Search results

This paper aims to explore the voting recommendations made by proxy advisory firms in India by descriptively analyzing the “Vote Against” recommendations made by two proxy advisory firms for shareholder resolutions for the listed Indian firms. It also empirically tests the relationship between proportion of “Vote Against” recommendations and the parameters which are proved to be influencing corporate governance practices of a firm.

Empirical analysis of proxy voting recommendations for a sample of 77 listed non-financial Indian firms across four financial years.

The paper finds that two categories of shareholders proposals, “reappointment of non-executive directors” and “remuneration of statutory auditors”, account for 83.5 per cent of “Vote Against” recommendations. Further, there are significant differences in the proportion of “Vote Against” recommendations based on the type of “controlling ownership” of the firms. The regression analysis indicates that the relationships between proportion of “Vote Against” recommendations and determinants of corporate governance practices are mostly in line with the a priori expectations, as far as ownership is concerned but requires further analysis for other parameters.

Exploratory nature of this paper opens up new research issues in the upcoming Indian Proxy advisory industry. It suggests that the future research should consider the controlling ownership as an important parameter while analyzing the proxy firm recommendations.

Indian proxy advisory industry requires lots of nurturing from the regulators, and this exploratory study provides the basic insights in this regard. It also highlights potential corporate governance issues where the regulators need to tighten the corporate governance norms, like reappointment of independent directors and appointment of statutory auditors.

Pioneering Study in understanding the proxy advisory voting recommendations in an emerging market.

This paper is a clinical examination of the October 2013 Management Buyout of Dell Inc. by founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners for a total consideration of $13.88 per share. The proposed transaction was targeted by shareholders unhappy with the deal price and voting framework. Various shareholders went on to file an appraisal suit. Examining these events yields insights into shareholder rights issues in a major transaction.

The paper examines events surrounding the acquisition including the negotiation process, go-shop period, shareholder activist demands for a higher price, shareholder voting and the subsequent appraisal trial and appeal.

Despite suggesting Dell's board fulfilled its fiduciary duties, Delaware Vice Chancellor Travis Laster awarded petitioning shareholders $17.62 per share, a 27% premium to the final deal consideration. This article draws on Laster's decision and research examining topics raised by the surrounding events to argue minority shareholder interests were not sufficiently protected.

The Dell transaction represents only one data point. Moreover, Vice Chancellor Laster's decision was reversed on appeal.

Nevertheless, the paper discusses the nuances surrounding many issues of interest to practitioners involving large going private transactions. It could also be used to illustrate many “real world” perspectives in an advanced corporate finance or mergers and acquisitions class.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between corporate governance practices and internationalization through foreign direct investments in the context of family-owned business groups in India.

The comparative case study method is used to understand the relationship between corporate governance practices and internationalization using four family-owned business groups in India.

The ownership concentration negatively influences the internationalization, while transparency has a positive association. Professionalization of management helps in internationalization. Overall, good corporate governance practices have a positive influence on group internationalization.

This paper provides detailed discussions based on the case study research which would help the future research work on the relationship between corporate governance practices and internationalization.

The existing literature studies in this field in the context of emerging markets are inconclusive. Hence, this paper uses the case study method to understand the relationship better.

The concern for environmental sustainability has created the need for businesses to embrace new environmentally responsible behavior, values and beliefs. Developing green culture has the capability of influencing employee attitudes and behavior and instilling certain values that shape an internal culture. The purpose of this study is to understand the causal relationship between the factors that influence green organization culture (GOC) in manufacturing small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) since they are considered significant contributors to environmental pollution. The study also aims to execute the driving and dependency power analysis to find the most and least significant factors of GOC.

The study identified eight factors through an extensive literature review and validated them with the specialists. The total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) approach was employed for discovering the interaction among the identified factors and developing their structural hierarchy. Further matriced impact croises multiplication applique (MICMAC) analysis was carried out to determine the driving-dependence power of each factor.

The study discovered that the factors namely “Top management commitment and support towards green practices and workforce greening F(2)”, “Internal regulatory forces towards the environmental system (F3)” and “Organization's mission including environmental concern (F6)” were observed to be the most significant ones. “Environment that creates green work-life balance F(8)” and “Environment that promotes green attitude and behavior F(4)” were identified to be extremely dependent on the remaining factors.

The proposed outline has been established in the context of India and is restricted to manufacturing SMEs. The methodology presented in the study relies solely on experts' opinions which are qualitative in nature. Integration with a different method can be used to do statistical validation and add new variables to the problem, thereby reducing restrictions. The findings may facilitate manufacturing SME owners/managers and HR managers to recognize the most and least important factors of GOC and their causal relationships. This will increase awareness of GOC practices among managers thus contributing to environmental performance.

It is essential for manufacturing small and medium enterprises to enhance their GOC for reducing its negative impact on the environment and further for gaining competitive advantage. Also, this research will offer insights into environmental management and enlarge awareness in the subsequent fields: of academics, practitioners and decision-makers who are engaged in managing environmental issues at various stages.

The researchers believe that the study is highly significant for manufacturing SMEs as they contribute to the economy as well as environmental degradation. Also, none of the research focused on understanding the causal relationships between the factors of GOC using the TISM approach in the Indian manufacturing SMEs context. This research adds an important contribution to the current GOC literature.

This paper aims to examine the relationship of supply chain disruption risk drivers to supply chain performance and firm performance outcomes.

Four disruption risk drivers for a supply chain are identified, namely, demand disruption risk, supply disruption risk, process disruption risk and environment disruption risk. A cross-sectional survey was developed and data was collected from 315 Chinese firms to determine the relationship of supply chain disruption risks to supply chain performance and firm performance.

The empirical findings show that supply disruption risks and process disruption risks have a significant impact on supply chain performance. In addition, this paper shows that supply disruptions, demand disruptions and process disruptions are significantly related to firm performance. This paper shows that supply chain disruption risks have different effects on supply chain performance and firm performance. Managers should be aware that disruption risk drivers can have an impact on firm performance that is different from their impact on supply chain performance. An important finding of the study is that the magnitude of the impact of disruption risks on supply chain performance is greater on the upstream side of the supply chain than on the downstream side of the supply chain.

This is one of the early studies to examine the effect of supply chain disruption risk drivers on both firm performance and supply chain performance. An important finding of the study is that the magnitude of the impact of disruption risks on supply chain performance is greater on the upstream side of the supply chain than on the downstream side of the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to present the application of an adaptive bacterial foraging (BF) algorithm for the design optimization of an energy efficient induction motor.

The induction motor design problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear optimization problem. A set of nine independent variables is selected, and to make the machine feasible and practically acceptable, six constraints are imposed on the design. Two different objective functions are considered, namely, the annual active material cost, and the sum of the annual active material cost, annual cost of the active power loss of the motor and annual energy cost required to supply such power loss. A new adaptive BF algorithm is used for solving the optimization problem. A generic penalty function method, which does not require any penalty coefficient, is employed for constraint handling.

The adaptive BF algorithm is validated for two sample motors and benchmarked with the genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, simple BF algorithm, and conventional design methods. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other methods in both the solution quality and convergence rate. The annual cost of the induction motor is remarkably reduced when designed on the basis of minimizing its annual total cost, instead of minimizing its material cost only.

To the best of the knowledge, none of the existing work has applied the BF algorithms for electrical machine design problems. Therefore, the solution to this problem constitutes the main contribution of the paper. According to the huge number of induction motors operating all over the world, the BF techniques used in their design, on minimum annual cost basis, will lead to a tremendous saving in global energy consumption.

This paper aims to evaluate the inhibition efficiency of norfloxacin on the corrosion of copper in 1.0 M nitric acid and 0.5 M sulfuric acid solutions.

Evaluation was carried out by electrochemical techniques such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic polarization studies. Scanning electron microscopy was used, and it finally confirmed the existence of the adsorbed film.

The electrochemical measurements showed that norfloxacin has good inhibition efficiency on the corrosion of copper in 1.0 M nitric acid and 0.5 M sulfuric acid solutions. The inhibition action of norfloxacin in both of the corrosive media was observed to be of mixed type but with more of cathodic nature. The temperature dependence of the corrosion rate was studied in the temperature range from 35 to 55°C and the activation energy (E_a) was calculated. The adsorption of norfloxacin molecules on copper surface obeyed Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Studies on the potential of zero charge have been carried out to establish the mechanism of adsorption of the inhibitor onto the metal surface. The thermodynamic parameters such as the adsorption equilibrium constant (K_ads) and the free energy of adsorption (ΔG_ads) were calculated. The value of free energy of adsorption very close to −40 kJmol⁻¹ indicates that the adsorption is through electrostatic coulombic attraction and chemisorption. The decrease in value of E_a with the addition of inhibitor also shows the chemisorption of the inhibitor on the metal surface.

This paper indicates that norfloxacin can act as a good inhibitor for the corrosion of copper in both the acid media.

Generation scheduling (GS) is the most prominent and hard-hitting problem in the electrical power industry especially in an integrated power system. Countless techniques have been used so far to solve this GS problem for proper functioning of the units in the power system to dispatch the load economically to consumers at once. Therefore, this work aims to study for the best possible function of integrated power plants to obtain the most favourable solution to the GS problem.

An appropriate method works in a proper way and assures to give the best solution to the GS problem. The finest function of incorporated power plants should be mathematically devised as a problem and via that the aim of the GS problem to minimize the total fuel cost subject to different constraints will be achieved. In this research work, the latest meta-heuristic and swarm intelligence-based technique called grey wolf optimization (GWO) technique is used as an optimization tool that will work along with the formulated problem for correct scheduling of generating units and thus achieve the objective function.

The recommended GWO technique provides the best feasible solution which is optimal in its performance for different test cases in the GS problem of integrated power plant. It is further found that the obtained solutions using GWO method are better than the former reports of other traditional methods in terms of solution excellence. The GWO method is found to be unique in its performance and having superior computational efficiency.

Decision making is significant for effective operation of integrated power plants in an electrical power system. The recommended tactic implements a modern meta-heuristic procedure that is applied to diverse test systems. The method that is proposed is efficient in providing the best solutions of solving GS problems. The suggested method surpasses the early techniques by offering the most excellent feasible solutions. Thus, it is obvious that the proposed method may be the appropriate substitute to attain the optimal operation of GS problem.

Renewable energy sources are discontinuous and infrequent in nature, and it is tough to predict them in general. Further, integrating renewable energy source-based plants with the conventional plant is extremely difficult to operate and maintain. Operation of integrated power system is full of challenges and complications. To handle those complications and challenges, the GWO algorithm is suggested for solving the GS problem and thus obtain the optimal solution in integrated power systems by considering the reserve requirement, load balance, equality and inequality constraints.

The proposed system should be further tested on diverse test systems to evaluate its performance in solving a GS problem and the results should be compared. Computation results reveal that the proposed GWO method is efficient in attaining best solution in GS problem. Further, its performance is effectively established by comparing the result obtained by GWO with other traditional methods.

We extend theories of the firm to the entrepreneurial finance setting and argue that R&D-focused start-up firms will have a greater likelihood of financing themselves with equity rather than debt. We argue that mechanisms which reduce information asymmetry, including owner work experience and financier reputation, will increase the probability of funding with more debt. We also argue that start-ups that correctly align their financing mix to their R&D focus will perform better than firms that are misaligned. We study these ideas using a large nationally representative dataset on start-up firms in the United States.

This paper describes how community gardens generate social capital, and with what potential implications for the health of gardeners and their communities.

This analysis draws on data from focus groups with gardeners from four community gardening programs, two each in Boston and Lynn, MA. The participants represent a diverse sample of community gardeners (n=32).

We identify four mechanisms through which community gardening increases social capital, with implications for individual and community health: (1) building social networks; (2) providing opportunities for resource sharing and social support; (3) preserving cultural knowledge and practice in diaspora; and (4) reflecting and reinforcing collective efficacy. We also describe gardeners’ perspectives on gardening itself as a political activity.

While much of the literature on social capital and health in community gardens comes from in-depth studies of single, relatively homogenous gardens, this analysis draws on data from focus group interviews with a diverse group of participants who garden in varied neighborhood settings. In contrast to studies that have suggested that the social capital generated in community gardens does not extend beyond the group of individuals actively involved in gardening, our study identifies multiple community level benefits. Consequently, this paper lends support to recent calls to consider community gardening as strategy for amplifying community assets in support of public health.