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The chapter discusses how adolescents are moving beyond the dichotomy of biological and linguistic socialization, forming interpretive meanings at home through the reading of literature in their mother tongue, Bengali. Involving cultural relevance and non-vulnerability, the chapter conceptualizes “leisure activities” and “leisure pursuits” of reading practice of the IXth and Xth graders from both Bengali and English medium schools in Kolkata. The discussion from the theoretical construction mentions the further conceptualization of reading habits and language choice. This is where adolescents derive their agency. Adolescents from the Indian and especially from the Bengali perspective have a path of colonial discourse. From historical standpoint, the change in Bengali language and its grammar structure has influenced the acceptance of Bengali literature among adolescents in varying degrees through generations. Using mixed methods and content analysis, the chapter focuses on young teenagers’ narration on the way they maneuver curriculum and literature in their respective homes. Authors, for example, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, form the Bengali identity construction in the present time. Rabindranath Tagore’s, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s works are always prevalent in the Bengali language syllabus. These are considered the foundational modern literary figures of pre-independent India. These are taught from a nationalist and gender discourse perspective. The adolescents in this chapter also read those at a minimum level at home and attempt to juggle the difficult vocabulary involved. The simple language of post-independent literature is much sought after by teenagers compared to pre-independent literature. Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Kakababu series, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Professor Shanku series, and Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s Chander Pahar stand out among the adolescents from both English and Bengali medium unanimously in this chapter.

Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.

While popular genre fictions like detective novels are often centred around formulaic plots and stereotypical characters, they also undergo several exciting changes when adapted in a diverse array of cultural and linguistic contexts. My chapter examines the first female detective of a Bangla crime writing series, Detective (Goyenda) Krishna as a figure that challenges patriarchal stereotypes related to violent women and dismantles the illusory neatness of binaries associated with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ femininity. The gun-toting, vengeance-seeking literary detective is also examined as mediating shifts and transitions in gendered practices and norms in Bengal – its socio-political as well as literary contexts – as it negotiated ideas of decoloniality from the first decade of the twentieth century and emerged as part of a new, partitioned nation in 1947. She is seen as a creative response to the changes related to gender that had been gradually taking shape in colonised Bengal and as articulating radically re-imagined possibilities and opportunities related to female subjectivities in a newly decolonised nation.

In this chapter, we review relational demography literature underpinned by the similarity–attraction paradigm and status characteristics and social identity theories. We then develop an uncertainty reduction model of relational demography, which describes a two-stage process of uncertainty emergence and reduction in a workgroup setting. The first stage depicts how structural features of the workgroup (workgroup composition) and occupation (the legitimacy of its status hierarchy) induce two forms of uncertainty: uncertainty about group norms and uncertainty about instrumental outcomes. The second part of the model illustrates employees' choice of uncertainty reduction strategies, depending on the type of uncertainty they experience, and the status of their demographic categories. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Identities provide a human link between macro-level mechanisms and microfoundations of institutions. Yet, as the literature on identity within the microfoundations of institutions has developed, scholars have begun to shift their understanding of “who” populates the microfoundations of institutions. This chapter offers a historical review of this niche, but growing, area of research. More specifically, the author identifies and discusses three phases of research on identity within the microfoundations of institutions, their ontological and epistemological assumptions, and their implications for the area. To conclude, the author reflects on the possible theoretical avenues for future research on identities within the microfoundations of institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate prior knowledge in the artificial neural network (ANN) model for the prediction of continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagram of steel, so that the model predictions become valid from materials engineering point of view.

Genetic algorithm (GA) is used in different ways for incorporating system knowledge during training the ANN. In case of training, the ANN in multi-objective optimization mode, with prediction error minimization as one objective and the system knowledge incorporation as the other, the generated Pareto solutions are different ANN models with better performance in at least one objective. To choose a single model for the prediction of steel transformation, different multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) concepts are employed. To avoid the problem of choosing a single model from the non-dominated Pareto solutions, the training scheme also converted into a single objective optimization problem.

The prediction results of the models trained in multi and single objective optimization schemes are compared. It is seen that though conversion of the problem to a single objective optimization problem reduces the complexity, the models trained using multi-objective optimization are found to be better for predicting metallurgically justifiable result.

ANN is being used extensively in the complex materials systems like steel. Several works have been done to develop ANN models for the prediction of CCT diagram. But the present work proposes some methods to overcome the inherent problem of data-driven model, and make the prediction viable from the system knowledge.

The determinants of investors’ sentiment based on secondary stock market proxies in many empirical studies are reported. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study undertakes investor sentiment drivers developed from primary survey measures by constructing an investor sentiment index (ISI) in relation to market drivers to date. This study aims to fill this research gap by first developing the ISI for the Indian retail investors and then examining which of the stock market drivers impacts such sentiment.

The ISI is constructed using the mean scores of eight statements as formulated based on popular direct investor sentiment surveys undertaken across the world. Then, we use the multiple regression approach overall and for top 33.33% (high-sentiment) and bottom 33.33% (low-sentiment) investors based on the responses of 576 respondents on 18 statements (proxying eight study hypotheses) collected in 2016. Moreover, the demography-based classification based investors’ sentiment is examined to make our results more robust and in-depth.

On an overall basis, the IPO activities/issues and information certainty, trading volume and momentum and institutional investors’ investment activities market drivers significantly and positively impact retail investors is examined. However, only IPO activities/issues and information certainty influences both high- and low-sentiment investors. It is intriguing to report that nature of the stock markets show conflicting results for high- (negative significant) and low- (positive significant) sentiment investors.

The construction of the ISI from primary survey measure is for the first time in Indian context in relation to investigating the stock market drivers influential to retail investors’ sentiment. In addition, hypothesized market drivers are also unique, each representing different fundamental and technical characteristics associated with the Indian market.

This double volume presents the state of the art in research on the microfoundations of institutions. In this introductory chapter, we develop an overview of where the emerging microfoundational agenda in institutional theory stands and in which direction it is moving. We discuss the questions of what microfoundations of institutions are, what the “micro” in microfoundations represents, why we use the plural form (microfoundations vs microfoundation), why microfoundations of institutions are needed, and how microfoundations can be studied. Specifically, we highlight that there are several traditions of microfoundational research, and we outline a cognitive, a communicative and a behavioral perspective. In addition, we explain that scholars tend to think of microfoundations in terms of an agency, levels, or mechanisms argument. We delineate key challenges and opportunities for future research and explain why we believe that the debate on microfoundations will become a defining element in the further development of institutional theory.

Purpose: During turbulent social and economic times, perceptions of job insecurity can be expected to increase. In this chapter, we outline a theoretical model that links perceptions of job insecurity to lower affective commitment and high work-related stress, resulting in employees' engaging in poor decision-making behavior. We argue further that employees who possess individual skills of being aware of emotions and managing emotions are less susceptible to such behavior. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: We tested our model in two studies. The first study was conducted using an online sample of 217 respondents. The second study used a split administration design conducted in a single organization and used a sample of 579 employees. Findings: Our data revealed that job insecurity is linked to negative decision-making behaviors and that better emotional awareness and management skills may reduce negative decision-making behaviors. Originality/Value: Our findings support the notion of threat rigidity theory where we found that job insecurity affects how individuals make decisions. Our analysis suggests that the individual's level of emotional skills can act as a form of behavioral control that can ameliorate the effects of job insecurity on decision-making behavior. Research Limitations: Both studies had a female gender bias in our sampling frames. There is a possibility of common method variance affecting the results of Study 1, and both studies involved the use of a self-report measure of emotional skills.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mathematical model comprising a heterogeneous fluid-saturated fissured porous layer overlying a non-homogeneous anisotropic fluid-saturated porous half-space without fissures. The influence of point source on horizontally polarized shear-wave (SH-wave) propagation has been studied intensely.

Techniques of Green’s function and Fourier transform are applied to acquire displacement components, and with the help of boundary conditions, complex frequency equation has been constructed.

Complex frequency relation leads to two distinct equations featuring dispersion and attenuation properties of SH-wave in a heterogeneous fissured porous medium. Using MATHEMATICA software, dispersion and damping curves are sketched to disclose the effects of heterogeneity parameters associated with both media, parameters related to rigidity and density of single porous half-space, attenuation coefficient, wave velocity, total porosity, volume fraction of fissures and anisotropy. The fact of obtaining classical Love wave equation by introducing several particular conditions establishes the validation of the considered model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, effect of point source on SH-wave propagating in porous layer containing macro as well as micro porosity is not analysed so far, although theory of fissured poroelasticity itself has vast applications in real life and impact of point source not only enhances the importance of fissured porous materials but also opens a new area for future research.