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The purpose of this article, based on the Indian philosophy of Karma that all individual actions have the power to bring joy or sorrow based on the nature of action, is to propose a new construct, salesperson's Karma Orientation, and discuss its antecedents and outcomes.

The paper reviews literature on oriental philosophy of Karma yoga, and on self‐leadership, and self‐control to propose the new construct, its antecedents, and consequences in a sales context.

The paper puts forward four dimensions of Karma orientation of salespersons: work as selfless action, work as duty towards others, detachment from work‐related rewards, and equanimity under environmental influences. Salesperson's Karma orientation is useful for developing relationship with customers, enhances selling effectiveness, ethical behaviors, and spiritual well‐being, by providing the salespersons with a sense of duty, and ownership towards their work.

The concept of Karma orientation would be useful for stressful jobs such as sales, and managers would find it useful as a coping strategy, as well as for improving performance of employees.

The paper proposes a new construct of Karma orientation at an individual boundary spanning sales employee's level. The paper also propose its important antecedents and outcomes.

This chapter explores the concept of ‘dharma’ (duty orientation) and ‘karma’ (action orientation) of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from Vedantic (Vedanta) viewpoints. Islam, Buddhism and Christianity have received wider attentions in the CSR literatures from philosophical and religious perspective. However, Vedanta is yet to be explored in the context of CSR. This chapter therefore is timely and fills the gap in the CSR literature.

In this chapter, the authors employ hermeneutics, a qualitative research methodology which involves the study, understanding and interpretation of religious texts of Vedanta particularly the ‘dharma’ and ‘karma’ in the context of CSR.

In a nutshell, the Vedanta provides an inside-out approach to CSR, which is development of the individual leader’s self-conscience. The leaders and the role they play in corporations are crucial in ensuring transparency, good conduct and governance towards the ultimate aim of achieving CSR.

This chapter analyses the Vedantic perspectives on communication in establishing CSR objectives. It investigates the problems and prospects of Vedantic style of communicating CSR.

In this conceptual paper, anchoring on the Hindu philosophical doctrine of karma, this study models the impact of salesperson’s karma orientation (KO) (a relatively new construct), in alleviating his/her job burnout. This study also explores the moderating impact of thought self-leadership (TSL).

This study theorizes the impact of KO on salesperson’s burnout by integrating the job demand–resource model with spirituality and TSL literatures.

Using multi-dimensional construct of KO, this study proposes several research propositions to theorize the impact of each of the four dimensions (i.e. work as selfless action, work as duty towards others, detachment from work-related rewards and equanimity under environmental influences) on three aspects of job burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment). Additionally, this study also theorizes the moderating impact of TSL on the above-mentioned relationships.

Organizations can adopt the karma doctrine for designing new sales jobs that provide higher meaningfulness and a greater sense of purpose to their salespeople, going beyond extrinsic rewards such as money. Higher KO among the business to business salespersons would lead them to derive higher intrinsic motivation to make karmic investments with their customers knowing that their good deeds with customers would eventually lead to good rewards for themselves, reducing their burnout, while also enhancing their well-being.

The paper makes an original theoretical contribution by theorizing the impact of Hindu philosophy of karma on salesperson’s job burnout, and hence well-being and eventual impact on organizational effectiveness.

The primary objective of the present study is to explore the relationship between workplace spirituality and work stress among offshore and onshore employees of the Indian oil and gas industry. The present study also tends to study the difference in the stress level of offshore and onshore employees of the Oil and Gas Industry.

The size of the sample for the present study was 202 respondents. It includes 128 onshore employees and 74 offshore employees of oil and gas companies. Respondents were mainly managers and supervisors working in various departments of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Cairn India, Reliance India Ltd (RIL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Indian Oil and Gas Ltd (IOCL). Since the different level of stress is experienced by employees at different stages of the organizational structure, thus study selected population comprising of managers and supervisors since they are believed to face similar work stressors. A variety of statistical tools like mean, t-test, correlation and multi-regression is used for the analysis of collected data.

Results show that all six dimensions of workplace spirituality are significantly negatively correlated with stress for onshore employees. However, the sense of community and gratitude are found insignificantly associated with stress for offshore employees. Stressful offshore conditions and excessive specialization might not allow offshore employees to cherish the community at the workplace and also the virtue of gratefulness. The offshore employees might have a certain level of gratitude and community system, but it is not sufficient for the employees to perceive a lower level of work relates to stress. The result gives the impression that the normal working conditions (onshore workplace) provide adequate opportunity to workplace spirituality to transcend its impact on work stress.

This is one of the pioneer studies that examined the role of workplace spirituality and stress in stress management of offshore and onshore employees of Indian Oil and gas companies.

The purpose of this paper is to present research work based on the authors’ conceptual framework reported in the VRAP Conference 2013. It is related with an efficient method to obtain an optimal part build orientation for additive manufacturing (AM) by using AM features with associated AM production knowledge and multi-attribute decision-making (MADM). The paper also emphasizes the importance of AM feature and the implied AM knowledge in AM process planning.

To solve the orientation problem in AM, two sub-tasks, the generation of a set of alternative orientations and the identification of an optimal one within the generated list, should be accomplished. In this paper, AM feature is defined and associated with AM production knowledge to be used for generating a set of alternative orientations. Key attributes for the decision-making of the orientation problem are then identified and used to represent those generated orientations. Finally, an integrated MADM model is adopted to find out the optimal orientation among the generated alternative orientations.

The proposed method to find out an optimal part build orientation for those parts with simple or medium complex geometric shapes is reasonable and efficient. It also has the potential to deal with more complex parts with cellular or porous structures in a short time by using high-performance computers.

The proposed method is a proof-of-concept. There is a need to investigate AM feature types and the association with related AM production knowledge further so as to suite the context of orientating parts with more complex geometric features. There are also research opportunities for developing more advanced algorithms to recognize AM features and generate alternative orientations and refine alternative orientations.

AM feature is defined and introduced to the orientation problem in AM for generating the alternative orientations. It is also used as one of the key attributes for decision-making so as to help express production requirements on specific geometric features of a desired part.

This paper examined the usage of cultural values in market segmentation. The study involved young Chinese consumers of apparel market in Hong Kong. Chinese Cultural Values Scale (CCVS) (Yau 1994) was adopted as the measurement instrument of the value construct. Samples were asked to rate the importance of various store attributes in their choices of where to purchase. The analysis involved multivariate statistical methods. Respondents were segmented into four clusters and contrasted. It revealed that clusters with different value orientations rated differently the importances of ten store attributes. Implications for marketers were proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated decision-making model for multi-attributes decision-making (MADM) problems in additive manufacturing (AM) process planning and for related MADM problems in other research areas.

This research analyzed the drawbacks of former methods and then proposed two sub-decision-making models, “deviation model” and “similarity model”. The former sub-model aimed to measure the deviation extent of each alternative to the aspired goal based on analyzing Euclidean distance between them, whereas the latter sub-model applying grey incidence analysis was used to measure the similarity between alternatives and the expected goal by investigating the curve shape of each alternative. Afterwards, an integrated model based on the aggregation of the two sub-models was proposed and verified by a numerical example and simple case studies.

The calculating results of the cited numerical example and the comparison to former related research showed that this proposed model is more practical and reasonable than former methods applied in MADM problems of AM. In addition, the proposed model can be applied in other fields where MADM problems exist.

This proposed integrated model not only considered the deviation extent of alternatives to the aspired goal but also investigated the similarity between alternatives and the expected goal. The similarity analysis compensates the drawbacks of traditional “distance-based” models or methods that cannot distinguish alternatives which have the same distance-based index value.

In today’s competitive environment, understanding employee well-being and work engagement (WE) is crucial. This study explores the relationship between values, well-being and WE within positive organizational behavior (POB). The research aims to provide insights for promoting employee well-being and enhancing WE.

Using a cross-sectional approach, three hundred and seventy-two teachers from higher education institutes in India participated by completing questionnaires. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) was employed to examine the mediation effect.

Human values i.e. benevolence (BE) and universalism (UN) significantly impacted teachers' WE. These relationships were mediated by positive emotions (PE), negative emotions (NE) and satisfaction with life (SWL). Interestingly, UN exhibited a positive relationship with PE and SWL and a negative relationship with NE. These findings contradict existing theories and may be attributed to India’s cultural aspects, particularly the concept of karma orientation.

The quantitative results obtained through CB-SEM could be complemented by future qualitative studies. Employing longitudinal research might yield different results. Generalizing the findings to other populations requires caution.

Institutions should prioritize human values in teacher recruitment and development to improve engagement. Promoting PE, managing NE and enhancing SWL can boost WE. Future research should explore mediation with other variables and use longitudinal studies to understand cultural impact and intervention strategies.

The study contributes to knowledge on WE within positive organizational behavior by examining BE and UN. Additionally, exploring the mediating effect of PE, NE and SWL adds further value.

To identify the characteristic features of humanistic leadership in the Tata group in India, and to explicate the key facilitating factors.

Narrative case-study inquiry via semi-structured interviews with top management leaders and middle managers, and secondary sources of information.

The top leaders of the Tata companies emphasised the following values and leadership experience: (1) Adherence to the founder's philosophy and the basic core values, (2) Leadership with Trust, (3) Community as the key purpose of the enterprise, (4) Senior leaders as mentors and role-models, (5) Abiding by the ethical code of conduct, (6) Employee-focus and (7) Tacit alignment with Indian cultural values. These resonated with the humanistic leadership tenets. Based on the literature the authors also identified that in Tata leadership, there is an amalgamation of personal values (humata, hukhta, hvarshta: good thought, word and deed) and national cultural ethos (dharma, karma and jnana: emphasis on duty-bound action and knowledge). These leadership values are conveyed and institutionalised in the organisation via strategic initiatives such as the Tata Trusts, Tata Business Excellence Model, Tata Code of Conduct. This synergy of personal values, national cultural ethos and organisational strategy makes Tata group realise the humanistic leadership objectives, while achieving business targets.

The thematic analysis of interview data provides a contextualised understanding of how humanistic leadership gets realised at both the individual behavioural level, as well as at the broader organisational strategic level. This provides inputs to building the theory of humanistic leadership.

By unravelling the factors that facilitate the realisation of humanistic leadership in the Tata group, the authors provide an exemplar for other organisations and business leaders to draw insights from.

Humanistic leadership, oriented towards upliftment of community and society, and not just profit maximisation, is critical to creating a more sustainable and peaceful world.

This is one of first studies that conceptualises the Tata leadership from the humanistic perspective. The theoretical insights are of basic and applied use.