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The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between state fragility and transparency. A state is deemed fragile when it falters in its ability to manage conflict and in its capacity to deliver basic functions and implement public policy. Although minimizing fragility of the state is undoubtedly an integral component of economic development, there is a huge variation across countries in terms of where they stand with regard to fragility. Further, it also explores how educational attainment affects the relationship between state fragility and transparency.

Using several robust estimation methodologies and a relatively new database on transparency, the authors find that higher levels of transparency lower state fragility. They reply on fixed effect estimators, lagged one period and five periods and system GMM estimators as part of our identification strategy.

Using several robust estimation methodologies and a relatively new database on transparency, the authors find that a higher level of transparency lowers state fragility. Greater and free flow of information empowers the populace, restores trust in government, increases participation in the political arena and, thus, reduces state fragility. This paper additionally shows that higher educational attainment helps reap the benefits of transparency even more and, thus, catalyzes transparency to lower-state fragility more effectively.

Our research shows that greater transparency leads to lower state fragility. Additionally, if the populace of the country has higher educational attainment, the benefits of transparency in reducing state fragility is enhanced. Although enhancing transparency amid high state fragility may be a challenging task, it can be achieved by providing the populace with better media access via internet and cell phones.

The authors use a relatively new database of transparency to show that transparency acts as an important determinant of state fragility. A state is deemed fragile when it falters in its ability to manage conflict and in its capacity to deliver basic functions and implement public policy. Given this definition, it is needless to say that what can affect state fragility and how can such fragility be lowered is an important research agenda. This paper aims to fill this gap. Additionally, it shows the importance of education while exploring such a relationship.

Existing literature has expressed significant pessimism about the outcomes of foreign aid received by developing nations. Foreign aid can lead to negative outcomes by generating greater rent-seeking opportunities and creating aid dependence. While aid’s negative impact has been explored in the context of growth, political institutions, and economic institutions, the literature has not investigated the effect of aid on business climate of recipient nations. The purpose of this paper is to explore foreign aid’s impact on government regulations on the business climate in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) and Middle East and North American countries.

The authors consider a panel of 64 countries over six years. Since foreign aid is most likely to be endogenous, as identified in most studies, the identification strategy follows two methodologies – system GMM estimator, that creates its own instruments via moment generating conditions and instrumental variable approach that relies on an external instrument.

The authors find that aid worsens the business climate by increasing government restrictions. Foreign aid provides the recipient governments and the political elite resources to strengthen their power and reinforce predatory policies that are harmful for the business climate. The results further show that in the presence of long-lasting and sustainable democratic regimes, the negative impact of foreign aid on business climate mitigates to a certain extent.

While aid’s negative impact has been explored in the context of growth, political institutions, and economic institutions, the literature has not investigated the effect of aid on business climate of recipient nations. The authors explore the impact of foreign aid on government regulations on the business climate in SSA and Middle East and North American countries.

Previous literature has clearly demonstrated the need for sound government policies or “institutions” to promote and support entrepreneurship in a country. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of one such institution – political stability – in boosting entrepreneurial endeavors. A politically stable nation will have lower risk and transaction/contracting costs, and higher levels of government transparency, predictability, and accountability. Thus, the paper should expect that with greater political stability there should be a greater degree of entrepreneurial activity.

Using dynamic panel estimators (System GMM estimators) and considering multiple proxies of political risk, our results confirm this hypothesis. Such estimators handle challenges associated with panel data efficiently.

The paper's results show that greater political stability for a country does indeed lead to an increased rate of entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

Entrepreneurship is critical to the process of economic growth and development. To prosper, countries must unleash the creative talents of their citizens through the decentralized process of formal private sector entrepreneurship. New legal businesses create jobs, opportunities, wealth, and goods and services that make a nation grow. Sadly in many nations, this process is stifled and poverty is the result. While previous research has examined which types of specific policies matter for promoting entrepreneurship, the paper considers the different question of how the stability of political institutions impacts the rate of entrepreneurship.

This study aims to explore the role of the Indian merchant class in 19th-century colonial India in addressing the social concerns of disability. Specifically, it addresses why and how business engaged with disability in colonial India.

This study’s methodology entailed historiographical approach and archival investigation of official correspondence and letters of business people in 19th-century colonial India.

Using institutional theory, the study’s findings indicate that guided by philanthropic and ethical motives, Indian businesses, while recognizing the normative and cognitive challenges, accepted the regulative institutional pressures of colonial India and adopted an involved and humane approach. This manifested in the construction of asylums and the setting up of bequeaths and charitable funds for people with disability (PwD). The principal institutional drivers in making of the asylums and the creation of benevolent charities were religion, social practices, caste-based expectations, exposure to Western education and Victorian and Protestantism ideologies, the emergence of colonial notions of health, hygiene and medicine, carefully crafted socio-political and economic policies of the British Raj and the social aspirations of the native merchant class.

In contrast to the 20th-century rights-based movement of the West, which gave birth to the global term of “disability,” a collective representation of different types of disabilities, this paper locates that cloaked in individual forms of sickness, the identity of PwD in 19th-century colonial India appeared under varied fragmented labels such as those of leper, lunatic, blind and infirm. This paper broadens the understanding of how philanthropic business response to disability provided social acceptability and credibility to business people as benevolent members of society. While parallelly, for PwD, it reinforced social marginalization and the need for institutionalization, propagating perceptions of unfortunate and helpless members of society.

This paper aims to trace Tata Group’s role in responding to disability in the decades immediately following India’s independence until the preliberalization period of the Indian economy, i.e. from the 1950s to the 1990s.

This study’s methodology entailed a historiographical approach and archival engagement at Tata Archives (Pune, India) of the company documents. Materials and records of the Tata Company between 1942 and 1992.

Adopting the corporate culture lens, the study findings show that Tata Group demonstrated an active prosocial corporate approach toward disability. In a period governed by the ideology of a state-dominated developmental approach, Tata Group’s initiatives were related to medical interventions for a wide spectrum of disabilities, rehabilitation and efforts to ensure persons with disabilities (PWDS)’ livelihood.

Disability, in the neoliberalized economic landscape of India, is an emergent business issue for companies espousing workplace diversity. The historical understanding of business engagement with disability from postindependence to liberalization in India remains, however, limited. In postindependence India, the passive business response to disability emerged within an ethical and discretionary framework, with charity and philanthropy as the main modes of engagement. In this background, this paper explores Tata’s response to disability and PWDs, which was distinct.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of announcements regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs)‐enabled offshoring on the share prices of public companies.

The study is carried out by means of an event study.

The finding from this research is that investors do not tend to reward offshoring announcements. It is most likely that the value of the firm will be perceived as unchanged or if there is a reaction, it is most likely to reduce the value of the firm. A positive relation between size of firm and the size of the offshoring contract is found. Also, US investors are found to be more likely to react negatively than UK investors.

This study extends the use of event studies in the information systems domain to ICT‐enabled offshoring. Owing to the relatively nascent state of offshoring, and consistent with previous event studies, the data set used in this study is relatively modest.

Managers in many types of organisations are currently undertaking or considering offshoring, this study will enable them to understand the possible reactions of shareholders and other stakeholders.

This study provides an empirical contribution by undertaking the first event study of offshoring announcements. It is also one of the very few event studies that considers both UK and US‐based companies. Its use of transaction cost economics perspective also adds to the theoretical understanding of offshoring, by demonstrating that investors appear to consider increased transaction costs involved in offshoring will outweigh lower purchasing or production costs.

The purpose of this study was to examine consumer’s perceptions of cloud kitchens, including the influence of perceived innovativeness (PI), utility motivations (price and food varieties), and food safety risk perceptions (FSRP) on trust; the impact of hedonic motivations and trust on attitude; and the moderating effect of FSRP on the relationship between utility motivations (food varieties) and trust. The relationships were examined with respect to gender and marital status.

The Theory of Consumption Value served as the theoretical underpinning of this study. Data was collected with an online survey (n = 316) using the Qualtrics panel. The partial least squares–structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the survey data.

PI, utilitarian motivations (price) and hedonic motivations (food varieties) positively influenced trust, whereas trust positively influenced attitude. FSRP negatively impacted trust and moderated the relationship between utility motivations (food varieties) and trust. Hedonic motivations positively influenced consumers’ attitudes. Multi-group analyses highlighted the differences attributed to gender and marital status.

PI and utility motivations influenced trust, supporting the notion that consumers are open to new and convenient ways to order food. Additionally, the negative influence of FSRP on trust and its moderating role on the path between food varieties and trust highlights the importance of FSRP on food consumption. Finally, this study provided insight into the influence of gender and marital status on perceptions of ordering from cloud kitchens.

The cloud kitchen business model is undergoing exponential growth, and this study provides an understanding of cloud kitchens from a consumer’s perspective.

This study aims to examine the impact of the three dimensions of materialism, namely, possessiveness, envy and non-generosity along with attitude on the purchase intention of sustainable luxury products.

The research study contains a descriptive approach to research with a quantitative analysis done with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis with 229 respondents.

The findings of the results contribute to research by extending the model of the theory of planned behavior with the material dimensions as an add-on.

The same could have been extended to all major metro cities of Indian where luxury brands are present in malls.

This shows that the consumer with a high level of materialism trait would be a very prospective segment for sustainable luxury brands.

The study shows that the three dimensions of materialism do impact the purchase intention of sustainable luxury producers and these findings will be crucial for devising consumer behavior-based strategies for sustainable luxury brands.

Entrepreneurship.

The case can be used to teach behavioural perspective of the entrepreneurship theory for the students of Master of Business Administration (MBA) level. The case may be equally important to teach the marketing and operational context to discuss the perspectives of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A young Indian professional had left his lucrative job in the pharma industry to start his own business of a small training centre that trained and placed young graduates with various pharmaceutical companies as medical sales representatives (MSRs). Without borrowing anything from the financial institutions, he plunged into the business in a rented room of a school in Kolkata, India. With every sincerity and path-breaking strategy, his vocational centre, named Carreograph Institute of Management Studies (CIMS) became number one in eastern India in training and placing MSRs and managers. With a number of hand-picked professionals from the industry, this young entrepreneur changed the concept of training by introducing short-term courses like Diploma in Pharmaceutical Management to technically prepare pharmacy undergraduates with professional skills and industry overview, Post Graduate Diploma in Pharmaceutical Management to cater to the contemporary management needs of the pharma industry. For the first time in India, Carreograph launched MBA in Pharmaceutical Management in the distance learning mode, and this strategy revolutionised the concept of management teaching in India. With a huge success in MBA, Carreograph was on the verge of launching another path-breaking course, i.e. Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in pharma in the distance learning mode.

To analyse Tamal Chatterjee's entrepreneurial characteristics, motivations and expertise in the field and how these parameters support his proposed new venture, to consider the effectiveness of his entrepreneurial methods for finding out more about the proposed business area in which he is interested and to evaluate his idea of newly developed MBA and BBA programmes in terms of its expected acceptance among the student communities and consider if and when he should go ahead with expanding his current venture.

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This paper aims to examine the impact of capital regulation, ownership structure and the degree of ownership concentration on the risk of commercial banks.

This study uses a sample of 565 commercial banks from 52 countries over the period of 2011-2015. A dynamic panel data model estimation using the maximum likelihood with structural equation modelling (SEM) was followed considering the panel nature of this study.

The study found that the increase of capital ratio decreases bank risk and the regulatory pressure increases the risk-taking of the bank. No statistically significant relationship between banks’ ownership structure and risk-taking was found. The concentration of ownership was found negatively associated with bank risk. Finally, the study found that in the long term, bank increases the capital level that decreases the default risk.

This study presents an empirical analysis on the global banking system focusing on the Basel Committee member and non-member countries that reflect the implementation of Basel II and Basel III. Therefore, it helps fill the gap in the banking literature on the effect of recent changes in the capital regulation on bank risk. Maximum likelihood with SEM addresses the issue of endogeneity, efficiency and time-invariant variables. Moreover, this study measures the risk by different proxy variables that address total, default and liquidity risks of the banks. Examining from a different perspective of risk makes the study more robust.