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This study aims to identify the antecedents of strategic thinking and its relationship with competitive advantage. Further, this study analyses the mediating effect of strategic thinking between its antecedents and competitive advantage.

A self-reported questionnaire with 51 questions was floated among 220 professionals from various industries in India. The response was analysed using the partial least squares-structural equation modelling methodology using SmartPLS software.

The direct effect of creativity, corporate culture and knowledge management are established with strategic thinking, as well as a competitive advantage. Also, the study finds a significant relationship between strategic thinking and competitive advantage. The study finds no mediation (direct effect) in the case of creativity, corporate culture and knowledge management. Further, no mediation (no relationship) is found in the case of vision.

Business must start adopting strategic thinking practices in their decision-making process to create a competitive advantage. Further, the influence of corporate culture, creativity and knowledge management on strategic thinking highlights their importance.

The study establishes the impact of antecedents of strategic thinking on competitive advantage. The study highlights the importance of other factors along with strategic thinking for achieving competitive advantage.

This study aims to derive a sound definition of strategic thinking by horizontal analysis of past research and discussions with professionals.

The research design includes three broad stages: item generation, scale development and assessment of scale’s psychometric properties.

The eclectic composition cuts across vocations, religions, sex and age strengthen the flexibility of application of the scale. The resulting scale shows strong psychometric properties and is expected to be useful for academics, practitioners and organizations alike.

The information on strategic thinking was self-reported through strategic thinking questionnaire (STQ) and is consequently at risk to be influenced by self-bias.

Using the scale of strategic thinking will empower strategic thinkers to draw a more extensive scope of strategies at all levels. This will additionally bring about higher-quality procedures, increased performance and greater competitive advantage.

The study represents to be an imperative predecessor to strategic decision-making and may give a key to better comprehend authoritative change marvels and at last survival.

As the sample for our STQ has been collected from all across the country cross-sectioning different culture, gender and position of responsibility, the scale has significant robustness and implicative potential.

This study aims to explore the dynamics of workplace ostracism and dehumanization behavior and its impact on employees’ psychological contract violation, their revenge intention and psychological well-being.

The study has collected data from 329 IT sector employees working in the northern part of India using standard measures for various constructs utilized in the study. For the purpose of testing the proposed hypothesis, partial least square structural equation modeling is used.

The results show that all the hypotheses were supported, meaning employees experiencing ostracism and dehumanization at the workplace feel stressed and anxious and develop feelings of revenge, leading them to experience irrational feelings.

In the presence of workplace dehumanization and workplace ostracism, employees may experience stress, anxiety and depression. Managers must ensure a psychologically safe environment because if individuals experience ostracism or dehumanization at the workplace, they are going to affect their well-being through revenge intention behavior. Hence, it is important that managers should provide adequate resources to the employees so that they can feel psychologically safe in the workplace and hence can enhance psychological well-being.

This study is unique in terms of its contribution to the existing literature by understanding the nuances of workplace ostracism and dehumanization on employee’s well-being. The study also contributes to highlighting the advantages of using tools to establish psychological safety.

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively examine the impact of perceived supervisor support, person-job fit (PJF) and person-organization fit (POF) on the company’s value through job satisfaction (JS).

Data were collected from 220 respondents selected from different organizations in India using standard questionnaires. To estimate the hypothesized model fit indices, partial least square structural equation modeling were used.

Findings suggest that there is a significant relationship among supervisor support, PJF and POF with JS and perceives company value.

Human resource (HR) professionals need to understand how they can help to increase the JS of employees before they decide on HR measures that would help improve the perceived contribution to company value.

Support from the superior induces a sense of value and worthiness to the employee, which, in turn, strengthens the relationship between the employees with his/her organization. Along with this PJF and POF are other significant factors for employee satisfaction. If the person likes the job or in other words if the prescribed job is suitable for the person, then the employee feels significant, which amplifies JS. The same is applicable for the POF. Consequently, the perceived contribution to company value increases.

This study aims to focus on assessing the influence of human resource development (HRD) interventions and learning agility (LA) on organizational innovation (OI).

Based on the social exchange theory, the theoretical research model was developed in this study. This study used cross-sectional data to test the research hypotheses. In addition, partial least square structured equation modelling was used to analyse 413 sample responses from Indian managerial professionals.

The findings suggest that HRD interventions and LA have an effect on OI. Additionally, age as a control factor also influences OI.

The study’s findings show that an organization must use HRD interventions effectively to improve innovation. Additionally, learning agile employees also helps in bringing innovation to an organization.

This study is one of its kind in exploring LA for OI by using the existing LA scale. Further, this study is a significant contribution to the existing literature by using HRD interventions, LA and OI in an extensive research model.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the elements of asymmetric motives, i.e., initial cross-border joint venture (CBJV) conditions and relative partner characteristics in emerging nations. The two main objectives of the present research are to identify the elements affecting asymmetric motives in Indian bilateral CBJV and to construct modified total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) for the identified elements of asymmetric motives.

For the current study, the qualitative technique named total interpretive structural modelling was used. The TISM (Sushil, 2012) is a novel extension of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) where ISM helps to understand the “what” and “how” of research (Warfield, 1974) and TISM answers the third question, i.e., “why” in the form of TISM; further checks for the correctness of TISM are given in Sushil (2016). TISM provides a hierarchical model of the elements selected for study and the interpretation of each element by iterative process and also a digraph that systematically depicts the relationship among various elements. TISM is an innovative modelling technique used by researchers in varied fields (Srivastava and Sushil, 2013; Wasuja et al., 2012; Nasim, 2011; Prasad and Suri, 2011). Steps involved in TISM are shown in Figure 1. It uses reachability matrix and partitioning of elements similar to ISM. Also, along with traditional TISM, the modified TISM process was also used where both paired comparisons and transitivity checks were done simultaneously which helped in minimising the redundant comparisons being made in the original process. Furthermore, for identifying the elements of study, SDC Platinum database was used, which was taken from research papers of major journals namely British Journal of Management, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal and Organization Science (Schilling, 2009). The database included all joint ventures that were formed in India, having India as one of the partner firms during fiscal year April 2000 and March 2010. From these, 361 CBJVs and 76 domestic joint ventures were identified. Although 54 CBJVs were excluded from these, a total number of 307 CBJVs were studied in the current research. Among these 307 CBJVs, 201 were from super-advanced nations (G7), 40 CBJVs from developing nations and 66 CBJVs from other developed nations. As 65 per cent of the CBJVs came from G7 nations (France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Germany, USA and UK), in the current study, we tried to examine Indian CBJVs with G7 partners only for a period of ten years as mentioned above.

The results of the study indicate that asymmetric motives are directly affected by critical activity alignment and interdependency. Thus, we can conclude that critical activity alignment of partners in CBJV is an antecedent of CBJV motive and thereby minimises the number of asymmetric motives. Bottom level variables such as culture difference and relative capital structure are considered as strong drivers of asymmetric motives. Diversification, resource heterogeneity and inter-partner conflict are middle level elements. Effect of these elements on asymmetric motives can only be improved and enhanced when improvement in bottom level variables is found. It has been believed that as the relative capital structure among firm increases, CBJVs’ asymmetric motives also increase, the reason being that as the difference in capital structure occurs, gradual change in bargaining power will also occur.

TISM used in the present study provides valuable insights into the interrelationship between identified elements through a systematic framework. The methodology of TISM used has its implications for researchers, academicians as well for practitioners. Further study also examines driver-dependent relationship among elements of interest, i.e., relative partner characteristics and initial CBJV conditions by using MICMAC analysis, which can be viewed as a significant step in research related to bilateral CBJV.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of organizational image in engaging employees and improving their performance. The study has explored the role of employee’s perception about the organizational image, and its linkage with the investment of employee’s energies into their work roles resulting in employee engagement (EE) and hence performance.

Adopting a model that was built on the basis of research conducted in the form of surveys. By using cross-sectional data and following a quantitative research method, the study collected data from 701 managers in India holding various positions, in different industries. The study has used “Component-Based Structural Equation Modeling” by Smart PLS.

The key findings of the study help employees as well as employers to have a thorough, comprehensive understanding to improve EE and their performance by creating a positive and consistent organizational image.

This study will be very useful for employers and policymakers to understand the value of organizational image in engaging the workforce effectively. Aligning with the organizational behaviors theoretical support, this study yields some important and useful suggestions for managers to engage and retain their workforce in the present dynamic work environment.

The paper tries to focus on one’s perceptions of the organization and its linkage between EE and performance. The positive perception of employees reflects that they identify themselves and feel connected with the overall vision of the organization.

This paper aims to understand the role of perception of HR capability, HR service quality, along with HR inducements, which, in turn, provides satisfaction with HR practices and affects employee performance.

The data of 155 managers have been collected through a questionnaire to understand the relationship among the studied constructs using partial least square structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results suggest that employers should attempt to create a positive perception by providing quality services in the HR domain, and quality services will certainly enhance employee performance.

This study is unique in terms of its contribution. This study has tried to link service quality and satisfaction to HR practices with employee performance. Further, it also shows that HR should be capable and have high HR inducements to provide the necessary and expected HR services, which leads to employee satisfaction with HR practices and employee performance.

This study aims to comprehend the ambidexterity and organizational learning capability construct in the Indian E-commerce industry context.

The survey method was adopted for this study. A survey was circulated among the personnel working in E-commerce companies in India. The focus was on people working in managerial positions and had at least three years of experience in the same industry.

This paper investigates the link between two dimensions of ambidexterity, i.e., exploration, exploitation and learning capability in firm performance. The paper also establishes the moderating effect of the learning capability on the two dimensions of ambidexterity and firm’s performance.

Our focus was to cover most of the E-commerce companies, yet to generalize the research the analysis needs to be conducted with even more E-commerce companies. Although we took extraordinary care to gather data from multiple resources and discarded the data that was incomplete or was from lower level employees yet, we need a larger sample to establish the causal claim of our model.

We reason that learning capability of a firm impacts the two dimensions and firms should focus both on external and internal knowledge to benefit from the ambidexterity efforts.

Learning capability influences a firm’s performance and has managerial implications. The analysis’ results on the India based ecommerce companies differs from prior research done in more developed countries and other industries.

No prior research has been done from this perspective in the Indian context, and thus our work opens up new avenues for researchers to look at.Keywords Ambidexterity, Firm performance, Learning capability

COMFED, Bihar State Co-operative Milk Federation Ltd., which involved 6 lakh farmers across India in 2012, was a rural organisation established in 1983 as the implementing agency of Operation Flood programme of dairy development on “Anand” pattern in Bihar. In 1983, COMFED started with just 1,030 cooperatives, which had risen to 11,400 in 2012. Apart from B2C segment of milk and milk products in Bihar and Jharkhand, COMFED’s major revenue source was its B2B business where they sent bulk milk to Kolkata, Manesar and Delhi. They supplied to Amul and Mother Dairy, which were the biggest Indian cooperatives, and allowed them to use their own brand names. In 2012, Mrs Harjot Kaur, the Managing Director of COMFED, aspired to market COMFED products all over India under the “Sudha” brand, with special focus on National Capital Region region. Moreover, Mrs Kaur also wanted to expand COMFED’s geographical reach to other countries such as Bangladesh and Bhutan.

Strategic management, Diversification.

Mrs Harjot Kaur was the Managing Director of Bihar State Co-operative Milk Federation (COMFED). COMFED is a rural organisation involving 6 lakh farmers. Starting with just 1,030 cooperatives in 1983, the number of cooperatives had risen to 11,400 in 2012. The milk production was 11 lakh litres per day, and the annual turnover in 2011-2012 was Rs 1,503.00 crore, 11 per cent more than that of previous year. Mrs Kaur was committed to serve COMFED customers and realise the dream of having at least one dish of Bihar in the plate of every Indian. Mrs Kaur envisaged COMFED producing 44 lakh litres milk per day from the existing 11 lakh litres per day, covering around 60 per cent villages of the state against the existing 33 per cent in 2013. COMFED was also trying to capture new markets. At present COMFED sent bulk milk to Delhi, Manesar and Kolkata, where it was sold by various dairy cooperatives such as Amul and Mother Dairy under their own brand names. Mrs Kaur aspired to market COMFED milk under the “Sudha” brand all over India. Moreover, Mrs Kaur was also looking to export to other countries such as Bangladesh and Bhutan. As Mrs Kaur was crafting the future path for COMFED, she also realised that above all the external challenges that exist, an internal vice – complacency – was the biggest hurdle her company had to face.

The case would be helpful for students to understand the concepts of competitive advantage, sustainable competitive advantage, industry structure, general environment, strategic positioning, diversification, internal analysis, external analysis and business level strategy in a strategic management course.

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CSS 11: Strategy.