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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of effectiveness in public colleges of Punjab (India) from the students’ perspective and the impact of these determinants on the satisfaction level of students. The study further explores the difference in the overall satisfaction of students’ toward college effectiveness on the basis of demographic variables.

The study uses a survey approach. The sample comprises of 369 students from 19 public/government general degree colleges of Punjab (India). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) has been used to explore the determinants of public colleges and structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to analyze the impact of these determinants on the satisfaction of students. t-Test and ANOVA have been used to examine the difference in students’ satisfaction on the basis of their demographic variables.

The research instrument has been tested for both reliability and validity. The findings showed that the eight determinants of the satisfaction of students toward public colleges, namely academic environment, college administration, students support services, learning material, infrastructure facilities, placement services, extracurricular activities and financial administration. These, eight independent variables have been entered into SEM. The SEM model shows that infrastructure facilities, academic environment, learning material, college administration, extracurricular activities and financial administration have a positive and significant impact on the students’ satisfaction. On the basis of demographic variables, significant differences in overall satisfaction have been found for gender and level of education.

Public higher education sector in Punjab suffers from many limitations. Students are the internal customers of educational institutions and their satisfaction toward higher educational institutions will make every learner’s mind and policymakers in the field of education think seriously about bringing reforms in the higher education sector in Punjab.

Punjab, a well-known state of northern India is a leader in providing higher education. But, it is a fact that public higher education sector in Punjab has been facing many challenges. Student satisfaction is the central goal of any institution and this research helps to develop new insight in the quality of public higher education.

Procurement planning has always been a huge and challenging activity for business firms, especially in manufacturing. With government legislations about global concern over carbon emissions, the manufacturing firms are enforced to regulate and reduce the emissions caused throughout the supply chain. It is observed that procurement and logistics activities in manufacturing firms contribute heavily toward carbon emissions. Moreover, highly dynamic and uncertain business environment with uncertainty in parameters such as demand, supplier and carrier capacity adds to the complexity in procurement planning. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is a novel attempt to model environmentally sustainable stochastic procurement (ESSP) problem as a mixed-integer non-linear program. The ESSP optimizes the procurement plan of the firm including lot-sizing, supplier and carrier selection by addressing uncertainty and environmental sustainability. The model applies chance-constrained-based approach to address the uncertain parameters.

The proposed ESSP model is solved optimally for 30 data sets to validate the proposed ESSP and is further demonstrated using three illustrations solved optimally in LINGO 10.

The ESSP model simultaneously minimizes total procurement cost and carbon emissions over the entire planning horizon considering uncertain demand, supplier and carrier capacity.

The purpose of this study is to comprehend the efficiency levels of the Indian textile industry and also its sub-sectors in the light of changing global and national business environment. It is imperative to study the efficiency levels of textile industry for an emerging economy like India, where the industry contributes up to 13 per cent in export earnings, 10 per cent in total industrial production and 2 per cent in gross domestic product (GDP). The study holds an important place in the wake of phasing out of the quota regime existing under the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) and the rising competition being faced from countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia.

The present study attempts to have an in-depth analysis of the efficiency levels in the Indian textile industry using meta-frontier data envelopment analysis, which is a non-parametric linear programming based frontier technique.

The findings highlight that the Indian textile industry is inefficient and has a huge scope of improvement in terms of efficiency. It also confirms the existence of different production functions among the sub-sectors of the industry. Among the different sub-sectors, the proximity of production frontier of readymade garments is the closest to meta-frontier followed by cotton and blended yarn, man-made fibre, cloth and others.

The findings bear strong implications for the policymakers in their attempt to regain the lost competitive position of the Indian textile industry and to enhance its contribution in the economy. As per the findings, policymakers should target the relatively inefficient sub-sectors of textile industry (cloth, man-made fibre, cotton and blended yarn) to infuse more efficiency in these sectors to enhance the market share of the Indian textile industry in the global textiles market.

The current study is a unique addition to the sparse literature on managing efficiencies in the textile industry, particularly of emerging economy like India. Looking at the methodological and geographical coverage of the previous work, it was found that no study has explored and analysed the efficiencies of the sub-sectors in the Indian textile industry using meta-frontier analysis. Therefore, this study will be the first of its kind which seeks to fill such gaps and intends to enrich the available literature.

In the present era, government colleges in Punjab are facing cutthroat competition on three fronts, i.e. financial constraints and insufficiency of government grants, falling number of students and the shortage of teaching staff in the colleges because of stiff competition and other reasons. Thus, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the resource use efficiency of government colleges in Punjab.

The study covered 15 general degree government colleges from various districts of Punjab. Secondary data for the study were collected from financial budgets, income and expenditure statements and self study reports of the colleges. The data envelopment analysis was conducted using the CCR model and BCC model.

The technical efficiency results suggest that colleges analyzed in this study are operating at a moderate level of efficiency relative to each other. Most of the colleges were found to be inefficient during the study period. Only one college was found consistently efficient during all the years of the study. Moreover, input and output slacks exist in many of the colleges.

To achieve the efficiency level, the colleges need to improve their utilization of resources and the enrollment rate at a given level of resources. To increase the efficiency of the colleges, the Government of India needs to reform their budgeting system.

Punjab is a well-known state of India and public higher education sector plays important role in the education system. This research provides a new insight to the efficiency of the government colleges.

The purpose of this paper is to model the sustainable food security system using various technologies driving internet of things (IoT). The right to food is a fundamental right of humans. With increasing population and urbanization, less land is being used for agricultural purposes. In addition, the climate change due to global warming often leads to frequent disasters such as droughts and floods, adversely affecting the food production. This leads to increased levels of poverty and hunger. Ensuring food security has become the prime agenda for all the policymakers and government bodies across the world. With changing global dynamics, traditional ways of ensuring food security will not be sufficient alone.

There is a need to develop a sustainable food security system that not only focusses on food production but also equally emphasizes on the efficacy of food distribution and reducing food wastage. In this digital age, the emerging disruptive technologies like Block chain, robotics, big data analytics, and cloud computations, etc., are increasingly changing the functioning of various sectors, giving rise to IoT-based working environment. The policymakers are also exploring these technologies to maximize their outreach so as to benefit the larger set of population and to gain visualization and control over policy implementation using IoT. This paper attempts to model the sustainable food security system using various technologies driving IoT. It also studies the interrelationship among various technologies and their application in various levels of policy implementation. The methodology used in the paper is fuzzy-TISM, which not only provides the causal relationship among two technologies but also provides the magnitude of the cause–effect relationship and the hierarchical framework for the complex problem.

The paper is addressed to the design of sustainable food security system in the Indian context wherein government ensures food security for all, using public distribution system (PDS).

The paper is addressed to the design of sustainable food security system in Indian context wherein government ensures food security for all, using PDS.

This study is a novel attempt to integrate the IoT into the design of the PDS to ensure food security. The enabling factors for IOT are modelled using Fuzzy-TISM.

The purpose of this paper is to develop, measure and empirically validate a scale that captures the full dimensionality of selection attributes considered by customers when choosing a bank.

Focus group interviews were conducted and a well-structured questionnaire was designed. The validity of this scale was tested in accordance with the psychometric scale development procedure.

Contrary to some assertions in past literature, the results suggested service delivery and cost/price as among the most important determinants of the bank selection decisions of consumers.

The practical implications drawn from this study involve the seven constructs which could be adopted by the bank managers, advertising executives and marketing experts in providing good quality services resulting in overall higher levels of customer satisfaction. These decision makers can apply the constructs from the study to identify factors most appealing to both potential and existing customers and build up effective marketing strategies to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

This research paper signifies the leading studies for advancing a validated tool to measure the customers’ selection decisions for banks. As a result, this valid and reliable scale would bring standardization to research conducted in the field of bank selection attributes.

Despite the susceptibility of cotton crops to pest attacks in the Malwa Region of Indian Punjab, no crop insurance policy has been implemented there– not even the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), which is a central scheme. Therefore, this paper attempts to gauge the likely impact of the PMFBY on Punjab cotton farmers and assess the changes needed for greater uptake and effectiveness of PMFBY.

The authors have conducted a primary survey to conduct this study. Initially, the authors compared the costs of cotton production with the returns in two scenarios (with and without insurance). Additionally, the authors have applied a logistic regression framework to examine the determinants of the willingness of farmers to participate in the crop insurance market.

The study finds that net returns of cotton crops are conventionally small and insufficient to cope with damages from crop failure. Yet, PMFBY will require some modifications in the premium rate and the level of indemnity for its greater uptake among Punjab cotton farmers. Additionally, using the logistic regression framework, the authors find that an increase in awareness about crop insurance and farmers' perceptions about their crop failure in the near future reduces the willingness of the farmers to participate in the crop insurance markets.

The present study looks for the viability of PMFBY in Indian Punjab for the cotton crop, which can also be extended to other crops.

Punjab could also use crop insurance to encourage diversification in agriculture. There is a need for special packages for diversified crops under any crop insurance policy. Crops susceptible to volatility due to climate-related factors should be identified and provided with a special insurance package.

There exist very scant studies that have discussed the viability of a central crop insurance scheme in the agricultural-rich state of India, i.e. Punjab. Moreover, they do not also focus on crop losses accruing due to pest and insect attacks.

Over the last few decades, there has been a substantial increase in environmentally conscious consumers' willingness to switch their preferences from mainstream products to green products. Hence, it becomes essential for academicians and marketers to understand the notion, attributes and a comprehensive profile of green consumers. Since consumer attitude towards green products is not widely studied in developing countries, the present study aims at exploring the profile of green consumers in India (Punjab State) based on the same in the Indian context.

The study used the survey method, and a sample of 400 respondents was selected from the Punjab State of India. Initially, principal component analysis was employed to reduce the dimensions. Following this, cluster analysis was applied to segment consumer market in distinctive segments. Results of cluster analysis were validated with discriminant analysis and finally, differences amongst the segments of green and non-green consumers were examined to build on the profile of green consumers.

The study segmented the consumer market based on consumer attitude towards green products. Results of the study revealed four distinct segments. “Dynamic Green”, the largest cluster, presents truly green consumers who exhibit a positive attitude towards green products. Finally, the study highlighted the attitudinal profile of green and non-green consumers and differences amongst the segments were explained.

Similar study should be conducted in other developing/developed countries. Furthermore, cross-cultural studies can be undertaken to contrast consumer attitude towards green products. The study may also be extended to probe the connection between consumers' attitude and actual behaviour towards green products.

The study examined the role of consumer attitude towards green products in identifying the distinct segment of green consumers and determining different configurations of consumer characteristics to build on the profile of green consumers.

This study aims to analyze the effect of organizational context on Entrepreneurial Orientation–Business Performance (EO–BP) relationship by drawing a sample from India.

This firm-level study uses a cross-sectional research design. A personal survey of key informants, one each from 500 North Indian firms, has been conducted. The hypotheses were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling and multi-group moderation analysis.

This study reveals the relevance of organizational context in strategic decision-making. This study finds that the firm’s size and nature of industry influence the inclination of an enterprise toward innovativeness and proactiveness. The results indicate that both, new entrants and older firms, can adopt entrepreneurial posture.

This study attempts to provide a unique perspective of entrepreneurship research by assessing the effect of organizational context on the EO–BP relationship in the Indian context. This study applies five-dimensional conceptualization of EO to EO–BP relationship and attempts to contribute to the literature by refining the inventory of five-dimensional conceptualization of EO construct. The CFA model of multifaceted subjective measurement of BP construct lends support to the integrated approach of BP measurement.