Search results

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mediating effect of organizational engagement in the relationship between supportive work environment (SWE) and employee retention.

Primary data of 211 respondents from 67 organizations were analysed. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the dimensionality and validity of study variables. Further, the hypothesized model was tested with the help of multiple regression analysis.

The findings suggest that SWE plays a crucial role in predicting employee retention. Organizational engagement partially mediates the relationship between SWE and employee retention.

The data were limited to the Indian setting and of cross-sectional design only; so, it may not be generalized across the world. Further, the sample size is also comparatively smaller but the results are not affected adversely.

The role of SWE along with organizational engagement is currently under-researched in the Indian context. The present study is an intense effort to analyse the mediating effect of organizational engagement in the relationship between SWE and employee retention.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has caused stress for everyone and impacted the lives of people globally. Such stress increases troubles for the employees. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to identify symptoms of health problems that employees face during the COVID-19 epidemic. Also, the aim of the paper is to examine if there are statistically significant differences in the physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of health problems among employees before the COVID-19 epidemic and employees during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The research is based on a survey of 950 employees in Slovenian companies. The factor analysis and the t-test for two independent samples were used to test the hypotheses of the research.

The results show that physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of health problems of employees during the COVID-19 epidemic are intensified as compared to the before COVID-19 epidemic era.

The results highlight the measures with which companies can reduce the problem of different symptoms of employees during the COVID-19 epidemic. The results can be useful for employers and for managers who want to create an adequate working environment for employees during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the relationship between the empowering structure and the employees’ innovative behavior and the role of psychological empowerment in mediating this link.

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data from 401 female primary school teachers in India. Prior to the main study, the scales were tested on a sample of 288 teachers. While psychological empowerment and structural empowerment were based on the self-reporting by the teachers, the innovative behavior of the teacher was assessed by two to three colleagues for each teacher.

The results confirmed that structural empowerment leads to innovative behavior and psychological empowerment and partially mediates the relationship between structural empowerment and innovative behavior.

Promising ideas die down because of lack of proper resource support and a free flow of information exchange despite employees’ willingness to carry out innovative tasks. Psychological empowerment affects creative intention in the workplace and can play a critical role for employees at their workplace.

In the context of development at the teacher and school levels, it is imperative to address both the psyche of the individual and the existing structure in schools.

This study makes two critical contributions. One, it emphasizes the importance of structural empowerment in ensuring innovative behavior of employees. Two, it also brings forward the importance of psychological empowerment in the relationship between structural empowerment and innovative behavior.

This study aims to prioritize barriers responsible for impeding the successful implementation of maintenance practices in Northern Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Maintenance practices play a crucial role in a company's long-term competitiveness in the manufacturing sector, significantly affecting production, quality and cost. Maintenance practices are equally vital in SMEs, because SMEs are the heart of the large industries, as these units are dependent on SMEs for their parts and sub-assemblies. However, due to many obstacles, SMEs have been confronted with various challenges in implementing maintenance practices.

First, a review of the published articles and survey of 216 Indian organizations has been conducted to identify the maintenance implementation barriers in SMEs. The Pareto analysis and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizcija Kompromisno Resenje in Serbian (VIKOR) approach have been deployed to rank the significant challenges in implementing maintenance practices in Northern Indian SMEs.

The present study aims to recognize and rank the barriers to effective maintenance implementation practices in SMEs, in order to initiate appropriate corrective actions to improve maintenance function performance.

The study will help maintenance managers in preparing an action plan to overcome the obstacles to maintenance practice's performance for realizing significant manufacturing performance improvements.

The purpose of this paper is to spur further exploration of blockchain technologies for environmental peacebuilding, specifically through water management. Although the environmental peacebuilding field acknowledges the potentially transformative nature of frontier technologies, most existing studies do not address how such technologies can contribute to peacebuilding through improved natural resource governance. Using a theory synthesis research design, this conceptual paper connects these studies to discuss how blockchain technologies in water management may contribute to environmental peacebuilding through the efficient and transparent management of natural resources.

The authors use a conceptual approach and a theory synthesis research design to present potential mechanisms through which blockchain technology can potentially contribute to environmental peacebuilding.

The authors discuss the limitations in the literature on environmental peacebuilding, blockchain and water management, concluding that the third generation of studies should focus on the role of frontier technologies. This approach should especially address the negative consequences of technology for peacebuilding objectives. The authors argue that blockchain applications in water management can potentially contribute to environmental peacebuilding objectives in three ways: (i) creating a mechanism for confidence-building in low-trust contexts through automated and transparent water transactions, (ii) facilitating postconflict economic development through attracting capital and increasing the efficiency of water management and (iii) improving governance through greater transparency and local participation in natural resource management.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to conceptually explore the use of blockchain technology for water management in the context of environmental peacebuilding. The insights from this study can guide policymakers of conflict sides that focus on resolving issues such as lack of governance and low state agency.

The purpose of this paper is to review maintenance practices, tools and parameters for marine mechanical systems that can be classified as plant, machinery and equipment (PME). It provides an insight for the maintenance crew on which maintenance parameters and practices are critical for a given PME systems.

The review paper characterizes the various maintenance parameters and maintenance practices used onshore and offshore for PME and identifies the possible gaps.

A variety of maintenance techniques are being used in the marine industry such as corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance and condition-based maintenance. As marine vehicles (MV) get older, the most important maintenance parameters become maintenance costs, reliability and safety. Maintenance models that have been developed in line with marine mechanical systems have been validated using a single system, whose outcome could be different if another PME system is used for validation.

There is a limited literature on MV maintenance parameters and maintenance characterization regarding mechanical systems. The maintenance practices or strategies of marine mechanical systems should be based on maintenance parameters that suit the marine industry for a given PME.

Based on the available literature, the paper provides a variety of maintenance framework, parameters and practices for marine mechanical systems. The paper further gives an insight on what maintenance parameters, strategies and platforms are given preference in the shipping industry.

A progressive hybrid censoring scheme (PHCS) becomes impractical for ensuring dependable outcomes when there is a low likelihood of encountering a small number of failures prior to the predetermined terminal time T. The generalized progressive hybrid censoring scheme (GPHCS) efficiently addresses to overcome the limitation of the PHCS.

In this article, estimation of model parameter, survival and hazard rate of the Unit-Lindley distribution (ULD), when sample comes from the GPHCS, have been taken into account. The maximum likelihood estimator has been derived using Newton–Raphson iterative procedures. Approximate confidence intervals of the model parameter and their arbitrary functions are established by the Fisher information matrix. Bayesian estimation procedures have been derived using Metropolis–Hastings algorithm under squared error loss function. Convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samples has been examined. Various optimality criteria have been considered. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation analysis has been shown to compare and validating of the proposed estimation techniques.

The Bayesian MCMC approach to estimate the model parameters and reliability characteristics of the generalized progressive hybrid censored data of ULD is recommended. The authors anticipate that health data analysts and reliability professionals will get benefit from the findings and approaches presented in this study.

The ULD has a broad range of practical utility, making it a problem to estimate the model parameters as well as reliability characteristics and the significance of the GPHCS also encourage the authors to consider the present estimation problem because it has not previously been discussed in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corrugation, wave number, initial stress and the heterogeneity of the media on the phase velocity of the Love-type wave. Moreover, the paper aims to have a comparative study of the presence and absence of anisotropy, heterogeneity, corrugation and initial stress in the half-space, which serve as a focal theme of the study.

The present paper modelled the propagation of the Love-type wave in a corrugated heterogeneous monoclinic layer lying over an initially stressed heterogeneous transversely isotropic half-space. The method of separation of variables is used to procure the dispersion relation.

The closed form of dispersion relation is obtained and found to be in well agreement to the classical Love wave equation. Neglecting the corrugation at either of the boundary surfaces, expressions of the phase velocity of the Love-type wave are deduced in closed form as special cases of the problem. It is established through the numerical computation of the obtained relation that the concerned affecting parameters have significant impact on the phase velocity of the Love-type wave. Also, a comparative study shows that the anisotropic case favours more to the phase velocity as comparison to the isotropic case.

Although many attempts have been made to study the effect of corrugated boundaries on reflection and refraction of seismic waves, but the effect of corrugated boundaries on the dispersion of surface wave (which are dispersive in nature) propagating through mediums pertaining various incredible features still needs to be investigated.

The electric power system is a complex system, whose operating condition may not remain at a constant value. The various contingencies like outage of lines, transformers, generators and sudden increase of load demand or failure of equipments are more common. This causes overloads and system parameters to exceed the limits thus resulting in an insecure system. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the power system security by alleviating overloads on the transmission lines.

Fuzzy logic system (FLS) with particle swarm optimization based optimal power flow approach is used for overload alleviation on the transmission lines. FLS is modeled to find the changes in inertia weight by which new weights are determined and their values are applied to particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for velocity and position updation.

The proposed method is tested and examined on the standard IEEE-30 bus system under base case and increased load conditions at different contingency. This method gives better results in terms of optimum fuel cost and fast convergence under base case and could alleviate the line overloads at different contingency with optimum generation cost, when compared to adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO) and PSO.

FLS is modeled in MATLAB environment. The effectiveness of the proposed method is tested and examined on the standard IEEE-30 bus system and their results are compared with APSO and PSO under MATPOWER environment. The results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of improving the transmission security with optimum generation cost.

The purpose of this study is to understand “Why Should Companies Embrace Cost Transparency”.

This paper is a thought piece in response to the paper by Simintiras et al. (2015), “Should Consumer’s Request Cost Transparency?”

Arguments based on past research and company practices show that companies practicing cost transparency can increase their customer following, brand loyalty, differentiation and ultimately the profits.

The paper showcases examples of how companies have implemented cost transparency to differentiate their customer offerings. The paper also shows that conscious consumers are now demanding more cost transparency, and companies have already started to heed this call.

The paper specifically outlines arguments and recent examples to show why companies should embrace cost transparency.