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Despite the severe impact of the COVID-19, Maldives was one of the top destinations which witnessed decent tourist arrival amid the pandemic. This study aims to analyze luxury hospitality experiences of guests amid COVID-19 pandemic.

This study is exploratory in nature. This study analyses 4,302 real-time customer reviews using sentiment and thematic analysis with the help of NVIVO 12 plus and Leximancer.

The findings suggest travel products as well as services associated with luxury resorts needs to be revisited. Staff needs to be more professional and must be proactive while redesigning services specially in situations like pandemic. While redesigning services in situations like pandemic, staff needs to be proactive, professional and must follow all protocols. Major negative experiences included long waiting time to avail frill services, privacy intrusion by bloggers and influencers, service quality issues. We recommend enhancing service quality followed by investing more in training and development, increasing the number of foreign languages spoken by staff and disseminating localized culinary experiences will enhance the experience quality with guests.

This study has several limitations: first, this study limited itself to 15 luxury resorts of Maldives, which may not serve as a true representation of all luxury resorts of Maldives. The next limitation of this study is that the authors have collected customer reviews from TripAdvisor only, and the reviews were only in English language.

The findings of the research can be beneficial for the policymakers, hospitality practitioners and academicians who study luxury tourism industry to carve appropriate strategies for enhancing the customers’ luxury experience like leveraging customization in all areas and enhancing service quality, food quality, training and development of employees.

Maldives has become one of the most expensive traveler destinations and is home to world’s most expensive resorts. This study is original in nature and has a forward-looking approach which studies the disruptive effect of pandemic, intangible nature of luxury as a concept can be used by hospitality industry to redesign the luxury customer experience which can improve marketing strategies aiming to potentiate this niche. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study will be the first one to capture the real customer experiences of luxury resorts of Maldives.

This study aims to investigate the effects of peers on corporate payout policies in one of the largest emerging markets – India. It also examines the motives for mimicking payout decisions.

The sample is composed of 3,024 non-financial and non-government firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the period 1995 to 2020. To encounter the endogeneity problem, the instrumental variable technique based on peer firms' idiosyncratic risk is used to estimate the effects of peers on firms' payout policy. To define peer reference groups, the authors use the basic industry classification of the firms.

The results indicate a significant positive impact of peers on firms' dividend policies in India. A firm with all dividend-paying peers is more likely to declare dividends than the one with no dividend-paying peers. Further, peer effects are found to be more pronounced amongst larger and older firms, thus supporting the rivalry theory of mimicking.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind that attempts to understand peer effects on payout decisions in an emerging market India, that offers a unique institutional setting. Moreover, the authors extend the existing literature by investigating the peer effects on a firm's payout policies considering various firm-level characteristics, such as growth opportunity, cash holding, financial constraint and profitability, which previous studies have not taken into consideration. These results provide additional insights into the heterogeneity and motives behind peer effects.

This study aims to develop a hierarchical model that uncovers the relationships between challenges confronting Africa's organ transplant supply chain systems.

Eleven challenges (variables) were identified after a comprehensive review of the existing literature. The contextual interactions among these variables were analysed from the perspectives of health-care stakeholders in two sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries (Nigeria and Uganda), using Delphi-interpretive structural modelling-cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) techniques.

The findings reveal that weak regulatory frameworks, insufficient information systems and a lack of necessary skills make it challenging for critical actors to perform the tasks effectively. The interaction effects of these challenges weaken organ supply chains and make it less efficient, giving rise to negative externalities such as black markets for donated organs and organ tourism/trafficking.

This paper establishes a solid foundation for a critical topic that could significantly impact human health and life once the government or non-profit ecosystem matures. The MICMAC analysis in this paper provides a methodological approach for future studies wishing to further develop the organ supply chain structural models.

The study provides valuable insights for experts and policymakers on where to prioritise efforts in designing interventions to strengthen organ transplantation supply chains in developing countries.

This study is one of the first to empirically examine the challenges of organ transplant supply chains from an SSA perspective, including theoretically grounded explanations from data collected in two developing countries.

This study investigates the effects of elements of corporate governance along with firm specific variables on the financial leverage of listed Indian firms in the context of agency conflicts and new governance laws.

A series of panel ordinary least squares as well as fixed/random effects regression models of book and market value of financial leverage on variables of corporate governance (board size, board composition, board meeting, board attendance and board gender) along with a set of control variables (asset tangibility, firm size, growth, liquidity and profitability) were estimated by employing 113 listed Indian firms during 2010–2021. Dynamic panel generalized method of moments models were also estimated to check the robustness of empirical results. Further, the full sample of firms was divided into small and large board sized companies using the median approach to investigate differences between small and large board characteristics on financial leverage.

The evidence predominantly suggested that the governance variables have significant impact on leverage ratios of selected firms. Governance variables such as board size, composition, attendance and gender are significantly found to be reducing the financial leverage of firms indicating that in general these attributes in a way, through monitoring managers, put pressure on them to pursue lower financial leverage. Board meeting is found to be positive and significantly related with financial leverage suggesting that the frequency of meetings signals its monitoring ability that may influence lenders' risk assessment lowering borrowing cost. The results on small and large board sized companies indicate that firms with small boards relatively issue more debt compared to firms with large boards suggesting that small boards adopt high debt policy.

The main policy implication of the study is that elements of internal corporate governance is a significant governance tool that has the potential to reduce agency conflict between the managers and agents through monitoring and decision making that has tangible effects on critical corporate decisions such as capital structure choices.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by bringing new evidence relating to agency conflicts and capital structure decisions in an emerging market like India post adoption of new regulations related to corporate governance specified in Clause 49 of Securities and Exchange Board of India and Companies Act, 2013 as there is significant dearth of such empirical work.

Fintech plays a prominent role in augmenting the financial inclusion of the population and increasing the money supply, which calls for the intervention of monetary policy. This article is an attempt to examine the relationship between the financial inclusion, fintech and monetary policy effectiveness of the Indian economy, within the framework of wealth creation and transmission mechanism through the cost of capital.

On the quarterly data retrieved from multiple sources, autoregressive distributed lagged regression is used to examine the relationship between different variables as explained in four set models; after which the Toda–Yamamoto causality test is employed to capture the direction of the relationship.

The study finds a positive relationship between financial inclusion, fintech and inflation taken as a proxy for Monetary Policy Effectiveness (MPE) in the short as well as in the long run. However, the relationship between fintech and inflation is negative once the cost of capital is included in the models. The causality test exhibits the uni-directional causality from fintech to MPE and MPE to financial inclusion. Bi-directional causality exists between wealth and MPE. Similarly, bank rate and interbank rate are bound by bi-directional causality.

Being financially included facilitates ease and boosts public access to more financial services and credit, leading to increased demand and hence inflation. Hence government and regulators need to take mindful measures to enhance the fintech development and financial inclusion to make the monetary policy effective.

As per the author's best knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between fintech, financial inclusion and monetary policy effectiveness in the context of the Indian economy.

The extant literature underlines the inadequacies of legal and policy frameworks addressing the safety and health concerns of sandstone mineworkers in India. Notably, Rajasthan, a state renowned for its extractive industries, mirrors these concerns. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to critically evaluate the relevant legal and policy landscape, with an emphasis on the recent central statute: the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2020 (OSHWCC). Given that the Code subsumes the key legislation pertaining to the safety and health of mineworkers, an in-depth critical analysis is essential to forge suitable policy interventions to address continued gross violations of human rights.

The critical analysis of legal and policy frameworks on silicosis in sandstone mineworkers is based on a comprehensive reading of existing literature. The literature includes relevant laws, case law, reports of the Rajasthan State Human Rights Commission and National Human Rights Commission, publicly available data and key scholarly contributions in the field.

Although the OSHWCC has made some changes to the existing regulatory architecture of mines in India, it has failed to safeguard the safety and health of mineworkers. Notably, the vast majority of mines in India – constituting approximately 90%, which are informal, seasonal and small-scale – remain beyond the jurisdiction of this Code. In Rajasthan, there are specific policies on silicosis, but these policies are poorly implemented. There is a serious shortage of doctors to diagnose silicosis cases, leading to under-diagnosis. The compensation for silicosis victims is insufficient; the distribution mechanism is complex and often delayed.

The central and many state governments have not established the regulatory institutions envisaged under the OSHWCC 2020; therefore, the working of the regulatory institutions could not be critically examined.

The paper critically evaluates laws and policies pertaining to silicosis in sandstone mineworkers, with a special emphasis on the state of Rajasthan. It offers a comprehensive critique of the OSHWCC of 2020, which has not received much attention from previous studies.

This study aims to examine the enablers of productivity of enterprise-level Agile development process using modified total interpretative structural modeling (TISM). The two main objectives of the current study are to determine the variables influencing enterprise-level agile development productivity and to develop modified TISM for the corresponding components.

To identify enablers of the productivity of enterprise-level agile software development process a literature review and opinions of domain experts were collected. A hierarchical relationship among variables that show direct and indirect influence is created using the modified TISM (M-TISM) technique with Cross Impact Matrix-Multiplication Applied to Classification analysis. This study examined and analyzed the relationships between the determinants within the enterprise using a M-TISM technique.

With the literature review, the study could identify ten enabling factors of the productivity of Agile development process at the enterprise level. Results depict that program increment (PI) planning and scalable backlog management, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), agile release trains (ART), agile work culture, delivery excellence, lean and DevOps practices, value stream mapping (VMS), team skills and expertise, collaborative culture, agile coaching, customer engagement have an impact on the productivity of enterprise-level Agile development process. The results show that team collaboration, agile ways of working and customer engagement have a greater impact on productivity improvement for enterprise-level Agile development process.

The developed model is useful for organizations employing scaled Agile development processes in software development. This study provides a recommended listing of key enablers, that may enable productivity improvements in the Agile development process at the enterprise level. Strategists should focus on team collaboration and Agile project management. This study offers a modified TISM model to academicians to help them understand the effects of numerous variables on maintaining the productivity of an enterprise-level Agile. The identified characteristics and their hierarchical structure can help project managers during the execution of Agile projects at the enterprise level, more effectively, increasing their success and productivity.

The study addresses the gap in the literature by interpretative relationships between the identified enabling factors. The model validation is carried out by a panel of nine experts from several information technology organizations deploying Agile software development at the enterprise level. This unique method broadens the knowledge base in Agile software development at scale and provides project managers and practitioners with a practical foundation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between dividend policy and the life cycle of firms in India. In addition, this study intends to examine the variation in dividend behaviour over the life cycle of a firm. The study anticipates that a firm's dividend behaviour varies over its life cycle.

To scrutinize the validity of the proposition, the authors classify 1968 non-financial industrial firms listed at Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) into growth, mature and stagnant firms over the period 2000–20. Additionally, to check the robustness of the results, they use an array of techniques such as analysis of variance, pooled ordinary least squares, fixed effects models and random effects models.

The empirical findings suggest that dividend behaviour varies over a firm's life cycle. Specifically, stagnant firms are paying significantly higher dividends than growth firms. Mature firms are paying significantly higher dividends than growth firms. The results are consistent after controlling the effects of firm's size, profitability, leverage, operating risk, systematic risk and growth opportunities.

The findings are useful for corporate decision makers in establishing an appropriate dividend policy conditional on firms' life cycle stage and for shareholders in making investment decisions.

The relation between dividend policy and firm life cycle has not been examined before in the context of Indian stock market. Thus, this research bridges this gap in the literature.

This paper seeks to add a historical perspective to the contemporary debate concerning women’s entrepreneurship in India. This study aims to explore the quantitative and qualitative research map of the research field of women’s entrepreneurship. Through this exploration, the authors aim to portray the historical and contemporary factors related to women’s entrepreneurship development in India, the problems and the opportunities. Future research opportunities are also identified based on the keyword analysis.

The study uses a systematic literature review to analyze the historical and theoretical perspectives of women’s entrepreneurship in India. The bibliometric analysis portrays the publication landscape, including the most popular journals, authors and countries, citation analysis and keyword analysis. The content analysis reveals the thematic clusters of the research field.

The content analysis of the management literature on women’s entrepreneurship reveals four primary clusters from the research: contextual embeddedness in women’s entrepreneurship, reasons for starting a business, microfinance interventions and empowerment of women entrepreneurs and marginalization dynamics for women entrepreneurs in India’s informal sector. The study also presents implications for policymakers and a women entrepreneurs’ development framework.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively analyze the management literature on women’s entrepreneurship in India from a historical perspective. The study combines bibliometric mapping and content analysis for a holistic presentation of the research field of women’s entrepreneurship in India and future research opportunities.

Farmers producer organisations (FPOs) play the most crucial role in the agriculture supply chain system, aiming to redress the balance between farming and marketing activities of agricultural produce. The purpose of this study is to assess the performance of FPOs using data envelopment analysis (usually referred to as DEA) on 34 FPO units selected from the state of Rajasthan.

One of the most commonly used techniques to examine business performance is the application of DEA. The application of DEA requires the selection of inputs and outputs. This study takes three inputs and three outputs based on the insights drawn from the field survey. While the input variables consist of total assets, paid-up capital and the number of economic activities, the three output variables are turnover, net profit and number of members benefitted. Broadly, these variables encapsulate the operational performance of the business units.

This study’s findings reveal that the estimated relative efficiency score of the input-oriented CCR (Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes) model ranges from 0.06 to 1. Interestingly, only one FPO has reported a relative efficiency (RE) score of one, whereas the remaining FPOs fall below the efficiency frontier. However, 15 FPOs report an RE score of one in the output-oriented CCR approach. Considering the estimates obtained in the input- and output-oriented BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) models, this study found that about 20% of the FPOs report an efficiency score greater than 0.80. Moreover, three FPOs are on the frontier line. An examination of the scale efficiency score in the input-oriented model, 45% of the FPOs have an efficiency score greater than 0.80, whereas almost all FPOs achieve a scale efficiency score greater than 0.80 in the output-oriented model. Overall, the results imply that the FPOs should place greater emphasis on the efficient utilisation of the inputs to enhance the overall business performance and productivity.

The findings of this study provide vital insights into the specific inputs and outputs that determine the performance efficiency of FPOs and identify the potential areas for improving the existing inefficient FPOs.

This study contributes to the repository of the existing empirical studies in three distinct ways. First, the authors hardly found any previous studies that quantitatively assess the business performance of FPOs using the DEA technique. Second, the effort to identify the slacks associated with each input and output variable in input- and output-oriented models gives insights on improvable areas for inefficient FPOs. Third, the authors attempt to demystify the empirical obfuscations by highlighting the major challenges FPOs face in the state of Rajasthan.