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The case is related to strategy of innovation, strategic marketing and brand valuation.

The case consolidates techniques and methodologies of businesses that demonstrate use of technology and innovation to attain competitive edge. It is appropriate for Master's, executive level programme and advance specialized courses of strategy and entrepreneurship. Introductory classes on basics of strategy and information technology will be value add for students.

In the growing digital era of virtualization, the businesses are depended on technology to facilitate their multiple operations. Virtual events of conference and exhibition provide broad opportunity to connect and collaborate in real time across the globe. The case discussion applies to potential use of virtual platform as a collaborative tool to achieve business objectives. This case highlights the strategic decision making by an IT company – VSL, regarding product migration and services diversification. It focuses on considering the appropriate strategy of innovation and to make the right decisions. Strategy of innovation and marketing techniques applied by VSL management to sustain in the competitive environment describes the essence of the case. The case is written with the objective to enhance user conceptual understanding through VSL brand valuation and international strategic alliance with 6Connex.

The case familiarises the students with the complexities and challenges involved in a real business environment and put emphasises on the role of played by management for effective decision making. The case helps students to comprehend the relevance of innovation to achieve competitive edge. The case provides an opportunity of exposure to students so that they can understand the key elements of efficient marketing, strategy of innovation and brand valuation. (Elaborate teaching objectives are appended in the teaching note.)

Teaching notes.

Innovation, information technology, e-marketing and sales, strategy and entrepreneurship.

The case is intended for use in advanced graduate and executive education level management and technical programs of study. The case is high inter-disciplinary appropriate for all courses dealing in use of innovation, information technology, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales and strategy.

Practo Technologies Pvt Ltd is a company established in 2008 by entrepreneurs Shashank, N.D. along with Abhinav Lal. At Practo Technologies engineers practice to create technology that supports healthcare industry. In India, there is not enough assistance given to the patients in terms of searching for appropriate doctors and fixing an appointment with them easily. The patient's data lie scattered in reports and the patient's medical history goes unrecorded. Practo provides a robust platform for doctors and patients to collaborate together under one umbrella. It provides patients with open basket of doctor profiles and special search based on doctor's specialty. The case showcases the journey of transformation healthcare sector in India has gone through. The change was resisted, it never came that easy! The case explores issues in implementing information technology for clinics and hospitals in India. This case illustrates interesting facts Indian healthcare and the preparation they need to equip with to manage global technology tide.

The case can be used for teaching service innovation. Managing innovative practices and low-cost online business models is illustrated. In particular, it deals with how the early start up employs innovation to set up new working ideas. The case is designed to stimulate discussions of broad array of issues regarding deployment of IT services specifically in the hospitals and clinics across India. Evaluate the advantages and liabilities of expanding globally at a very early start up stage. The case focuses on Practo early development with only concept in hand and transforming it into a profit generating business. Evaluate the advantages and challenges of innovation, technology development, deployment and training of manpower to use it. The case offers students opportunity to understand and take view of strategically building early start up and management of concerns with no prior experience. To identify business opportunities and explore various possibilities of expansion into IT healthcare business. The students are given base to explore sales and marketing strategies for online model. The students get overview of cutting edge business offerings and surviving the dynamic competition in the era of globalization.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The waste of invaluable agri-food produce is the concern of United Nations Organisation and all countries across the world. The purpose of this paper is to identify and model the drivers of agri-food waste management in India.

The interpretive structural modelling method is used to model the drivers in this study. This method helps in understanding the driver-dependent relationships among various drivers/criteria which are selected for studying.

The findings of the study vividly shows that the drivers such as disaster management planning, information dissemination, and training and awareness programs for farmers are most vital for tackling the issue.

This work would help the policy makers in developing the effective policies regarding the management of agri-food waste in a sustainable manner.

This work would be very helpful for deeply understanding the causes of occurring waste and carefully handling it scientifically with a managerial perspective. Hence, it has the potential to reduce the generation of waste and saving the food for society.

With the help of this study, the people, society, and underprivileged will be benefited directly. The savings in agri-food waste will not only help in controlling the prices of it but also its more availability would be beneficial for all in beating the hunger.

The identification of drivers for the sustainable management of agri-food is the novelty of this research.

The growing environmental awareness all through the world has motivated a standard change toward planning and designing better materials having good performance, which are very much suited to the environmental factors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact on mechanical, thermal and water absorption properties of sawdust-based composites reinforced by epoxy, and the amount of sawdust in each form.

Manufacturing of the sawdust reinforced epoxy composites is the main area of the research for promoting the green composite by having good mechanical properties, biodegradability or many applications. Throughout this research work, the authors emphasize the importance of explaining the methodology for the evaluation of the mechanical and water absorption properties of the sawdust reinforced epoxy composites used by researchers.

In this paper, a comprehensive review of the mechanical properties of sawdust reinforced epoxy composite is presented. This study is reported about the use of different Wt.% of sawdust composites prepared by different processes and their mechanical, thermal and water absorption properties. It is studied that after optimum filler percentage, mechanical, thermal properties gradually decrease, but water absorption property increases with Wt.% of sawdust. The changes in the microstructure are studied by using scanning electron microscopy.

The novelty of this study lies in its use of a systematic approach that offers a perspective on choosing suitable processing parameters for the fabrication of composite materials for persons from both industry and academia. A study of sawdust reinforced epoxy composites guides new researchers in the fabrication and characterization of the materials.

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in multiple challenges for employees, which led to employee turnover, disengagement at work, employees’ mental health issues, etc. The study tries to elucidate how artificial intelligence (AI) herald great promise in human resource management in decreasing cost, attrition level and enhancing productivity. Considering the dearth of studies on recent trends in human resource management (HRM) in the context of AI, the study elucidates the role of AI in facilitating seamless onboarding, diversity and inclusion (D&I), work engagement, emotional intelligence and employees’ mental health. Thus, a conceptual model of recent trends in HRM in the context of AI and its organisational outcomes is proposed. A systematic review and meta-synthesis method are undertaken. A systematic literature review assisted in critically analysing, synthesising, and mapping the extant literature by identifying the broad themes. The findings of the study suggest that using natural language processing (NLP) and robots has eased the onboarding process. D&I is promoted using data analytics, big data, machine learning, predictive analysis and NLP. Furthermore, NLP and data analytics have proved to be highly effective in engaging employees. Emotional Intelligence is applied through AI simulation and intelligent robots. On the other hand, chatbots, employee pulse surveys, wearable technology, and intelligent robots have paved way for employees’ mental health. The study also reveals that using AI in HRM leads to enhanced organisational performance, reduced cost and decreased intention to quit the organisation. Thus, AI in HRM provides a competitive edge to organisations by enhancing the performance of the employees.

The purpose of this article is to describe the union databases maintained by the INFLIBNET for university libraries in India. INFLIBNET maintains union databases of serials, books, theses and an “experts” database. Efforts to collect the raw data, maintain it and make it available to the end user via the internet are also discussed.

The article describes the workflow of maintaining union databases and the steps involved are discussed. Various software are being used to provide a systematic approach to these databases and to ensure that the searching for needed documents is user friendly; the user should be able to go automatically to the document supply system with a single click of the mouse button.

If the library system is large, it becomes most important to know the location of documents. The Indian educational system is one of the largest in the world. INFLIBNET maintains union databases of various types of documents for more than 150 university libraries and membership is growing rapidly to accommodate all university and college libraries. Many best procedures on bibliographic standards and guidelines have been adopted and are updated regularly. UniCat, an in house software package has been used to process bibliographic raw data which is then hosted on the website for access by users.

This article is significant to researchers and librarians in India and also more widely.

This study aims to contribute to international doctrine by testing how environmental social governance (ESG) pillars can affect marketing performance in the pharmaceutical industry.

The authors follow a pioneering approach, using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and data from the largest European listed companies belonging to the pharmaceutical industry in 2019. Specifically, the authors contribute to international doctrine by testing how ESG pillars can affect marketing performance by presenting two configurational paths that may help to clarify not only the individual role of the pillars but also how their interrelationships predict marketing performance.

The results identify two different causal configurations that lead to higher marketing performance. These configurations allow us to think more carefully about the role of ESG pillars in the pharmaceutical sector. These results could help managers reflect upon and justify their choice to invest in specific ESG pillars, highlighting the importance of the governance pillar.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use configurational analysis to investigate combinations of ESG pillars that lead firms to achieve higher levels of marketing performance.

This paper aims to develop and validate a cashless transaction adoption model (CTAM) that integrates all essential elements to investigate the adoption of “cashless transactions (CLT)”.

The researchers surveyed 375 respondents from each of Bengaluru’s eight zones in India. In addition, using the respondents’ replies, a “partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM)” technique was used to analyse the relationship between the components.

The results of CTAM reveal that 12 independent variables explain 84.7% of the variation in behavioural intention to adopt CLT. In addition, performance expectancy is the strongest predictor of users’ intentions to embrace CLT, followed by perceptions of the economy’s security and economic offence reduction, social influence, perceived trustworthiness, the expected level of effort and innovativeness. Furthermore, in terms of impediments, perceived risk and cost are the negative influence factors that affect behavioural intention to adopt CLT.

The research successfully developed and validated a comprehensive CTAM that integrates essential elements to investigate the adoption of CLT. Consequently, this research, for the first time, elucidates the precise role of “Perceived Economic Offense Reduction (PEOR)”, “Perceived Economic Benefit (PEB)” and “Perceived Economy’s Security (PES)” in influencing individuals’ behavioural intentions towards adopting CLT. Accordingly, this CTAM offers a more in-depth explanation than any other research for understanding why individuals embrace CLT systems.