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This article examines the future of e‐money as a payment instrument and some of the microeconomic policy issues it will raise. The paper is in two parts. This first part focuses on the various forms which electronic money is likely to take in the future, and considers key technological and economic factors that will shape its evolution. Part 2, to be published in the next issue of foresight, examines some of the major regulatory and institutional issues that are likely to have a bearing on the adoption of e‐money, notably concerns related to the regulation of payment systems, security, privacy and consumer protection.

Purpose – This paper focuses on a unique historical case study of industry evolution in order to develop a road map where historical and strategic research could develop a common ground for trans-disciplinary inquiry.

Design/methodology/approach – The industry I explore is the Universal Credit Card Industry since its inception with the Diners Club in 1949 until its maturity in late 1990s. My empirical objective here is to develop a historically detailed and theoretically rich case study in which evolutionary processes are discovered as a result of the historical narrative.

Findings – The historical account of the industry demonstrates how the evolution of alternative business models as organizing forms has led to the establishment of interorganizational platforms with unique ecosystems. These alternative business models, through various experimentations, have ultimately produced two critical interorganizational organizations, one based on an open-loop system represented by Visa and MasterCard, and the other based on a closed-loop system represented by Diners Club and the American Express. The historical account also shows that in a given industry competition is not only among specific firms in the industry but also among the business models and the platforms created by these models.

Originality/value – I conclude that historical analyses reveal the nature of competition not only among firms but also among alternative business models where traditional strategy research rarely covers.

In this chapter customer opinion and perception towards e-payment system is disclosed with the help of descriptive analysis of the responses collected from the respondents using questionnaire.

The First of January 1984 may well be recognised as one of the most significant dates in the evolutionary calendar of Information Management. On that date there came into force the first mandatory stipulation regarding the form that information would have to take. This event could well be the first of many that will force industry to make changes in the methods by which it produces, receives and stores information. This must, inevitably, require the provision of people aware of the impact that such changes will bring and who will be trained to respond effectively to those changes.

The purpose of this paper is to design a sustainable development platform for water and energy peer-to-peer trading that is financially and economically feasible. Water and other resources are becoming scarcer every day, and developing countries are the neediest for an immediate intervention. Water, as a national need, is considered to be one of the most precious commodities, but it is also one of the main causes for conflicts in the 21st century. Rainwater harvesting and peer-to-peer trading of the harvested water is one of the most convenient, scalable and sustainable solutions but faces organization challenges such as the absence of suitable business models motivating normal users to sell their generated resources (such as water and energy), currency and financial settlement complexities and single utility markets.

This paper proposes a multi-utility trading platform based on the blockchain technology which can address the challenges faced by peer-to-peer trading for resources such as energy and water.

This paper presents a peer-to-peer multi-utility trading platform that solves the shortcomings of existing utility frameworks reported in the current literature.

This proposed platform meets the needs of developing countries as well as rural areas of developed countries. The open nature of the proposed design makes it suitable for adoption and use by various stakeholders.

Purpose: The study aims to explore the wider acceptance of blockchain technology and growing faith in this technology among all business domains to mitigate the chances of fraud in various sectors.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The authors focus on studies conducted during 2015–2022 using keywords such as blockchain, fraud detection and financial domain for Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The SLR approach entails two databases, namely, Scopus and IEEE Xplore, to seek relevant articles covering the effectiveness of blockchain technology in controlling financial fraud.

Findings: The findings of the research explored different types of business domains using blockchains in detecting fraud. They examined their effectiveness in other sectors such as insurance, banks, online transactions, real estate, credit card usage, etc.

Practical Implications: The results of this research highlight (1) the real-life applications of blockchain technology to secure the gateway for online transactions; (2) people from diverse backgrounds with different business objectives can strongly rely on blockchains to prevent fraud.

Originality/Value: The SLR conducted in this study assists in the identification of future avenues with practical implications, making researchers aware of the work so far carried out for checking the effectiveness of blockchain; however, it does not ignore the possibility of zero to less effectiveness in some businesses which is yet to be explored.

The evolution of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) was nurtured by economists and accountants loyal to the philosophical basis of what is often referred to as “Western” market economies, being classical and neoclassical contracting theories. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a particular Asian cultural attribute (guānxì ) impacts on the efficacy of fair value measurement.

Using a literature review and research of studies of the adoption of IFRS in China, studies of both guānxì and fair value in Chinese accounting research, this study unbundles Williamson’s governance structure and contracting theory to examine how guānxì is positioned orthogonally to fair value (market-oriented valuation) principles for financial reporting. This is followed by a case study of the events surrounding the collapse of China Medical Technologies.

Guānxì is integral to Asian economies and economic transactions. Resulting conditions, characterised by relational contracting, may not meet the qualitative characteristics of neutrality and faithful representation in fair value measurement of assets and liabilities. The same may be true when insider or “trusted party transaction” values prevail for large ticket transactions among entities in any jurisdiction.

Future research on the impact of guānxì may be constrained by its often hidden, and yet dynamic, character; and the varieties of its manifestations.

This study highlights how difficult it may be to achieve both comparability and relevance in the asset and liability recognition and measurement rules in Asian (and possibly also other) economies adopting accounting principles that are developed in a Western context.

One of the most significant changes in monetary economics at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been the virtual disappearance of what was once a dominant focus, the role of money in monetary policy, and parallelly, the disappearance of the liquidity preference-money supply (LM) curve. Economists used to consider monetary policy with the help of the LM curve as part of the analytical framework which captures the demand for money. However, the workhorse model of modern monetary theory and policy, the New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) framework, only comprises the dynamic investment-savings (IS) curve, the New Keynesian (NK) Phillips curve, and a monetary policy rule. The monetary policy rule is generally known as the Taylor rule. It relates the nominal interest rate to the output-gaps and inflation-gaps, but typically not to either the quantity or the growth rate of money. This change in the modern monetary model reflects how the central banks make monetary policy now. This study provides a detailed discussion on the role of money in monetary policy formulation in the context of the NK and the New Monetarist perspectives. The pros and cons of abandonment of money or the LM curve from monetary policy models have been discussed in detail.

Strategic Management and Marketing.

Management students (MBA).

In the present times of global competition and busy schedules of individuals, it is expected that companies provide service with security, sincerity and flexibility keeping pace with changing global scenario of marketing. Service receiver expects competitive and optimum facilities with ease while sitting in any corner of the world at any time of the day. It implies that the service provider should be available at all times/all places for satisfying the needs of the customers. A daunting task ahead of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) was to change its conventional approach and work toward a newer, user-friendly one. The top management, i.e. the Board of Directors, took up the task of identifying a quicker but securer approach to provide optimum facilities to the policyholders.

Achieving customer satisfaction through alternate collection channels and retaining market share, role of customer servicing in creating competitive advantage, challenges for a large public sector enterprise – traditional approach or modern approach, role of private companies in development of insurance industry, creating awareness about the product/service through different distribution channels and use of information and telecommunication technologies to reach remote places, are the expected learning outcomes.

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CSS 8: Marketing

Recent experiments with changes in work week structure from ‘rigid’ to ‘flexible’ have alerted employers and employees to the possibility of varying existing hours arrangements. The decision to change (or not to change) is often based on inadequate consideration of the consequences and an incomplete identification and analysis of all the available alternatives. Different degrees and forms of ‘flexibility’ may be appropriate for different work situations. The decision‐maker must appraise the work situations under his control and determine from the alternatives available which particular structure(s) are most suitable. To this end it is necessary, firstly, to conceptualize about the major variables in work week structures and then to develop a model which will allow the work situation characteristics to be ‘matched’ with a suitable work week structure. Research carried out in the Department of Management Studies at Loughborough University indicates that a ‘contingency’ model seems most appropriate.