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Taking a multidimensional perspective, the study aims to identify and examine the factors that are essential for employability. The study pursues to understand the underlying causes that facilitate the development of appropriate skills and attitudes that influence the development of employability in an individual.

The study pursued an exploratory research design followed by a descriptive. It explored the employability factors from the perspectives of the recruiter, student (candidate) and trainer. Additionally, it followed a causal research approach to examine the relationship between factors related to the personal environment, academic system, recruiter’s bias, industry and job attributes and overall employability. The antecedents of employability and their impact were examined with all the constructs taking the recruiter, student and trainer data sets.

The study identifies and analyses the antecedent factors that influence the employability development among college graduates and undergraduates. With its findings, the study identifies the changes or improvements required in teaching and learning mechanisms, grooming students and societal practices, social and economic biases in accessibility to facilities leading to employability. It also calls for a reflection on individual’s own attitude, motivation and abilities. The study calls for an assessment of the education systems and academic quality to develop employability among students. It conjures that the alignment of teacher and learner with industry requirements is an imperative requirement for the expansion of the industry and, in particular, the retail sector.

The study will be of significance to the policymakers and academicians while designing the retail-specific courses and aims toward addressing the mismatch amidst the demand and supply of manpower in the retail industry. The study has been designed to make it highly relevant for the students who are potential manpower to the retail sector as well as the employees who have already entered the industry. It addresses the major factors required for India to develop a cohesive and inclusive ecosystem that provides for the benefit of millions of youths in India.

The literature lacks a coherent meaning and measurement of employability and identifies the need to empirically explore and examine employability skills. Furthermore, the scant empirical research focuses largely on employee or student perspective, even when the role of recruitment in the assessment of employability is most critical. This study empirically evaluates the market from the perspective of students, employees, employers, trainers and academicians and develops a model that gives a holistic picture of the causes that influence the development of employability in an individual.

Brand management, marketing management and retail.

This case is applicable to postgraduate business management students.

Mr Rajesh Jain promoted Miraaya chain of stores in the year 2010. Currently, Miraaya is a fast-evolving retail chain selling women's wear, and this case describes Miraaya's journey since its inception and its attempt to build a brand with limited resources and to carve a place for itself amidst growing competition and fast-growing customer awareness. Though Rajesh almost singlehandedly led the brand, the organization has professionals in each function and there has been process orientation – both for front-end functions as well as back-end functions, right from the beginning. In the second year of operation, the revenue grew very rapidly, but in the third year, when faced with the challenge of stagnant revenue, the organization could still increase the profitability. With a focus on product innovation, he and his team have been able to retain the customers' interest, which is at a premium with widespread competition from both organized and unorganized women's apparel retailers. With innovations like salwars in knitted fabric and cropped trousers with elastic waistband, Miraaya remained ahead of the pack. To keep the costs low, Rajesh and his team worked constantly on expanding via franchising and shop-in-shop formats as well as on online sales, thus also increasing the brand awareness. Students might come to the class with an understanding that brand building is done mainly through active communication in the media, while this case would create an opportunity for the students to appreciate that word-of-mouth, online media and building customer relationships via product innovation can be very exciting, affordable and successful media.

With the help of this case, students would learn about customer-based brand equity model and its factors. The case would also help to understand the challenges of brand building in retail in a country like India. It also defines the latest buying behaviour of Indian women and their aspirations.

The case illustrates the challenges and opportunities for a retail entrepreneur in an Indian environment. The case is a nice piece of work to showcase how a new retailer should build the brand in a highly competitive market. This case can be a source of inspiration among budding entrepreneurs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Strategy.

Post-Graduate and Executive Programmes in Management.

Mr Srinivas Kesineni has been chairman of Kesineni Tours and Travels for the last 19 years. Kesineni Tours and Travels is one of the fastest growing bus travel and transport organisations. The case describes the journey of Kesineni Tours and Travels since its inception. It also outlines different strategies adopted by the Chairman to reach newer heights, to survive and to grow in the turbulent times of changing technology and rising competition from different means of transportation. This unique organisation is run by family, friends and well-wishers of the owners, yet it is professional in its approach in operations. The board of directors of Kesineni Tours and Travels has approved the financial results of 2010, which shows 55 percent growth and Rs 86.71 crores turnover. This is a remarkable achievement and recognition for a company that has been in the business since 1992. In early 1992, entrepreneur Mr Srinivas Kesineni thought of a bus transportation business when he started with just two buses, and today when the organization is the largest tour and travel company in the region serving approximately 15 lack customers in a year covering 75 destinations with around 425 daily schedules. He and his team have been working tirelessly and the company has a remarkable presence in the tour and travel business in India with occasional innovative moves from optimising bus routing, initiating sleeper coaches, introducing Volvo buses to the fleet, entering the cargo transportation business and more. This business has grown at CAGR of 24.07 percent since 2000-2001. Students reading this case may come to the class with preconceived views that the journey of the organisation since its beginning is an ordinary story, but this case creates an opportunity for students to come to their own conclusion how different strategies and the synthesis is important for achieving desired outcomes form time to time. This case facilitates the deductive learning process by identifying different strategic elements form the case and to understand its synergy to explain McKinsey 7s framework.

These include: understanding different strategies and policies adopted by the organisation and its impact on performance; understanding the importance of alignment of processes and departments in achievement of organisational strategy; and analysing and understanding the concept of the McKinsey 7S Framework, which is a helpful tool to understand the performance of the organisation.

Teaching notes are available. Bradach, Jaffrey, Organisational Alignment: The 7S Model, Harvard Business School Publishing are useful for further reading.

The world is seeing a large deficit in employable workforce. An employable workforce is developed with appropriate combination of academic and practical skills. Practical skills are better developed with industry intervention rather than in classrooms. Changing trends of economic activity have steadily changed the business thought. The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of industry in developing employability by studying employability from the value chain and “Demand-Supply” of workforce models. The scope is limited to Indian context. This paper is a part of the research on factors influencing employability in India.

Literature review, expert interviews and authors’ own experiences and understanding.

It has been found that most of the countries in the world are facing a shortage of skilled and employable workforce. We examined various literature content and studied specific instances in the Industry. The study has shown that in the cases where industry has been actively involved in identifying training needs, the supply of manpower has been adequate. So, it is found that industry's role in employability is crucial and impacts on other macro policies for human development.

As this paper is a part of a larger study on “Factors impacting employability in India,” it is of paramount importance to Indian researchers, students and policy makers. The paper and the research are oriented to identifying causes to the problem of employability, so that systemic changes can be identified.

This paper is based on large amount of literature that is existing in various sources. All the literature has been thoroughly read and assimilated. Suitable references have cited and others have been acknowledged. Most importantly this is an original work of the authors and their views.

Currently, one of the most important dilemmas facing mankind is environmental degradation and natural resource shortage. The adoption of Green Banking practices has been identified as a solution to the growing environmental problems all over the world. However, an important issue being faced by both the conventional and Islamic banking industry is the creation of stakeholder engagement in Green Banking practices. The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of Islamic principles in developing an emotional attachment between Green Banking practices and the Muslim consumer market to facilitate Green Banking adoption.

Based on the theory of self-congruity, the authors have proposed a framework to analyze the congruity between Islamic principles and Green Banking. The argument is built on secondary data by identifying the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) dimensions of Green Banking and proving its congruence with teachings of the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah.

It is observed that the doctrine of Islam established for mankind 1,400 years ago consists of the same principles that are now being implemented in the shape of Green Banking. The dimensions of Green Banking are in line with Islamic teachings and, thus, can easily be adopted and marketed by banks, especially Islamic banks, targeting the Muslim consumers. The congruence of Green Banking with Islamic principles can play a major role in fostering the growth of this imperative ideology for the Green Muslim consumers. Islamic banks can market green products and services on the basis of religious congruity to the Muslim consumer market and create greater acceptability and loyalty.

The proposed model has not been empirically tested.

Limited research exists in the area of Green Banking adoption, especially in Muslim countries. Up until now, academic research has not been conducted on the congruity between the principles of Islam and Green Banking dimensions. This paper attempts to add to the unsaturated research area of Green Banking adoption by Islamic banks and how Islamic banks can gain a competitive advantage by building on the congruity between Green Banking and Islam.

There are uncertainties concerning how innovators can successfully venture into disruptive innovations and how incumbents can react to the emergence of such innovations. Disruptive digital innovations, which use information technology to disrupt business contexts and can evolve rapidly to either successes or failures, have unique challenges. The literature has largely remained silent concerning these. Also, existing studies often focus on innovations originating in developed economies and just on successful cases. There is a lack of comparative focus on successful and failure cases emerging across economies. The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps.

This paper assesses the evolution of disruptive digital innovations in various contexts through a financial management-motivated conceptual framework. Contrary to existing works, this paper focuses on both successful and failure cases and regards the influence of various stakeholders further to innovators and incumbents to explain the successes or failures of the innovation.

There are some common success factors for disruptive digital innovation. These include an inherent focus on social value, alignment to financiers' interests and rivals' actions and strategic collaborations to create a synergy effect.

Innovators can cause effective digital disruption by focusing on social and financial values. Success can also largely depend on strategic partnerships rather than actions by an individual entity. Thus, venturing and managing disruptive digital innovation is not an isolated but a social process.

This paper recommends propositions for innovators and incumbents to venture into and confront disruptive digital innovations effectively. Its originality lies in focusing on both successful and failure cases, unexplored in literature, to develop the propositions.