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This study focuses on HR practices that foster employee engagement during Covid-19. Companies in transition economies are particularly vulnerable to crisis and downsizing and other recessionary practices are frequently used.

Drawing on the model of caring human resource management, we utilise interviews with human resource representatives of 10 banks in the transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We analyse the banks at two different times to demonstrate how and why companies adapt their HR practices.

Our findings show a changing mindset in the deployment of highly context-specific HR practices. Strengthening company culture through a sense of community and communication ensure stability and continuity in work. Rather than layoffs, flexible work has become standard.

By highlighting the interplay between HR practices and employee engagement, we contribute to the discussion on engagement in exceptional circumstances and challenging settings and demonstrate how caring responsibilities “migrate” into HR practices in the professional context of a transition economy.

We propose a context-specific “protective caring approach” to foster employee engagement during crises.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

Increasing competition in product and capital markets has put tremendous pressure on managers to become more cost competitive. To address their firms' uncompetitive cost structures, managers may have to consider dramatic restructuring of their businesses. During 2014–2017, Tata Steel Ltd (TSL) UK considered a series of divestitures and a merger plan to nurse the company back to health. The case considers the economics of the restructuring plan. The case is designed to help students analyze a corporate downsizing program undertaken by a large Indian company in the UK and to highlight the dynamic role of the CFO and governance issues in family firms. It introduces students to issues surrounding a typical restructuring and provides students a platform to practice the estimation of value creation in a restructuring exercise. While some cases on corporate restructuring in the context of developed economies are available, there are very few cases written in an emerging market context. This case bridges that gap. TSL presents a unique opportunity to study corporate restructuring necessitated by a failed cross-border acquisition. It illustrates the potential for value loss in large, cross-border acquisitions. It shows how managerial hubris can prompt family firm owners to overbid in acquisitions and create legacy hot spots. In addition, the case can be used to discuss the causes of governance failures such as weak institutional monitoring and poor legal enforcement in emerging markets that could potentially harm minority shareholders.

The case was developed from secondary sources and interviews with a security analyst. The secondary sources include company annual reports, news reports, analyst reports, industry reports, company websites, stock exchange websites and databases such as Bloomberg and CMIE Prowess.

This study empirically demonstrates a contradiction between pillar 3 of Basel norms III and the designation of Systemically Important Banks (SIBs), also known as Too Big to Fail (TBTF). The objective of this study is threefold, which has been approached in a phased manner. The first is to determine the systemic importance of the banks under study; second, to examine if market discipline exists at different levels of systemic importance of banks and lastly, to examine if the strength of market discipline varies at different levels of systemic importance.

This study is based on all the public and private sector banks operating in the Indian banking sector. The Gaussian Mixture Model algorithm has been utilized to classify banks into distinct levels of systemic importance. Thereafter, market discipline has been observed by analyzing depositors' sentiments toward banks' risk (CAMEL indicators). The analysis has been performed by employing the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to estimate models with different dependent variables.

The findings affirm the existence of market discipline across all levels of systemic importance. However, the strength of market discipline varies with the systemic importance of the banks, with weak market discipline being a negative externality of the SIBs designation.

By employing the Gaussian Mixture Model algorithm to develop a framework for categorizing banks on the basis of their systemic importance, this study is the first to go beyond the conventional method as outlined by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Interest rate derivatives (IRDs) are the essential components of financial risk management and are used across various industry sectors. The objective is to analyze the differences in approach to managing interest rate risks between the Indian corporates that execute IRDs and the ones that do not.

Interest rate fluctuations require Indian corporates to hedge their exposures in foreign currency interest rates. This is all the more true for mid-sized corporates because of their balance sheet exposures. Additionally, they may not have the resources to formulate risk management policies. This paper analyzes data collected from financial statements of a diverse set of companies that use IRD and helps in formulating such a strategy.

The results indicate significant differences for some of the parameters like information asymmetry and agency cost between users and non-users of IRDs. The study further suggests causality between users of derivatives and parameters like size, growth and debt.

The study compares users and non-users of IRDs, thereby identifying factors unique to users of IRDs. It also studies causality relations which explain the motivation to do IRDs. Thus, it enables risk managers to use this as a reference point to decide on their strategies.

While there are multiple studies across geographies and sectors including commercial banks in India on the usage of interest rate swaps, this study focuses on Indian mid-tier corporates. Furthermore, the study distinguishes between users and non-users based on financial parameters, which in turn would provide a framework for decision-hedging strategies.

Discussions on tourism development address the urgent need to reduce the negative impacts of tourism on tourist destinations. Despite decades of trying to find potential ways to foster sustainability, however, current tourism development is still mainly driven by political interests and growth agendas. In spite of concepts intending to improve sustainable tourism development, negative dynamics, such as over-tourism and the exploitation of nature and local communities, dominate the current reality of tourism. This article focuses on the concept of degrowth as a potential solution for rethinking tourism policy and practices to ensure greater sustainability. Its aim is to explore the gap between these policies and the academic theories on instigating sustainable change, and the actual reality of the tourism industry, which is primarily driven by economic motivations such as growth.

To explore this dichotomy, this paper investigates the values of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs. Small businesses are the most dominant group in the industry in terms of numbers. I contend that researching their viewpoint on current developmental trends could lead to valuable insights into how to tackle this gap between theory and reality. This paper also explores how the degrowth paradigm may promote sustainability in tourism, as well as the potential role that tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could play in this development. The discussion is illustrated by a case study based on interviews with tourism entrepreneurs in Iceland.

The findings indicate that various tourism stakeholders have different approaches to growth, with many tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs tending to embrace degrowth practices by acting according to their value base, albeit sometimes unconsciously. This focus on aspects other than growth could potentially encourage tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs to contribute to sustainable development.

The examples discussed in this paper are locally limited and cannot be generalized due to the small size of the interviewed sample group. The scalability of individual entrepreneurs’ impact is limited due to their small size.

The actions and values applied by these tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs demonstrate how degrowth can be manifest on a small scale: growth is only embraced up to a certain limit, so it oes not exceed social and environmental capacities; from that point on, community well-being plays the key role. This study demonstrates the untapped knowledge tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could provide to rethinking the tourism industry.

This study demonstrates the importance of shedding more light on ethical issues and values beyond growth in both academic and political discussions. Addressing tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs as smaller-scale actors of tourism degrowth could be a meaningful starting point for holistically rethinking tourism and give them a voice.

This research emphasizes untapped knowledge by acknowledging entrepreneurs and their potential for rethinking tourism development, concluding with recommendations for practice and policy.

A positive outlook on the impact of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) on sustainability prevails in the literature. However, some studies have highlighted potential areas of concern that have not yet been systematically addressed. The goal of this study is to challenge the assumption of a sustainable Fourth Industrial Revolution by (1) identifying the possible unintended negative impacts of I4.0 technologies on sustainability; (2) highlighting the underlying motivations and potential actions to mitigate such impacts; and (3) developing and evaluating alternative assumptions on the impacts of I4.0 technologies on sustainability.

Building on a problematization approach, a systematic literature review was conducted to develop potential alternative assumptions about the negative impacts of I4.0 on sustainability. Then, a Delphi study was carried out with 43 experts from academia and practice to evaluate the alternative assumptions. Two rounds of data collection were performed until reaching the convergence or stability of the responses.

The results highlight various unintended negative effects on environmental and social aspects that challenge the literature. The reasons behind the high/low probability of occurrence, the severity of each impact in the next five years and corrective actions are also identified. Unintended negative environmental effects are less controversial than social effects and are therefore more likely to generate widely accepted theoretical propositions. Finally, the alternative hypothesis ground is partially accepted by the panel, indicating that the problematization process has effectively opened up new perspectives for analysis.

This study is one of the few to systematically problematize the assumptions of the I4.0 and sustainability literature, generating research propositions that reveal several avenues for future research.

The purpose of this study is to quantify the impact of electricity power outages on the local housing market in South Africa.

This study uses the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) and quantile autoregressive distributive lag (QARDL) models on annual time series data, for the period 1971–2014. The interest rate, real income and inflation were used as control variables to enable a multivariate framework.

The results from the ARDL model show that real income is the only factor influencing housing price over the long run, whereas other variables only have short-run effects. The estimates from the QARDL further reveal hidden cointegration relationship over the long run with higher quantile levels of distribution and transmission losses raising the residential price growth.

Overall, the findings of this study imply that the South African housing market is more vulnerable to property devaluation caused by power outages over the short run and yet remains resilient to loadshedding over the long run. Other macro-economic factors, such as real income and inflation, are more influential factors towards long-run developments in the residential market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the empirical relationship between power outages and housing price growth.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the construction sector are highly vulnerable to disruptions caused by political and economic decisions or even pandemics. This study evaluated the current operations of selected SMEs providing engineering design and consultancy services against Toyota Production System (TPS) lean tool. The purpose is to juxtapose SME operations and processes with TPS to ascertain the level of their operations conformity to the established TPS lean thinking tool.

This study used a qualitative data collection and analysis approach to evaluate the current processes of participating SMEs against Liker's 14 management principles of TPS. The data collected were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes that emerged from the qualitative data.

The analysis revealed that focus on short-term goals, immediate profit and duplication of effort resulting from insufficient collaboration is currently creating waste in participating SMEs' operations. Hence, the implementation of TPS was recommended as a lean tool and a framework based on TPS lean tool was developed for improving the operations of SMEs.

The study is limited to SMEs operating only as consultants providing project planning design within the construction industry. Data collection is limited to qualitative even though observations would improve the outcome of the study.

The study advances contemporary issues in promoting lean implementation in construction sector and developed an improved framework based on the TPS to enhance the performance of SME construction businesses.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between employer and employees in a public power sector undertaking through the validation of CODE (compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment) and PLE (workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement) model.

A hypothesized research model was developed and validated by using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20). In total, 303 responses were accumulated by administering a structured questionnaire among the employees of a state-owned power sector.

The results revealed that a harmonious climate of employee relations is prevailing in the public power utility. Additionally, the findings suggest that the CODE and PLE model of employee relations are found to be positive and significant by investigating the impact of compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment as the predictors; and workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement as the critical outcomes of employee relations.

The study recommends some plausible insights for practitioners, decision-makers and policy formulators to develop strategies and policies for nurturing congenial employee relations and also to cultivate a facilitative work environment for generating contented and competent manpower.

Validation of CODE and PLE model of employee relations in the new perspective of power sector undertaking is an epoch-making and novel contribution that offers significant empirical evidence to the extant literature. Moreover, the exploration of employer–employee relations in this context is a unique and innovative effort toward existing research.

This paper aims to explore current trends in how companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements. As part of the authors’ analysis, they examine: whether forward-looking assumptions and judgements are typically considered in reporting climate-related risks/opportunities; whether there are differences in the reporting practices of firms in carbon-intensive industries versus non-carbon-intensive industries; and whether negative media reports have an influence on the levels of disclosure a firm makes.

The authors chose content analysis as their methodology and examined the financial statements published by firms listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 between 2016 and 2020. This analysis is framed by Suchman’s three dimensions of legitimacy, being pragmatic, cognitive and moral.

Climate-related disclosures in the notes and financial accounts of these firms did increase over the period. Yet, overall, the level the disclosures was inadequate and the quality was inconsistent. From this, the authors conclude that pragmatic legitimacy is not a particularly strong driving factor in compelling organisations to disclose climate-related information. The firms in carbon-intensive industries do provide greater levels of disclosure, including both qualitative and quantitative (monetary) content, which is consistent with cognitive legitimacy. However, from a moral legitimacy perspective, this study finds that firms did not adapt responsively to negative media coverage as a way of reflecting their accountability to broader public norms and values. Overall, this analysis suggests that regulatory enforcement and a systematic reporting framework with adequate guidance is going to be critical to developing transparent climate-related reporting in future.

This paper contributes to existing studies on climate-related disclosures, which have mainly examined the ‘front-half’ of annual reports. Conversely, this study aims to shed light on these practices in the “back-half” of these reports, exploring the underlying reasons for reporting climate-related risks and opportunities in financial accounts. The authors’ insights into the current disclosure practices make a theoretical contribution to the literature. Practitioners can also draw on these insights to improve how they report on climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements.