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Nuclear disarmament has been a matter of great policy concern for Russia as it was for the former Soviet Union. To recall briefly, super power rivalry between the former Soviet Union and the United States was deeply entrenched even in the field of nuclear issue for about five decades as a form of offensive and defensive policy instrument. Fully realizing and acknowledging the high risk involved in the event of a nuclear war for themselves and for the world as a whole, both the superpowers were sensible and responsible enough to avoid such an eventuality. As more countries joined the nuclear race subsequently, there was growing realization of the need to launch the campaign for nuclear disarmament on a global scale. In this background an effort has been made in this chapter to understand and analyze Russia’s perspectives and initiatives on the issue of nuclear disarmament.

In the total quality management (TQM) environment, a major responsibility of TQM implementation rests with supervisors who translate the top management strategies into short‐term execution. Hence, the role of supervisors in the quality improvement efforts warrants a serious examination. Presents a comparison of the roles of supervisors in quality improvement strategies in TQM and non‐TQM firms. Based on a survey of 232 manufacturing firms in the USA and Canada, analyses the role of supervisors in TQM and non‐TQM firms using eight quality constructs. Major results indicate that, as compared with non‐TQM firms, supervisors in TQM firms receive more support and encouragement from top management, are under less tension, and possess a higher level of satisfaction. Also, participation of supervisors in the firm’s quality efforts is higher in TQM firms. The higher level of supervisors’ involvement, coupled with the top management commitment, results in higher quality of manufacturing processes and products for TQM firms than non‐TQM firms. Further, when implementing TQM strategies, non‐unionized firms are found to provide a better work environment for supervisors than the unionized firms.

The recent spate of farmer’s suicide in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India has left many of those households in the charge of widows. These are the women left behind to live for their children after their husband committed suicide, unable to bear the burden of their debts anymore. The surviving family members of those who killed themselves in distress are prone to depression and tend to have suicidal tendencies too. They are experiencing exclusion in day to day life. This research paper is based on empirical study. Hundred Respondents from Wardha district of Vidarbha region are interviewed. For these widows, life is a tale of suffering and Harassment. Their relations with their in-law soured to a great extent after their husband committed suicide. They have to struggle for basic human rights. They are facing physical, sexual, mental, emotional and economic exclusion in day-to-day life. Sexual exploitation is not a common occurrence, but it does exist. The mental and emotional violence is much more. According to them, ‘The humiliation is greater than the pain of husband’s suicide’. The village social system has many pitfalls for such women. Because of widowhood, in several arenas her quality of life and capabilities have worsened.

This paper deals with suffering and various aspect of social exclusion faced by widows of the farmer and the role of social fabric in handling these problems.

Questions about the role and composition of the middle class have been examined and debated in the academy and in the political sphere for more than 100 years. In analyses of the Indian middle class specifically, two questions, both addressed by Diane Davis, seem to excite the most attention. The first has to do with the definition of a middle class, a term that has its origins in a very different social formation as well as its potentially mediating function in democracy. The second and more recent question has to do with what is variously called the “new” or “emerging” middle classes – in short, the middle classes of a liberalizing India.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for assessing the overall innovativeness of manufacturing firms using a multi-attribute group decision-making methodology.

This study identifies the indicators of firms’ innovativeness from the literature. The concept of neutrosophic numbers has been used to assign different importance weights to individual decision makers to account for the differences in their educational backgrounds and practical experience. An intuitionistic fuzzy based TOPSIS procedure is adapted for ranking the candidate firms based on their performance on identified criteria. The implementation of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through an explanatory example. Sensitivity analysis is carried out to judge the robustness of the proposed framework.

The proposed framework provides an efficient and reliable tool to subjectively evaluate and compare the innovativeness of manufacturing firms. The sensitivity analysis shows that the methodology is robust enough to absorb the noise factors/errors/variations, etc.

Motivated by this work, future studies can consider developing an integrated innovativeness index for evaluation of innovativeness of manufacturing firms. The concept of interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy and neutrosophic sets can be utilized to reduce the margin of perceptual errors even further.

The study will provide the firms with a framework for benchmarking their innovative performance. The firms can analyze their current performance and reconfigure their resources and capabilities suitably to improve their competitive position.

This study is one of the few attempts that have been made to articulate a firm level innovativeness assessment tool for manufacturing firms operating in an industry sector. Advanced concepts of fuzzy and neutrosophic sets have been utilized to eliminate the chances of bias/perceptual errors that most often affect the quality of decisions in today’s dynamic and uncertain decision-making environment.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a socio-ecological counter account of the role that agroecology plays in supporting the sustainable livelihoods of a co-operative of smallholder coffee farmers, where very little value is created at their end of the coffee commodity chain. Agroecology may be defined as the science that provides the ecological principles and concepts for the design and management of productive agricultural ecosystems that conserve natural resources.

This study uses a case study design of a coffee-producing co-operative in India using data collected from participant observation, focus groups and unstructured interviews with indigenous smallholder farmers. It combines the science of agroecology with the labour theory of value as a theoretical framework.

An agroecological approach supports agricultural biodiversity, while promoting sustainable livelihoods since members of the co-operative are able to reduce their use of external inputs. However, an agroecological transformation is curtailed by the continued dependence on corporate value chains. A framework using the labour theory of value is used to explain the extraction of surplus value from the labour of both the smallholder farmers as well as nature. This study provides evidence of the role of government policy and practice in perpetuating the status quo by not promoting either research on agroecology or direct consumer to producer value chains while providing subsidies for the inputs of industrial agriculture.

There have been very few studies that have provided an account of the limited value generated in agricultural commodity chains for smallholder farmers due to the need to purchase the inputs of industrial agriculture supported by government subsidies. This study extends the field of accounting for biodiversity into agriculture using the science of agroecology to explain the role played by biodiversity in increasing the amount of value generated by smallholder farmers. By utilising the labour theory of value, the authors have introduced the notion of the labour power of nature as represented by the environmental services that nature provides.

The purpose of this paper is to identify select antecedents for affective commitment (AC) and whether organizational trust (OT) mediates the relationship between dimensions of organizational justice (OJ) and AC.

Using a survey-based design, data were collected from employees across industry verticals who were working in various organizations and participated in an executive management program at an Indian management institute. Analysis was carried out using a partial least square-based package of ADANCO 2.2.1.

In line with cross-cultural research, the results indicated that distributive and informational justice contribute toward employees' AC. In addition, the findings confirmed that OT mediates the justice-AC relationship for distributive, interpersonal and informational justice. The role of job satisfaction (JS) as an important antecedent was also identified.

The evidence-based findings, as represented in importance–performance map analysis (IPMA), will help the organizational leaders understand the factors responsible for employees' AC. Leaders will appreciate the important role played by justice, fairness and OT in enhancing commitment. The importance of JS was also highlighted.

This is a pioneering study to provide empirical evidence of the moderating effect of trust on OJ and the AC relationship. It is also one of the first to consider all of the four dimensions of OJ as possible antecedents for AC in a non-Western context.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on determinants that influence organizational performance and to develop a framework that could be beneficial for leaders.

This paper uses a systematic review of articles on the factors that influence organizational performance. The purpose of this systematic review is to collect and summarize all empirical evidence from literature that fits the context of this study.

The findings of the study have been weaved together in a proposed framework for the role of cognitive, emotional, and social competencies on leadership competencies that in turn influence both employee and organizational performance.

This paper is a literature review, a framework on the determinants of organizational performance has been proposed but has not yet been tested empirically.

Leaders can leverage the results of this study to enhance their leadership competencies for the purpose of improving the performance on both individual employee and organizational levels.

There are few research-based studies on the determinants of organizational performance. This paper has identified key variables that play a significant role in helping organizations perform effectively.