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Purpose: This chapter explores the changing global dynamics of employability and the current skill gaps among college students. Employability is defined as the measure of how desirable an individual is in the workforce, that is, their skills and knowledge. This chapter is centred on the students’ existing skills, missing skills, and the skill requirements of different industries.

Methodology: For this study, both primary and secondary data have been collected. Case studies have been used to analyse the skill gaps among students and industry requirements. Primary data has been collected from Indian students and case studies from other countries.

Findings: After conducting primary surveys and analysing case studies, we were able to conclude that there are serious skill gaps among students – especially in industries related to new emerging technologies. Educational institutes are not keeping pace with technological changes, and, in some cases, are not taking care of students’ interests. This is a serious problem for unemployed youth around the world.

Practical Implications: This chapter will help design the curriculum, addressing core issues of skill shortages in the labour market in developing and underdeveloped countries, decreasing the labour shortage and increasing employment, and helping countries’ national income.

Significance: This study is important as it addresses the issue of unemployment by providing a clear understanding of the present needs of industries. Educational institutions and the government will be able to design the best curriculum and education policies to provide the youth with all the necessary skills to help them fulfil the needs of industries.

The purpose of this paper is to review several influential empirical studies that examine the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The paper undertakes a citation analysis of journals, authors and titles in the area of privatization and firm performance in general, and assesses the impact of privatization on the performance of SOEs in particular.

The methodology is based on a systematic and structured review of over 100 papers published in economics, public management, business strategy and related social sciences. The systematic review is based on citation analysis of journals, authors and titles. The journal and author citation counts were tabulated by leveraging the databases of SCImago Journal Rankings and Google Scholar and filtered it to find out the most highly cited journals and authors. The structured review is based on the framing opinion with respect to major findings, variables selected, measurement techniques and statistical tools applied by different researchers. The impact is measured through coding a value “P” in case of positive effects, “N” in case of negative effects and “NT” in case the study found both positive and negative effects.

The citation analysis reveals that American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Finance as the top-cited journals, and Megginson and Netter (3,468), Megginson et al. (1,737), Djankov and Murrell (1,356), Boardman and Vining (1,320), Balsam et al. (1,094) and DeWenter and Malatesta (1,018) as the top-cited authors in this particular research field. While majority research studies have revealed a significant improvement in the performance of SOEs in the post-privatization period, few studies have reserved their impact as neutral or even negative in some respects.

Given that economic transitions, corporate governance, and performance of SOEs have attracted a great attention from public management and business strategy scholars in recent years, this paper aims to summarize a large number of empirical studies that examine the performance of SOEs. The paper would be useful to future researchers especially the beginners and early career researchers in terms of its current trends, selection of variables, measurement techniques and statistical tools applied.

This paper aims to attempt to empirically investigate the impact of privatization on the performance of central public sector enterprises in India. Further attempt is made to explore whether privatization is a necessary or sufficient condition for improvement of performance of central public sector enterprises.

The scope of the study is limited to financial and operating performance analysis of 206 central public sector enterprises in India. Multiple regression analysis has been used to determine the magnitude and direction of relationship between dependent and independent variables and identify variables other than privatization which affects performance.

The study found that financial and operational performance of firms has improved significantly due to privatization. Further, firm-specific factors and other parallel reforms adopted by enterprises have significantly influenced their performance. The established regression model is highly significant with F-ratio of 31.825 at 99% significance level. The degree of explanation of the model is robust with adjusted R² at 0.956 implying that only 4.40% of explanation in the dependent variable cannot be explained by designated independent/explanatory variables.

The study would be useful to public policymakers to reach to a policy view on whether further disinvestment/privatization of central public sector enterprises need to be continued, and if so, then to what extent and direction.

The emergence of virtual reality (VR) has the potential to revolutionize various industries, including tourism, as it delivers a simulated environment that closely emulates real-life experiences. Therefore, this study aims to explore how the factors, i.e. enjoyment, emotional involvement, flow state, perceived privacy risk, physical risk and cost, influence the customers’ intention to use VR for tourism.

This study integrates the technology acceptance model, hedonic consumption theory with other factors, including cognitive response, authenticity, perceived privacy risk, perceived physical risk, perceived cost and perceived presence. Partial least squares structural equation modelling approach was used to test the proposed research model.

The finding based on the sample of 252 respondents revealed that authenticity is the most influential factor impacting behavior intention followed by perceived cost, attitude, cognitive response and enjoyment. Also, the study supported the moderating impact of personal innovativeness between attitude and behavioral intention to use VR for tourism.

The findings of the study offers practical implications for service providers, site managers, destination marketers, tourist organizations and policymaker to develop more effective strategies for offering VR services for tourism.

This study enriches the current understanding of VR adoption in context of tourism with empirical evidences.

The objective of this paper is to employ a model to expand the literature's comprehension of the organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) phenomenon in the Indian banking sector. The authors examine OCB as a mediator of the relationship between job embeddedness (JE), self-efficacy (SE) and organisation effectiveness (OE). The authors also verify the moderating role of affective commitment (AC) on the JE, SE and OE relationship.

Data for the purpose of this paper are collected from 568 employees in 89 branches of banks located in North and Central India using a survey questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings confirm the positive association between JE, SE and OE. The results also suggest that OCB mediates the association between the independent and dependent variables. Furthermore, the authors observed that AC moderates the OCB and OE relationship.

The results of this examination will assist the employees to realise the substance of OCB in directing their performance towards OE. This investigation will inspire bank managers to notice that employee readiness to put in extra effort in a bank is primarily the effect of apt individual characteristics, namely JE and SE, that can be shaped and developed. Furthermore, this study draws the attention of bank managers towards the significance of AC, as an essential phenomenon to emotionally attach the employees to their organisation.

This study contributes to the existing literature on OCB by examining how OCB leads to desired outcomes and the conditions that promote the effect of OCB. The authors address these questions by building on a more contemporary perspective, i.e., PsyCap.

This paper aims to assess the factors favoring the adoption of the challenges faced and support mechanism, which will lead to the proliferation of glass fiber-reinforced gypsum (GFRG) technology in India.

Semi-structured interviews with 35 experts, including construction developers, architects, contractors, government officials and design consultants, were conducted. This qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis and matrix analysis.

GFRG-based buildings produce much less carbon footprints as compared to traditional ones and can be safely recommended as a promising, environmentally sensitive technology of the future. The major drivers in its adoption are its efficient construction capability, energy and soil conservation and significant waste reduction. Some of the challenges in implementation are long planning time, lack of skilled labor, lack of awareness about green building technologies and myopic perception of high cost incurred in green building adoption in people’s minds.

This study establishes that the construction industry has the potential to contribute toward creating a sustainable and green planet. It does so by evaluating and then positively positioning GFRG as an environmentally friendly building system.

The harmful effects of continuous environmental manipulation by humans leading to its degradation is a critical discussion agenda for most nations of the world. The issue has been taken up seriously by developing countries, and now, developing countries are also becoming sensitised to it. Several policies toward the attainment of this goal have been formulated and are being implemented by government and private bodies. Although some authors have studied the issues and challenges related to the adoption of green buildings, their attempts mostly focused on developed countries. Moreover, research that investigated the evaluation of the GFRG building system as a successful green technology of the future is inadequate.

The quest to acquire new customers and retain the existing ones is a challenge for all aviation companies. This paper attempts to assist the aviation companies in tackling this challenge by revealing the most important factors that their customers consider to be the most important while making purchasing choices.

Drawing on three separate studies, this paper identifies the most important factors that influence consumers' choice of airlines in an emerging economy context. The first study adopts a qualitative approach with 20 respondents (Max QDA is used for analyzing these data), followed by the second study based on a quantitative survey with 105 participants, and finally, the third study which employs a multi-criteria decision-making technique named fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) on a sample of 12 expert customers.

The findings of this paper reveal that customer care quality and on-time arrival are the two most important factors that aviation customers consider while making their purchase decisions. In contrast, baggage allowance and fastest route to destination are the two least considered by aviation customers while making their purchasing choices.

This study includes only a geographic-specific segment of passengers. Future studies of consumer preferences in the aviation industry may include consumers belonging to other geographic regions. Furthermore, future studies may segment their sample populations based on factors other than age, the purpose of travel and booking medium.

This investigation attempts to give a rich and holistic understanding of the different factors that influence the aviation choices of consumers of varying segments. This study has significant practical implications as modern-day airlines aim to optimally cater to the needs of their target segments without incurring additional costs on services that consumers do not deem to be as important.

This study highlights the importance attributed to each identified factor by passengers, something that previous research has mostly ignored.

The awareness for protecting the environment has resulted in remanufacturing and recycling policies in manufacturing industries. Carbon emission is one of the most important elements affecting the environment. Carbon emission due to production and transportation creates complicated situations for the manufacturing firms by affecting the manufacturer's carbon quota. The ecological consequences posed in a reverse logistic model are the subject of this study.

The present study explores the fuzzy model of economic production for both remanufacturing and recycling with uncertain cost parameters under the cap-and-trade rule to control the carbon emission due to different modes of transportation. Due to imprecise cost parameters, the hexagonal fuzzy numbers are set to fuzzify the overall cost, which leads to correct decisions in a more confident way. The result is defuzzified by using graded mean integration.

This study offers an explicit condition to control the carbon emission of the manufacturer and reduce the optimum cost. The findings indicate that the collection of used goods that can be remanufactured must be increased. The model is validated numerically. Sensitivity analysis explores the various aspects of different parameters on net cost to accomplish the fuzzy production model.

Under fuzzy inference, the research offers a relevant contribution in the field of recycling with controlling carbon emission by using the cap-and-trade policy. This study provides a trading strategy for a manufacturer's decision to avoid losses.