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Shimla is a teeming city, with a population of 140,000. It is located in the north Indian Himalayas, in an area of high seismicity that was rocked by a devastating earthquake a hundred years ago. However, it is oblivious of the ticking time bomb below its foundations. Initiating risk reduction in this fast growing urban economic hub is an enormous challenge. A national non-governmental organisation (NGO) called SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) started working in the city just before the earthquake centenary, with the aim to identify ways of reducing earthquake risk through actions that could be carried out by the citizens and the local government.

The experience has been unique, and has led to further refinement of the community action planning approach that SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society) has picked up and worked with over the last ten years in different vulnerable communities in the region. What emerges from the experience is a mix of tools for the improvement of technical aspects, community-based working approaches and governance for risk reduction. It is evident that community-local government-NGO partnerships are the key to solving such acute problems as earthquake safety in a resource strapped, vulnerable city. The assessment and planning phases initiate the building of these partnerships in the early stages of the process.

This paper is an attempt to share the experience of developing and testing a community based urban risk reduction approach for a city at extreme earthquake risk.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the findings from the body of case studies offered in the issue, combined with three external perspectives on local voices and action.

Using as its basis the eight key case studies and three external contributions to the special issue, the paper offers a theoretical framework as a basis for discussion of this material. Through this, it identifies possible modes of action understood through the theoretical framework and elaborated through the specific cases. It concludes with proposals for further work.

The discussion finds that from a local perspective, the ambitions of local populations and local NGOs to achieve emancipatory change depend on the scope for local collaboration and partnerships to exercise influence on underlying risk factors. It resolves the suggested tension between operating within, and outside the system through the concept of “legitimate subversion”.

It is felt that the original recording of case studies of local level action combined with the process of iterative critical reflection on the part of the contributors offers a novel approach to knowledge creation from practice, and offers insights bridging theoretical and practitioner perspectives into means of addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations.

The purpose of this paper is to individually examine the findings from eight case studies presented in this special issue and comparatively identify the findings regarding local learning and action.

Underlying research questions regarding power and powerlessness in regard to addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations form the basis for the discussion. Proceedings of a collaborative workshop conducted with the contributing authors are analysed qualitatively to identify learning relating to the research questions emerging from the case studies individually and collectively.

A number of strategies and tactics for addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations were identified from the case studies, including collaboration and cohesion. Campaigning, lobbying, communications and social mobilisation in an attempt to bridge the gap between local concerns and the decision-making of government and other powerful actors. Innovation and local mobilisation to address shortcomings in government support for disaster reduction and development. Communications as a first base to influence behaviour of both communities and government. Social change through empowerment of women to act in disaster reduction and development.

The outcomes of the action research conducted by the authors individually and collectively highlight the necessity for bridging different scales of action through a range of strategies and tactics to move beyond local self-reliance to influence on underlying risk factors. The action research process employed may have wider applications in gathering and formalising local-level experience and knowledge.

The case studies and their analysis present a range of practical strategies and tactics to strengthen local resilience and address underlying risk factors which are replicable in other contexts.

Practitioners are activists and do not often engage in critical reflection and analysis. The method presented here offers a means of achieving this in order to generate learning from local-level experience. The findings contribute to the consideration of cross-scale action to address underlying risk factors which impact local communities.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate practical approaches to addressing issues of risk reduction and disaster prevention in urban areas. In addition to exposure to natural hazards, urban areas represent complex risks and vulnerabilities together with complicated governance structures.

To address the challenge, SEEDS mobilised a “Disaster Watch Forum” – a citizens’ platform that brought citizens together to proactively engage with the local government. With hand-holding support from SEEDS, training by domain experts, internal team building and the forum has become a credible people-based institution addressing issues of risk reduction and prevention.

Urban risk reduction has remained a challenging issue with solutions often sought in high investment structural interventions. These have limited impact on the urban poor living in informal areas. This paper reveals “bottom-up” people-based approach that is able to engage with the “system” from “outside”. It reveals how people relate to day-to-day risks that affect their lives, making it the stepping stone to address higher order societal risks. Finally, the immense power and energy of youth and children work as local “agents of change”. Overall, the work aligns with priorities of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

There are three principal implications for further research: with half the world now urbanized, urgent solutions are needed for improving disaster risk governance in cities; taking a “whole of society” approach in addressing a wider canvas of risks; and redirecting investments in urban areas towards managing risks, rather than managing disasters.

The model illustrated is replicable in urban areas facing risk. It worked well in a population catchment of 50,000 residents; to achieve scale would require enabling a federated structure of several localised forums.

The paper presents a hands-on experience in building an alternative approach to urban risk reduction. It has required authors to move from “government to governance” model making citizens active stakeholders in proactively addressing their own underlying vulnerabilities that lead to creation of and exacerbation of risks.

This paper aims to study differences in risk behavior between holding companies that undertake both banking activity and insurance underwriting (labeled financial holding companies or FHCs) and stand-alone bank holding companies (BHCs).

The paper examines the discretionary accruals of FHCs to comparable BHCs and compares their bad loans-to-assets ratio in the future.

FHCs have lower discretionary accruals (loan loss provisions and realized capital gains) than BHCs. FHCs fare better than BHCs in terms of bad loans-to-assets ratio. Insurance underwriting has a dampening effect on discretionary accruals of FHCs.

This study raises additional research questions. Do shared governance and insurance underwriting serve as substitutes or complements? Will regulatory environment affect this relation?

When reported earnings do not match true earnings, the market participants lose the ability to price correctly, and the regulators lose the ability to effectively regulate banks. From the regulatory perspective, these findings suggest insurance underwriting by banks mitigate potential market distortions.

This paper is the first to study the effect of underwriting insurance risk on earnings management behavior of BHCs and its link to risk governance.

It has been observed in a number of recent disasters, and most evidently after the South Asian tsunami, that remote, underdeveloped, and most vulnerable communities take the longest to recover, in‐spite of an abundance of resources available for supporting them. The loss compounding approach of analysing the tsunami impact is a useful way of identifying those factors within the recovery process that need attention for helping affected communities get rehabilitated in a better and faster manner. The paper seeks to address this issue.

The paper looks at how and why the recovery process has been slower and less efficient in the tsunami affected small island communities of India as compared to the mainland communities. This is further analysed in terms of the physical, social and environmental impacts and their recovery aspects.

The paper identifies good governance and social capital as important elements for ensuring equitable recovery processes, and for ensuring appropriate capacity building in marginalised and highly vulnerable communities.

The practical implications of the discussed approach and findings are two pronged: governance needs to be responsive to community systems; and communities need to tap into their social capital to enhance their local coping capacities. Participation is a primary element in achieving these goals. Participation is a crucial element of governance to ensure that it is responsive, locally relevant, and accountable to specific needs of less represented communities. At the same time, it is also a critical process that enables local realilsation of needs and contexts, and creates an environment of capacity building at the grassroot level.

The paper highlights the continuing lack of recognition of the importance of local coping capacities, with no appreciation of the fact that rehabilitation needs to be based on local resources, determined by local capacities, and decided by local communities.

The purpose of the study is twofold. The first objective is to identify adoption barriers (AdoBs) in engaging young consumers in the Omni-channel retailing (OCR). The second objective is to develop interrelationship among identified AdoBs.

The study used interpretative structural modeling–fuzzy ( Matriced’ Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée a UN Classement) methods on 18 AdoBs identified from the existing literature and validated from 10 experts and 137 young consumers through pairwise comparison using the arithmetic hierarchical process method. The resulting ten barriers were further investigated for identifying the strength of relationships among them.

The study has identified price inconsistency as the dominant AdoB that restricts young consumers in engaging with OCR. The other critical AdoBs include lack of coordination among the channels, and information sharing and inconsistent price discount are the main barriers that affect all the other barriers among the 10 AdoBs identified in this study. The data also revealed that the young consumers exhibit the research-online purchase-offline effect in the purchase process.

The research study has undertaken ten barriers only. The interrelationship among the barriers may be tested further with advanced techniques. The data have been collected from young consumers of emerging markets only which may be further extended for other markets.

This study helps practitioners and decision-makers understand about AdoBs faced by the young consumers influencing the purchase-intention process. Retailers or marketers are encouraged to focus on price consistency, advanced shared information system, proper coordination and developing trust of consumers in sharing their data to enhance the acceptability of Omni channels. Moreover, the identification of barriers and their strength offer marketers or retailers an opportunity to engage them in an effective manner and thus create value using communication channels.

Social benefits of understanding barriers are helpful for transforming the existing retail channel into a fully integrated Omni-channel ecosystem. For this, AdoBs identified and their inter-relationships explored in this study could be used for engaging young consumers in OCR.

To date, the research on Omni-channel barriers in the present context is scant. The research provides insides on identified dimensions on young consumer engagement in OCR.

This paper aims to focus on the application of multi-attribute decision-making methods (MADMs) to ascertain the optimal machining parameters while turning Ti-6Al-4V alloy under minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) conditions using Jatropha-curcas oil (JCO) bio-based lubricant.

The experiments were designed and performed using Taguchi L27 design of experiments methodology. A total of 27 experiments were performed under MQL conditions using textured carbide cutting tools on which different MADMs like Analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Simple additive weighting (SAW) were implemented in an empirical manner to extract optimize machining parameters for turning of Ti-6Al-4V alloy under set of constrained conditions.

The results evaluated through MADMs exhibit the optimized set of machining parameters (cutting speed V_c = 80 m/min, feed rate f = 0.05 mm/rev. and depth of cut a_p = 0.10 mm) for minimizing the average surface roughness (Ra), maximum flank wear (Vbmax), tangential cutting force (Fc) and cutting temperature (T). Further, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and traditional desirability function approach was applied and results of TOPSIS and SAW methods having optimal setting of parameters were compared as well as confirmation experiments were conducted to verify the results. A SEM analysis at lowest and highest cutting speeds was performed to investigate the tool wear patterns. At the highest speed, large cutting temperature generated, thereby resulted in chipping as well as notching and fracturing of the textured insert.

The research paper attempted in exploring the optimized machining parameters during turning of difficult-to-cut titanium alloy (Ti-6AL-4V) with textured carbide cutting tool under MQL environment through combined approach of MADMs techniques. Ti-6Al-4V alloy has been extensively used in important aerospace components like fuselage, hydraulic tubing, bulk head, wing spar, landing gear, as well as bio-medical applications.

Currently, the bulk of research on marketing innovation focuses on various firm-level dimensions using relationships from the technological (product and process) innovation literature. Research on industry-level differences in marketing innovation is lacking. Testing relationships form the technological paradigm in the context of the marketing innovation paradigm is also lacking. This paper aims to present empirical evidence on both aspects using a large-scale data set.

This study uses two large-scale datasets, each consisting of approximately 4,000 Canadian enterprises in 18 industries. The data was collected by Statistics Canada in 2009 and 2012 through its nationwide Survey of Innovation and Business Strategies program. Two widely used theoretical frameworks, resource-based view of the firm and the competitive perspective, are used to generate constructs and hypotheses in relation to marketing innovation. The data was analyzed using multi-level logistic regression.

The findings show that industry-level competition is a much more important driver of marketing innovation than firm-level competition. The authors also show that marketing constructs that are significant in the context of technological innovation are also significant for marketing innovation.

This study extends the firm-level literature by providing evidence of how industry-level dynamics enhances marketing innovation. The study also provides empirical evidence from Canadian enterprises that complement those from other countries.

A deeper understanding of the drivers of marketing innovation can enable managers to enact innovation strategies that can enhance organizational performance, differentiate themselves and enhance customer engagement and brand image.

As one of the few studies to examine industry-level differences in marketing innovation, the authors show that disaggregating competition into industry-level and firm-level provides a clearer picture of how competition advances marketing innovation. Additionally, this study is the first of its kind to provide empirical evidence on Canadian enterprises, thereby complementing evidence on marketing innovation from other countries. Thus, this study makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the emerging marketing innovation literature.