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The paper intends to comprehend the pattern of usage of FinTech services among bank customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper also examines the factors influencing the adoption of FinTech services by using the constructs from the technology acceptance model (TAM) together with highlighting the issues faced in using FinTech services in Assam.

The research is empirical in nature. Data have been collected from 1,066 prime earners of the households having a bank account.

There has been an upsurge in the use of FinTech services in the area of study. Apart from government and private service employees, businessmen, self-employed professionals, many daily-wage earners and agriculturists have also experienced an increase in their frequency of usage of FinTech services thereby making technology-based financial services an indispensable tool in enhancing access, improving inclusivity in the times of crisis and aftermath. Government support, trust, perceived usefulness (PU), attitude and social influence have a positive influence on FinTech adoption; however, perceived risks impact respondents’ trust towards FinTech services thereby requiring necessary measures to evaluate organizations’ preparedness to deal with cyber threats.

The paper provides insight into the factors impacting the adoption of FinTech services to stimulate superior connectivity infrastructure, robust security measures and maintaining financial stability with adequate supervisory and monitoring regulations to enhance trust towards FinTech services during the crisis and aftermath.

The locational disadvantage of a health-care centre often restricts adequate delivery of health-care services in an area. The purpose of this study is to examine the status of primary health-care services in such a geographically disadvantageous area which is confined by forests, tea gardens and undulating topography.

Necessary secondary data of 13 primary health centres and 236 sub-centres has been collected from the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. Based on obtained data, Health-care Infrastructure Index has been prepared which has been validated by an expert panel, and subsequently, the Thiessen Polygon method has been applied through Arc GIS software to show spatial variation of health-care services delivered by different health-care centres.

In the study area, there is wide variation found in the case of physical facilities, caregivers and connectivity of road networks, which altogether affect the overall status of health-care services. Among all the indicators, some health-care centres experience staff shortages for prolonged non-recruitment, inaccessibility and inconsistent patient load in different health centres.

In spite of the unfavourable geographical landscape, health-care centres have to be set up wherever possible. There is a need to make new roads and simultaneously the existing road connectivity should be improved so that patients and caregivers can move quickly whenever required. Existing physical facilities need to be renewed or redeveloped along with increasing the number of doctors and other health-care providers as per the need of people with an adequate and optimum level of services.

Generating meaningful employment has become a major concern for countries across the globe to break the vicious circle of poverty. Employment creation becomes more intricate in a developing economy like India where the population is at an incessant rise, without a simultaneous increase in the employment generation. In the event of situations of mounting unemployment, micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) being largely labour-intensive have been claimed as a significant contributor in an economy’s development to induce employment generation. The study at hand is an attempt to gauge the overall contributions of MSMEs in employment creation in Assam, a developing region of the Indian sub-continent. However, most importantly, the purpose of this paper is to determine if men and women are differently employed in the sample MSMEs and if the pattern of employment creation is different across male and female-owned sample MSMEs.

The study is based on a uniquely large sample of 320 MSME entrepreneurs with an equal representation of 160 each from male and female entrepreneurs. Secondary data sources were also consulted. Study areas comprising Kamrup-Metropolitan and Kamrup-Rural, depicting both urban and rural Assam, respectively. The choice of activities undertaken by the entrepreneurs includes a wide variety of 12 activities pertaining to all the MSME entrepreneurs in general and certain gender-specific in particular. The two hypotheses (H01 and H02) formulated were tested using the Chi-square test and the Mann-Whitney U test. Furthermore, the growth rate of employment generation in Assam along with the growth rate of the number of MSMEs established and investment made by the MSMEs were computed.

The calculated growth rate of employment creation, capital investment and MSMEs established were found to be positive. Based on the results of the Chi-Square test and Cramer’s V test, this paper establishes a strong association between the MSMEs and the total employment generation by the sample entrepreneurs (H01). The primary data suggested that 320 MSMEs are Employing 2,766 people in the study area with an average of 8 people per unit. Employment in the service sector is higher than the manufacturing units with an average of 4 people per unit. Another vital finding of the study professed that the women-owned MSMEs have a relatively lesser number of people (32.2%) employed than their male counterparts (67.8%). The mean rank of male entrepreneurs is considerably higher (211.49) testifying a higher employment creation by the male-owned MSMEs than the women-owned (H02). Moreover, women (33.4%) are thinly employed than men (66.5%). Women entrepreneurs were seen to have mostly limited themselves in micro-units followed by small-units. In terms of the nature of employment, full-time employees (81.8%) supersede part-time employees (6.6%). The pattern of self-employment is equal (5.8%) across both male and women entrepreneurs. MSMEs have been well identified as an impeccable answer to mitigate the problem of mounting unemployment.

The novelty of the study lies in its meticulous and explicit understanding of the employment scenario in Assam by the MSMEs. Empirical works on employment creation by the MSMEs in Assam were fundamentally based on secondary data sources. The study fills in the gap by providing a holistic picture of employment creation based on both primary and secondary data, but prominently on the primary. The study accounts details about the nature of MSME employment, the gender of the MSME employees, employment creation by male and female MSME entrepreneurs, the growth rate of MSME employment and self-employment to name a few

In this research, collaboration attributes related to the firm's intrinsic and extrinsic facets at pertinent levels (i.e. enterprise, strategic, operational, and tactical levels) for construction equipment OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) operating in India have been quantified and modeled.

For modeling the intra-firm collaboration at respective organizational levels, relevant attributes have been populated employing literature review followed by subsequent validation from pertinent focus groups. The focus groups comprising professionals working in the construction and mining equipment industry in India aided us in estimating the extent of interdependencies and influences within/amongst collaboration attributes. The collaboration attributes and respective interdependencies/influences are modeled employing the concept of graph theory wherein the individual attributes are represented using vertices and influences/interdependencies are represented using edges. The collaboration indices resulting from the variable permanent matrix have been derived as well.

Scenario and subsequent sensitivity analysis are performed. This research discusses the significance and aspects related to various collaborative attributes and the interrelations amongst them. Further, the research also evolves quantitative measures of collaboration indices at enterprise, strategic, tactical and operational levels by employing a graph-theoretic approach (GTA). The authors have also extricated and discussed a number of meaningful implications from both the perspectives of interorganizational relationships (IORs) and the normative theory of organizations using a cross-case analysis of five firms having operations in India.

The research would aid organizations (particularly those belonging to the construction equipment sector) measure the efficacy of collaboration in respective value-chains at strategic, tactical and operational levels. From the theoretical perspective, the integration of the IORs and normative theory of organizations enables looking at the intra-firm collaboration problem from a multi-dimensional standpoint involving activities, performance measures, action initiation, communication, shades of top management, level of activity, etc.

Entrepreneurship is one of the significant drivers of economic growth, development and job generation in several countries worldwide. Realizing its significant contribution to the nation’s development, policymakers and educators have also drawn attention to fostering entrepreneurship among the youth. Researchers attempted to comprehend the dynamics and investigate the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention (EI). As is true for other abilities and response tendencies, individual differences exist for EI also. This study aims to explore the relationship of emotional intelligence (EIn) and cognitive flexibility (CF) with EI and mediating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the relationship between CF, EIn and EI.

The cross-sectional survey was conducted to gather responses from 635 individuals aged 17–26 years (M = 19.2, SD = 1.49). The hypotheses were tested using correlation, regression and mediation analysis.

The findings indicated that EIn and CF were significantly and positively related to EI. Furthermore, ESE was found to be a partial mediator between EIn and EI and a full mediator between CF and EI.

Results reflected the critical significance of ESE and implied that EI might be strengthened by intervening in ESE through various sources.

This study adds to the existing literature by incorporating less studied individual factors (EIn and CF) to better understand EI by explaining the mediation mechanism through ESE.

This study aims to determine the influence of corporate governance characteristics on carbon emission disclosure in an emerging economy.

The study is based on S&P BSE 500 Indian firms for the period of 6 years from 2016–2017 to 2021–2022. The panel data regression models are used to gauge the association between corporate governance and carbon emission disclosure.

The empirical findings of the study support the positive and significant association between board activity intensity, environment committee and carbon emission disclosure. This evinced that the board activity intensity and presence of the environment committee have a critical role in carbon emission disclosure. On the contrary, findings reveal a significant and negative relationship between board size and carbon emission disclosure.

The present study provides treasured insights to regulators, policymakers, investors and corporate managers, as the study corroborates that various corporate governance characteristics exert significant influence on carbon emission disclosure.

The current research work provides novel insights into corporate governance and climate change literature that good corporate governance significantly boosts the carbon emission disclosure of firms. Previous studies examining the impact of corporate governance on carbon emission disclosure ignored emerging economies. Thus, the current work explores the role of governance mechanisms on carbon emission disclosure in an emerging context. Further, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the current study is the first of its kind to investigate the role of corporate governance on carbon emission disclosure in the Indian context.

Sustainable development comprises three bottom line concepts, i.e. protect environment, improve economic performance, and social performance. Business organization with only profitability as the primary objective may lead to a highly competitive market which mainly focuses on financial performance and pay less attention to environmental and social performance. Companies that adopt the product recovery activities also select economic performance as the prime priority of their business objectives. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief idea about a different kind of business model other than conventional business models. Here, the authors aim to represent collaboration among firms, companies, and players within a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) to build a leading business model that establishes three basic concepts of sustainability.

From literature the authors identified that the primary objective of establishing a sustainable business model is environmental issues but achieving economic performance and gaining market share increase competition among companies. The authors also identified that increasing financial performance results in the development of a competitive business model. This literature review helps to represent the concept of collaborative business model, its benefit, and its mechanism and also helps to compare it with competitive business model in terms of sustainability.

In case of the collaborative business model, the authors found that collaboration is better than competition to sustain in the market. The authors described the collaborative business model and mechanism of both competitive and collaborative business strategies in a CLSC. The authors gave an idea to adopt some well-known business model and pricing policies for the collaborating firms. The authors presented a comparison between the collaborative and competitive business model and also identified different types of collaborative and completive relationship among the players within a CLSC.

Government legislations, e-waste rules, and environmental rules involve original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for taking back its end-of-life (EOL)/end-of-use products. A collaborative business model helps OEM to manage those huge amounts of used products by involving third parties within the supply chain. Here, in this paper the authors represent different collaborative parties and their purpose for collaboration, and also represent a strong belief that collaborative business model is the recent trend for establishing sustainability than competitive business model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the choice of employment sector for women is driven by the structure of the labour market or determined by the household socioeconomic condition.

Data for the study were drawn from the National Sample Survey 68th round (2011–2012). The sector of employment was assessed through females’ participation as an unpaid labour, employer/own account worker, informal wage worker, formal wage worker and unemployed. A multinomial logit model was used to examine the factors that determine the sector of employment.

Although education increases formal employment among women, most of them are unemployed or entering into informal employment. It indicates that the labour market has not been able to integrate educated women into formal employment.

Increase in female education accompanied by a slow growth of employment creates the challenge to accommodate the educated and skilled women in formal employment.

This study examines the factors determining the sectoral participation of employment to assess the responses of the current labour market for the females, especially educated females who have not been adequately addressed. The findings of the study have significant implications for formulating appropriate labour market policies for the educated female labour force.

This study aims to particularly focus on undergraduate and postgraduate early stage level students pursuing business, educational, social work programs. Particularly those studying organizational behavior, leadership and change, curriculum design management, social literacy and courses on 21st Century Skills.

Social entrepreneurship, developmental studies, education, organisational behavior are the subject areas focused in this study.

Purpose – The present case study is an empirical account of the gender perspectives on leadership styles and entrepreneurial mind-set demonstrated by Jigyasa and Gaurav, the co-founders of “Slam Out Loud” (SOL) – an Indian for mission non-profit organisation established in 2017. The authors intend to highlight the challenges faced by SOL during COVID outbreak, to establish community connect in the virtual domain and deliver hyper-personalised socio-emotional learning (SEL) frameworks. Will SOL’s Creatively Omnipresent and Versatile Inclusive Design framework transform Indian child education in the wake of New Education Policy 2020 of India while being sustainable as well as globally competitive?

This case study is based on primary data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with the founders of SOL. It follows the deductive approach of methodology. The data has been complemented by documentary analysis, including videos, descriptions of internal processes and articles.

SOL has been strengthening the transformative power of performance and visual arts to help build creative confidence (CC) among children from disadvantaged communities below five years of age. The co-founders have focused on imparting life skills such as communication, critical thinking and empathy in children. The framework adopted by SOL is a combination of six 21st century and SEL skills including creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, self-esteem and empathy.

A novel Sinha’s 5 × 7 SEL- COVID Matrix.

Learning outcomes can only be achieved using case-based pedagogy. Students are encouraged to dive deep into the dilemma. After the case discussion students will be able to define Creative Confidence (CC) with its importance in social development, comprehend the impact of developmental interventions such as Jijivisha Fellowship during COVID 19 and post COVID 19, understand servant leadership and its impact in the management, analyse how servant leadership accelerates social efficacy in the social enterprises, illustrate the novel 5 × 7 SEL-COVID framework for educators, create and evaluate their hyper-personalised SEL framework curriculum.

The SOL initiative is well aligned with the National Education Policy introduced in India in 2020. It will address the issues of not only providing equitable and inclusive education but also enhancing enrolment ratio and reducing dropout rates. Adoption of Arts-based education will also develop Creative Confidence (CC) and improve emotional well-being of children in primary education.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship