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The purpose of this paper is to test the stickiness of payout policy across times for Indian firms, by identifying the determinants of dividend payout (for amount of dividends as well as probability of dividends) and examine their predictive consistency through good and bad times, affiliation categories, amid controls for idiosyncratic characteristics. The authors also examine the scantly explored effects of financial constraints on firms’ dividend decisions.

The authors use various regression models, i.e. panel, Tobit and logit models; and amid control for firm-specific characteristics throughout the analysis.

The authors observe payout levels on average increasing with time for Indian firms. Further, group firms pay higher dividends compared to standalone firms. Firms’ leverage, profitability, non-promoters holdings, growth prospects and dividend event are apparently the important determinants of payout ratio and are mostly, but not always, consistent through times and firms’ categories, for both the amount as well as the likelihood of dividend payments. Financial constraints have an overall negative impact on dividends with significantly varying magnitude across periods of stability, crisis and recovery. Firms’ age and size are positive and significant factors for dividends level decisions in Indian firms, which is consistent with the life-cycle theory. However, inconsistent size and age effect is observed in determining the likelihood of dividend payment.

This study adds to the growing literature on the changing trends and contributing factors of firms’ dividend payout policy.

This study provides evidence on predictive consistency of payout policy of firms and its determination with the change in the external economic condition.

Post-2008 global food crisis the prices of perishable high-value food commodities, such as vegetables and fruits, in India have risen faster and become more volatile compared to that of cereals. The welfare consequences of price shocks though are well understood yet the policy responses to manage these remain blurred because of a lack of clarity on their causes. Focusing on onions that comprise an important constituent of the Indian diet, the purpose of this paper is to explore causes of high price volatility.

Using high-frequency time series data on wholesale prices and arrivals of onions in major markets and other relevant variables, this paper analyzes causes of price volatility from several angles, that is production shocks, seasonality in production and market arrivals, internal trade, export policies and market power of intermediaries on the supply chain.

Despite markets being integrated and no significant climatic shocks to production there exists a strong element of uncertainty in market arrivals of onions, pointing toward the market power immediate downstream the production or alternatively anti-competition trade practices in major markets as a cause of high price volatility. The measures to manage price volatility, such as an increase in minimum export prices and bans on exports, are also not found to have an immediate cooling effect on prices.

The agricultural policy should provide for a system of market intelligence to monitor anti-competitive trade practices along the supply chain, and to take proactive trade control measures to prevent frequent ups and downs in domestic prices. In addition, it should provide for incentives for developing efficient supply chains and for the cultivation of onions in the regions that have agronomic potential but it has remained underexploited due to one or the other constraint.

Excessive volatility in food prices impacts farmers, consumers, processors, and traders and even political system. It may distort production and investment decisions of farmers and intermediaries on the value chains, leading to inefficient allocation of resources. The poor consumers may be forced to reduce food and non-food productive expenditures. If persists for a longer period, it may lead to political instability too.

Several studies have analyzed volatility in food prices and causes thereof. However, rarely any of these has examined volatility in prices of perishable high-value food commodities. This paper is an attempt toward filling this gap.

Sustainable strategic management (SSM) is an integrated concept that entails sustainability in the approaches and processes of strategic management. Banking being a rapidly growing industry in service sector, it is reasonably important to study the SSM and its integrated performance. This paper aims to study the sustainable-strategic (SS) factors of Indian banks that affects their endurance and prioritizes the banks based on their sustainable and strategic performance.

This study appertains a sustainable balanced scorecard (SBSC) framework to determine the SS factors and an integrated multicriteria decision making (MCDM) method to weigh the criteria and prioritize the banks' performance.

The criterion weightage signifies sustainability, followed by financial and internal business perspective to be a crucial dimension for the performance of banks. The banks, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank Ltd and Canara Bank are ranked top-most on the SS performance.

The insights from the study on SS factors and banks' performance can be further used by policy-makers and researchers to understand the sustainability assessing factors and focus on making policies and further studies to enhance the performance in this regard.

Banking is one of the potentially growing industry in service sector. It being a major part of economy's sustainable growth, it is essential to assess the SS factors that enhance their sustainable performance. There is dearth of study in this purview, for developing countries like India. Thus, this study critically analyses the strategic sustainability of Indian banking industry to ascertain the SS factors and prioritize the performance of banks based on criterion weightage and bank's SS operations.

Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed significantly over the past few years, evolving into a collection of innovative tools that provide a competitive advantage to businesses. The acceptance and investment in AI are skyrocketing over the globe. The entry of AI in the workplace automates tasks and impacts making a timely decisions. At the same time, the workforce is not ready to welcome the new technology due to the skill gap. The organisation has to face many challenges in reskilling and convincing the workforce to incorporate AI in their work.

Purpose: With this study, the authors aim to analyse and highlight the introduction of AI in the organisation and the call for the reskilling of the workforce. To figure out what skills are most important for employees to learn to advance their careers.

Methodology: Given the deductive nature of the study, the researchers used secondary data collected and compiled from research papers, publications, websites, HR blogs, survey reports, etc. Research papers from reputed journals, reports of consultancies and agencies have been considered to synthesise the information and present it in a systematic manner and to derive the conclusion.

Findings: The findings indicate AI’s capabilities and applications have grown considerably, which shows the importance of AI in a growing number of fields, yet several hurdles need to be overcome, the most prominent one being the issues concerning upskilling the workforce for the future of AI. This study reveals the change in the perceived importance of the skills in the present and future times. Reskilling and upskilling the workforce and creating new talent to meet the changing employment demands is becoming increasingly important.