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Although managers and academicians have recognised the importance of high-commitment work systems (HCWS), work engagement and psychological capital (PsyCap) in service firms, many questions remain unanswered. This study aims to fill the gaps in the area of work engagement by considering the relationships among HCWS, PsyCap and work engagement. In this cross-sectional study, the author drew on the social exchange theory to analyse these relationships.

Cross-sectional data from 309 employees from India’s services sector was collected to investigate HCWS and work engagement associations. The data were analysed by structural equation modelling.

The study findings integrate the existing literature on human resource (HR) systems and positive psychology by identifying the critical role of PsyCap in passing the positive effects of HCWS to engage employees in their work. Further, it supports the assumption that PsyCap is formed primarily based on organisational practices, thereby addressing the paucity of research that examined the antecedents of PsyCap.

Owing to study findings, service firms are encouraged to carry out human resource development intervention(s) to make their employees psychologically capable. Since PsyCap is a state-like construct, it can be developed among individuals. Thus, managers can develop their employees’ PsyCap through various training interventions.

The mediating role of PsyCap in the HCWS and work engagement in India’s service industries settings was tested. The present study’s findings contribute to the theory of strategic human resource management by explaining how HCWS can help employees engage better in their work.

This study's main objective is to investigate the influence of flexible working arrangements (FWAs) on employee job performance. In addition, this research studies the mediating role of supervisor's support on the relationship between FWAs and job performance.

To test the hypothesised model, cross-sectional data were collected from 214 employees working in 46 service firms in India. The data were analysed by structural equation modelling.

The supervisor's support mediated the relationship between FWAs and job performance. The study’s results show that role of supervisors shapes the collective social exchange relationship between the organisation and employees. These findings highlight the importance of shared experiences, values and norms, which reciprocate with change-supportive behaviours and abilities. Moreover, supervisors’ support transmits signals through which employees feel more valued and eventually affect their job performance.

The research is confined to India's service industries settings only.

Service firm management recommended implementing FWAs with appropriate organisation level planning, which directly benefits employees' well-being, improves work–life balance, reduces the rate of employee turnover and leads to increased employee productivity.

The study's result is that supervisor's support has a significant influence on employee uptake of FWAs, and understanding how the service firm's context shapes supervisors’ support is critical to improving FWAs implementation.

The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers to including sustainability in management education institutions (MEIs) in India, and subsequently, to analyze the structure of the causal relationships among the barriers.

In this study, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory methodology are applied to analyze the structure of the causal relationships among the identified sustainability barriers.

Through an extensive literature review and expert interviews, this paper identified 4 primary barriers and 46 sub-barriers. Encompassing sustainability in Indian MEIs results in changes in behavior involving increased respect for the environment, hence, leading to improved sustainable efficiency.

The present study is limited to MEIs in India.

The inclusion of sustainability in MEIs equips future managers with the economic, ecological and technical knowledge required to demonstrate sustainable behavior in the workplace. It assists also equips managers with the ability to affect social change at an organizational level. MEIs has been acknowledged as playing a crucial role in societal transformations, including the need for transformation toward sustainability.

The present study adds to the current knowledge base regarding the structure of the causal relationships among the identified sustainability barriers. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to identify such barriers to including sustainability in an Indian MEI context.

This study aims to investigate how the intangible intensive nature of firms affects the value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity between profit- and loss-reporting firms. The study also examines how firms’ intangible intensity affects the value relevance of R&D outlays between profit- and loss-reporting firms.

An empirical analysis based on Ohlson’s (1995) framework is used. A total of 54,421 firm-year observations of Indian listed firms from financial years 1992–2016 constitute the study sample.

The findings suggest that the difference in the value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity between profit- and loss-reporting firms is more significant in non-intangible intensive firms than in intangible firms. Specifically, earnings are more value relevant in profit-reporting and non-intangible intensive firms, whereas book value of equity is more value relevant in loss-reporting and intangible intensive firms. The results also suggest that the difference in the incremental value relevance of R&D information between profit- and loss-making firms is higher in intangible intensive firms than in non-intangible intensive firms.

The findings of this study can help managers, standard-setters and investors make effective decisions.

This study offers insights into the impact of intangible intensity on the value relevance of aggregated and disaggregated accounting information between profit- and loss-making firms in institutional settings where capitalization of R&D expenditures is allowed.

Fundamental shifting of the world toward intangible intensive economy raised an apprehension regarding value relevance of internally generated intangible assets. In the previous studies, research and development (R&D) expenditure is recognized as a significant accounting item, which can indicate potential internally generated intangible assets. This study aims to examine whether investors consider nature of intangible intensity of a firm for the evaluation of R&D expenditure to determine equity values in India.

The authors compared value relevance of capitalized and the expensed portion of R&D expenditure between intangible- and non-intangible-intensive firms. They adopted empirical model grounded on the generalized version of Ohlson’s (1995) model.

The findings of the study indicate that, in intangible-intensive (non-intangible) firms, the capitalized portion of expenditure is positively (negatively) significant and the expensed portion of R&D expenditure is negatively (positively) significant to explain equity values.

The findings of this study may have potential implication for the discussion on the accounting treatment of internally generated intangible assets based on the nature of intangible intensity of the firm. The study also suggests that while setting standards, standard-setters should consider nature of intangible intensity of the firm, which could disseminate the discrepancy between the market and book value of the equity.

The study provides evidence, how value relevance of R&D reporting is affected by the nature of intangible intensity of a firm.

This paper aims to measure the human resource (HR) flexibility and firm performances confirmatory model and to map the causal relation structures in the HR flexibility and firm performance dimensions using the DEMATEL method.

Data were collected from leading national and multinational information technology (IT) firms operating in the southern part of India. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure the confirmatory model, and the DEMATEL method was used to map the causal relation among the dimensions of HR flexibility and firm performance.

HR flexibility could exist across IT firms. Organisations are required to anticipate and respond promptly to changing conditions in such a way that both technical and stakeholders’ complexity are effectively managed.

The study was conducted at leading national and multinational IT firms operating in the southern part of India.

HR flexibility allows employees with a wide variety of work styles and lifestyles to be successful contributors, to advance and to lead in the parent firm. It brings out diversity and individuality, shared responsibility, wholeness, etc., among the employees. It applies to work schedules and career paths across the organisation. IT firms are advised to adopt an external focus, an organic and employee-oriented approach and long-term orientation.

Confirming the measurement model and mapping the causal relationship among the dimensions of HR flexibility and firm performance would be the novel contributions to the research in the areas of HR flexibility and firm performance with regard to IT firms. This paper contributes to the literature by theoretically and empirically investigating such relationships, thereby addressing the research gaps reviewed from literature.

An amalgamation of Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) has been performed to develop a decision-making framework for improving the overall performance of the microfinance institutions. A primary survey was conducted to collect real-time data from the heterogeneous stakeholders of microfinance institutions across India. The validation of the proposed framework is performed by comparing the results against the conventional method of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).

This study identifies various dimensions and indicators for measuring the performance of Indian microfinance institutions. Additionally, the ranking and prioritisation of the performance dimensions and indicators is obtained by considering the mutual interrelation between them.

The study indicates that there exists a significant dyadic relationship between financial performance and social performance for improving the overall performance of the microfinance institutions. Governance is found to unidirectionally influence both financial and social performance. Among all the considered dimensions, financial performance of a microfinance institution is the most critical dimension for improving the overall performance. The top five performance indicators of the Indian microfinance institutions are funding source, borrowing and overhead cost, size of the firm, end-use of the money and depth of outreach.

The study was conducted in the context of Indian microfinance institutions; hence the scope of generalisation of the results is limited. This research considers both subjective and objective aspect of the performance dimensions and indicators from the perspective of multiple stakeholders (i.e. firm, society and regulator). The integrated framework is expected to aid in improving overall performance of microfinance institutions by focusing on the most critical (high prioritised) performance indicators.

An integrated DEMATEL-ANP framework is used in the domain of microfinance to assess the performance dimensions. This study is unique in terms of analysing performance of microfinance institutions from the perspective of heterogeneous stakeholders.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the intangible intensity of the firm on the relevance of research and development (R&D) information to determine equity values in India. Additionally, the study compares the association of input information on R&D investment (the reported R&D cost) and output information on R&D investment (patent count) with equity values. Further, the study also examines the operational nature of the firm and patent count, which is the better proxy to measure the intangible intensity of the firm.

The authors compared the explanatory power of R&D information between intangible and non-intangible intensive firms. To estimate the value relevance of R&D information, the authors followed the statistical model based on the theoretical framework of the residual income model.

The results indicate that there is a significant moderating impact of the intangible intensity of the firm on the relevance of R&D information to determine equity values in India over the 25 years study period (from 1991 to 2016). Further, in India, the study finds that the input information of R&D outlay is more relevant than output information on R&D outlay to determine equity values, irrespective of the proxy measure of intangible intensity. Moreover, the study finds that the operational nature of the firm is a better proxy of the intangible intensity of the firm compared to patent counts.

In this study, pooled cross-sectional data were used for analysis. In the future, longitudinal and panel data can be used for more insightful results.

The findings of the study provide direction to investors and creditors to find the intrinsic value of the investments in internally developed intangible assets, which will reduce the asymmetry between the market value and accounting value of equity.

The paper offers insights into the impact of intangible intensity on the relevance quality of R&D information in an emerging country.

Fraud transaction detection has become a significant factor in the communication technologies and electronic commerce systems, as it affects the usage of electronic payment. Even though, various fraud detection methods are developed, enhancing the performance of electronic payment by detecting the fraudsters results in a great challenge in the bank transaction.

This paper aims to design the fraud detection mechanism using the proposed Harris water optimization-based deep recurrent neural network (HWO-based deep RNN). The proposed fraud detection strategy includes three different phases, namely, pre-processing, feature selection and fraud detection. Initially, the input transactional data is subjected to the pre-processing phase, where the data is pre-processed using the Box-Cox transformation to remove the redundant and noise values from data. The pre-processed data is passed to the feature selection phase, where the essential and the suitable features are selected using the wrapper model. The selected feature makes the classifier to perform better detection performance. Finally, the selected features are fed to the detection phase, where the deep recurrent neural network classifier is used to achieve the fraud detection process such that the training process of the classifier is done by the proposed Harris water optimization algorithm, which is the integration of water wave optimization and Harris hawks optimization.

Moreover, the proposed HWO-based deep RNN obtained better performance in terms of the metrics, such as accuracy, sensitivity and specificity with the values of 0.9192, 0.7642 and 0.9943.

An effective fraud detection method named HWO-based deep RNN is designed to detect the frauds in the bank transaction. The optimal features selected using the wrapper model enable the classifier to find fraudulent activities more efficiently. However, the accurate detection result is evaluated through the optimization model based on the fitness measure such that the function with the minimal error value is declared as the best solution, as it yields better detection results.

The purpose of the paper is to mathematically model and predict the characteristics of thermo-mechanically treated (TMT) rebar when subjected to elevated temperatures.

Data were collected from a few selected studies for developing the constitutive relations. Using the exposed temperature and the duration of heating as independent variables, the empirical relations were developed for determining the changes in mechanical properties of TMT rebars at elevated temperatures.

Recrystallization of TMT rebar crystals took place around 500 °C, which led to a decrease in the dislocation density along with the increase of large-sized grains, resulting in the degradation of strength. Up to a temperature range of 500 °C, the normalized fracture strength was higher, while the normalized fracture strain is not so high. This indicated a failure of brittle nature.

This is an original work done by others as a study to theoretically predict the mechanical behavior of TMT rebars when exposed to elevated temperature.

1. The TMT bars showed brittleness characteristics up to 500 °C and showed ductility characteristics after that on account of its recrystallization and extensive tempering of the outer martensitic rim around that temperature.

2. The comparison between the super ductile (SD) TMT and the regular TMT exhibit shows that the SD-TMT bars were about 1.5 times more ductile than the normal ones.

The TMT bars showed brittleness characteristics up to 500 °C and showed ductility characteristics after that on account of its recrystallization and extensive tempering of the outer martensitic rim around that temperature.

The comparison between the super ductile (SD) TMT and the regular TMT exhibit shows that the SD-TMT bars were about 1.5 times more ductile than the normal ones.