Search results

Regulation is critical for sustainable microfinance sector growth. Under this premise, the study aims to examine the different regulatory noncompliance (RNC) practices prevalent in the operations of microfinance institutions (MFIs) at the ground level.

Both the quantitative and qualitative (observations, interviews and focus group discussions) techniques are used to extract the findings.

The study highlights the different RNC practices exercised by the loan officers at the field level in their microfinance loan disbursements.

This study is based on the primary data collected from microfinance clients. The arguments put forth for the RNC practices are extracted from direct personal interviews with the loan officers and the clients. The role of various dilemmas/circumstances of the loan officers and the beneficiaries that implicate the MFIs in RNC is highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the cost of microfinance intermediation on borrowers’ loan size. The identified transaction cost and credit risk factors tell about what a lender takes into accounts while screening and allocating loan amounts to the borrowers, where the lender has limited information about the client’s ability to repay.

The analysis is based on the primary data collected from a sample of 498 microfinance institutions (MFI) linked group clients covering two microfinance leading states of India.

Empirical findings suggest that the cost of microfinance intermediation has an impact on borrowers’ loan size. To reduce the cost, the MFIs lend big loans to clients having a high income, assets, land size, lower informal borrowings and having longer loan experiences. In MFI lending, the younger and less educated people are the ones who demand bigger loan amounts. The geographical distance of borrowers’ location from MFI offices, group size and interest rate are the other factors that influence the loan size.

The past empirical works seem to have not focused on how the cost of microfinance intermediation creates loan size variation among the borrowers in joint liability group lending. The endogeneity problem has not been resolved. The present article thus identifies the factors that influence the individual member loan size by using two-stage least squared regression to tackle the issue of endogeneity.

The welfare impacts of the food security on the beneficiaries can be understood from multiple dimensions. This paper, thus, examines the impact of the India's National Food Security Act (NFSA) on the welfare of the beneficiary households from a multidimensional perspective.

The study is based on a sample household survey covering three different states of India. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select the states, districts and blocks. Sample villages and households were selected purposively. A total of 1,523 households comprising 1,069 beneficiary and 454 non-beneficiary households constituted the sample. In order to find out the impact of the programme on different dimensions of welfare, the endogenous switching regression model is employed as it helps control for any absence of randomization and the unobserved heterogeneity bias. Propensity score matching is also employed to supplement the results.

The substitution effect and income effect of the food subsidy policy combined improve the overall welfare of the households presented through the subjective measures of food consumption behaviour, income transfer and educational achievements. The bargaining effect of the food subsidy programme is reflected in the enhanced social status and women's empowerment. The food security programme seems to augment the food consumption of the beneficiaries as observed from the food consumption score.

The food security policy has improved the overall welfare of the households and can play a major role in enhancing household welfare even further. The non-beneficiaries' welfare could have increased if they would have been included in the food security programme. The subjective assessment may, however, be subjected to personal biases, and there is also absence of a common reference point. Hence, the implications of the findings may be generalized with caution.

This study provides evidences of the impacts of food subsidy from a multidimensional standpoint considering both subjective and objective dimensions of household welfare.

There have been increasing numbers of studies on the role of energy and environmental pollution upon income of the economies across the countries after the development of the endogenous growth literature. As standard practice, the factors which make explanations of why the developed countries are growing more compared to the common list of developing countries are the knowledge capital, role of institutions, etc. But, the roles of energy use and environmental resources upon economic growth have also been identified as additional source of endogenous growth. Sometimes, in certain economies, it is observed that both the factors maintain bidirectional causal relations with the level and growth of income. The present chapter aims to investigate whether energy use and environmental pollution make a cause to the level of income measured by gross domestic product, in both the long run and short run, for the world's highly developing group of economies in the nomenclature of BRICS. The period of study is taken to be 1990–2016 for which the data on all the indicators are available for the five member countries of the group. Using a VAR model, the study arrives at the conclusion that all the three are cointegrated for Brazil and Russia only. Further, there are short-run causal interplays among the three in different combinations across the member countries. While GDP and energy use are the common cause of CO2 emission for Brazil, India, and China; energy use and CO2 emissions are to GDP in India, South Africa, and China.

Higher economic output as measured in gross national product (GNP) may not always imply a higher quality of living. It has been the outcome of the long debate between growth and development of a nation. The aims of economic growth should be reconsidered because it has polluted the environment, wasted natural resources, harmed people’s quality of life, and failed to alleviate socioeconomic problems. It is also a common phenomenon to the economies of the South Asian region. The study is thus conducted to show the existence of long-run relationship and short-run interplays between output efficiency of energy use (GEU) and carbon efficiency of energy use (CEU) in the panel of countries in the South Asian region for the period of 1971–2014. The results show that there is a long-run and short-run association between energy efficiency in output and carbon emission as respectively measured in GEU and CEU. This means that in South Asia, energy consumption leads to an increase in both gross domestic product and carbon emissions. When GEU is used as the independent variable in vector error correction model (VECM), the result reveals that any short-run disequilibrium from the long-run stable connection will be adjusted over time, and the long-run stable relationship will be restored.

Blockchain technology has brought about significant transformation among organizations worldwide. This study aimed to explore the effects of organizational and technological factors on blockchain technology adoption (BTA) and financial performance (FP) in Pakistan.

This is a co-relational study which used the cross-sectional data. We gathered the data from the managers of Pakistan’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which functioned their industries with blockchain technology. We applied convenience sampling to identify the respondents. Finally, we based this study’s findings on 274 valid cases.

We used structural equation modeling (SEM) in this study, to exert a positive and significant impact on organizational factors such as organizational innovativeness (OI), organizational learning capability (OLC), top management support (TMS) and organizational work climate (OWC) on BTA. In addition, the technological factors, such as complexity (CTY), technology readiness (TR), compatibility (CBTY) and technology capability (TC), have a positive and significant effect on BTA. Finally, this study’s findings show that BTA positively and significantly impacts FP.

This study’s findings will help policymakers and planners to design policies to adopt other blockchain technologies to improve SMEs’ operations. Moreover, this study’s findings will inspire policymakers and planners to actively seek new ideas, knowledge and skills through acquiring new knowledge to assist with their IT-related decisions.

This study empirically confirms the role of organizational and technology factors toward BTA and FP among Pakistan's SME managers.

Marketing, Marketing environment, Marketing strategy.

Post Graduate (MBA), Executive Education Program.

The present case study deals with the marketing strategies of Punascha (meaning re-beginning), a publisher of Bengali non-textbooks based in Kolkata, India. This case is suitable for teaching in Marketing Management course in a Post Graduate Program in Business Management. It could also be taken up for an executive program in marketing strategy. The case study is a live case study, which was based on in-depth interviews with the company people and company site visit. The case study discusses how Punascha started from a humble beginning in 1988 and became one of the leading publishers of Bengali books in India. The key focus of the case is on how a company can use marketing tools effectively (and uniquely) and become successful.

Understanding the basics of 4Ps of marketing and how they are used in synchronisation with each other to achieve the marketing objectives. Understanding the role of marketing environment in marketing strategy. Realizing the need of a new product development strategy. Assessing the need of non-traditional modes of marketing communications and its role in product promotion.

Teaching notes.

In part-I of this review series, research from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka was reviewed. The purpose of this paper which is part-II of the series, is to review management research from India and Pakistan over a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014.

A systematic review approach was adopted for this research. As a quality standard for inclusion, articles were restricted to journals rated A*, A, or B by the Australian Business Deans Council in 2013 and either Q1 or Q2 in the Scopus/Imago classification system. The divisions and interest groups of the Academy of Management were used as framework to organize the search results.

A total of 1,039 articles related to India (n = 930) and Pakistan (n = 112) emerged from the search process, with three articles being related to both countries. The research was published in 163 different journals that met the quality criteria. The period under review coincides with the advent of economic liberalization in India and this emerged as a major theme in the India-related research. Other context-specific insights for these two countries are also derived from an ecological and institutional theory perspective.

This research represents the first comprehensive and systematic review of management research in India and Pakistan. As in part-I, the unique review approach allows for strict adherence to a predetermined quality standard while including a wide variety of journals and research traditions.