The humanitarian supply chain (HSC) aims at providing relief to affected people in the wake of a disaster at right place and at the right time to reduce their suffering. HSC operations can be categorized into three phases - pre-disaster preparedness phase, postdisaster response phase and rehabilitation phase. HSC operates under complex conditions with large number of stakeholders such as donors, NGOs, government, local self-help groups (SHGs), etc. and face unique set of challenges compared to the commercial supply chains. Achieving coordination in the humanitarian setting is entwined with the dual objective of saving lives and achieving efficient utilization of resources. The coordination in HSC becomes unique in comparison to commercial supply chain owing to multitude of factors such as operating philosophy of HSC, number and diversity of actors, donor expectation and funding structure in HSC, competition for funding, impact of media on the relief activities, unpredictability associated with operational environment, resource scarcity and oversupply and cost of coordination. Hence in this research, certain issues related to coordination in HSC are explored. A detailed literature review of both academic and practitioner reports was undertaken to identify the nature of research conducted in HSC in last two decades. Detailed review of literature gave insights into the attributes of the previous studies on operational phases, type of disaster, type of coordination problems, demography, geographical perspective, HSCM phase, stakeholder, etc. The major findings of the review and research problems formulated are as follows. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) (2005) instituted Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) for improved risk reduction and recent review of these activities in 2015 revealed multiple shortcomings towards reducing the risk. One of the major shortcomings was poor coordination between the stakeholders, which lead to fragmented implementation, increased costs, lack of standardized disaster response procedures, and ineffective response mechanisms. Since the impact of disaster vary across the geographies, the stakeholders usually disagree on the type and nature of preparedness activities and since, the DRR capabilities depend upon the type of disaster, the capability building should focus on high impact disasters. This led to the first research problem RP 1: What are the disasters to be focused upon during the preparedness phase? How can the same be identified for various countries and continents? In the post disaster scenario, poor coordination results in increased suffering, overlapping and duplication of relief activities, increased cost of operations, slow and inequitable distribution of aid materials, etc. Though the importance of coordination is well appreciated in the preparedness phase, the complexities associated with the humanitarian operations such as conflicting and competing mandates, unregulated nature of operations, donor regulations and impending lack of resources, make coordination between the actors quite difficult. Furthermore, the coordination activities involve a certain cost for the humanitarian agencies, such as dedicated resources in terms of man power, infrastructure, space, etc. and it often disincentives smaller humanitarian agencies (HA) to be part of coordination initiatives unless effectiveness of the coordination activities can be measured. This leads to the second research problem: RP 2: What are the factors affecting coordination and how can the effectiveness of coordination activities be measured? Coordination mechanism in commercial SC is well defined, however, they are all not valid in HSC owing to differences in operating philosophy, sharing the cost of coordination, resource sharing and ownership structure and risk/reward sharing between the entities (Xu and Beamom, 2006). For instance, commercial supply chain coordination models such as quick response, vendor managed inventory might be suited only for large agencies, product standardization is not conducive in relief operations, 4PL and shipper collaboration too have low potential for implementation. Hence, RP 3: What mechanisms can be used for improving coordination in Humanitarian Supply Chain? These three research problems are diverse and has to be addressed from the point of view of the stakeholders; the humanitarian agencies (HA) and the buyer supplier relationship in humanitarian supply chain. The first model (research problem 1) i.e. classification of disaster based on the impact aims to address the coordination issues between the stakeholders at a stakeholder level, where it becomes imperative for the stakeholders to identify the most impactful disasters within a geography and to plan and coordinate the DRR activities. Addressing RP1 lead to proposing a new classification schema for the disasters based on the impact. This helps in identifying the disasters with most impact across geographies. Furthermore, it helps policy makers to prepare disaster oriented DRR strategies The second and third model (research problem 2) focuses on the coordination problem at an organizational level. This part of the thesis provides insights to HA in identifying the factors affecting and their interdependence on each other. Further, it also helps the practitioners to quantify the effectiveness of the coordination initiative undertaken to both justify the cost of coordination and to improve inter-organizational association to achieve the same. Major contributions of the inter-relationships model addressed as part of RP2 are twofold. Firstly, the study explored the relationships between the multiple factors affecting coordination. Though extant literature talks about the coordination in HSC and the factors affecting coordination, it is silent on the nature of interaction between these factors. Secondly, the empirical investigation based on a large scale disaster such as Chennai floods helped to better understand the practical implications of the coordination in HSC and how these factors affect the effectiveness of relief activities. Major contributions of the model on measuring the effectiveness of coordination include a novel measurement index, which can be used as a measure to quantify the effectiveness of coordination activities in terms of perceived benefits of coordination. Finally, the contracts model explored the use of options and QFDi contracts as mechanisms to achieve coordination between the HA and aid supplier at an operational level. The models operationalized the options and QFDi contracts in the HSC context from a buyersupplier dyadic relationship anchored in the preparedness phase aid procurement planning. For the options model, the coordination between the two parties can be achieved over a range of option and exercise price combinations rather than point estimates while still maintaining the system optimality. Furthermore, the decision variables for supplier is decoupled from the demand distribution allowing greater flexibility to both parties without deviating from systemic coordination. Furthermore, the study also provides insights into the pricing policies to be adapted by the supplier and the flexibility in pricing implicitly allows the parties to select the prices depending upon the risk appetite and still achieve system optimality

Disengagement at work has been a cause of concern for the business world for a while now. Disengaged employees are likely to be withdrawn psychologically despite physical presence. Practitioners hold that disengagement afflicts a vast majority of the workforce. The urgency and the extent of practitioner discourse on the subject however do not find resonance in the academic research. If disengagement at work has to be arrested, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the conditions that trigger disengagement in employees. In this background, this thesis had two objectives: 1. To organize and integrate the extant approaches to disengagement at work. 2. To empirically test the antecedents and contingencies of disengagement at work. Towards the fulfillment of the first objective, I reviewed the relevant literature to uncover the two approaches to disengagement at work. While Kahn’s (1990) grounded approach suggests that the lack of psychological conditions of meaningfulness, availability and safety leads to disengagement, the job demands-resources (JD-R) approach of Demerouti et al. (2001) contends that lack of job resources triggers disengagement at work. Synthesizing the two approaches, I proposed an interplay of resources before the incidence of disengagement at work. Specifically, I argued that lack of job resources is likely to lead to disengagement. Further, I also proposed a moderating role of personal and social resources on the relationship between job resources and disengagement at work. In doing so, I used the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) to integrate the extant approaches to disengagement at work. Towards fulfilling the second objective, data were collected from early career IT employees (N = 321). Hierarchical regression results suggest that except for perceived coworker support, all job resources (or lack thereof) were significantly associated with disengagement at work. Mixed results were found for the personal resource of resilience. While it moderated the relationship between perceived organizational support and disengagement along expected lines, its moderating influence on the association between job complexity and disengagement was found to be opposite to the hypothesized direction. Finally, emotional sustenance from family/ friends (social resource) did not moderate the influence of job resources on disengagement. My work has significant implications for research. First, by employing conservation of resources (COR, Hobfoll, 1989) lens, causes and contingencies of disengagement at work were delineated. In doing so, this thesis has consolidated the extant approaches that have coexisted but scarcely interacted, for over a decade and a half. It is hoped that the research model presented herein advances research on the phenomenon, leading in turn to suitable evidencebased interventions. Second, the negligible interplay of resources, as evidenced by the empirical results, indicates that engagement and disengagement are likely to be distinct from each other and not the two sides of the same coin. Finally, given the availability of only one measure, I have also called for additional measures of disengagement at work to facilitate triangulation. 2 This thesis has specific implications for practice as well. First, one of the motivations for this research were the practitioner concerns coupled with lack of specificity in describing the phenomenon of disengagement. This thesis parsimoniously delineates the causes and contingencies of disengagement which is likely to be useful, providing a much-needed structure to practitioner discourse on disengagement. Second, empirical setting of the study is also significant. This research responds to a specific call for the determination of disengagement levels in the Indian IT sector (see Bhatnagar, 2007). Further, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first study on disengagement in the Indian IT sector. Finally, in the light of findings, it is important for the practicing managers to note that job resources are inalienable. Of the social support resources, support from organization and organizational elites is of paramount importance for early career professionals. Further, managers cannot necessarily bank upon personal and social resources of employees to mitigate the influence of lack of job resources. Additionally, they need to be careful with highly resilient employees. Specifically, resilient individuals should be assigned to jobs that are sufficiently complex for their ability. This thesis is not without its limitations. First, with respect to the sample, I collected data only from professionals working in the Indian IT industry. Further, the study sample composed of about 20% women, which is less than the industry average. Second, the design of this study was a cross-sectional survey wherein respondents answered to both predictor and outcome variables simultaneously. Though recommended procedural precautions were taken, I refrain from claiming causality. Finally, most of the measures employed for the study exhibit unsatisfactory validity and reliability indices. Similar conclusions in future studies employing varying measures would grant credence to my findings. The proposed model is only a beginning in so far as it integrates the extant literature on disengagement. For example, the proposed model highlights the loss of supervisor support as one of the causes of disengagement, but it does not quite capture dysfunctionality or abuse of leadership. Thus, there is scope for new frameworks explaining the incidence of disengagement at work. Second, the model proposed in this research suggests that in the wake of the loss of job resources, individuals are likely to employ personal and social resources at disposal to substitute for such a loss. However, this should not prevent employees from seeking substitutes for the loss of a job resource from another job resource. Future research may, therefore, like to uncover as to how the availability of one or more job resources will moderate the effect of loss of another on disengagement. The model proposed herein should be tested in more representative samples across occupational groups. Further, the researchers should examine additional personal and social resources for the likely buffering effect.

The relationship between resources and creativity is ambiguous. Organizations are found to be creative when resources are in abundance as well as when they are constrained. Despite studies on both aspects, creativity is mostly associated with resource abundance rather than resource constraints. However, many organizations especially in an emerging economy like India are resource constrained. Hence, I explore more on this relevant but less explored phenomenon; creativity in resource-constrained organizations, specifically, financially constrained organizations. Organizations with abundant resources manage creativity by utilizing their idle resources. But what about resource constrained organizations? Resource constrained organizations create new resources by combining their existing ones. Extant literature operationalizes this act of resource combination by constrained firms as bricolage. How do organizations engage in resource combinations when they have limited resources? Extant literature explains the resource combinations involved in bricolage with the help of resource based theory (Baker & Nelson, 2005; Penrose, 1959). Bricolage is built on assumptions of resource heterogeneity, wherein each resource is assumed to be capable of generating multiple applications. Thus, the heterogeneous nature of resources enables organizations to identify new resource combinations involved in bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005). Resource based theory and extant studies on bricolage consider resource heterogeneity as a given assumption without examining the attendant question of how organizations discover the heterogeneity within their existing resources. Studies in the past have not looked at the underlying mechanisms that enable organizations to identify the multiple services generated by resources and their unique combination possibilities. Drawing on the behavioral theory of firms, I address this research gap by suggesting search as the underlying mechanism driving bricolage. Specifically, I examine the following research question: Research question 1: Do search activities in the organization influence the impact of financial constraints on bricolage? My study further proceeds to examine the influence of other resources on the pursuit of search and bricolage in influencing the creative outcomes of organizations. I argue that human capital, which relates to the knowledge, skills and abilities of human resources, influences the scope of search activities in the organization. According to Penrose (1959), services derived from resources depend on the capacity of human resources using them. Hence, the human capital in organizations may influence the search activities as well as the combination of resources. The present study seeks to examine how human capital, precisely, specific human capital, influences the mechanisms (here search and bricolage) driving organizational creativity and performance. Research question 2: Does human capital influence the mechanisms driving organizational creativity and performance? Social capital relates to the resources embedded in relationships amongst employees in organizations. It provides access to key information and thus is found to influence search activities in the organization. It also enables organizations in maintaining a shared vision. Shared vision acts as a bonding mechanism which brings in collective action among employees and thus makes 2 resource combination more plausible. Thus, the social capital within organizations is found to be associated with search behavior as well as bricolage in organizations. The present study thereby seeks to examine how social capital, specifically, in two forms – relational and cognitive - influences the mechanisms (here search and bricolage) driving organizational creativity and performance Research question 3: Does social capital influence the mechanisms driving organizational creativity and performance? The study develops a framework for constraint driven creativity in organizations. I propose local search (searching for alternatives in existing search domains) and bricolage as the two mechanisms that explain creativity and performance of financially constrained organizations. The study also examines the influence of other resources (human capital and social capital) on the mechanisms that drive organizational creativity and performance. The proposed research model was tested among small and medium enterprises in manufacturing industry in India. Of the 711 firms, 349 surveys were collected from 105 firms. After the data cleaning procedures, 274 surveys from 102 firms were found to be usable. Data analysis supported hypotheses linking search and bricolage as the underlying mechanisms that encourage creativity in financially constrained firms. However, in contrast to what was proposed, financially constrained firms were found to pursue non-local search (searching for alternatives in distant unfamiliar search domains) for engaging in bricolage. Relational social capital and specific human capital were found to dampen the pursuit of non-local search in financially constrained organizations. However, specific human capital and cognitive human capital had no significant impact on the firms engaging in bricolage. Bricolage was found to enhance the creativity and performance of organizations. The present study makes several contributions to research and practice. Firstly, it contributes to the literature on constraints and creativity by presenting a framework of the underlying mechanisms at play in constraint-driven creativity in organizations. Secondly, the study adds to the literature on bricolage by specifically delineating search as one of the underlying mechanisms that enables financially constrained organizations to pursue bricolage. Thirdly, the study combines two streams of previously unrelated literature - bricolage and the behavioral theory of firms. Fourthly, the study enhances the understanding of heterogeneity within resources, which would have wider implications to resource based theory. To conclude, the study findings are expected to help organizations manage their creativity when faced with financial constraints. Organizations are advised to have a local combination of existing resources by searching for ideas non-locally. Contrary to intuitive expectations, organisations also need to be wary about the high levels of specific human capital and relational social capital for their potential role in dampening non-local search behaviour.

Institutional investors are becoming a potent force in emerging markets; they provide the much-needed liquidity in financial markets and are also becoming proficient at shareholder activism. Therefore, in recent times, there has been increasingly great interest by both regula¬tors, policymakers and researchers to understand whether these investors monitor, discipline and influence corporate managers. This dissertation tries to understand whether they influ¬ence key managerial decisions such as dividend policy and corporate investments and also whether they improve firm performance. Additionally, we disaggregate institutional own¬ership into domestic and foreign investor categories to examine whether they differ in their impact on managerial decision making. Our empirical analysis is carried out on NSE listed firms during the period 2001 to 2016. The period is also important as it is marked by increas¬ing institutional activism and significant regulatory reforms in the Indian market. The dissertation is organised as three essays. The first essay examines the impact of insti¬tutional investor ownership on dividend payouts. We assume a dynamic relationship between institutional investor ownership and dividend payouts and use a GMM estimator to obtain valid estimates. Preliminary bi-variate tests on our sample show that there is an association between institutional investor holdings and payout policy; they are observed to have larger holdings in dividend-paying firms as compared to non-paying firms. However, we do not find evidence to support a causal relationship between total institutional ownership and div¬idend payout level. Across institutional investor categories, we find evidence that domestic institutional investors do improve payouts and that this relationship holds across large firms. The second essay tries to understand whether institutional investors reduce distortions to corporate investment. We try to answer this question by examining the sensitivity of in¬vestment to cash flows in q model regressions and check whether the level of institutional ownership reduces the strength of this relationship. The investment-cash flow sensitivity has been a source of great debate in empirical finance, and extant research considers it to be indicative of sub-optimal investment. We find that institutional ownership reduces a firms Investment-cash flow sensitivity and that the reductions are more pronounced among firms with higher agency costs. The evidence is consistent with the monitoring role of institutional investors and their ability to minimise agency-related over investments.

In the third essay, we examine the relationship between large change in institutional ownership and firm performance. Our measures of performance include both accounting based measures and capital market-based measures. we use a treatment effect model to estimate the relational between large increases in institutional ownership and operating performance. This result is significant across both domestic and foreign institutional investors. However, when we use firm value as a measure of firm performance, we observe that large increases(decreases) in institutional ownership results in subsequent decreases (increases) in firm value. The evidence is consistent with institutional investors being myopic. Their short-term focus could be argued to result in an excessive preference for short-term earnings at the cost of long-term value.

The concept of experience economy is gaining significance in the marketing literature and is often used to explain, design, and execute experiential offerings. Tourism is an industry that provides a unique context to see the experience economy ideas in action, as majority of the offerings are experiential in nature. The literature review suggested that there have been only a few attempts to quantify customer experiences; the development of a comprehensive memorable tourism experience scale is one such important development. With many studies reporting the utility of sevendimensional MTE scale it is necessary to extend its relationships with other more established constructs to ascertain and emphasize its utility. Many studies have called for studying relationship of MTEs with behavioural outcomes.Accordingly, this study extends the relationships of MTE with commonmeasures used by practitioners and suggested by the literature to evaluate the success of tourismofferings.The dependent variables studied are satisfaction, word-of-mouth intention and behaviour as well as re-experiencing intention of the tourists in response to memorable tourism experiences that they receive.

Social enterprises (SEs) primarily aim to create social value i.e. generate benefits or reduce costs for society, while maintaining financial sustainability. They typically step in when both the government and private sector fail to address social problems, a market failure condition. In order to address such problems, SEs need to mobilize the required resources. However, such a market failure situation may lead to an acute shortage of resources, posing serious challenges for the operation of SEs. Further, SE in emerging economies faces even greater challenges for resource mobilization owing to the large-scale demand for social entrepreneurship activities, when facing scarcity of institutional financing and growing suspicion about the activities of social organizations. A comprehensive review of the literature suggests that the majority of work in resource mobilization has been conducted in commercial enterprise (henceforth CEs) setups. SEs are different from CEs in terms of primary focus, type of organization, stakeholders, and opportunity recognition. These differences create unique challenges for resource mobilization in SEs. Hence, existing theories for CEs may not fully capture the uniqueness and intricacies of resource mobilization in SEs. Hence, a grounded exploration of resource mobilization in SEs is necessary for progressing research further and for providing guidelines for owners and managers of SEs. In order to address this gap, in this dissertation, we study resource mobilization in SEs operating in a resource-constrained environment of an emerging economy. In particular, we ask the following research question: How Social Enterprises mobilize resources while operating in resource-constrained environment of emerging economies? This dissertation set out to develop a deeper understanding of resource mobilization in social enterprises through an in-depth analysis of data collected from two social enterprises operating in India. Considering the lack of understanding of resource mobilization in social enterprises operating in emerging economies, a qualitative case study approach was deemed to be suitable for this study. A variety of Data were collected from both organizations through semi-structured interviews, observations, secondary sources, and others. Each case was separately analyzed following Gioia methodology (Gioia, Corley & Hamilton, 2013) to arrive at corresponding empirically grounded models. The grounded models developed from both the cases unpack how resource challenges arise for SEs and how the organizations mobilize resources internally and externally to address the resource challenges. The primary contribution of the current study is a model of resource mobilization in social enterprises. This model shows how resource challenges arise and how SEs can overcome that through internal and external resource mobilization to finally achieve their dual mission. Further, by identifying different ways in which SEs mobilizes resources internally and externally, this thesis shed light into an important yet neglected aspect of social enterprises. This dissertation further explores the role of emerging market context as both inhibitor and facilitator for social entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, by discussing different aspects of internal and external resource mobilization comprehensively, this work can help social enterprise owner and managers in planning for resources besides providing a guideline for organizations facing legitimacy problem about how to overcome that. This dissertation also has important policy implications in terms of highlighting the role of the government in the development of SEs.

This dissertation examines how alternative organizations in highly institutionalized and mature fields can deviate from institutions. Institutions are socially constructed rules, norms, and beliefs that result in taken-for-granted practices and routine-like behavior. Mature institutions, characterized by strong rules and norms and highly taken-for-granted practices, are particularly more powerful making it extremely difficult for organizations to deviate from institutionalized practices. In such highly institutionalized and mature fields, can organizations deviate from institutions? I explore this theme through newinstitutionalism theory, particularly through the concepts of institutional logics and institutional work. Institutional logic highlights the presence of multiple institutional environments guided by distinct logics at the societal level. These logics serve as bases for action for individuals and organizations. Most of the extant studies on institutional logics have focused on the dominant logic of the field examining the effect of dominant logic on the organizations or the change of dominant logic in a field or the competition between multiple dominant logics in a field. Very few studies have focused on the alternative logics in a field and the alternative organizations that follow these logics. Even these studies have primarily taken a field-level perspective, and reveal very little about how alternative logic is enacted at an organizational level. Specifically, we do not know how and what alternative organizations do to enact alternative logics given the pressures of the dominant logic, particularly in mature and highly institutionalized fields. In this thesis, I address this gap. By employing the concept of institutional work, I examine alternative organizations at an organizational level and inside the organization. Specifically, I ask the following three research questions. (i) How do alternative organizations in mature fields maintain alternative logic externally? (ii) How do alternative organizations in mature fields maintain alternative logic internally? (iii) How do alternative organizations in mature fields influence the field towards change? Given the exploratory nature of the research questions, I employ a qualitative inductive method, the purpose of which is to elaborate theory. Specifically, I adopt a qualitative multiple case study method studying four alternative schools in India. I chose the Indian school sector as the organizational field and the empirical context, as it a mature, highly institutionalized and regulated field with strong forces for isomorphism. A state-centered logic dominates the Indian school education field for more than two centuries. The State exerts considerable control over school education in India controlling all 2 aspects of the school such as mandating curriculum, textbooks, school infrastructure, teacher qualifications and conduct of examinations. However, a non-dominant, alternative learner-centered logic that originated in early 20th century continues to be present in the field through the activities of few schools, which I call alternative schools. The two logics are based on different educational philosophies, incompatible epistemological assumptions and contrasting beliefs about what is legitimate knowledge. These, in turn, affect the whole organizational structure and processes of the school such as the goal of the school, the teacher-student relationship, the role of teachers and students, the curriculum, and the mode of transmission and evaluation of knowledge. Even though statecentered logic dominates the field, the learner-centered logic remains in the field, albeit as an alternative logic, through the functioning of alternative schools. Hence these schools serve as an ideal setting to explore alternative organizations in mature fields. My findings show that alternative organizations engaged in multiple forms of institutional work both outside and inside the organization and also at the field level. Externally, alternative organizations engaged in two forms of institutional work – legitimacy work and defensive work; internally, alternative organizations engaged in three forms of institutional work – balancing work, relational work and acculturation work; and at the field level they engaged in sub-field creation work. Additionally, I find that the different forms of institutional work affect each other. Further, I find that the characteristics of the institutional referents affected the institutional work done by alternative organizations. Particularly the power and economic status of the institutional referent affected the institutional work done by alternative organizations externally. This thesis contributes in advancing our understanding of alternative logics in mature fields, offers insight on the institutional work of alternative organizations and highlights the effect of institutional referents’ characteristics on institutional work of organizations. My study supports the finding of prior studies that organizational fields are heterogeneous and multiple logics exist within a field. It extends the literature further by showing that even though multiple logics exist within a field, it is not as easy for organizations to gain legitimacy from these logics, as posited in the extant literature. The organizations, subscribing to alternative logic, had to expend considerable effort in securing the legitimacy. Even then, alternative organizations cannot ignore the dominant logic, and they can gain stronger moral legitimacy only by achieving the outcomes prescribed by the dominant logic. Consequently, they have to balance both the alternative and dominant logics within the organization and eventually end up as hybrid organizations.

In general, adapting Lean Thinking (LT) in an organisation consists of broadly three stages: getting ready for implementing LT by satisfying the prerequisites, implementation of LT principles and practices, and finally the assessment of extent of leanness attained by the organization. Though several studies exist in literature discussing the implementation of LT in both manufacturing and service organization(Hines et al., 2004; Moyano-Fuentes &SacristanDiaz, 2012; Stone, 2012; Bhamu&Sangwan, 2014; Jasti&Kodali, 2015), relatively very few studies are available on readiness and assessment.It has also been stated that the concept of lean implementation has been clearly defined with the passing of time but the way to assess it has not been (Pilkington & Fitzgerald 2006).Review of leanness assessment revealed that most of these assessment studies were recent and related to performing the leanness evaluation of manufacturing organizations. Hardly any research has been reported on assessing leanness in service sector. Hence in this proposed research study, an attempt is made to develop assessment procedures to evaluate the leanness level attained by a service organization during its lean journey. Design/methodology/approach A detailed literature review is conducted to identify the assessment methodology used, and lean practices and lean performance measures considered to assess the leanness attained by the organisation. Different assessment methods varying over the temporal dimension of three-stages of lean implementation, namely pre-implementation, implementation, and post-implementation is proposed.Assessment techniques developed for different stages of lean journey will be validated in hospitals as no detailed study exists in literature documenting the leanness assessment procedure to be followed for hospitals. On the contrary, maximum number of lean implementation studies in service sector has been reported in the domain of healthcare. It is also supported by the existing literature review studies on lean implementation in healthcare (De Souza et al., 2011; Mazzocato et al., 2010).

This research proposes a Cognitive Business Intelligence framework which is a novel conceptualization of Business Intelligence. This framework can be used to develop systems that can take decisions that closely resemble human decision-making process. The framework has been implemented (through Matlab programming) in real world decision scenarios in two different domains to demonstrate its capability. Business intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, storage, access, analysis, and presentation of business information to help users make better decisions. BI has become very popular and an important area of study among practitioners and researchers over the past two decades (Chen, Chiang, & Storey, 2012), and BI applications are dominating the technology priority lists of many Chief Information Officers (Wixom, Watson, & Werner, 2011). However, the traditional business intelligence systems are essentially decision support systems with enhanced reporting and visualization facilities (Chaudhuri, Dayal, & Narasayya, 2011). The future of the business intelligence industry lies in systems that can make decisions (Michalewicz, Schmidt, Michalewicz, & Chiriac, 2007). The adaptive BI system proposed by Michalewicz et al. (2007) is an attempt in this direction, but is wholly focused on rational decision-making style, which is just one of the decision-making styles employed by humans. Rational decision-making is one which is consciously analytic (Simon, 1987). Most of the decisions taken by humans in practice are rather intuition-based decisions. However, the traditional BI systems ignore this aspect. Some of the unexplored questions in BI domain are: how to build a BI system that is based on the way human beings take decisions; is intelligence the only basis of human decisionmaking; which other factors are responsible for human decision-making; and how can they be included in a BI framework to build a system that can represent human decision-making processes more closely? The literature on decision-making was studied to identify important factors that contribute to human decision-making. This led to the studies of how each of these factors (knowledge, intuition, intelligence, creativity and wisdom) has been conceptualized in literature and how they are inter-related. Based on these studies, a Cognitive Business Intelligence Framework (CBIF) has been proposed. A system based on CBIF can take business decisions in a way that closely resembles human decision-making. The potential of this framework is then verified on two different business scenarios, one in the health care domain and the other in the finance domain. The first application in the health care domain has been developed, and tested on part of the real data collected from a leading hospital in Kerala. It is related to cardiac surgery scheduling in a high-volume facility. The results show tangible benefits with the use of the proposed framework. It has been found that, on an average, the proposed system utilizes the operation theatres ten percent more than the present system. Due to this, the utilization of the surgeon's available time also increased proportionally. The disruptions to the existing patient schedule were minimal, but at the same time requests of some patients for early dates of surgery could be accommodated. The second application is a dynamic portfolio designer. The aim is to generate a portfolio with a subset of companies that are part of the NIFTY index, so that the portfolio outperforms the index. Results show that the portfolio generated by the system outperforms the NIFTY index consistently. While accomplishing this, the proportion invested in stocks with beta values greater than 1 was only in the range 30% to 40% of the stocks in the portfolio. Further, Sharpe ratio computations show that even after adjusting for risk, the portfolio performs better than the index. The limitations of the study and the future work planned will also be discussed. In addition to contributing a novel framework to the literature, this study also will have instrumental, conceptual and symbolic utilization (Astley & Zammuto, 1992) in managerial practice.

An information system (IS) is effective when it is successfully implemented, effectively put to use and caters to the needs of the end user community. An example of such an information system is the core banking solution (CBS), which is extensively used by many banks all over the world. A CBS primarily takes care of the core operations of the bank. In the last three decades, Information Systems Effectiveness (ISE) has gained prominence in IS research. Information Systems effectiveness is a multi-stage, multi-dimensional construct and has been represented using system quality, information quality, system usage, user satisfaction, individual impact and organizational impact. There has been a dearth of research on the organizational impact dimension of information system effectiveness, particularly in the area of sustained effectiveness of the information systems in the banking vertical. The focus of the existing body of knowledge on organizational impact has been on the net benefits that are brought to the organization rather than the sustained benefits. We argue that information systems should be developed, implemented and managed with an objective of providing sustained benefits to the organization. Sustained IS effectiveness is primarily concerned with those changes which would ensure a continuous flow of benefits to the organizations. Academic research in effectiveness has been mostly goal-oriented. Most of the research on ISE has been ERP-centric and banking systems have received considerably lesser attention. This research is an exploratory study of the overall ISE in the Indian Banking industry. The context of the research is the organizational change in the Indian Banking System. Banking Industry leads other verticals as far as IT spending is concerned. Information systems were embraced by Indian Banks way back in the last decade of the 20th century. Despite stiff resistance in the initial period to the use of information systems, these organizations were able to steadily grow in the use of information systems and hence, multiple generations of information systems can be clearly identified in each bank. For instance, starting with the Advanced Ledger Posting Machines (ALPMs) till the core banking solution (CBS), we can clearly identify three distinct types of information systems in the case of most of the banks in India. Over the years, considerable improvements have occurred in the quality of the information systems used. During the period between 2005 and 2010, all major banks implemented the CBS, which paved the way for great changes in the industry. New and innovative products and services were introduced and some of the banks were able to continuously improve their organizational performance. This means that IS benefits were followed by better performance. However, a post-implementation assessment of the organizational performance of these banks with respect to Return of Assets (ROA) presented totally mixed results. Many of the banks who implemented CBS reported poor results. The objective of this research is to understand why some banks were able to sustain their performance in the post-implementation period while many other banks could not. In short, what are those factors which facilitated positive change in the organization and what are the inhibitors? A qualitative case research methodology is employed to bring out the factors that contribute to the achievement of sustained information systems effectiveness. In the first phase, the case methodology was employed to investigate the post-deployment effectiveness of core banking systems in three Indian banks. Secondary data pertaining to financial results for the last 30 years and ROA data were used to identify the three banks. The thrust was to find out the extent to which Information Systems contributed to the improvement of organizational systems. To obtain a clear picture of organizational impact of information systems, a detailed protocol was designed to understand the pre-implementation state of the banks, the process of information system implementation and the post-implementation changes. The structure of the sustained information system effectiveness construct was brought out through data collected through multiple sources like internal documents, printed material, web sites of the banks, direct interaction with internal customers and observation of the bank premises. The major data collection methods employed were observation and interviews. The case study revealed the organizational and IS characteristics of these banks, the critical events in the implementation process and the subsequent changes in these organizations. The previous state of the organization and the quality of legacy systems were found to be important for sustained effectiveness of information systems. The changes in each of the organizational elements were also brought out through analysis of the various organizational changes during the period. In the second phase, interviews were conducted with carefully selected managers to identify the factors responsible for sustained effectiveness of information systems. This research brought out a list of factors that would be helpful to IS/business heads to ensure that their information systems continue to be beneficial to their organizations. Marketing efforts of IT products, presence of online banking systems and back office centralization were found to be the important facilitators that ensured sustained IS effectiveness. The inhibitors include an intense feeling of alienation by a section of the employees, disappearance of agricultural communities and groups from the banking arena and deep distrust about the true intentions of the bank managements. This study adds to the theory of information systems effectiveness and has implications for the practitioner community.

Researchers and practitioners explored factors that influenced salesperson performance since a long time (Churchill et al. 1985; Vinchur et al. 1998; Verbeke et al, 2011). More recently, the changes in selling environment, increased product complexity, ever demanding customers and technological advancement, have impacted salespersons performance adversely (Homburg et al., 2011). Extant literature suggests that the determinants of salesperson performance have been able to explain only a small variance (about 10 percent) in the sales performance (Rollins et al 2014). Empirical studies have traditionally focused on what is wrong with the salesperson and suggested corrective or remedial measures (Friends et al., 2016). This exclusive attention on repairing human functioning neglects the well-being of salespersons and the importance of nurturing their positive competencies. There is a dearth of research that focused on the positive competencies of salesperson and this study addresses the gap. Drawing from Flow theory and Broaden and Build Theory, this study aims to advance the understanding of the determinants of salesperson performance. Flow is a state of consciousness or peak experience that is characterized by absorption, work enjoyment and intrinsic motivation (Bakker, 2005). When in a state of flow, the salesperson would be able to broaden the positive emotions and build further in the form of a positive spiral (Fredrickson, 2001). As hypothesised in this study, such positive emotions reduce negative states such as sales anxiety, salesperson burnout and deviance behaviour. They also enhance positive selling behaviours such as learning orientation, adaptive selling and sales creativity. Both these routes would end up enhancing the salesperson performance. Following a mixed method approach, this study incorporated a cross-sectional survey, qualitative research design - interview and Experience Sampling Method. The study was conducted on pharmaceutical salespersons in India. About 603 pharma sales representatives of select companies participated in the cross-sectional survey and 31 sales representatives in Experience Sampling Method. Interviews were conducted on 15 sales representatives. Data were analysed using PLS - SEM as advocated by Hair et al. (2014). Flow, in our study, was found to have reduced the sales anxiety and burnout but had no direct effect on the deviance. Sales anxiety was found to have mediated the relationship between flow and burnout; flow and deviance. Further, flow has enhanced the positive selling behaviours like learning orientation, adaptive selling and sales creativity. Learning orientation mediated the relationship between flow and adaptive selling, flow and sales creativity. Overall, these two routes have significantly enhanced the salesperson performance. Our study made novel contribution to both theory and practice by bringing positive psychology constructs into sales literature. In addition, the findings offer important implications to sales managers as Flow can be fostered to reduce negative behaviours as well as enhanced positive selling behaviour, and thus improve sales performance.