suggesting a positive relation between bank credit and private corporate investment in the investment upturn and no relationship in the downturn.nIn the third essay we carry out a firm-level analysis of the relationship between private corporate investment, profitability and debt. We analyze changing distribution of firms during investment upturns and downturns. This is the underlying mechanism in Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis. We establish that there are two different sets of firms: first a risingnproportion of financially stressed firms who cannot invest in downturns; and second a set of healthy firms who choose to minimise debt during the downturn and therefore are not investing. We suggest that it is the combination of these effects that has prolonged the recent investment slowdown. We also see simultaneous rise in investment, profitability, and debt across multiple industries and firm sizes in the investment upturn; and fall in investments and profitability along with inability to reduce debt during the investment downturn. This firm level evidence is the micro-level analogue of the macro-level cyclicality and instability that we have established using a Kalecki-Minsky framework in Essay 2.nA common theme across all essays is role of expectations captured through the role of profits in influencing investment decisions. In the fourth essay we explore the role of negative sentiment in shaping such expectations. We quantify industry level negative sentiment using news-based textual analysis method. We explore the explanatory power of industry-level negative sentiment in explaining firm-level investment decisions over and above firm specific financial variables. We observe a significant negative impact of firm-level negative sentiment on investments for large firms. On the contrary for smaller firms, firm-level financial indicators appear to be better explanatory variables as compared to industry level sentiments.

The purpose of the thesis was to investigate the changes in the organizing of theatre given the changes in their environment. Taking a contingency approach (Thompson, 1967) to explore the data at an organizational level (Greenwood et al., 2014; Khanagha et al., 2018), I studied theatre based on the assumption that theatre organizations could behave differently from other organizations in dealing with their environment. In a distinct difference with the other organizations, theatre may have value dimensions present which go beyond profit motive (Hirschman, 1983; Voss et al., 2000). For example, some of the organizations in this industry n may be guided solely by its artistic criteria. Based on these kinds of differences in the features and objectives of theatre organizations, I aimed to study how these organizations reacted to the environment. Since proscenium theatre was introduced in Kolkata during the colonial period (Rakshit, 2013), this city seemed like a fertile site to situate this study. Kolkata also had other aspects of history such as the influence of communist ideologies which had influenced the organizing of theatre (Ghosh, 2012). It has been studied that historically in Kolkata, the practice of theatre had changed over time, given the environmental influences (Bandyopadhyay, 1971; Rakshit, 2013).nTheatre cannot be mass-produced and it has no concept of an assembly line that is present in manufacturing organizations. Much of the classic work in organizational theory, such as the contingency approach, was based on manufacturing organizations (Barbini & Masino, 2017).nHence, in this study, I attempted to translate some of the concepts to theatre organizations to understand the classic approach better and also better conceptualize theatre organizations. In the contingency approach, the aspects of age and size have been studied in the past and these factors may have a bearing on how organizations cope with an uncertain environment (Sharfman et al., 1988; Thompson, 1967). To cope with the fluctuations of the environment, the organization may want to have forms of buffering to protect its technical core. It has been studied that organizations use slack resources which is a form of buffering (Lynn, 2005; Sharfman et al., 1988). In this study, I have looked into what these fluctuations might be by using the lens of contingency approach. I have also tried to observe how theatre organizations, with their accentuated features, react to uncertainties. I attempted to explore this query by closely studying the organizations.nThe thesis adopted a case study method using qualitative research consisting of interviews, observations and interspersed periods of participation (Eisenhardt, 1989). The case study method is a useful method to employ since it gives us the scope to understand the uniqueness of each case and also derive insights from a cross-case analysis. The organizations have been chosen based on age and size since these factors are said to have a bearing on how organizations cope with the environment.nResults suggest that value dimensions do exist in theatre organizations and their actions may be influenced by these dimensions. Past literature has debated whether buffering can be beneficial or harmful (Thompson, 1967; Daniel et al., 2004; Ettlie & Reza, 1992; George, 2005; Ju & Zhao, 2009; Nohria & Gulati, 1996). The results in this study suggest that relational slack is an important factor for survival for theatre organizations and the organizations resort to utilizing their relational slack during environmental changes. However, slack can also breed inefficiency and can seal the organization off from the market even when it may have the knowledge of the market. Results also suggest that there may exist a large lag in recovering slack and this can be unplanned in nature. Moreover, the same source of slack may result in two different types of slack over time.nAs suggested by past literature, during environmental shocks, buffering may be helpful. However, uncertainties in an environment may not be a bad thing if it is more gradual. If the organization does not utilize the slack in these times to explore and experiment, then it may start losing out on the market.

Firms compete not only in the business environment but also in the natural environment that provides the basic resources for production. The global discourse around climate change has put research on firms ' environmental behaviour a t the forefront of management scholarship. According to experts, the key solution to climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a rapid manner. Renewable sources of energy contribute very little to the GHG emissions as compared to fossil fuels, and thus adoption of renewable energy is an important environmental behaviour by firms in the con text of climate change. In this scenario, I explore the variation in firms' adoption of environment-friendly practices, and seek to understand firm ownership and institutional factors as some of the antecedents. I choose to stud y the adoption of renewable energy as a strategic environment-friendly practice in the emerging economy context where growth and sustainability are still less cohesive. By studying Indian manufacturing firms, I find that concentrated family ownership interacts with the sub-national institutional context in determining adoption of renewable energy. Similarly, by studying electricity generating firms in the country, I find evidence that global linkage through business group affiliation facilitates adoption, more so when the firm has higher importance to the business group. Overall, this study suggests that owner' motivations in adopting environment-friendly practices depend much on the institutional contexts of the firms. In the presence of conflicting economic and environmental demands, institutions and ownership can jointly determine environment-friendly practices, supporting the institutional complexity perspective of firm behaviour. From this understanding, managers can try to overcome adoption constraints, and policymakers can work towards ensuring better environmental compliances by firms.

Financing decisions by managers of firms occupy the central position in corporate finance. Despite the voluminous body of research on corporate financing decisions, several intriguing questions remain unanswered. Some of these research questions cannot be answered using contexts, such as those of the US and other developed markets, in which the bulk of the literature has been set. This dissertation exploits the Indian context to examine some novel questions related to corporate financing decisions and their implications. In this dissertation, which has been divided into three essays, we examine two different kinds of financing decisions by managers of firms in India – financing of acquisitions and raising of capital using rights offerings.nIn the first essay, we exploit an interesting setting of overlapping insiders at the acquiring and target firms in acquisitions and answer how the presence of overlapping insiders influences the financing of these large investments. All prior studies on takeovers have either been set in a context where the insiders of an acquirer and those of a target are almost always different sets of individuals, or they do not consider the possibility of having common insiders at the acquirer, as well as the target, when financing acquisitions. In markets with business groups, both in developing and developed countries, there is a distinct possibility that both the acquirer and the target belong to the same business group in case of corporate acquisitions, and thus, they share the same set of insiders. When the insiders are overlapping on both sides of an acquisition deal, the considerations of control are likely to become unimportant in financing of the deal. The first essaynof the dissertation proposes a new order of financing investments based on the considerations of control and financial constraints in a market with the presence of business groups. Basing our analysis on a sample of acquisitions, we test the relative propensity of group-affiliated firms, as well as that of standalone (non-affiliated) firms, to finance their investments with stock on the one hand, and either cash or debt on the other. We find that group-affiliated bidders have the greatest propensity to finance their investments with stock when taking over firms affiliated with the same business group (within-group acquisitions), followed by standalone firms making acquisitions (standalone acquisitions). Finally, group-affiliated bidders acquiring either standalone firms or firms not affiliated with their group (outside-group acquisitions) have the lowest propensity to finance their investments with stock. The evidence of higher stock-financing of within-group acquisitions is robust to alternative explanations of tunneling and propping up in business groups.nIn the second essay, we again exploit the setting of overlapping insider ownership in acquiring and target firms in India to conduct direct tests of adverse selection in stock-financed acquisitions. We find that when the insiders are non-overlapping on both sides of the deal, cash-financed deals generate greater value for acquiring firms’ shareholders relative to stock-financed deals. The underperformance of stock-financed deals relative to cash-financed deals in the case of non-overlapping insiders is consistent with the adverse selection effects of stock issues. The presence of overlapping insiders at the acquiring and target firms, on the other hand, is likely to mitigate adverse selection in stock-financed acquisitions due to symmetric information between the transacting parties. Consistent with this explanation, we show that stock-financed deals with overlapping insiders outperform those without them. Finally, we do not find a significant difference between the performance of stock-financed and that of cash-financed deals, when there is an insider overlap on both sides of the deal. This result suggests that difference in performance.nbetween cash-financed and stock-financed deals stems primarily from the adverse selection effects associated with equity issues.nThe third and final essay of the dissertation is based on another important corporate financing decision – capital raising through rights offerings. Rights offerings, as well as follow-on or further public offerings (FPOs), are two different forms of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). Unlike some of the developed markets such as the US, rights offerings have been a popular means of raising finance in India, and rights offerings often outnumber the FPOs year after year. Even though both rights offerings and FPOs involve the issue of new shares to investors, there is a striking difference between the issue of rights offerings and that of FPOs. In an FPO issue, the new shares are almost always issued to the new investors, while in a rights issue, the new shares are issued primarily to the existing shareholders of a firm. Further, unlike an FPO, a rights offering can potentially transfer wealth from non-participating (minority) shareholders to participating shareholders (insiders) of the rights-issuing firm, and the extent of wealth transfer increases with the degree to which earnings are managed downward. Exploiting these notable differences between the two types of SEOs, we hypothesize as well as document income-decreasing accrual-based earnings management as well as real-activities based earnings management immediately prior to the issue of rights offerings. Further, the incidence of accrual-based earnings management is limited to the period of weak corporate governance enforcement. Our results, which are in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom of income-inflating earnings management around SEOs, also provide evidence of another form of tunneling of wealth from minority shareholders to insiders.nOverall, this dissertation attempts to exploit the uniqueness of the Indian context to answer some questions hitherto little explored on corporate financing decisions of firms and which are otherwise difficult to answer in many other contexts.

The term courage is derived from the french term “coeur” or “heart” and therefore courage in organizations implies the centre or core of the organization from which organizational life and processes flow (Srivastva & Cooperrider, 1998). The study of courage is rooted in philosophy where it has been defined as a virtue, which is manifested in response to threatening or difficult conditions and is associated with largely positive outcomes. There is a growing interest in the study of courage in organizational research, as it provides a compelling framework to examine the interplay of organizational systems and processes, individuals and situations (Harbour & Kisfalvi, 2014). Courage has been operationalized as a quality of managerial decision making, visionary leadership or an attempt to correct an organizational wrongdoing. Courageous actions can be regarded as an immune system of the organization which keeps organizational health in check (Schilpzand et al., 2014). Despite the ubiquity and the necessity of the concept, courage scholarship suffers from unsystematic theorization and a resulting scanty empirical research.nExtant studies on courage in organizational literature adopt a deterministic and agent-centric approach, highlighting isolated acts of courage such as acts of whistle-blowing, voice behaviour, and so on (Quinn & Worline, 2008; Sekerka et al., 2009; Vadera et al., 2013). Further, research has primarily focused on exceptional behaviour shown by individuals in various circumstances, as compared to courage displayed by individuals that may require engagement with risks, threats and obstacles on an everyday basis in organizational contexts (Beyer & Nino, 1998). In addition, scholars have lamented on the absence of process-basednstudies of courage examining the social context within which courageous behaviour is enacted. Courage is regarded as a polysemic concept in management studies, and has several but related connotations (Detert & Bruno, 2017; Harbour & Kisfalvi, 2012; Klepousniotou et al., 2008). Such concepts have different meanings in different contexts for different people. Thus courage in the case of top management could be illustrated by the boldness of the decision, a soldier is courageous because he/she is risking his/her life for the nation, or women in a small village are courageous because they are resisting the everyday patriarchy of their society. Therefore the very nature of the concept is fluid and people ascribe idiosyncratic meaning to it in a given context. This quality of the concept not only makes it difficult to investigate the phenomenon, it has given rise to various courage related definitions and conceptions, and contradictory findings on a variety of issues such as whistle blowing, positive deviance, speaking up and taking charge. This has hampered empirical work on the construct and also poses a big challenge towards building a coherent courage scholarship. However, some scholars have proposed that there is a core element that links the various meanings attributed to the given polysemic concept. Given the inherent subjectivity in the experience and perception of courage, the construct has been defined as a moral decision, a personality trait or a quality of behaviour. Despite the unorganized nature of courage scholarship, scholars have come to agree that courageous actions have two core components in any given context: facing „difficulty/danger?, for a „worthy cause?, where the nature of threat and meaningfulness of the cause are highlighted in any given context. In order to understand the underlying factors and processes of courageous work, the dissertation is taking a behavioural approach to the investigation of courage. Recent researches contend that no single individual or action can influence the organization without the participation of others. Therefore rather than conceptualizing courage as a trait contained within an individual that makes him/her fearless present work is interested in capturing the fluid relational process of courage (McNamee, 1998; Koerner 2014, Shilpzand et al., 2014). The widely accepted definition of courage proposed by Goud (2005) serves as the framework for the dissertation. He defines it as „acting intentionally in the face of risks, threat and obstacles in the pursuit of morally worthy goals?. Unlike the earlier work on courage in management, such as managerial decision making, or professional moral courage, the dissertation does not limit itself to examine only the „implicit theories? of an actor?s courage experience but the objective here is to understand the unfolding process of courage in undertaking roles that involve taking risks or facing challenges, for a worthy purpose, in a given context. The fragmented nature of courage literature, lack of consensus on the definition and scanty empirical studies suggest that an inductive approach is appropriate to examine the polysemic construct of courage. In the dissertation, I have followed the constructivist grounded theory method to study courage in two research contexts – the courage of wild life rescue officers and courage shown by members of a women self-help group (SHG). Goud?s (2005) definition has guided the context identification and exploration of courageous work for the two studies under investigation.nThe first study is situated in the context of the wider issue of human-animal conflicts. The cases of human and wild life confrontations are rising around the world, and experts say that climate change effects will make it worse. According to the Union Environment Ministry, more than 1,608 humans were killed in conflict cases involving tigers, leopards, bears and elephants between 2013 and 2017, in India. With expanding communities and shrinking wild life territories, both factions are increasingly pitted against each other for food and space. The consequences of the conflict are often huge in terms of loss of livestock,nproperty, and at times human lives. The animals caught in the crossfire are often injured and sometimes killed in retaliation, and the whole process increases the hostility towards wild animals, in the minds of the community. The wild life rescue officers are entrusted with the responsibility of safe rescue and translocation of wild animals and also of protecting the interests of the human population affected by the encroachment of the animal. The rescue narratives of the officers reveal interesting insights about the process of courageous work, by bringing out the multifaceted nature of threats that they have to confront, and how they negotiate with them. The rescue operations make an interesting case for the exploration of courage as the actors face a complex mix of challenges and threats, which are too large to handle individually, and thus the setting reveals the courage dynamics inherent in organizing in a situation of crisis.nThe second study investigates the courage of members of a women?s self-help group (SHG) working towards the empowerment of women in a patriarchal society. As per the Global Gender Gap Index (2018) published by the World Economic Forum, India ranks 108th out of 149 countries on gender parity. The index is calculated on four sub-dimensions - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The index stands for the inequality and discrimination women face in their everyday lives. The state of affairs is starker in the Indian rural areas with dismal opportunity and support for education, healthcare, economic and political participation, for women. Women self-help groups have been seen as an important instrument for women?s empowerment. I studied the journey of members of a women federation in a set of tribal villages to understand how they overcame the threats associated with their fight against the entrenched patriarchy that they were embedded in.nThe findings of the studies reveal the underlying processes of courage manifestations. The present analysis extends current understanding and explanations of the process ofncourage that suggest that courage goes beyond the individual?s disposition to take risks. Study 1 (Rescue operations) highlights the role of various narratives and their interactions, as the precondition for courage enactment. My analysis emphasizes the under-examined role of space and collaboration narratives in explaining courageous work. The case of SHG women discussed in Study 2 brings out the role of identity work in courage. The present study reveals the various stages and processes of identity work these women go through in their SHG journey. The courage-based identity work reflected in their SHG participation, reveals how the women?s sense of self transforms in their efforts to change the existing social norms and practices, and how both feed into each other. The analysis emphasizes the role of internal and external identity work and their on-going interaction in the enactment of courage.nThe two research contexts present unique sites for the examination of courageous work, and the analysis reveals interesting insights about underlying courage dynamics. The rich data and grounded theory analysis followed in the dissertation help us in taking a closer look into the phenomenon of courage as it unfolds in vivo. Through the study I hope to contribute to the theorization of courage. The study also has practical implications for managers and for training in dealing with challenging and threatening situations.

Behavioral finance as a distinct paradigm started evolving around the secondnhalf of the twentieth century. As a separate research field, academic finance begannimbibing the broader perspective from allied social sciences discipline includingnpsychology and sociology into mainstream finance. Shiller (2003) best describesnthe onslaught of this new research paradigm as an “eclectic way of thinking aboutnfinancial markets and the economy” with an apparent shift towards developingnpsychological models for explaining investment behavior. However, unlike psychology,nfinance models are primarily concerned with prediction as opposed to thenmere description (Olsen, 1998).nExtant literature on investor attention maintains that collecting and processingninformation require scarce cognitive resources. Our first essay develops hypothesesnto examine the limited attention theory. If a limited cognitive budgetnindeed bounds the attention of market participants, any external disturbance thatnconsumes their attention would impair their ability to process value-relevant information.nWe examine the asset pricing dynamics where a subset of traders arennaïve and trade manually and the second set engages sophisticated algorithms tontrade mechanically.nResearch findings from experimental studies reveal that individual preferencesnconform to the peak-end rule (Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993; Redelmeier &nKahneman, 1996). Fredrickson & Kahneman (1993) proposed a snapshot modelnto explain this behavior, in which individuals retain snapshots of their affective ex-nperiences and ultimately recall only the most extreme and most recent experiences.nThe peak-end rule refers to this behavior. Such a memory-based evaluative rulendiffers from the moment-based approach of affect evaluation (Kahneman, 2003)nand appears to work for experiences with a well-defined beginning and end. Thisnrule contradicts the normative utility axioms and adheres to the behavioristic approachnof remembered utility principles.nExisting research on the peak-end rule remains limited, which creates an opportunitynfor further exploration. Our second essay examines whether a tradingnstrategy based on the peak-end rule can be devised that will beat other popularntrading strategies such as Jegadeesh and Titman’s (1993) momentum chasingnstrategies or rules based on contrarian bets. In the process, we explore the mechanismnthrough which market participants’ emotional experiences intervene in thendecision-making process. Further, the second essay examines whether economicnagents’ usage of heuristics distorts equilibrium asset prices.nOur third essay tries to unravel the psychological underpinnings of asset pricingndynamics. In particular, we aim to investigate the role of behavioral biases,nsuch as the disposition effect, and its implications for stock market mispricing.nUsing monthly holdings data on equity-oriented mutual funds, we explore thendecision-making dynamics of institutional investors. We examine whether thencognitive constraints faced by investors amplify some of these biases. Our study,ntherefore, contributes to the relatively nascent psychology-based asset pricing literature.

In the last decade or so, the retail industry has witnessed a huge shift in customer attitudes asntechnology has started playing a critical role in shaping customer expectations. Ubiquity ofninternet, advancement in mobile computing, and emergence of social media have resulted inncustomers demanding enhanced flexibility and control during their purchase journeys.nCustomers today expect a convenient and seamless purchase experience regardless of when,nwhere, and how they interact with a retailer. They increasingly prefer to have a singlenconversation – conducted across multiple channels, often simultaneously – with the retailer.nRecent advancements in digital technology have made it possible for the retailers to cater tonthe changing customer expectations.nOmnichannel approach has been extolled to be the answer to all the problems being faced bynthe retailers in meeting the enhanced customer expectations. Omnichannel retailing has beennenvisaged to allow the customers increased flexibility to interact with the retailers of theirnchoice – without any restrictions on the timing, geographic distance, or modalities of suchninteractions. The ability to offer the customers unified, consistent, and personalized experiencenby abolishing the barriers across channels enables the concerned retailer to realize increasednloyalty and higher per-customer revenue. Encouraged by its promises, many retailers havenembarked on ‘omnichannel’ journeys. Unfortunately, the results have not been verynencouraging. The number of success stories has been few and far between. Retailers encounternnumerous challenges in executing omnichannel strategies. Among those, lack of clarity onnwhat it entails to become omnichannel and sustain there, limited understanding of thenunderlying economic logic, and inability to ensure convergence of channel operations havenbeen reported to be some of the most likely reasons why omnichannel initiatives fail. Thenliterature related to omnichannel retailing has attracted significant research focus from bothnacademicians and practitioners in the recent past. However, adequate efforts have not gone intoninvestigating what entails setting up a successful omnichannel business model.nIn this thesis, we address some of the aspects that hamper omnichannel endeavors and, in thenprocess, we attempt to enrich our understanding regarding successful design, implementation,nand management of omnichannel business models. The thesis discusses three such topics thatnare in the multi-disciplinary area of Retailing, Operations Research, and Information Systems.nWe examine the following topics essential for successful execution of omnichannel strategies:n(a) capability identification for omnichannel value delivery in today’s ever-evolving businessnenvironment; (b) economic sustainability assessment of an omnichannel business model; andn(c) optimal inventory policy designing for a specific omnichannel service configuration. Thentopics are ‘interconnected’ in the sense that one leads to the other, and each of these topics hasna critical role to play in determining the outcome of an omnichannel endeavor.nThe first essay proposes a framework for omnichannel capability identification andndevelopment. The framework takes into consideration the challenges posed by changingncustomer behaviors induced by the evolving technological landscape. Dynamic elements in thenenvironment tend to reduce the strategic fit of an omnichannel operation. Moreover, changingncustomer expectations demand introduction of new omnichannel services and/or modificationnof existing ones. To preserve its competitiveness in the face of unpredictable changes, annomnichannel retailer needs to continuously innovate and reconfigure its resources and skillset.nMoreover, omnichannel philosophy mandates that omnichannel retailers do not deviate fromnmaintaining both cost-effectiveness and customer-centricity of channel operations, which arencornerstones of omnichannel value delivery. The ability to dynamically balance exploitationnand exploration assumes critical importance in this endeavor. In this framework, we use andynamic capabilities-based approach to identify the capabilities necessary for omnichannelnretailers to sustain competitive advantage despite environmental dynamism and providenguidelines regarding how to develop those.nIn the second essay, we investigate the economic sustainability of an omnichannel businessnmodel. Omnichannel service delivery requires investments in infrastructure, processes, andncapability development to ensure seamless integration of different channel operations. Thisnadditional cost burden, in turn, needs to be charged back to the customers. On the other hand,nintroduction of omnichannel services aims to make the purchase process more convenient fornthe customers. Thus, sustainability of an omnichannel business model would depend on thentrade-off between the additional cost the customers have to pay vis-à-vis the enhanced valuenthey expect to get from the omnichannel services offered. However, the concerned retailernneeds to keep in mind that, while the customers differ in the benefits they expect to obtain fromnthe omnichannel services, all of them would face a single retail price. Therefore, thenattractiveness of an omnichannel business model also depends on the distribution of perceivednvalue addition among the target customers. In this essay, we identify different factorsninfluencing this cost vs. benefit trade-off and suggest how the insights derived from thisnanalysis can help omnichannel aspirants design sustainable omnichannel business models.nThe third essay discusses ‘buy online and pick up in store’ (BOPS) as a specific omnichannelnservice configuration. Here, a customer places an order online but collects the product from thenoffline store at her convenience. Apart from the BOPS customers, the offline store also servesnregular walk-in demands. Stock-outs at the offline store would result in non-fulfillment of bothnBOPS and walk-in demands, leading to the possibility of losing customers to the competition.nOn the other hand, overstocking invariably hurts the store’s profitability. Determination of anninventory policy to optimally cater to both BOPS and walk-in demands is a complicatednexercise. Moreover, different channel ownerships create additional challenges for the storenmanagement. In such a franchisee arrangement, BOPS revenue is to be shared between thenchannels as both the channels collaborate in serving the BOPS customers. However, the offlinenstore may like to prioritize walk-in demands over BOPS ones as serving a customer from thenformer category is always more profitable than catering to a BOPS customer. This essay usesna queueing-theoretic approach to determine the optimal inventory management policy for anstore participating in a BOPS arrangement under both centralized and decentralized ownershipnscenarios.nThe topics discussed in the thesis have endeavored to deal with three different aspects –nstrategic, economic, and operational – of omnichannel value delivery. We believe that theninsights derived from these studies would enrich both literature and practice with a betternunderstanding of some of the aspects associated with omnichannel strategy execution, whichnhave not been adequately addressed in the extant literature. We also expect the insights toncollectively help retailers design and pursue successful omnichannel journeys.n

In today’s world, the process of digitization and the proliferation of social media havenbrought about marked changes in consumer behaviour in both physical and electronicnmarketplaces (Belk, 2013). Recently, increased access to digital and mobile technologies hasnenabled consumers to display themselves publicly on digital media platforms through andistinctive cultural marker of the current generation - the “selfie”. According to the Oxfordndictionary, the term selfie is a neologism for "a self-portrait photography of oneself (or oneselfnwith other people), taken with a camera or a camera phone held at arm's length or pointed at anmirror, which is usually shared through social media" (Sorokowski et al., 2015).nSelfies are arguably one of the most important controversies in today's world. Severalnauthors (Erickson, 2013; Murray, 2015) have pointed out that the word "Selfie" has becomensynonymous with the vision of a self grossed individual clicking his/her pictures on ansmartphone only to garner adulation from a wide range of 'friends' on a social media platform.nAcademics have been, at best, divided in their opinion as far as this phenomenon is considered.nSelfies have been derided as being inappropriate, irreverent, stupid, narcissist, inward-looking,nand dangerous, (Novakova, 2014; Shah, 2015). Some selfie-addicts have attracted the ire ofncritics by clicking their selfies at sombre monuments (e.g. Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh,nCambodia, and Genocide memorial in Berlin, Germany); one of the most controversial selfiesnwas of the US President Barrack Obama taking one with the Prime Ministers of Denmark and thenUnited Kingdom at the Nelson Mandela Memorial services (Erickson, 2013). Such behaviournfrom the point of view of accepted social norms, of course, has been 'disturbing', and the rise ofnselfies has been attributed to the self-obsessive nature of the millennials. However, somenacademics have come to the rescue of the selfie-addicts, terming this as a Do-it-Yourself (DIY)nself-expression and liberation (Nemer & Freeman, 2015; Shah, 2015). Their studies showcasenselfies as a form/medium through which marginalized individuals are expressing themselvesnwith greater confidence (Lim, 2016) . However, the extant studies suffer from a rathernsymptomatic view of selfies and have failed to probe beyond the obvious (Novakova, 2014;nPresi, Maehle, & Kleppe, 2016). In this dissertation, through a multi-method qualitative enquiry,nI try to probe deeper into the phenomenon of consumer selfies to broaden the understanding ofnthe selfie phenomenon.nIn my first essay, I investigate why and how consumers manage their identities throughnconsumption selfies. By integrating the Communication Theory of Identity (Hecht et al. 1993)nand the Practice Theory (Schatzki, 2013), I offer insights into how consumers’ personal, enacted,nrelational and communal identity frames interact and contradict in the online space therebyncreating identity gaps and how consumers carefully use the material practice of selfies to managenthese identity gaps. I uncover and explain the process of digital identity gap management andnelaborate how it happens through the three stages of adapting, adopting and artifacting. Thisnessay contributes to the debate on consumers’ digital identity management by extending hownmateriality and a material practice helps in the communicative process of identities. This essaynalso offers insights into how consumption selfies are effective tools in shaping and evolution ofnindividual identities. The findings from this study will help broaden marketers' understanding ofnconsumer’s digital persona, thereby helping them cater to their consumers in a better way.nIn my second essay, I investigate the process of consumer engagement in selfie-basednsocial media campaigns. First, I establish how selfies are little-narratives of one’s self in thendigital space. Then I explain how consumer engagement in selfie-based campaigns happennthrough four iterative stages of narrative identification, narrative transportation, narrativenconstruction and narrative elaboration. The findings of this essay highlight the interactive,niterative and experiential process (Brodie et al, 2011) by which consumers engage in selfie-basednsocial media campaigns. The study also uncovers how brands can use the selfie-based campaignsnto co-create value (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004) in this era of digitization, where consumersnare becoming increasingly distant from brands and advertisements. These findings will helpnbrand managers to understand the differences in the consumer engagement process innselfie-based campaigns and will help them to construct campaign themes that can makenconsumers participants transcend the four stages to construct and broadcast their relationshipnwith the brands.nIn my third essay, I try to address two research questions. 1) How are the dominantninstitutional logics which stigmatize the marginalised consumer citizens codified and perpetuatednin the online space? How do these marginalised consumers counter these dominant logicsnthrough their consumption and online practices to bring forth a new institutional logic? I try tonanswer these questions by conceptualising the socio-political online consumption space as anninstitutional field, and studying the dynamics between the upper and lower caste members andntheir efforts to distort the current logic of caste flux and establish the logic of caste dominancenand the logic of castelessness respectively. The study uncovers two types of institutionalnentrepreneurship namely subjugation and indignation institutional entrepreneurship and theirnorganisational field level measures that facilitate the construction of contesting masculinenidentities through consumption practices. Second, I bridge the institutional and practice theoriesnand try to elaborate the materiality of the selfie and its performative role in bringing about anninstitutional logic change. Third, I highlight the importance of the concurrence of symbolic andnsubstantive actions by institutional entrepreneurs for bringing about an institutional logic change.

Widespread adoption and popularity of social media and social networking sites, along with their immense commercial potential, are changing the ways of conducting businesses. At present e-commerce is going through an evolution where e-retailers are harnessing the advantages of social media to move beyond just selling their products and services. They are using social media and social networking sites to have wider reach to their consumer base, promote and advertise their offerings, receive feedback from customers, and co-create products and services. Consumers are also enjoying greater sense of empowerment with the shift of bargaining power from sellers to buyers (Hajli & Sims, 2015). They have access to opinions and actions of other consumers including their friends and acquaintances. Along with that, being able to share their own opinions, recommendations and referrals, provides them a sense of belongingness to a community. It also provides gratification from heightened social presence. These opportunities have led to social commerce (s-commerce), the newest paradigm of e-business that marks the convergence of e-commerce and social networks.nE-commerce giants such as Amazon and e-Bay have enabled their websites with social elements such as likes, reviews, referrals, facilities to create and share wish-lists, share purchase information, etc. They allow consumer interaction and networking (Wang & Zhang, 2012). On the other hand, leading social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are augmenting their capabilities to enable commercial transactions: from retailers launching their social media pages (Busalim & Hussin, 2016) to the latest feature of ‘direct buying’ (e.g., ‘buy’ pins in Pinterest, ‘shop now’ in Facebook) for direct purchase of products from social media platforms. These are typical examples of s-commerce.nWith its growing popularity, s-commerce has drawn significant attention of academic research (especially in Information Systems and Marketing) in the recent past. Researchers have concentrated on a wide variety of themes, such as adoption of s-commerce, economic value of s-commerce, website design and technological features of s-commerce, user behavior in s-commerce, electronic word of mouth, implications of s-commerce activities, risk and security issues in s-commerce, etc. (Busalim & Hussin, 2016). There are several competing definitions of s-commerce in literature. However, it essentially refers to the “exchange-related activities taking place between and are influenced by social network users in a computer-mediated environment, where activities correspond to need-recognition, pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase stages of a focal exchange” (Yadav et al. 2013). Despite its recent growth, research in this field is still fragmented with several avenues yet to be explored.nWhat demarcates s-commerce from classical e-commerce is the social element of s-commerce. In an s-commerce environment social interaction is of paramount importance and the information shared through the social exchange plays a pivotal role in the sustenance and success of the ecosystem (Hajli, 2015). Information that results from the social interactions in s-commerce context are referred to as online social information. Marketers heavily bank on online social information to influence consumers’ commercial and social behavior on s-commerce platforms. To receive user feedback and facilitate active users’ social interaction and communication, s-commerce platforms provide various features such as review and rating tools, comment and chat boxes, ‘like’, ‘share’ and ‘favorite’ buttons, etc (Gonçalves Curty & Zhang, 2013; Huang & Benyoucef, 2013). Furthermore, in some cases s-commerce websites have features for tracking user activities on the platform to gather insights about user behavior and projecting market trends. They also display the information related to user behavior on websites to influence other users (Gonçalves Curty & Zhang, 2013). Thus, s-commerce witnesses a plethora of social information cues, independently or simultaneously influencing user decision making.nDespite a considerable amount of research in the specific area of online social information in s-commerce, it is quite nascent with different studies concentrating on bits and pieces of different s-commerce information. Thus, there exists a gap in the holistic understanding of the domain, including its definition, scope, and boundaries. Furthermore, major portion of the existing research is confined to the conventional type of e-WOM, i.e., ratings and online reviews. Research on ratings and online reviews in s-commerce is further supplemented by a voluminous body of research on the same under the purview of traditional e-commerce making it an over-studied area. Only a few studies have discretely focused on alternate sources of social information, such as social media cues (Facebook likes, Google+ +1, etc.) and information generated by fellow consumers’ actions or behaviors.nIn this dissertation we try to address the gaps by first defining the term online social information in s-commerce and then investigating the effects of different types of online social information on users’ purchase decisions under different s-commerce settings. The dissertation is divided into three parts.nIn the first part, we define online social information in s-commerce ecosystem based on review of past literature. Next, we identify and classify prevalent online social information into two groups depending on their mode of creation: peer opinion-based and peer behavior-based. We further divide each class into two subclasses according to their relationship with actual s-commerce sales: direct and indirect. We also map real s-commerce social cues to each of these classes and compare them based on their advantages and limitations. Thus, we contribute to s-commerce literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of the area.nIn the second part of the dissertation, we investigate the impact of Facebook likes on s-commerce users’ purchase and recommendation decisions using controlled experiments. We use the context of our study as social network driven e-commerce transactions. We find that Facebook likes exert positive influence on users’ purchase and recommendation likelihood on a linked e-commerce site. The effect of likes is mediated by the product attitude formed onnFacebook, indicating a transfer of attitude across websites. We also find that like acts as an effective information cue when its number is sufficiently high, underscoring the significance of not only the presence but also the volume of Facebook likes.nIn the third part, we investigate the joint role of two behavior-based social information cues (i.e., peer purchase information and peer bookmarking information) on a product’s purchase likelihood. The timing of the purchase sets the context. We find that concurrent information involving high peer purchase volume and low peer bookmarking volume leads to higher purchase likelihood of a product in case of immediate purchases than distant purchases. However, concurrent information involving low peer purchase volume and high peer bookmarking volume leads to similar purchase likelihood both immediate and distant purchases. The results indicate differential preference of information cues based on purchase temporality in s-commerce. This study also explicates the signalling role of behavior-based information cues.nThis dissertation contributes to the expanding body of research on s-commerce by defining and classifying online social information in s-commerce, and then examining the impact of different types (opinion-based and behavior-based) online social information cues on two most important s-commerce outcomes: social buying and social sharing. The findings emphasize the importance of alternate types of social information cues, such as social media cues (e.g. Facebook likes) and users’ behavior-based information cues (e.g., purchases and wishlists) on s-commerce purchase decisions and expand our understanding beyond conventional forms of e-WOM, i.e., ratings and online reviews. The dissertation also provides practical insights to the marketers and s-commerce website managers to harness the power of online social information, and accordingly devise strategies to increase footfalls to their websites and thus increase sales.

Organisations are embedded in society, and organisational members bring along with them their different beliefs, value systems, experiences, and practices. This makes the organisations as an amalgamation of individuals influenced by different social forces working together in teams. It is for this reason that issues in the organisations are multi-level ranging from micro to macro aspects interacting, and interwoven. It can thus be argued that organisational and occupational level aspects can together impact an individual’s psychological experience of work. One such experience is the Meaningfulness of Work (MOW) for an individual. Meaningfulness of work is understood as “the sense made of, and significance felt regarding the nature of one’s being and existence” (Steger et al., 2006:81). May et al. (2004:11) defined it as “the value of a work goal or purpose judge[d] to the individual’s own ideals and standard”.nLysova et al. (2019) have proposed that there is a need to develop multi-level theories to understand the MOW by examining how organisations can better facilitate MOW based on personality, organisational, societal, and other factors. In spite of this vast scholarship, the literature on MOW remains sketchy towards examining MOW beyond its psychological individual level (Dobrow, 2013; Frieder et al., 2018; Fouché et al., 2017; Woods & Sofat, 2013). However, some indications that organisational level aspects (Albrecht et al., 2015; Colbert et al., 2016; Cardador & Rupp, 2011; Fletcher, 2016; Lee et al., 2017; Sorakraikitikul & Siengthai, 2014) and occupational level aspects (Allan et al., 2018; Duffy et al., 2017; I??k et al., 2019) can facilitate (or impede) MOW exist in literature. But, the literature has remained silent in examining these organisational andnoccupational level aspects, which may facilitate MOW, as ‘Organisational Identity’ (OI) and ‘Occupational Identity (OCI)’.nFurther, organisational behaviour scholars have also suggested that there is a need for problematising real-life context-based phenomena in formulating research problems (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011; Bamberger, 2008; Cunliffe, 2003; Härtel & Connor, 2014). Hence, this study is an endeavour to pursue a research problem by problematising a real-time context-based phenomenon. It seeks to understand MOW from a multi-level perspective, an aspect which has not been sufficiently examined in the literature (Lysova et al., 2019). The two levels taken together are organisational identity (OI) and occupational identity (OCI). Here, the OI is a macro level aspect; OCI operates at the meso (occupational) level, and MOW operates at the micro-level.nIn this regard, consider an anecdote from a real-life situation. Navy as an organisation employs house-keepers among its several employees, these employees are likely to have an OI of a sailor based on their membership with the organisation, their socialisation and training as sailors. However, based on their work profile, they are involved in mundane tasks like cleaning the ship, which depicts their OCI as that of a house-keeper. The two differently invoked but interactive identities, namely organisational identity (OI) and occupational identity (OCI), here are likely to influence the employees’ perception of their MOW. The thesis seeks to explore similar phenomena to understand MOW from a multi-level perspective of OI and OCI through the following research question:nQuestion: Does the interaction between organisational identity and occupational identity influence the MOW?nThe study followed the qualitative research tradition adopting the interpretive style of analysis because the accounts of OI, OCI, and MOW are constituted through language and narratives which are context-specific (Klein & Myers, 1999) and to meticulously understand them, it was obligatory to follow interpretivism (Chreim, 2005). In the same line of reasoning, constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) was adopted for analysis of data. The study was carried out in a combatant uniformed services organisation named ‘Gallant’ (pseudonym) because it offered substantial opportunities for theninteraction of OI and OCI enabling an in-depth study into nuances of the phenomenon. The data comprised of 48 interviews, observations and archival documents.nThe study finds that identity interactions between OI and OCI impacts MOW for an individual. In this regard, three types of identity interactions between OI and OCI are found which are further observed to impact MOW leading to four states of MOW. This study has also found that individuals practice certain strategies to enhance their MOW and observed three types of strategies which facilitate MOW by reducing the tension between OI and OCI. Individuals were found to be adopting more than one strategy simultaneously or at different stages of their career to enhance their MOW. These strategies do not guarantee any permanent or achieved state of MOW. However, the use of these strategies helped the individuals to transform their current state of MOW to an enhanced state of MOW.

The objective of this thesis is to study the dynamics of organizational memory and forgetting in Village Panchayat, the lowest tier of India’s three-tier rural local government and to examine the phenomena of managing memory and forgetting in this public organization. In particular, the thesis aims to explore the locations and constituents of organizational memory, modes of organizational forgetting, and the role of politics in construction and erasing of memories in local governments. The existing body of scholarship on Village Panchayats is strong and has justifiably attracted scholars who analyzed people’s participation, women empowerment, service delivery and its politicization. But an analysis of Village Panchayat as a rich site for memory studies remains uncharted.nVillage Panchayats work in close proximity with citizen’s needs, where people’s participation is encouraged so that local needs get reflected in policy outcomes. In West Bengal, panchayats have played a crucial role since their inception in 1978 in delivery of pro-poor programs such as land reform, disaster relief and poverty alleviation schemes. This makes panchayats possible reservoirs of local knowledge on policy implementation and service delivery. Local politics, too, plays a major role in the functioning of panchayats. As a result, these organizations have a memory of politics and politicization of its functions and functionaries. Village Panchayats in West Bengal supposedly hold four decades of memory of implementation of development schemes and local experience of party politics. Such uniqueness embellishes Village Panchayats of West Bengal as sites noteworthy for memory studies. The present context of the State is crucial for studying memory since it has undergone political changeover after the state assembly elections of 2011 when Trinamool Congress came to power with a massive mandate that effectively put an end to 34 years of ruling by the Left Front Government. The victory of Trinamool congress along with the downfall of the Left Front regime continued in 2013 panchayat elections and again in the 2016 state assembly elections. Such political changeover provides us with an opportunity to analyzing how Village Panchayats work their pasts and how their members represent the past to suit the present or to influence the future.nThis thesis is based on an ethnographic study, in which we delve into two Village Panchayats from two districts of West Bengal. The finding, first, identifies five possible storage locations of organizational memory in panchayats, which include the minds of its members, social network of the officials, register books and files, oral narratives, and thenparty-panchayat team. We argue that the memory of the Village Panchayat has faded out as a result of the party-society interface; however, this memory could be very well located beyond formal repositories of organizational memory.nSecond, we show that through the formation of a party-panchayat team, the Village Panchayat maintains a mechanically produced spurious memory inside the organization. In addition, we also examine the limitations of existing frameworks for analyzing constituents of organizational memory and suggest possible extensions.nThird, we identify four modes of organizational forgetting (e.g., memory decay, failure to capture, unlearning, and aborted learning) that occurs in Village Panchayats. Memory decay takes place due to lack of infrastructure for preserving memories. Failure to capture happens when panchayats fail to consolidate the skills and networks of expert members. We show how unlearning becomes formalized to hide the failure and ethical lapses of local politicians, and ‘aborted learning’ gets endorsed to cease the flow of knowledge between politicians and common electorates.nFinally, we argue that organizational forgetting is often a political strategy used by local politicians. They have enough control over the memory system, and they purposefully decide what needs to be remembered and what should not be remembered. They use forgetting strategically to channelizing resources available at the grassroots for ensuring personal and political advantages.