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The case explores information technology (IT) company Mindtree’s journey of 20 years from the time it was founded in 1999 to be different from others, and how it became a target for acquisition by an Indian diversified conglomerate in 2019. It offers insights into developing organizational culture and values in an organization, threats faced by a company when promoters dilute their shareholding, and the strategies followed by the acquirer and the target firm. It also deals with the challenges in the acquisition of a knowledge service digital firm. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to: identify the circumstances under which a company can become a target for hostile takeover; describe motivations of the acquirer firm in an acquisition; distinguish between acquisition and hostile takeover, and discuss salient features of Securities and Exchange Board of India (substantial acquisition of shares and takeover) regulations, 2011; list the defenses a target firm can adopt to ward off hostile acquirer; explore strategies followed by acquirer and target firms; analyze important ingredients of organization culture, and importance of cultural congruence in an acquisition; and discuss challenges faced by an acquirer in India, namely, legal, retention of clients and key people in the target firm particularly in hostile environment.

The case explores how ten IT professionals founded mid-tier IT services company Mindtree in 1999 in Bengaluru, India (home to Infosys and Wipro) to be different from others – by inserting themselves at a higher level in the value chain, being philanthropic as a part of broader business strategy to attract a certain kind of employee and customer. It developed a culture of equality, consideration and respect. Its attrition rate of 12 to 13 per cent was significantly lower than the Industries. Mindtree crossed annual revenue of US$1bn for FY 2019 and was growing at twice the industry’s growth rate. The most attractive part was that its proportion of revenue from digital services was about 50 per cent as compared to 25-35 per cent of other services vendors. With time, the share of promoters/founders declined and increased one investor’s shareholding of V. G. Siddhartha and his related entities. In early March 2019, the promoters’ stake was 13.32 per cent while Siddhartha had 20.32 per cent. Larsen and Toubro (L&T) one of India’s conglomerate entered into a share purchase agreement on March 18, 2019 with Siddhartha to acquire his 20.32 per cent stake. Immediately, L&T asked its broker to purchase up to 15 per cent of share capital of Mindtree at a price not exceeding INR 980 per share (each share of face value INR 10). This would trigger an open offer by L&T to purchase additional 31 per cent shares of Mindtree. The action of hostile takeover bid by L&T evoked emotional criticism from Mindtree founders. Mindtree efforts to defend itself could not materialize. L&T’s stake crossed 26 per cent on May 16, 2019. After Indian regulator SEBI’s approval, L&T’s open offer to buy shares from Mindtree shareholders commenced on June 17, 2019. The case examines motivation of the acquirer firm particularly when it is a conglomerate, and how a well-performing company became a target for hostile takeover. It looks at vulnerabilities of a target firm, and defensive steps a firm can take to fence itself against such takeover. The case also explores how organizational culture is built in a people-oriented business, namely, digital services, and what role it plays in a merger of two firms.

The case is suited for postgraduate students of management, as well as those undergoing executive courses in management.

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

CSS 11: Strategy.

HR analytics is a process for systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It discovers, interprets and communicates significant patterns in data to enable evidence-based HR research and uses analytical insights to help organizations achieve their strategic objectives. However, its adoption and utilization among HR professionals remain a subject of concern. This study aims to determine the reasons that facilitate or inhibit the acceptance of HR analytics among HR professionals in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

A sample of 387 HR professionals in BFSI firms across India was collected through non-probabilistic purposive sampling. Structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the association between predetermined variables. In addition, the predictive relevance of “Data Availability” was analyzed using hierarchical regression.

The results revealed that data availability, hedonic motivation and performance expectancy positively influenced behavioral intention (BI). In contrast, effort expectancy, social influence and habit had an insignificant effect on BI. Also, facilitating conditions (FCs), habit, BI achieved a variance of 60% in HR analytics use. The use behavior of HR analytics was significantly influenced by FCs and BIs.

This study focuses on insights into the elements that influence HR analytics adoption, revealing additional light on success drivers and grey areas for failed adoption.

This research adds to the body of knowledge by identifying factors that hinder the adoption of HR analytics in Indian organizations and signifies the relevance of easy accessibility and availability of data for technology adoption.

Employing the “Job demands-resources (JD-R)” framework, this study examines the impact of co-occurring social supports (supervisor, coworker, and family support) on the telework environment and employee engagement.

The study uses a multimethod approach. Data from 294 employees belonging to Indian technology organizations were collected and analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS)-based structure equation modeling software SmartPLS4. Following this, necessary condition analysis (NCA) was carried out using the NCA package for R.

Telework environment was found to mediate the relationship between social support and work engagement. Supervisor support and instrumental family support were identified as predictors as well as necessary conditions for telework environment. Coworker support was identified both as a predictor and necessary condition for telework environment. Although emotional family support was found to be a predictor of telework environment, it was not identified as a necessary condition.

The findings indicate that coworker support and family instrumental support are as important for telework success as supervisor support. Moreover, our findings suggest that varying levels of telework environments (low, moderate, and high) may necessitate distinct social support configurations. Consequently, organizations should match their social support configuration to match their overall teleworking strategy.

A basic premise of the JD-R framework is that resources exist in caravans (bundles). However, previous research (in telework) has concentrated on only one or two kinds of social support, that too in varying situational contexts, limiting generalizability of the findings. This has also produced inconsistent conclusions concerning the role of support providers such as coworkers and family. Recent developments in JD-R also suggest that the role of resources may vary in terms of their importance (necessity) for work engagement. By augmenting standard regression-based techniques with NCA, the authors explore these issues to provide a more thorough understanding of the influence of social supports on work engagement in telework situations.

This study aimed to evaluate the factors that determine an individual's decision to adopt human resources (HR) analytics. This study attempts to extend Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology - 2 (UTAUT2) to identify the lag rate in adoption.

Responses were obtained from 387 HR employees of the Banking Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector in metropolitan cities of India through nonprobabilistic purposive sampling. The analysis was performed through hierarchical regression, structural equation modeling and moderation of resistance to change.

The results suggest that performance expectancy, hedonic motivation and data availability are endorsed by proponents of the intention to adopt HR analytics. In contrast, effort expectancy, social influence, quantitative self-efficacy and habits did not influence behavioral intention (BI). Additionally, the actual use behavior (UB) of HR analytics was determined by BI and facilitating conditions. Furthermore, the moderating effect of resistance to change is explored.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature on the adoption of HR analytics. By appropriately concentrating on the adoption intention of HR analytics, organizations can intensify healthy employee relationships, thus encouraging the actual usage of HR analytics.

This study formulates a conceptual framework for the adoption of HR analytics that can be used by top management to formulate strategies for the implementation of HR analytics. Moreover, this study aimed to expand UTAUT2, emphasizing the concept of data availability and quantitative self-efficacy and examining the moderating role of resistance to change in the relationship between BI and UB.

Despite the extensive benefits of human resource (HR) analytics, the intention to adopt such technology is still a matter of concern in the engineering and construction sectors. This study aims to examine the slow adoption of HR analytics among HR professionals in the engineering and construction sector.

A cross-sectional online survey including 376 HR executives working in Indian-based engineering and construction firms was conducted. Hierarchal regression, structural equation modeling and artificial neural networks (ANN) were applied to evaluate the relative importance of HR analytics predictors.

The results reveal that hedonic motivation (HM), data availability (DA) and performance expectancy (PE) influence the behavioral intention (BI) to use HR analytics, whereas effort expectancy (EE), quantitative self-efficacy (QSE), habit (HA) and social influence (SI) act as barriers to its adoption. Moreover, PE was the most influential predictor of BI.

Based on the findings of this study, engineering and construction industry managers can formulate strategies for the implementation and promotion of HR analytics to enhance organizational performance.

This study draws attention to evidence-based decision-making, emphasizing barriers to the adoption of HR analytics. This study also emphasizes the concept of DA and QSE to enhance adoption among HR professionals, specifically in the engineering and construction industry.

This study aims to analyze the existing literature in human resource analytics and highlights the future research agenda and trends in the same context. It deals with evaluating regional distribution, identifying key authors, publications, journals and keyword occurrences while examining current literature.

A total of 127 articles exported from the Scopus database were systematically analyzed using bibliometric analysis through VOSviewer, including performance analysis and science mapping of the literature studied.

This research postulates the inconsistency between the number of publications and citations received by an author. There was an increase in collaborative research over the years. Human Resource Management Review was regarded as the most influential journal with maximum citation. Maximum publications came from Asian countries. The study revealed that the author with maximum citation were mostly the first authors of the most cited documents.

This research may be beneficial for both researchers and human resource (HR) practitioners because it identifies the research gaps and research needs in the HR analytics domain. Besides, this study recognizes the patterns in HR analytics literature that helps researchers better understand the subject area.

This research incorporates bibliometric analysis for analyzing HR analytics literature to establish a more exhaustive and systematic understanding of the research area. This research contributes to the existing body of literature and assists fellow researchers in future studies.

Scholars and practitioners have raised concerns that mandatory remote work can lead to feelings of isolation and alienation in employees. Therefore, this study aims to investigate this issue by examining the impact of work communication satisfaction in remote environments on employee alienation and job satisfaction.

Sensemaking and social information processing (SIP) theory are used for formulating the hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, primary data were collected from 418 employees working in various Indian organizations and analyzed using AMOS and Hayes' PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The findings reveal that work communication satisfaction is negatively associated with alienation and positively associated with job satisfaction. Alienation mediated the relationship between work communication satisfaction and job satisfaction. Additionally, employees belonging to organizations with stronger CSR associations reported feeling less alienated than employees of organizations with weaker CSR associations.

Organizations can improve work communication satisfaction by devising remote communication plans that clarify employee expectations regarding the frequency, purpose and channel of communication. Additionally, organizations should communicate their CSR efforts to employees, particularly during times of crisis, as this can help improve employee impressions of the organization.

The study extends the work on alienation by approaching it from the perspective of sensemaking. The research demonstrates how work and non-work-related social information cues (work communication and CSR associations) can influence employee attitudes through their sensemaking. The context of the study adds to its uniqueness.

Economies and societies are not digitally isolated. Digital technologies are widely recognised as key drivers of information dissemination, knowledge sharing, income and employment. Digital technologies also influence the interlinkages of digitalisation, gender and labour market outcomes. Digital technologies impact every sphere of day-to-day life. It impacts ways of communication, trade and business; influences networking abilities; shapes societal norms, attitudes and behaviours. It is hence argued that digital technologies may have crucial implications for women's participation in the workforce.

Gender equality and increasing women's workforce participation is an important goal under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Research indicates that women are mainly involved in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, while collar formal work, and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies significantly impact the ways of working in all these sectors. Consequently, it is argued that digital technologies influence women's participation across all such types of work.

This chapter aims at unravelling the linkages between digital technologies and women's workforce participation. To this end, the influences of digital technologies on women's participation in agricultural work, blue-collar formal work, white-collar formal work and entrepreneurship are discussed. The implications and impacts of the use of broadband, internet and mobile technologies are also discussed. This chapter also includes important theories of women's workforce participation and discusses them in light of digitalisation.

In this article, the authors consider the following nonlinear singular boundary value problem (SBVP) known as Lane–Emden equations, −u″(t)-(α/t) u′(t) = g(t, u), 0 < t < 1 where α ≥ 1 subject to two-point and three-point boundary conditions. The authors propose to develop a novel method to solve the class of Lane–Emden equations.

The authors improve the modified variation iteration method (VIM) proposed in [JAAC, 9(4) 1242–1260 (2019)], which greatly accelerates the convergence and reduces the computational task.

The findings revealed that either exact or highly accurate approximate solutions of Lane–Emden equations can be computed with the proposed method.

Novel modification is made in the VIM that provides either exact or highly accurate approximate solutions of Lane-Emden equations, which does not exist in the literature.