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This paper aims to study the motives that led to conflict between two groups – Employees of state-owned power distribution companies and the Government – over permitting parallel licensing to a private company for power distribution services in selected areas of the Maharashtra state in India. The study also seeks to comprehend the reconciliation process and the role of leadership in thwarting the strike that could have impacted common citizens.

The research is built on a case-based approach to analyze the pre- and poststrike environment along with the impact of the power shortage during the few hours of the strike. A semi-structured interview method wherein government and employee union representatives were interviewed to understand their version of the incident is used. Related literature, reports and news were reviewed to realize the impacts and consequences of similar situations in the past.

The strike was called off within a few hours with the intervention of state government to resolve the issue, promising the union the government’s intention not to privatize but to invest INR 500bn in the three government companies. The parallel licensing may impact government-owned power distribution companies as well as customers in the future.

It will pave the way for lessons related to such incidence where the Government and the Unions are at loggerheads over issues like privatization or ownership of the company and help the involved and other parties to seek a viable solution. The role of resilient leadership demonstrated by both parties led to a win-win solution within a few hours of the strike.

The paper is a case study on an issue that is very contemporary; the role of leadership and its swiftness in decision-making that led to a solution to a very complex situation is something that was not done earlier in the context of the State vs Union issue.

Lean manufacturing (LM) concepts have been widely adopted in diverse industrial sectors. However, no literature review focusing on case studies describing LM implementation is available. Case studies represent the actual implementation and provide secondary data for further analysis. This study aims to review the same to understand the pathways of LM implementation. In addition, it aims to analyse other related review questions, such as how implementing LM impacts manufacturing capabilities and the maturity level of manufacturing organisations that implemented LM, to name a few.

A literature review of case studies that discuss the implementation of LM during the last decade (from 2010 to 2020) is carried out. These studies were synthesised, and content analyses were performed to reveal critical insights.

The implementation pattern of LM significantly varies across manufacturing organisations. The findings show simultaneous improvement in manufacturing capabilities. Towards the end of the last decade, organisations implemented LM with radio frequency identification, e-kanban, simulation, etc.

Reviewing the case studies documenting LM implementation to comprehend the various nuances is a novel attempt. Furthermore, potential future research directions are identified for advancing the research in the domain of LM.

People usually try to avoid uncertainty. Recently, however, uncertainty has become an emerging marketing tool in the hedonic product industry. In the case of blind box consumption, for example, the consumers become addicted to the uncertainty created by businesses, leading to repeat purchases and even indulgences. Previous research has, yet, to focus on the impact of uncertainty on indulgence and the role of emotions.

This paper constructs and validates a chain mediation model of uncertainty triggering indulgent consumption based on the information gap theory, positive emotion theory and uncertainty resolution theory and examines the difference between resolved and unresolved uncertainty. This study also explores differences in the impact of whether uncertainty is resolved on emotions. The uncertainty-resolved group elicited a more positive emotional response than the uncertainty-unresolved group, leading to a more indulgent consumption.

The results of three studies show that uncertainty influences indulgent consumption through curiosity and positive emotion, and that curiosity and positive emotion play separate and chain mediating roles between uncertainty and indulgent consumption, respectively. We validate our central hypothesis with questionnaires among blind box consumer groups, examining the moderating role of perceived luck and risk preferences.

The findings shed new light on firms' use of uncertainty to promote consumer purchases.