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This paper aims to evaluate the relationship between external sources of knowledge and technological innovation and then analyze how technological innovation improves firm performance.

This study presents evidence based on a sample of 708 low-tech firms that participated in the National Survey of Innovation in the Manufacturing Industry and Knowledge-Intensive Service Firms (ENIIMSEC). A structural equation model approach was applied in this study.

There is a positive relationship between external sources of knowledge and technological innovation; technological innovation improves firm performance.

These results provide a deeper knowledge about how manufacturing firms in an emerging economy can apply open innovation practices to develop technological innovation, thus improving the firms' performance.

El artículo tiene por propósito evaluar la relación entre las fuentes externas de conocimiento y la innovación tecnológica, para luego analizar como esta mejora el desempeño de la empresa.

Este estudio presenta evidencia basado en una base de datos de 708 empresas de baja intensidad tecnológica que participaron en la Encuesta Nacional de Innovación en la Industria Manufacturera y Empresas de Servicios Intensivas en Conocimiento (ENIIMSEC) 2018. Se aplico el enfoque del modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Existe una relación positiva entre las fuentes externas de conocimiento y la innovación tecnológica, para que luego esta mejore el desempeño de la empresa.

Estos resultados proporcionan un conocimiento más profundo sobre como las empresas de manufactura de menor intensidad tecnológica pertenecientes a una economía emergente son capaces de aplicar las prácticas de la innovación abierta para desarrollar la innovación tecnológica, mejorando el desempeño de la empresa.

Economic pressures are driving fleets to substantially increase their maintenance intervals. To meet this challenge, both the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and the lubricant suppliers have developed new and better products to give users the benefits of extended service intervals while at the same time maintaining equipment life and reducing operating costs. This paper will examine the options available in formulating extended drain transmission and axle lubricants by comparing four products designed to meet the OEM extended service interval requirements. Bench test and field test data will be reviewed which show that by optimizing the base oil as well as the additive system, both synthetic as well as properly formulated mineral oil products can give excellent extended drain performance. With mounting economic pressures in the trucking industry, these new products will give maintenance personnel additional product choices as they move their fleets to extended drain transmission and axle lubricants in an effort to safely extend equipment life and reduce total maintenance costs.

Air pollution affects labour productivity and these effects arise in both indoor and outdoor environments and at varying levels of worker skill. They also arise at levels of air pollution generally considered to be within existing air quality standards and guidelines. Although the damage per individual is small when compared to more extreme events, such as mortality and hospitalisations, the effects are more widespread and may thus represent a significant cost to society. Labour is an essential element in every nation’s economy serving as one of the primary factors of production and India not an exception. Investing in human capital is viewed as a key source of sustained increase in labour productivity and economic growth. On the other hand, environmental regulations are typically considered to be a struggle on the economy. However, improved environmental quality may actually enhance productivity by creating a healthier workforce. At the same time, air pollution may affect labour productivity and can reduce the productivity of workers in physically demanding occupations. This chapter may be an attempt to provide comprehensive estimates of the major air pollutants in different states of India and also tries to identify the linkage between air pollution and labour productivity in case of Indian manufacturing sector.

In India, economic reforms adopted in 1991 in form of LPG (Liberalization-Privatization-Globalization) removed numerous barriers to grow and offered opportunities to improve productivity, particularly, for the manufacturing sector. But the rationale that manufacturing sector acted as main contributor to country's economic growth via GDP growth (called “engine of growth”) for a long time in India has been challenged now a day. The growing significance of the services sector across the world exhibits that at the present time, the services sector could become the new engine of economic growth in developing economies like India. The present study seeks to bring to light whether manufacturing is acting as an “engine of growth” at inter-state level in India or not and the cross section result indicates that potency of manufacturing growth and agricultural growth is gradually slowing down as a conforming part of economic growth and service sector is taking leading position in accelerating engine of growth in India.

World economies including India have been moving toward recession. To combat this recession more employment generation through investment is required in a highly populated economy like India. Since unorganized manufacturing enterprises (UMEs) provide employment to a huge mass in India, therefore its growth and productivity is a matter of concern in the Indian economy. The present study analyzes the growth and productivity of UMEs on the basis of the latest two rounds of NSSO unit level data incorporating all states and union territories (UTs) of India. It reveals that the growth of UMEs, employment, gross value added (GVA) and fixed assets widely varied across states/UTs, and these growth rates were substantially high in a number of states during 2010–11 and 2015–16. In most of the states/UTs the labor productivity of UMEs has increased significantly but not the capital productivity. Our analysis supports the theoretical relationship among growth of employment, GVA, and labor productivity. Therefore, the government has to make deliberate attempts to increase the growth of UMEs on one side and raise productivities of UMEs through skill developments on the other side to overcome the problem of unemployment in particular and expedite the growth of the Indian economy in general to combat the global economic recession.

The unorganised manufacturing sector contributes one third share of overall manufacturing employment and one fifth share of gross value added of the manufacturing sector. Despite its important role in large-scale employment generation, this sector is neglected by the researchers as well as by the policy makers as compared to the focus given on the organised manufacturing sector. The issues of energy intensity, environment emissions and growth of unorganised manufacturing enterprises (UMEs) remain unexplored. The present chapter attempts to estimate the CO₂ emission and emission intensity (EI) across UMEs on the basis of NSSO Unit Level data of 62nd, 67th and 73rd rounds. It also analyses the growth of UMEs in relation to CO₂ emission and EI. The nature of the sector is very much dispersed. Our study reveals that a portion of unorganised enterprises did not use any energy in their production activities and used manually operated instruments like – handlooms, weaving machines, hand-operated oil and rice mills, etc. The main energy inputs of UMEs are electricity and fuel & lubricants. The CO₂ emission is relatively less in UMEs compared to organised manufacturing enterprises. Across the unorganised manufacturing industries, the higher CO₂ emission are observed in manufacturing of food product industry and other non-metallic mineral industry. The study found that CO₂ EI of UMEs depends on firm-level characteristics like perennial nature, establishment type, urban location and expanding growth status. However, capital intensive UMEs are more polluting.

We all understand the everlasting harmful effects of pollution. A larger proportion of this pollution gets generated from industrial units due to use of backward technologies along with intentional or unintentional economic policies that has allowed such industries to grow over the years. Many of these industries are poor, in many cases, they do not have the ability to install abatement technologies or use emission-free green technologies for their huge cost. In many cases, they do not do so intentionally just to enjoy higher profit and due to faulty planning. But, the pollution generated from such industries makes us all suffer, especially those who live in those industrial areas. They are more exposed to the emission directly. Again, growing consensus among people about pollution has increased the consumption of eco-friendly, less-polluting products which could have a wide-ranging impact on the production techniques and can force the producers to change their production techniques, In this chapter, by applying contingent valuation method (CVM), the authors have looked to capture how far people of two very renowned industrial belts in West Bengal, Howrah and Barrackpore, are willing to contribute to the reduction of such emission level by consuming eco-friendly products and paying the emitting producers to force them to adopt pollution-free technology. The authors have applied close-ended dichotomous choice (DC) bidding technique by using logit regression and have also applied open-ended bidding process by using ordinary least square (OLS) method. In both cases, the authors have found the mean willingness to pay (WTP) is quite high which shows that people are very much willing to move towards using eco-friendly goods and technologies.