Search results

This paper sets out to classify business process outsourcing (BPO), linking it to service level agreement (SLA) design needs.

The paper develops a framework based on prior literature to classify BPOs and illustrates it with field research of Indian vendors.

The paper identifies criticality and complexity as the dimensions of classification and explicates the role of SLAs along these dimensions.

This is an exploratory research involving four vendors. A larger study is needed to strengthen/enrich the proposed framework, and make the findings more conclusive.

The taxonomy aids BPO industry practitioners in understanding the characteristics of different processes and the control issues arising therein. It also helps analysts to make more qualified generalizations within the BPO industry.

The paper addresses a dearth of literature on BPOs, especially from a vendor perspective. The taxonomy serves to position future work in this fast‐growing field of research.

Ensuring adequate access to food to all has remained a major challenge of the 21^st century. To aid the effort of hunger alleviation, many studies have quantified the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU), mostly at the national level. There has been limited attention to understanding the intra-country variation in undernourishment estimates.

Unlike past studies, this study tracks the substantial regional heterogeneity in the undernourishment status within Nepal. Employing Food and Agriculture Organization's methodology and Nepal Living Standards Survey data from 1995, 2003 and 2011, household energy consumption and requirements are computed to determine regional undernourishment.

Nepal's PoU declined between 1995 and 2003 but increased after 2003 affecting approximately 7.6 million Nepalese in 2011. The Terai domain – Provinces 2 and 5 – are found to be the most vulnerable to undernourishment concerns likely because of economic and natural shocks. Province 4 achieved higher progress in alleviating undernourishment during 2003, but its PoU doubled in 2011 (as in Province 6).

By examining where and how many are undernourished within Nepal, this study has provided a more accurate picture of the PoU for better-targeting assistance to improve the livelihood of its citizens.

Past studies indicate substantial variation in food access and PoU within Nepal. While they provide some answers to “where and how many” questions for some districts, provinces, belts and urban/rural domains at the cross-sectional level (or for selected locales), few have examined intra-Nepal heterogeneity, especially over time. Therefore, this study explores where and how many within Nepal have been undernourished during the past three decades.

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled the education system to switch over to emergency learning-teaching that is organised remotely. The present study investigated the experience of emergency remote learning (ERL) provided to higher-education learners. The study explores learners' perceived experience regarding the quality of learning resources, the effectiveness of teaching in a virtual climate and the scope of interaction in ERL.

Utilising a snowball sampling method, data were obtained from 470 Indian students of higher education through a cross-sectional online survey using a questionnaire through social media platforms. Data were analysed with relevant statistics.

The majority of students agreed that they had benefited from ERL. The overall impression of the ERL is positive; nevertheless, the students are perplexed and lack confidence in many aspects of the ERL. The Quality of ERL Resources, Teaching Effectiveness, Peer Interaction and Workloads were found to be significant factors in determining the quality of ERL.

Learning from the crisis of a pandemic is paramount for the education system. The education system could not go back to what was considered normal before the pandemic; rather it is time to assess and finalise strategies from the experience during this pandemic that could be taken by the higher-education institutions to make the ecosystem better equipped to create 21st-century learning climate. Accommodating the components of remote learning-teaching and engaging technology towards hybridisation are the needs of the time. Hence, assessing the quality of ERL from the learner's perspective might contribute to redesigning future remote learning.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss business processes as building‐blocks of organisational capabilities and outsourcing of business processes as a viable management approach to building strategic organisational capabilities.

The paper develops a conceptual framework based on “strategic partnering” to successfully implement “global sourcing” of organisational capabilities and validates this framework using multiple case studies research.

The paper identifies business process management, relationship management and the outsourcing value propositions as the key dimensions for business process outsourcing (BPO) success.

The paper is based on case studies of seven European clients and ten Indian service providers of BPO services. A larger survey of BPO clients and service providers may further strengthen the proposed framework and make the findings more conclusive.

The proposed framework helps both the BPO client and the service provider organisations in understanding the critical role of relationship management in realising the intended BPO service outcomes. It also helps the BPO clients and the service providers to understand the risk and business value implications of BPO value proposition.

The paper addresses a dearth of literature on BPO service provision and establishes the need for dyadic study of BPO services from both the client and the service provider perspective simultaneously for understanding the dynamics of this emerging service sector.

The aim of this research work is to examine the originator which is affecting in Thailand the adoption of m-commerce (based on the behavioural intention). The usage of m-commerce has faced reluctance by the subscribers of mobile phone, which is in general the most anticipated challenge among both the developing and developed countries. Similarly, there are restricted empirical research work regarding to the m-commerce in Thailand. As a result, in the situation of developing countries (for instance, Thailand specially), very less numbers of research exist for the recognition of important variables for the m-commerce installation or estimating the m-commerce adoption variables. For explaining the behavioural targets of subscribers and for estimation generally the model that has been used is referred to as technology acceptance model (TAM). First, the factor subjective norms by the region of technology acceptance had contradictory outcomes and inconsistency to the behavioural target. In this study, we employed the Smart Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling version 3.2.6 as a data analysis technique. The response rate of the current study is 81%. The results have certainty that has established the presence of these associations between the users which implicated the significance of subjective norms in Thailand which were recognized. The personal opinion of usefulness, perceptions of attitude and easy usage to m-commerce are the important features towards the subjective norms which are the social impacts.

Construction workers’ health and safety (CWHS) research in India has not gained much attention among researchers. This study aims to review articles related to CWHS research in India using a science mapping approach.

A total number of 64 journal articles published between 2004 and 2019 were extracted from the Scopus database using keywords including “construction safety,” “occupational health,” “ergonomics in construction,” etc. VOSviewer software was used to examine the influential keywords, documents, sources and authors in the field of CWHS.

The study found that most of the current work focuses on safety management, safety climate, safety performance, musculoskeletal disorders and behavior-based safety. The result indicates no theoretical basis for the theories and learning methods for the existing studies.

The findings open up a research gap that researchers explore to enhance workers’ health and safety within the Indian construction environment.

The paper is the first article to provide a better understanding of current research in the field of CWHS in India by analyzing its growth through the science mapping approach.

Over the last several decades, businesses have faced mounting pressures from diverse stakeholders to alter their corporate operations to become more socially and environmentally responsible. In turn, many firms appear to have responded by implementing more sustainable practices — measuring, documenting, and publishing annual CSR or sustainability reports to showcase how they are addressing important issues in this area, including: resource stewardship, waste management, greenhouse gas emission reductions, fair and safe labor practices, amongst other stakeholder concerns. And yet, research in this domain has not yet systematically examined whether businesses have, on the whole, changed their practices in tandem with the important changes in its institutional context over time. Have corporate CSR initiatives, in fact, been growing over the last 25 years or has the increased attention to CSR actually been much ado about nothing? In this chapter, we review the empirical literature on CSR to uncover that common measures of CSR such as the KLD do not support the concept that CSR practices have increased substantively over the last 25 years. We supplement this historical review by modeling the growth curves of CSR implementation in practice and find that the pace of positive change has indeed been glacial. More alarmingly, we also look at corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and find that, contrary to expectations, businesses have become more, not less, irresponsible during this same time period. Implications of these findings for theory are presented as are suggestions for future research in this domain.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to predict the fiber diameter of melt blowing nonwovens by means of physics model.

The effects of the processing parameters on the fiber diameter is studied using the established physics model.

The results show that the predicted and experimental values agree well, the physics model produces more accurate and stable predictions, which also indicates that the physics model is really an effective and available modeling method for predictors.

The results show the great potential of this research for computer assisted design of the melt blowing technology.

The applications of geographic information systems (GIS) are described in the civil engineering literature for generation, visualisation and evaluation of the construction schedule. GIS use is also explored for construction quantity takeoffs and cost estimation. The purpose of this paper is to supplement the already explored capabilities of GIS in construction by providing the methodology for direct sunlight visualisation on buildings.

The proposed methodology for direct sunlight visualisation is to calculate the solar angles and use them for spatial distribution representation of the amount of sunlight received on different faces of a building by rendering it with the colour of varied gradients. The colour gradient on any face of a building depends upon the amount of direct sunlight received. The solar gain is demonstrated through the multi‐dimensional data visualisation like sun angle variations with diurnal and annual cycles in a navigable 3D animation.

GIS‐based methodology provides the planner a way to control the natural lighting and solar gain on a building which can be combined with the project schedule, quantity takeoffs, cost estimate and 4D visualisation in a single environment. Beginning with this idea, the planner may store and share information about a construction project, site and surrounding geography.

Most of the existing 4D CAD technologies do not have project management capabilities and are used mainly for the planning and design stage of a construction project. In comparison, GIS‐based tools may be used in different stages. These are more management‐based and allow more collaborative and cooperative relationships between designer, constructor and client. By using a GIS‐based approach, construction documents like schedules, drawings, quantity takeoffs, cost estimates, project specifications and direct sunlight visualisations are more consistent with each other.