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Beginning with Rawls's claim that the Supreme Court is the exemplar of public reason, we develop a theory of how reasoned arguments are used in political disputes. We argue that justices often make piecemeal arguments and that this fragmented style of argumentation extends beyond the bench. The result is that many political disputes are “legalized” – not because public arguments are necessarily about laws, but because public arguments often unfold in the same ambiguous way that they do on the Court. We illustrate our argument by examining the use of American Dream talk in the dispute over same-sex marriage (SSM).

In this chapter, I suggest that Connecticut’s and other states’ recent discontinuation of civil unions in the name of marriage “equality” marginalizes and demeans marriage – rejecting people who may nonetheless wish to codify their intimate partnerships – for purposes of legal “incidents,” including rights and privileges, like hospital visitation rights, testimonial privilege, inheritance rights, etc. In doing so, I also call for a rejuvenation of the practice of granting civil union licenses in these states.

The authors have attempted to understand how big data and predictive analytics (BDPA) can help retain employees in the organization.

This study is grounded in the positivism philosophy. The authors have used a resource-based view (RBV) to develop their research hypotheses. The authors tested their research hypotheses using primary data gathered using a single-informant questionnaire. The authors obtained 254 usable responses. The authors performed the assumptions test, performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the validity of the proposed theoretical model, and further tested their research hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis.

The statistical result suggests that the various human resource management strategies play a significant role in improving retention under the mediating effect of the BDPA.

The authors have grounded their study in the positivism philosophy. Moreover, the authors tested their hypotheses using single-informant cross-sectional data. Hence, the authors cannot ignore the effects of the common method bias on their research findings. Moreover, the research findings are based on a particular setting. Thus, the authors caution the readers that their findings must be examined in the light of their study limitations.

The study provided empirical findings based on survey data. Hence, the authors provide numerous guidelines to the practitioners that how the organization can invest in creating BDPA that helps analyze complex data to extract meaningful and relevant information. This information related to employee turnaround may guide top management to reduce the dissatisfaction level among the employees working in high-stress environments resulting from a high degree of uncertainty.

The study helps understand the complex factors that affect the morale of the employee. In the high-paced environment, the employees are often exposed to various negative forces that affect their morale which further affect their productivity. Due to lack of awareness and adequate information, most of the employees and their issues are not dealt with effectively and efficiently by their line managers. Thus, the BDPA can help tackle the most complex problem of society in a significant way.

This study offers some useful contributions to the literature which attempts to unfold the complex nexus between human resource management, information management and strategy. The study contributes to the BDPA literature and how it helps in the retention of employees is one of the areas which still remains elusive to the academic community. Moreover, the managers are still skeptical about the application of BDPA in understanding human-related issues due to a lack of understanding of how and to what extent the employee-related information can be stored and processed. This study’s findings further open the new avenues of research that need to be tackled.

Cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) enables an organization to pay for the services they need and removes the need to maintain information technology infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the role of cloud-based ERP services on the performance of an organization. Here, the performance is categorized as supply chain performance and organizational performance that comprises of financial performance and marketing performance. Contingent resource-based view (RBV) theory was used to develop a theoretical framework in which supply base complexity (SBC) acts as a moderating variable on the relationship between cloud ERP and the performance.

Contingent RBV theory is used to explain the relationship between all identified variables in this paper. Partial least squares (PLS) based on structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to empirically test our theoretical framework.

The PLS-SEM analysis of 154 respondents supports the contingent RBV theory. Six hypotheses – out of the eight hypotheses formulated in this paper – are supported by data.

Given this study was conducted in India where the potential of cloud ERP has not been fully implemented yet, the results may reflect more of perceived usefulness of this technology. The authors have attempted to understand the effect of SBC as a moderator in the relationship between cloud ERP and organizational performance which may not be the only moderator affecting this relationship among other potential moderators.

This paper empirically validates the theoretical framework based on the contingent RBV theory as it mitigates the static nature of the resource-based view approach suggested in the seminal article of Barney (1991).

The learning outcome of this case study is to help students identify issues of the electric two-wheeler industry in India, revisiting conventional business models and transitioning toward sustainable business models. Eventually, this case study will enhance students’ analytical, qualitative analysis, multidisciplinary approach and strategic decision-making skills.

This case study can be used to discuss Michael Porter’s five forces model, TOWS matrix and Michael Porter’s generic strategies for competitive advantage.

Bounce was established in 2014 by Vivekananda Halkere, Anil G. and Varun Agni. The startup was an on-demand service provider of scooters. It also claimed to be the world’s fastest-growing scooter rental startup. As of March 2020, Bounce operated in 12 Indian cities, namely, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Hassan, Kolar, Mysore, Bhuj, Udaipur, Belgavi, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Hampi and Delhi. Bounce’s revenue grew to INR 1,000m in the fiscal year (FY) 2020 compared to INR 160m in FY 2019. Halkere was happy and proud of what his friends and he had achieved in the past two years. However, he was concerned about competition. What plan of action was needed to help thwart competition. What would be the best strategy to achieve growth and monetize operations? and How would Bounce address these major challenges to capture market share?

This case study can be taught in advanced undergraduate, MBA or executive-level programs dealing with strategic management. This case study helps students in dealing with issues pertaining to a given market sector where a firm is operating and the strategies to thwart competition.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS11: Strategy.

The COVID-19 crisis has created enormous strain in global supply chains. The disruption has caused severe shortages of critical items, including personal protective equipment (e.g. face masks), ventilators and diagnostics. The failure of the industry to meet the sudden demand for these necessary items has caused a severe humanitarian crisis. These situations, resulting from the COVID-19, crisis have led to the informal growth of frugal innovation in sustainable global supply chains. This paper aims to provide a detailed overview of drivers of frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains, following lessons acquired from emerging countries’ attempts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors used a focused group approach to identify the drivers and this paper further validated them using existing literature published in international peer-reviewed journals and reports. The authors adopted total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze the complex relationships among identified drivers.

The authors present a theoretical framework to explain how the drivers are interlinked. This paper has developed the framework through a synthesis of the TISM modeling and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment analysis. This paper observed that government financial support, policies and regulations, under the mediating effect of leadership and the moderating effect of national culture and international rules and regulations, has a significant effect on the adoption of emerging technology, volunteering initiatives and values and ethics. Further, emerging technology, volunteering initiative and values and ethics have a significant effect on supply chain talent and frugal engineering. These results provide some useful theoretical insights that may help in further investigating the role of frugal innovations in other contexts.

The authors find that outcomes of the methodical contributions and the resulting managerial insights can be categorized into four levels. Industry and researchers alike can use the study to develop the decision-support systems guiding frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains amid the COVID-19 pandemic and in recovering them thereafter. Suggestions for future research directions are offered and discussed.

This paper aims to explore and analyse stakeholders’ perceptions of the development priorities and suggests more effective strategies to assist sustainable economic growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The authors use the World Bank data set, which collects various stakeholders’ opinions on the UAE development. First, the exploratory factor analysis has been applied to detect the main groups of development priorities. Second, the fuzzy cluster analysis has been conducted to detect the groups of stakeholders with different attitudes towards the importance of extracted groups of priorities. Third, clusters have been compared according to demographics, media usage and shared prosperity goals.

The two main groups of development priorities have been extracted by the exploratory factor analysis: economic priorities and sustainability priorities. Four clusters have been detected according to the level of motivation when it comes to the economic and sustainability priorities: Cluster 1 (High economic – High sustainability), Cluster 2 (High economic – Medium sustainability), Cluster 3 (High economic – Low sustainability) and Cluster 4 (Low economic – Low sustainability). Members of the cluster that prefer a high level of economic and sustainability priorities (Cluster 1) also prefer more diversified economic growth providing better employment opportunities and better education and training for young people in the UAE.

Limitations stem from the survey being conducted on a relatively small sample using the data collected by the World Bank; however, this data set allowed a comparison of various stakeholders. Future research should consider a broader sample approach, e.g. exploring and comparing all of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; investigating the opinions of the expatriate managers living in the UAE that are not from GCC countries; and/or including other various groups that are lagging, such as female entrepreneurs.

Several practical implications were identified regarding education and media coverage. Since respondents prioritize the economic development factors over sustainability factors, a media campaign could be developed and executed to increase sustainability awareness. A campaign could target especially male citizens since the analysis indicates that males are more likely to affirm high economic and low sustainability priorities than females. There is no need for further diversification of media campaigns according to age since the analysis did not reveal relevant differences in age groups, implying there is no inter-generational gap between respondents.

This paper contributes to the literature by comparing the perceived importance of various development goals in the UAE, such as development priorities and shared prosperity indicators. The fuzzy cluster analysis has been used as a novel approach to detect the relevant groups of stakeholders in the UAE and their developmental priorities. The issue of media usage and demographic characteristics in this context has also been discussed.

This paper considers the East India Company’s emergence as a territorial power from the 1760s until the revocation of most of its commercial functions in 1834. While this period has been a key episode for historians of the British Empire and of South Asia, social scientists have struggled with the Company’s ambiguous nature. In this paper, I propose that a profitable way to grasp the Company’s transformation is to consider it as a global strategic action field. This perspective clarifies two key processes in the Company’s transition: the enlargement of its territorial possessions; and the increased exposure of its patrimonial network to intervention from British metropolitan politics. To further suggest the utility of this analytic perspective, I synthesize evidence from various sources, including data concerning the East India Court of Directors and the career histories of Company servants in two of its key administrative regions, Bengal and Madras, during this period of transition.