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The case, “Shivani Carriers Pvt. Ltd.: Managing Employee Motivation at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, has been designed to teach students about the basic principles of employee motivation. The case is also a representative example of the problems faced by small and medium-sized businesses in employee acquisition, motivation, and retention, especially at junior levels i.e. entry-level operational and front-line roles. The case documents the history and evolution of the driver management system (DMS) instituted by Vandana and Hemant Laddha at Shivani Carriers Pvt. Ltd. (SCPL). It looks at the constraints faced by the company and the challenges that emerged during the implementation of the new system. After initial success, Vandana Laddha faced a dilemma around the future direction of the DMS. The original incentive scheme had been a success: driver productivity and motivation had improved significantly. Given that the scheme had achieved its desired objectives, the firm had decided to modify it to further improve efficiency. However, employee discontent was brewing since the scheme had been modified. Vandana Laddha had to decide if she should she bring back the original incentive management scheme to quell employee discontent or should she introduce alternate initiatives to manage driver motivation? If she chose to introduce new initiatives, what could these be? What mechanisms would she need to put in place to support the new initiatives? What about the complaints of the drivers? What should she do to address the complaints of the drivers? The case provides students with an opportunity to understand the principles of employee motivation with the help of extant and contemporary research on motivation. It also sheds light on the link between initiatives aimed at increasing motivation and other managerial activities and mechanisms. Importantly, it helps students arrive at an integrated framework that links various aspects of employee motivation such as needs, cognitions, work design factors, organizational support and actions, organizational culture and industry context.

Marketing, Retail Marketing and E-commerce.

Graduate and Post-graduate.

The Future Group is the most profitable retailer in India without having any foreign direct investment (FDI). In September 2013, the retailer launched its online retailing platform, “Big Bazaar Direct” (BBD). BBD is a franchisee-based model which aims to partner with people having rich customer networks to reach more shoppers. This novice idea of BBD is the result of Big Bazaar’s greater mind share over its market share. Mr Kishore Biyani, CEO Future Group, has lot of expectation from this business model.

The outcomes include: to familiarize students with Indian Retail Industry; to develop student’s skills in critically analyzing an online retail-based new business model; and to explain key factors that work for success of a retail-based business model.

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 8: Marketing

Purpose: This paper aims to present the case study of the SHE (Šibenik Hub for Ecology) hub project, ecofeminist business practice in Croatia. The SHE hub is a sustainable tourism project based around issues of ‘ethical consumerism’ and sustainable development and shows that is possible to implement ecofeminist ideas in business.

Method: Paper is divided into two parts. The first part is theoretical and presents an overview of relevant literature regarding ecofeminism, sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and green consumerism. The second part is a case study of the SHE hub project, based on analysis of the project website, content analysis of the media coverage regarding the project and an in-depth interview with project initiator.

Findings: The results show that strengthening of the ethical consumerism movement has given a new impetus to the realisation of ecofeminist projects in real life and that SHE hub is a good example of this. Although the SHE hub has insufficient transformative social potential, it is important to notice that sustainable change always begins with small steps.

Originality/value: The topic of the relationship between social corporate responsibility and ecofeminism has not been researched, so this case study represents a valuable contribution to the research of this relationship.

This study aims to provide empirical insights pertaining to the impact of trait emotional intelligence on the mental well-being of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) in India.

In the current study, responses from a total of 252 students were randomly taken from different universities of Uttarakhand (India). The analysis was done using structural equation modelling AMOS 23.

The current study empirically established the positive impact of trait emotional intelligence (TEI) on the mental well-being of students and highlighted the relevance of TEI in curbing the psychological distress in students of HEIs.

This study endeavours to bridge the empirical and population gap by examining the emotional intelligence and its impact on mental well-being of the students of Indian HEIs, where studies are still scant and demand massive exploration of the perceptions of students. Strong emotional intelligence is pivotal in strengthening the mental well-being of students so that they can make appropriate decisions pertaining to their career and personal life.

The case has been developed as an illustrative case study using primary data. The data and images used for developing the case have been collected from the Alipurduar Division of Indian Railways with suitable permissions. The specific newspaper studies used in developing the case content have been referenced as footnotes on the relevant pages of the case study document.

Train operations in Alipurduar Division of Northeast Frontier Railway zone of Indian Railways are difficult. The division provides the vital rail link between the northeast states and the rest of India. Railway lines in the Alipurduar Division pass through several forests with a significant elephant population. As an outcome of train–elephant conflicts, train operations on one of the railway lines operate under severe speed restrictions. Moreover, the region is known for heavy rainfall and thunderstorms for almost six months every year. For the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), the protagonist of the case, this implied repeated congestion, traffic disruptions, inadvertent delays and lack of time for critical maintenance of the tracks. A solution was planned several years ago for creating an alternative path to de-congest the traffic; however, it ran into a roadblock due to land acquisition issues.With all these limitations, could a solution be found and implemented? How could it be executed?The case illustrates how a simple yet innovative solution was proposed by the DRM in 2015 and implemented in 2016.With this case, students will be able to understand the innovation process that is embedded within long-term infrastructure projects. The case will help students understand how innovation can take place even in the later stages of project implementation, and how simple and creative solutions can have a long-term impact.

The case can be used in graduate and executive education courses in General Management and in Public Policy Management. It can also be used in Doctoral-Level Programmes such as those taught to scholars pursuing Fellow Programme in Management. Since the case brings out elements of problem framing and critical thinking, the case can be used for courses in strategic management. Many professionals, particularly those working in large organizations dealing with large infrastructure projects, will identify with the DRM and the challenges faced by him.

Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy.

The case is designed for business students at the undergraduate or MBA levels in courses that deal with social entrepreneurship. The case describes the future growth potential of the exotic vegetable/fruit market in emerging economy India and lends itself for use in Rural Management courses as well.

Nisarg Nirman Agro Products Private Limited (hereafter referred as NNPL), a social farming venture, was started by Anjali Churi in the year 1997 in India. Churi, an agriculturist at heart, was always interested in experimenting and conducting research on new crops. What started as a small research experiment soon prospered to become a commercial venture producing and selling exotic vegetables to the Indian business customers, such as the five-/four-star hotels, premier clubs, hypermarkets, etc. NNPL was one among the pioneers to start the cultivation of exotic vegetables in the country. Their indigenous produce was of high quality. Their business customers were benefitted by the freshness of their products as well as competitive pricing as compared to their earlier imports. In her journey to commercial prosperity, she adopted co-operative farming, thus providing employment and livelihood opportunities to Indian farmers. Over the period, NNPL was invited to provide agriculture consulting to some of the other countries, such as Maldives, Thailand and Israel. In 2014, the company boasted of an indigenous produce of 95 different varieties of exotic vegetables and fruits, with 34 clients across the country, revenues to the tune of INR40 million and touching lives of more than 600 farmers across the country. The Indian exotic vegetables market had a promising future. Churi desired to expand her venture but in a manner that could systematically impact and generate employment opportunities for the rural Indians. She was at crossroads to deciding what could be such a venture, agro-processing or agro-tourism? Any such expansions required substantial investments for agricultural research activities. The case is structured to achieve the following pedagogical objectives: a social entrepreneur's ability to identify and exploit the market opportunity for growing own venture as well as generating a larger social impact; understand the industry's change trajectory and its impact on the venture; understand the importance of such business models of cooperative farming in populous emerging economies such as India where 70 per cent of the population resides in rural India.

The case that maps the growth/challenges of a social farming venture and allows students to: understand that small social venture also has the ability to generate a larger social impact; evaluate the venture's strategic positioning and scope in a competitive environment; and evaluate the need and potential of business models as cooperative farming to generate employment at the base of the pyramid in populous emerging economy as India.

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

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of social media in creating an attractive employer brand for any organization. It investigates one of the social media Glassdoor, which is an online employer branding platform, where employees put their reviews which are both positive and negative. Analysis of these reviews can generate a lot of insights into employer branding.

The data was collected as 1,243 reviews from Glassdoor, an online crowdsourced employer branding platform for 40 top-rated employers across four different sectors, namely, Pharma, IT, retail and FMCG. Text and sentimental analyses were done using SAS visual analytical for these reviews.

Ten themes were generated from the text analytics which is nothing but the employer value propositions (EVPs), and they were social, interest, development and economic value as given by Berthon et al. (2005) and also others, such as work–life, management and brand value emerged. Social value came as a significant EVP followed by interest value and work–life values.

This research is providing only ways to show that crowdsourced data can also be used to understand the mindset of employees regarding an employer’s image but is not providing any idea regarding how to generate the right employee value proposition.

The research has shown that employers can use crowdsourced employer branding insights to see where they stand in the employer's attractiveness spectrum. They can use innovative data analytics techniques, such as visualization for text and sentimental analysis to create employer branding intelligence strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the usage pattern of electronic resources (e-resources) among management graduates. The respondents were asked about the types of e-resources they used, who their influencers were, their preferred place for surfing, the frequency of use, purpose for which they used e-resources, its benefits and the problems they faced while using e-resources. The findings of the study will help in enhancing the usage of e-resources among students who opt for management courses.

This descriptive research was conducted in Nagpur, Maharashtra (India). Data collected from 150 management students through purposive sampling were analyzed through descriptive statistics, and the responses were presented in tabular form.

The investigation reveals that students are well aware of e-resources and consider them to be very useful for their academic performance. Interestingly, students are found to be using non-paid resources more than paid ones because of a lack of search skills. Discipline-wise investigation reveals that students from the disciplines of information technology, economics and finance use e-resources more frequently than those studying subjects like marketing, operations and human resource management. Faculty and training have emerged as strong influencers that have persuaded students to use e-resources.

The present study is limited to students studying management courses in Nagpur, Maharashtra (India).

This research will help institutions, librarians and publishers in gaining insight on the utilization patterns of e-resources. The uniqueness of this study lies in the fact that it has analyzed and presented the responses of management students belonging to different disciplines in management studies such as, marketing, finance, human resource management operations, economics and information technology regarding their usage patterns of e-resources.

The students will get a hands on research techniques like mental mapping, laddering and means end chain (MEC) model for value proposition and survey techniques.

Market Research has always acted as one of the major driving force behind the successful launch of any product in any market. There are several evidences of how market research and thorough understanding of the consumers in and out has lead companies reach new peaks and acquire market share. This case deals with a company called Eco-Remedies, based in Nashik, India, which is in the business of providing eco-solutions to different health ailments and also general purpose health supplements like health drinks. The major concentration is on the product called “AnjaNeya-The Graviola fruit drink” from Eco-Remedies, where in different research techniques were used to gather information so that appropriate strategies could be implemented in order to increase the market share of the product and create a strong position in the minds of the customers. The case deals with gathering consumer insights and then developing appropriate positioning strategies for Eco remedies based on consumer value proposition using the MEC theory, mental mapping, blind tests and general consumer survey.

The study is applicable to Masters level Marketing Management and Marketing Research Studies.

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

Marketing.

A recent innovative technology used in wireless communication is recognized as multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication system and became popular for quicker data transmission speed. This technology is being examined and implemented for the latest broadband wireless connectivity networks. Though high-capacity wireless channel is identified, there is still requirement of better techniques to get increased data transmission speed with acceptable reliability. There are two types of systems comprising of multi-antennas placed at transmitting and receiving sides, of which first is diversity technique and another is spatial multiplexing method. By making use of these diversity techniques, the reliability of transmitting signal can be improved. The fundamental method of the diversity is to transform wireless channel such as Rayleigh fading into steady additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel which is devoid of any disastrous fading of the signal. The maximum transmission speed that can be achieved by spatial multiplexing methods is nearly equal to channel capacity of MIMO. Conversely, for diversity methods, the maximum speed of broadcasting is much lower than channel capacity of MIMO. With the advent of space–time block coding (STBC) antenna diversity technique, higher-speed data transmission is achievable for spatially multiplexed multiple input multiple output (SM-MIMO) system. At the receiving end, detection of the signal is a complex task for system which exhibits SM-MIMO. Additionally, a link modification method is implemented to decide appropriate coding and modulation scheme such as space diversity technique STBC to use two-way radio resources efficiently. The proposed work attempts to improve detection of signal at receiving end by employing STBC diversity technique for linear detection methods such as zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean square error (MMSE), ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) and maximum likelihood detection (MLD). The performance of MLD has been found to be better than other detection techniques.

Alamouti's STBC uses two transmit antennas regardless of the number of receiver antennas. The encoding and decoding operation of STBC is shown in the earlier cited diagram. In the following matrix, the rows of each coding scheme represent a different time instant, while the columns represent the transmitted symbols through each different antenna. In this case, the first and second rows represent the transmission at the first and second time instant, respectively. At a time t, the symbol s₁ and symbol s₂ are transmitted from antenna 1 and antenna 2, respectively. Assuming that each symbol has duration T, then at time t + T, the symbols –s₂* and s₁*, where (.)* denotes the complex conjugate, are transmitted from antenna 1 and antenna 2, respectively. Case of one receiver antenna: The reception and decoding of the signal depend on the number of receiver antennas available. For the case of one receiver antenna, the received signals are received at antenna 1 , hij is the channel transfer function from the jth transmit antenna and the ith receiver antenna, n1 is a complex random variable representing noise at antenna 1 and x (k) denotes x at time instant k ( at time t + (k – 1)T.

The results obtained for maximal ratio combining (MRC) with 1 × 4 scheme show that the BER curve drops to 10–4 for signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of 10 dB, whereas for MRC 1 × 2 scheme, the BER drops down to 10–5 for SNR of 20 dB. Results obtained in Table 1 show that when STBC is employed for MRC with 1 × 2 scheme (one antenna at transmitter node and two antennas at receiver node), BER curve comes down to 0.0076 for Eb/N0 of 12. Similarly, when MRC with 1 × 4 antenna scheme is implemented, BER drops down to 0 for Eb/N0 of 12. Thus, it can be concluded from the obtained graph that the performance of MRC with STBC gives improved results. When STBC technique is used with 3 × 4 scheme, at SNR of 10 dB, BER comes nearer to 10–6 (figure 7.3). It can be concluded from the analytics observed between AWGN and Rayleigh fading channel that for AWGN channel, BER is found to be equal to 0 for SNR value of 13.5 dB, whereas for Rayleigh fading channel, BER is observed nearer to 10–3 for Eb/N0 = 15. Simulation results (in figure 7.2) from the analytics show BER drops to 0 for SNR value of 12 dB.

Optimal design and successful deployment of high-performance wireless networks present a number of technical challenges. These include regulatory limits on useable radio-frequency spectrum and a complex time-varying propagation environment affected by fading and multipath. The effect of multipath fading in wireless systems can be reduced by using antenna diversity. Previous studies show the performance of transmit diversity with narrowband signals using linear equalization, decision feedback equalization, maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) and spread spectrum signals using a RAKE receiver. The available IC techniques compatible with STBC schemes at transmission require multiple antennas at the receiver. However, if this not a strong constraint at the base station level, it remains a challenge at the handset level due to cost and size limitation. For this reason, SAIC technique, alternative to complex ML multiuser demodulation technique, is still of interest for 4G wireless networks using the MIMO technology and STBC in particular. In a system with characteristics similar to the North American Digital mobile radio standard IS-54 (24.3 K symbols per sec. with an 81 Hz fading rate), adaptive retransmission with time deviation is not practical.

The evaluation of performance in terms of bit error rate and convergence time which estimates that MLD technique outperforms in terms of received SNR and low decoding complexity. MLD technique performs well but when higher number of antennas are used, it requires more computational time and thereby resulting in increased hardware complexity. When MRC scheme is implemented for singe input single output (SISO) system, BER drops down to 10–2 for SNR of 20 dB. Therefore, when MIMO systems are employed for MRC scheme, improved results based on BER versus SNR are obtained and are used for detecting the signal; comparative study based on different techniques is done. Initially ZF detection method is utilized which was then modified to ZF with successive interference cancellation (ZFSIC). When successive interference cancellation scheme is employed for ZFSIC, better performance is observed as compared to the estimation of ML and MMSE. For 2 × 2 scheme with QPSK modulation method, ZFSIC requires more computational time as compared to ZF, MMSE and ML technique. From the obtained results, the conclusion is that ZFSIC gives the improved results as compared to ZF in terms of BER ratio. ZF-based decision statistics can be produced by the detection algorithm for a desired sub-stream from the received vector whichs consist of an interference which occurred from previous transmitted sub-streams. Consequently, a decision on the secondary stream is made and contribution of the noise is regenerated and subtracted from the vector received. With no involvement of interference cancellation, system performance gets reduced but computational cost is saved. While using cancellation, as H is deflated, coefficients of MMSE are recalculated at each iteration. When cancellation is not involved, the computation of MMSE coefficients is done only once, because of H remaining unchanged. For MMSE 4 × 4 BPSK scheme, bit error rate of 10–2 at 30 dB is observed. In general, the most thorough procedure of the detection algorithm is the computation of the MMSE coefficients. Complexity arises in the calculation of the MMSE coefficients, when the antennas at the transmitting side are increased. However, while implementing adaptive MMSE receivers on slow channel fading, it is probable to recover the signal with the complications being linear in the antennas of transmitter node. The performance of MMSE and successive interference cancellation of MMSE are observed for 2 × 2 and 4 × 4 BPSK and QPSK modulation schemes. The drawback of MMSE SIC scheme is that the first detected signal observes the noise interference from (NT-1) signals, while signals processed from every antenna later observe less noisy interference as the process of cancellation progresses. This difficulty could be overcome by using OSIC detection method which uses successive ordering of the processed layers in the decreasing power of the signal or by power allocation to the signal transmitted depending on the order of the processing. By using successive scheme, a computation of NT delay stages is desired to bring out the abandoned process. The work also includes comparison of BER with various modulation schemes and number of antennas involved while evaluating the performance. MLD determines the Euclidean distance among the vector signal received and result of all probable transmitted vector signals with the specified channel H and finds the one with the minimum distance. Estimated results show that higher order of the diversity is observed by employing more antennas at both the receiving and transmitting ends. MLD with 8 × 8 binary phase shift keying (BPSK) scheme offers bit error rate near to 10^–4 for SNR (16 dB). By using Altamonti space ti.

It should come as no surprise that companies everywhere are pushing to get products to market faster. Missing a market window or a design cycle can be a major setback in a competitive environment. It should be equally clear that this pressure is coming at the same time that companies are pushing towards “leaner” organizations that can do more with less. The trends mentioned earlier are not well supported by current test and measurement equipment, given this increasingly high-pressure design environment: in order to measure signals across multiple domains, multiple pieces of measurement equipment are needed, increasing capital or rental expenses. The methods available for making cross-domain, time-correlated measurements are inefficient, reducing engineering efficiency. When only used on occasion, the learning curve to understand how to use equipment for logic analysis, time domain and RF spectrum measurements often requires an operator to re-learn each piece of separate equipment. The equipment needed to measure wide bandwidth, time-varying spectral signals is expensive, again increasing capital or rental expenses. What is needed is a measurement instrument with a common user interface that integrates multiple measurement capabilities into a single cost-effective tool that can efficiently measure signals in the current wide-bandwidth, time-correlated, cross-domain environments. The market of wireless communication using STBCs has large scope of expansion in India. Therefore, the proposed work has techno-commercial potential and the product can be patented. This project shall in turn be helpful for remote areas of the nearby region particularly in Gadchiroli district and Melghat Tiger reserve project of Amravati district, Nagjira and so on where electricity is not available and there is an all the time problem of coverage in getting the network. In some regions where electricity is available, the shortage is such that they cannot use it for peak hours. In such cases, stand-alone space diversity technique, STBC shall help them to meet their requirements in making connection during coverage problem, thereby giving higher data transmission rates with better QOS (quality of service) with least dropped connections. This trend towards wireless everywhere is causing a profound change in the responsibilities of embedded designers as they struggle to incorporate unfamiliar RF technology into their designs. Embedded designers frequently find themselves needing to solve problems without the proper equipment needed to perform the tasks.

Work is original.