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Change in culture brought about by effective leadership is at the core of this case. Therefore, two broad topics can be discussed using this case: organizational culture change and Change Leadership OR Role of leaders in organzational change.

The case was prepared using primary data collected through a series of interviews conducted with participants of the change process. The participants included R. Sivanesan, Senior Vice President (Quality, Sourcing and Supply Chain) of Ashok Leyland, many members of the quality team, production department, HR executives and members of the marketing team. Secondary data in the form of an interview of Mr Vinod Dasari published in a popular magazine Autocar Professionals and organizational documents/presentations used during the change process were also used to build the case.

In 2011, when Vinod Dasari took over as the Managing Director and CEO of Ashok Leyland (AL), he hired R. Sivanesan. The quality standards of the vehicles produced in the AL plants in 2011 was far from satisfactory. He decided to change this. Part A of the case discusses the challenges faced by Sivanesan and Vinod Dasari in bringing about a change in the quality management practices at AL. Part B discusses the steps they actually took and the change that resulted from it.

At the end of the case discussion, the participants will be able to develop an understanding of the various aspects of organizational culture and how it manifests itself; become aware of the underlying causes of resistance to change; critically evaluate and apply various theories of change management; create an action plan for changing the culture of any organization; and appreciate the role of leaders as change agents.

The central theme in this case is managing culture change within organizations through effective leadership. Instructors teaching courses in organizational theory, organization structure/culture and leadership will find this case relevant. It is primarily intended for use in MBA and Executive Education programs in Management.

Capital structure is an important corporate financing decision, particularly for companies in emerging economies. This paper attempts to understand whether the pandemic had any significant impact on the capital structure of companies in emerging economies. India being a prominent emerging economy is an ideal candidate for the analysis.

The study utilizes three leverage ratios in an extended market index, BSE500, for the period 2015–2021. The ratios considered are short-term leverage ratio (STLR), long-term leverage ratio (LTLR) and total leverage ratio (TLR). A dummy variable differentiates the pre-epidemic (2015–2019) and pandemic (2020–2021) period. Control variables are used to represent firm characteristics such as growth, tangibility, profit, size and liquidity. Dynamic panel data regression is employed to address endogeneity.

The findings point out that Covid-19 has had a significant, negative effect on LTLR, while the impact on STLR and TLR was insignificant. The findings indicate that companies based in a culturally risk-averse environment, such as India, would reduce the long-term debt to avoid bankruptcy in times of uncertainty.

The study covers the impact of the pandemic on Indian companies. Hence, generalization of the findings to global context might not be valid.

To maintain economic growth in the post-crisis period, Indian policymakers should ensure accessibility to low-cost capital. The findings provide impetus to deepen the insignificant corporate bond market in India for future economic revival.

Developing countries are struggling to revive the economies postpandemic. This is particularly true for Asian economies which are heavily reliant on banks for survival. This research finds evidence to utilize bond market as a source of raising capital for economic revival.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the most important factors that affect the capital structure of commercial banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This study uses annual data of 11 Saudi commercial, national banks listed on the tadawul Saudi stock exchange for the period 2010–2017. Data was collected from the banks financial statements, tadawul annual publications and Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. By constructing a balanced panel, this study uses pooled ordinary least squares regression along with fixed effects and random effects to examine the relationship between the bank’s book leverage as the dependent variable and bank-specific explanatory variables that include profitability, tangibility, earnings volatility, growth opportunities and bank size, while controlling for macroeconomic conditions.

The findings of this study suggest that banks in Saudi Arabia are highly leveraged, endorsing the fact that the nature of banks’ business is different from non-banking firms. Earnings volatility, growth and bank size show positive and significant relations with book leverage. Profitability and tangibility are negatively related to the book leverage. Empirically, the explanatory variables profitability, earnings volatility, tangibility, growth and bank size have material effects on the capital structure decisions of Saudi commercial banks. In summary, the determinants of capital structure for Saudi banks are the same as those of non-financial firms but are distinctive in nature.

An extensive study on all the banks operating in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is suggested.

The findings have practical implications for bank managers, which will help them to identify the bank-specific factors affecting the capital structure and choose the values enhancing optimal capital structure. The results of this study can assist regulatory agencies to formulate an effective regulatory framework. Moreover, the findings lay a foundation for the development of financial sector under the umbrella of the Vision 2030 program in the Kingdom.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the factors affecting the capital structure choices of commercial banks operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the findings of the study would prove useful in detailed studies of capital structure in the GCC countries as well.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of capital structure using a dataset of firms in Malaysia.

This paper carries out a panel data analysis of 8,270 observations from 827 listed non-financial firms on the Malaysia stock market over the period 2008–2017. To estimate the model and analyse the data collected from the DataStream and World Bank databases, the authors use static panel estimation techniques as well as two-step difference and system dynamic GMM estimator.

The results show that profitability, growth opportunity, tax-shield, liquidity and cash flow volatility have a negative and significant impact on debt measures. However, the effects of collateral, non-debt tax and earnings volatility on measures of debt are positive and significant. In addition, firm size, firm age, inflation rate and interest rate are important determinants of the present value of debt. The results also show a significant inverse U-shaped relationship between the firm's age and its capital structure. In general, the results support the proposition advocated by the pecking order and trade-off theories.

The results of this study necessitate formulation of various policy measures that can counter the effects of debt on firms.

The present study is among the earliest to use both the book and market value measures of capital structure. It also uses three proxies for each: total debt, long-term debt and short-term debt. It incorporates earning volatility and cash flow volatility as new independent variables in the model. These variables have not previously been used together with both book and market value measures of capital structure. The study also examines the non-monotonic relationship between firm's age and capital structure using a quadratic regression method. It applies both static panel techniques and dynamic GMM estimation techniques to analyse the data.

This study compares the motives of holding cash between developed (Australian) and developing (Malaysian) financial markets.

For the period 2006–2020, the t-test, fixed-effect and generalised method of moment (GMM) model have been applied to a sample of 1878 (1,165 Australian and 713 Malaysian) firms.

The empirical results reveal that firms in developed financial markets hold higher cash compared to the developing financial markets. The findings confirm that motives to hold cash differ between developed and developing financial markets. The GMM findings further show that cash holdings (CH) in Australia are higher due to higher ratios of cash flow, research and development (R&D) and return on assets (ROA), and lower due to larger dividend payments. In the Malaysian market, however, cash flows and R&D are ineffectual, ROA falls and dividend payments rise CH.

The study helps managers, practitioners and investors understand that firms' distinct economic, institutional, accounting and financial environments are important. To attain the desired outcomes, they must thus comprehend and consider these considerations while developing suitable liquidity strategies.

To the authors' best knowledge, this is the initial research demonstrating how varied cash motives and their ramifications are in developed and developing financial markets. Therefore, this study identifies the importance that CH motives varied among financial markets and that findings from a particular market cannot be generalised to other markets because of the market and financial structural variations.

In this paper, the authors examine the association between a firm's geographical location and the value of its cash holdings.

Following Loughran and Schultz (2005) and Nielsson and Wójcik (2016), the authors define firms as either geographically remote or geographically proximate based on their distance to areas that are either largely populated or concentrated in financial expertise. We also estimate the marginal value of cash using the model developed by Faulkender and Wang (2006).

The authors find that the marginal value of cash is $0.10–$0.16 lower in remotely located firms than in geographically proximate firms. The lower marginal value of cash is prominent among remotely located firms with greater severity of information asymmetry. Our findings support the view that the inability of shareholders to closely monitor how managers use of firm cash may increase the perceived conflicts of interest associated with managers' cash spending and decrease the value of cash.

Previous studies try to explain the cash holdings puzzle by attributing it to CEO overconfidence, external funding constraints, poor corporate governance, difference in corporate financial policy, poor investor protection, lack of firm diversification and large operating losses. This study contributes to the extant literature by offering new evidence of the role of geographic location on the value of cash holdings.

A persistent and increasing pattern in cash holdings was notable in the aggregate behaviour of Indian corporations around the period from 2007–2008 to 2012–2013. Extant literature suggests that agency conflicts and financing frictions are important determinants of cash holdings. In this chapter the author aims to shed light on the role of corporate governance (CG) in the determination of cash holdings and examined how ownership structure, board and audit-related attributes (used as proxies for the nature of CG) impact cash holdings in the context of an emerging economy, like India. The author employed four different measures of cash and liquidity and 24 structural indicators of CG. Using principal component analysis, the author offers an exploratory inquiry into the dimensions of CG. Thereafter, multiple regression was used to delve into the association between cash holdings (the dependent variable) and CG. Using a sample of 58 top-listed companies the results revealed that the quality of firm-level CG is important in deciding corporate cash holdings. The author reported that firms with stronger CG tend to reduce cash balances and have higher capital expenditures, while in firms with entrenched managers having high cash reserves invest more in current assets. Firms also hold cash for financial flexibility and to take advantage of strategic opportunities as they present themselves. Parallel to this point is the fact that larger balances help firms to avoid uncertainty and hedge themselves against the difficulty of accessing external funds.

A wave of technological change in the first decades of the twenty-first century is prefiguring a fundamental restructuring of society. Key among the driving forces behind such change are powerful technologies with the potential to exert major transformations on a range of human activities and, crucially, to do so without direct human intervention. The technologies collectively referred to as Artificial Intelligence, or AI represent a productive lens through which to investigate two interrelated transformations: the emergence of self-driving cars and the coming shifts in education. This is in particular because AI’s versatility has led it to be directly applied (and increasingly valued) both in new automated driving technologies, and in the development of new forms of instruction. From the educational perspective, this means that the same technologies that are transforming workforce conditions are also reshaping – directly and indirectly – the approaches, objectives, and experiences of students and educational institutions. This chapter lays out how these twin transformations are likely to play out in the case of the automotive industry and the educational pathways of two occupations closely associated with it: automotive engineers and repair technicians. Two key arguments underpin this examination. First, educational programs for these two occupations, (and beyond) should be broadened to develop versatility and adaptability through tools and perspectives that allow people to move vertically within organizations and laterally across industries in the face of rapid technological change. Second, these educational programs must explicitly tackle AI and the coming technological revolution from a variety of dimensions that connect technical skills acquisition with the context on how these technologies are incorporated in society, how they are governed, and what are the various responses to them. This will allow students and professionals to navigate a rapidly changing labor landscape better while endowing them with the vocabulary to actively participate in the debates that shape its construction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between capital structure and debt lifetime among listed companies in Palestine stock market.

This study investigates firms that have been listed on the Palestine securities exchange (PSE) over a five‐year period (2000‐2004). In total, 28 companies were listed in PSE since 1999. Only 15 firms working in different economic sectors qualified to be included in the study sample according to the availability and continuity of published financial statements during the period of 2000‐2004. Variables used for the analysis include profitability, leverage ratios (total debt (TD), short‐term debt (STD) and long‐term debt (LTD)), liquidity (LQ), age, asset structure, and firm size and sales growth are also included as control variables. The panel character of the data allows for the use of panel data methodology. Panel data involves the pooling of observations on a cross‐section of units over several times.

The study has shown that the service companies have the highest TD ratio (53.69 percent), followed by industrial companies (50.86 percent), trade companies (34.11 percent) and agriculture companies (24.02 percent). The one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows no significant difference in the use of debt, neither total, LTD or STD among companies in the four sectors. Adding to that, ANOVA indicates insignificant differences among the companies in the sample with respect growth opportunities, size, age, tangibility (TAN), and LQ. The correlation analysis has shown that TD is positively and significantly related to TAN, on the country, no significant relationship between the long debt and STD on the one hand and age, growth, LQ, TAN, and size on the other hand.

This paper is the first that employs a new database containing the market and accounting data (from 2000 to 2004). This study will contribute in examining the relationship between capital structure and debt lifetime among listed companies in the Palestine stock market.