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This study aims to squeeze some critical viewpoints from the shifting landscape of business research (she), that conceals her true personality. Today, she is relentlessly struggling to strike a good balance between science and creativity. Therefore, she resolves to pivot the scholarly attention towards “scientific creativity”.

Business research is personified in this viewpoint paper. By adopting the methodology of third-person omniscient, the author pens the introspections of contemporary business research, and how she would express herself in modern times if she were a living person.

Business research introspects that she is suffering from the phenomena of “existential crisis” and “popularity fallacy” in contemporary times. Though she believes that the science of business research is evolving significantly, worries about becoming scientifically monotonous grip her in the dark of the nights. She laments the grim reality of today; studies of a similar nature dominate the research literature while the philosopher in her is fading gradually. Therefore, she calls for more “scientific creativity”. She realises that solving societal problems must remain her foremost priority. However, she believes that her priorities towards society and world peace depend on whether she could revitalise the fading philosopher of personality.

The current viewpoint paper is an attempt to shed some light on the landscape of contemporary business research, which is undergoing unremitting changes. It also highlights the desirable changes in the context of business research.

The current essay aims to generate critical reflections on environment, social and governance (ESG) based on observations, experiences, literature reviews and logical reasoning.

The essay adopts the methodology of first-person omniscient, where the narrator (ESG in this essay) is a character in the story. In this methodology, the ESG is also aware of the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters, such as the ESG practitioners, academics, researchers, lawmakers and relevant stakeholders.

The essay concludes that the relevance of ESG is broader than what is currently perceived. The piece endorses a view to look at ESG from other perspectives and benefits, not only from its financial relevance. It should be understood and implemented at the grassroots level.

The essay is one of its kind to reflect on the current ESG landscape. It attempts to redirect the debate on ESG toward the origin of its very existence.

The long-term sustainability of microfinancing institutions (MFIs) is essential for poverty reduction. This study aims to empirically evaluate whether contemporary microfinance economics supports the institutionalization of MFIs, which are crucial for the socioeconomic development of marginalized communities.

This research examines the flow of funds from wealthy economic areas (high-income countries, richer urban areas and capital-rich corporations) to poorer regions (low-income countries, poorer rural areas, female borrowers and financially constrained microenterprises) as a proxy for microfinance economics. Financial sustainability and institutionalization are assessed through return on assets and operational self-sufficiency. The study also considers credit risk as a key independent variable. Using panel data analysis of 333 MFIs from the USA and India, covering 2008–2018, sourced from the Microfinance Information Exchange data set on the World Bank website, this paper analyzes these dynamics.

Results show that credit risks negatively affect the financial sustainability of MFIs in both developed and developing countries. Contrary to expectations, the development status of a nation positively moderates the impact of credit risks on financial sustainability. In developing countries, intra-nation investments do not yield additional returns for MFIs or interact with credit risks. However, the economics of microfinance support the institutionalization of MFIs in these regions.

This study provides valuable empirical evidence on the relationship between microfinance economics and institutionalization, addressing a critical need in the microfinancing sector.

The objective of this study is to assess if corporate social disclosures in a company are influenced by gender diversity at board level. We also investigate the number of women directors, who can collectively make an impact on social disclosures, by considering different numbers of women directors on the board.

We have measured board gender diversity using the ratio of women at board and have also used two indices: the Blau-index and the Shannon-index. The social disclosure index is fetched from Bloomberg terminal. The research is quantitative and has been carried out using panel data models for estimating the linkage between board gender diversity and corporate social disclosures.

Our results support the idea that women are more conscious of social concerns and that having a gender diverse board has a favourable impact on social disclosures. It also shows that when there is only one woman director on the board, she might not be able to affect social disclosures in a company; however, two or more women on board may significantly influence social disclosures.

The study supports critical mass theory and has significant implications for academics, corporations and regulatory bodies. With the mandatory regulations on women directors, the study determines the significance of board gender diversity to improve policies for disseminating information of social nature.

The past studies have so far inspected the impact of gender diversity on financial performance, corporate social responsibility disclosures, dividend policies and corporate sustainability disclosures but have not specifically assessed the influence of gender diversity on social disclosures.

This paper examine whether social performance moderates the linkage between financial risk and financial performance in microfinance institutions (MFIs). The study focuses on the financial self-sufficiency and long-term sustainability of MFIs.

The empirical study uses unbalanced panel data of 2,694 worldwide MFIs from 2009 to 2019. In the first step, the study inspects the impact of social performance and risk on financial performance, proxied as return on assets and operational self-sufficiency. In the second stage, moderated hierarchical regression is applied to test whether social performance moderates the relationship between risk and financial performance. Lastly, the study confirms the significant moderation effects with slope tests.

The study detects robust evidence that financial risk is negatively related to financial performance. Though social performance exhibits a weak positive link with financial performance in silos, the evidence of its moderating effects on risk is mixed and significant. Social performance indicators, such as the borrower retention rate and female representation, positively moderate the relationship between financial risk and financial performance. The study documents that social performance impacts financial performance and operational self-sufficiency through risk moderation. Thus, social performance fosters the sustainability of these institutions over the long haul.

The study is relevant to academics and theorists to consider the stakeholder approach in microfinancing. In the context of stakeholder theory, the study advances the specific social responsiveness process, namely stakeholder engagement.

The evidence that socially sensitive operations can curtail the adverse effects of credit risks on financial performance signify the required attention to social performance. For MFI managers and practitioners, the findings justify the business case for social performance. Stakeholder engagement, under the auspices of social responsiveness, acts as a risk-mitigation mechanism to eventually foster financial performance and self-sufficiency.

The study motivates MFIs to do more for their stakeholders and society by highlighting the benefits of social performance.

The study reaffirms that social performance remains at the epicenter of the MFIs' mission and is an essential risk mitigation mechanism. The study adds to the extant literature on stakeholder engagement and its effects on MFIs.

An autonomous mobile robot requires efficient perception of the environment to perform various tasks in a challenging environment. The precise sensory information from the range sensors is required to accomplish prerequisites, such as SLAM, path planning and localization. But the accuracy and precision of the sensors become unreliable in harsh environmental conditions because of the effect of rain, dust, humidity, fog and smoke. The purpose of this paper is to generate robust mapping of the environment in harsh environmental conditions.

This paper presents a novel technique, averaging data with short range selection (ADWSRS), to reduce the effect of harsh environmental (rain, wind, humidity, etc.) conditions on sensory information (range) to generate reliable grid mapping. The sensory information on laser and sonar sensors in terms of probability values (occupied/unoccupied cell) in generating grid maps are fused after passing through two newly designed pre-processing filters: laser averaging filter and short range selection filter. This proposed approach relies on various aspects such as averaging laser data analogous to current pose of the sensor, selection of short range with respect to threshold value to remove the effect of specular reflection/crosstalk of sonar and a newly designed apparatus in which dirt cover (glass cover) and air blower are coupled to remove the influence of dirt, rain and humidity.

This proposed approach is tested in different environmental conditions, and to verify the consistency of the proposed approach, qualitative and quantitative analyses are carried out, which shows 42.5 per cent improvement in the probability value of occupied cells in the generated grid map.

The proposed ADWSRS approach reduced the effect of harsh environmental conditions such as fog, rain and smoke to generate efficient mapping of the environment, which may be implemented in diverse applications such as autonomous navigation, localization, path planning and mapping.

Accurate perception of the environment using range sensors such as laser scanner, SONAR, infrared, vision, etc., for the application, such as path planning, localization, autonomous navigation, simultaneously localization and mapping, is a highly challenging area. The reliability of the perception by range sensors relies on the sensor accuracy, precision, sensor model, sensor registration, resolution, etc. Laser scanner is even though accurate and precise but still the efficient and consistent mapping of the environment is yet to be attained because laser scanner gives error as the extrinsic and intrinsic parameters varied which cause specular reflection, refraction, absorption, etc., of the laser beam. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper presents an error analysis in sensory information of laser scanner due to the effect of varying the scanning angle with respect to the optical axis and surface reflectivity or refractive index of the targets. Uncertainties caused by these parameters are reduced by proposing a new technique, tilt mounting system (TMS) with designed filters of tilting the angular position of a laser scanner with the best possible selection of range and scanning angle for the robust occupancy grid mapping. Various experiments are performed in different indoor environments, and the results are validated after the implementation of the TMS approach with designed filters.

After the implementation of the proposed TMS approach with filters, the errors in the laser grid map are reduced by 15.6 percent, which results in 62.5 percent reduction in the collision of a mobile robot during autonomous navigation in the laser grid map.

The TMS approach with designed filter reduces the effect of variation in intrinsic and extrinsic parameters to generate efficient laser occupancy grid map to achieve collision-free autonomous navigation.

An efficient perception of the complex environment is the foremost requirement in mobile robotics. At present, the utilization of glass as a glass wall and automated transparent door in the modern building has become a highlight feature for interior decoration, which has resulted in the wrong perception of the environment by various range sensors. The perception generated by multi-data sensor fusion (MDSF) of sonar and laser is fairly consistent to detect glass but is still affected by the issues such as sensor inaccuracies, sensor reliability, scan mismatching due to glass, sensor model, probabilistic approaches for sensor fusion, sensor registration, etc. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper presents a modified framework – Advanced Laser and Sonar Framework (ALSF) – to fuse the sensory information of a laser scanner and sonar to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass in an environment by selecting the optimal range information corresponding to a selected threshold value. In the proposed approach, the conventional sonar sensor model is also modified to reduce the wrong perception in sonar as an outcome of the diverse range measurement. The laser scan matching algorithm is also modified by taking out the small cluster of laser point (w.r.t. range information) to get efficient perception.

The probability of the occupied cells w.r.t. the modified sonar sensor model becomes consistent corresponding to diverse sonar range measurement. The scan matching technique is also modified to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass and high computational load for the efficient and fast pose estimation of the laser sensor/mobile robot to generate robust mapping. These stated modifications are linked with the proposed ALSF technique to reduce the uncertainty caused by glass, inconsistent probabilities and high load computation during the generation of occupancy grid mapping with MDSF. Various real-world experiments are performed with the implementation of the proposed approach on a mobile robot fitted with laser and sonar, and the obtained results are qualitatively and quantitatively compared with conventional approaches.

The proposed ASIF approach generates efficient perception of the complex environment contains glass and can be implemented for various robotics applications.

Modern service robots are designed to work in a complex indoor environment, in which the robot has to interact with the objects in different ambient light intensities (day light, tube light, halogen light and dark ambiance). The variations in sudden ambient light intensities often cause an error in the sensory information of optical sensors like laser scanner, which reduce the reliability of the sensor in applications such as mapping, path planning and object detection of a mobile robot. Laser scanner is an optical sensor, so sensory information depends upon parameters like surface reflectivity, ambient light condition, texture of the targets, etc. The purposes of this research are to investigate and remove the effect of variation in ambient light conditions on the laser scanner to achieve robust autonomous mobile robot navigation.

The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of ambient light condition (dark ambiance, tube light and halogen bulb) on the accuracy of the laser scanner for the robust autonomous navigation of mobile robot in diverse illumination environments. A proposed AIFA (Adaptive Intensity Filter Algorithm) approach is designed in robot operating system (ROS) and implemented on a mobile robot fitted with laser scanner to reduce the effect of high-intensity ambiance illumination of the environment.

It has been experimentally found that the variation in the measured distance in dark is more consistent and accurate as compared to the sensory information taken in high-intensity tube light/halogen bulbs and in sunlight. The proposed AIFA approach is implement on a laser scanner fitted on a mobile robot which navigates in the high-intensity ambiance-illuminating complex environment. During autonomous navigation of mobile robot, while implementing the AIFA filter, the proportion of cession with the obstacles is reduce to 23 per cent lesser as compared to conventional approaches.

The proposed AIFA approach reduced the effect of the varying ambient light conditions in the sensory information of laser scanner for the applications such as autonomous navigation, path planning, mapping, etc. in diverse ambiance environment.

Research signifies that well-governed companies exhibit long-run financial results and sustainable growth. In the context of SMEs, this paper aims to review the literature on corporate governance, the implementation challenges of corporate governance and its relationship with performance. Entwined with Indian scenarios, the study can be generalized to other emerging economies, with geographic considerations.

Studies from 1990 to 2020 are included in the literature review. Three databases were used for the extraction of relevant research articles: Scopus, EBSCO and ScienceDirect. To identify the relevant work, keywords along with Boolean operators for literature search were used from the research databases. The selected articles were further refined based on the authors’ keywords, journal type, data analysis methodologies and abstract analysis. Finally, 115 articles were selected and categorized into themes based on inclusion criteria for further study.

Corporate governance provides tangible and intangible benefits to SMEs. The study emphasizes on designing a cost-effective discrete governance mechanism for SMEs than the prevailing corporate governance code for large firms. Furthermore, implementing the corporate governance structure with a great level of discipline and stability is equally essential and related to performance.

Listing of SMEs is a relatively new phenomenon in emerging economies, including India. With listing, corporate governance and financial performance are expected to shift. The inclusion of the changing landscape of SME governance makes this study unique and relevant in the current scenario. The study will benefit the policymakers and firms to adopt optimum governance practices and link it optimally with performance.