Abstract of the talk:

Operations research is a multidisciplinary field that employs mathematical and analytical methods to optimize decision-making and problem-solving processes within organizations. Optimization problems lie at the core of operations research, representing a fundamental aspect of decision-making and resource allocation. These problems involve finding the best possible solution from a set of feasible alternatives to optimize a specific objective function, subject to various constraints. Common optimization problems include linear programming, integer programming, and nonlinear programming. Linear programming finds its most significant and successful application in optimizing the physical distribution of goods, commonly referred to as the transportation problem. The efficient movement of goods plays a crucial role in the financial development of a country and can be a determining factor in the survival and growth of enterprises. However, precise mathematical models often fall short as real-life data is not always deterministic. To address this inherent imprecision and uncertainty, several theories such as probability theory, fuzzy set theory, rough set theory, etc. have been introduced by the researchers. These theories have broadened the scope of linear programming and transportation models, making them more applicable to the real-life situations by enabling the consideration of tolerances for decision variables in a natural and direct manner. Rough set theory introduced by Pawlak has higher practical implications than other theories since it takes into consideration the opinion of all involved experts and respects their knowledge by lower and upper approximation intervals, respectively.

This work delves into the investigation of optimization problems, specifically focusing on the transportation problems, where the parameters are uncertain in the context of globalized markets and uncontrollable factors. Various scenarios are explored, including the unbalanced multi-objective fixed-charge transportation problem, the multi-objective fractional transportation problem and the multi-objective transportation problem for waste management. Emphasizing environmental sustainability, the analysis delves into a multiobjective model for sustainable transportation, incorporating ANPR technology, driving behaviour analysis, and electric vehicles. To address the complexity of both small-scale and large-scale non-linear fixed-charge transportation problems, novel variants of particle swarm optimization algorithm are developed and compared with existing heuristic and metaheuristic approaches, providing insights into effective solutions for these problems.

About the Speaker:

It is my great pleasure to introduce Ms. Shivani, a doctoral candidate at the National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar. She has completed her PhD research and submitted her thesis in June 2024, and is now awaiting her final viva. Her research area is “Operations Research,” with an emphasis on multi-objective programming problems in transportation and related fields. During her PhD, Ms. Shivani has published eleven research papers in leading international journals, including Applied Soft Computing, Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, Complex & Intelligent Systems, and Soft Computing. In addition, she has presented several research papers in renowned international conferences. Ms. Shivani has cleared UGC-CSIR NET and GATE, and is also a recipient of the MHRD Senior Research Fellowship (SRF), a prestigious recognition for her contributions to research.

Abstract of the talk:

A 360° virtual tour experience integrates videos and smartphones to evoke tourists’ cognition, emotion, and heightened intentions. The present study investigates the impact of perceived destination attributes on information-seeking and destination visit intention when tourists are presented with a 360° virtual tour experience. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework is extended to investigate this mechanism by incorporating perceived destination attributes as a stimulus, tourists’ perceived confidence, confirmation, and satisfaction as an organism, and information seeking and visit intention as a response. Data was collected from 260 tourists in India. The results reveal the strong influence of 360° media in generating perceived destination attributes, which has a significant and positive association with tourists’ perceived confidence and destination satisfaction. Findings based on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) reveal that destination satisfaction is a strong predictor of information-seeking, and confirmation is a predictor of destination visit intention. The implications provide valuable insights to Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs), VR content creators, and policymakers for effectively promoting VR videos for tourism.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Saumya Dixit completed her PhD in Marketing from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad in 2014. She brings significant expertise in teaching a wide range of subjects, including Consumer Behavior, Product Management, Marketing Management, Marketing Research, and Organizational Management. Her research primarily explores the adoption and continued use of emerging information and communication technologies, with a focus on enhancing well-being and promoting sustainability. Her work has been published in prominent international journals such as Tourism Recreation Research, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and Resources, Conservation and Recycling, among others. Her contributions have advanced the understanding of both marketing theory and practice, with a special emphasis on technology-driven innovations.

Abstract of the talk:

While evidence suggests the significant role played by personality traits in affecting the usage of inappropriate and unethical negotiation strategies, studies have rarely examined the dark core. Considering, negotiation frequently involves choosing between economic outcomes and relational gains, this research primarily examines the effect of dark core and the mediating role of relational interdependent self-construal (RISC) in affecting the usage of inappropriate negotiation strategies (SINS), at the person level (Study – 1) (n = 283, managers, India). Further, it evaluates the individual and interactive effect of dark core with two situation level variables, namely, Interdependence and Incentives in a dictator game design (Study – 2) (n = 221, business school postgraduates, India). It was observed that, while at the person level, the effects of dark core were significantly mediated by RISC, at the situational level, the increasing degree of interdependence with the actor and the additional economic incentives offered, significantly interacted with dark core to predict the endorsement of a variety of inappropriate negotiation strategies. In summary, the study examines the role of dark core, clarifies its self – interested nature, propensity for favoring economic gains at the cost of deteriorated relationships and highlights the role of two important situational elements in negotiation.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sujit has a BTech (IGIT Sarang), MTech (IIT Kharagpur), MBA – HRM (XIMB), and PhD (IIM Lucknow). Subsequent to completion of his PhD, he joined IIM Ranchi as an Assistant Professor in the OB – HRM area. At IIM Ranchi, he was involved in offering various subjects such as Total Rewards Management, Competency Management, Trading Psychology in Indian Markets and Occupational Testing Methods. Further, Dr. Sujit’s research interests are primarily related to the Dark Triad of Personality and its effects on human behavior. He regularly contributes to this area by publishing his findings in academic journals. Additionally, he has also published a book on “Contemporary Organizational Behavior”. Lastly, Dr. Sujit is an avid stock market enthusiast and regularly trades the market as a past time.

Abstract of the talk:

As the global environment continues to change, companies worldwide are increasingly compelled to go beyond financial performance and to incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns into their strategic planning. In an organisation, the board of directors and the top executives are responsible for formulating the company's ESG strategy given the complexity of climate risk, evolving ESG regulations, and rising stakeholder activism. In this talk, I present my research work aimed at analyzing the relationship between the board’s structural attributes and sustainability disclosures in an emerging economy such as India. I investigate this relationship using the system generalized method of moments (SGMM) panel regression on a sample of firms from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Nifty 100 Index from 2013 to 2020. This econometric framework controls endogeneity among the variables, which has been lacking in the previous studies. The results indicate that board structural attributes, such as board size, gender diversity, chief executive officer (CEO) duality, and independence, have little bearing on sustainability disclosures of Indian companies. However, the board of directors, through the board’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee, strives for sustainability practices in Indian organizations. The bigger companies, based on their assets size, are more willing to disclose on their ESG efforts compared to the smaller ones. From the standpoint of an emerging economy like India, which has statutory CSR mandates for firms, this research adds a fresh perspective to the relationship between corporate governance and corporate responsibility by employing stakeholder theory, which is augmented by the use of system GMM as a robust methodology. My work also highlights the significance of a mandatory CSR committee as a facilitator of sustainability practices and reporting in emerging economies. I will conclude my talk by outlining the vision and future direction of my research.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Priti is an Assistant Professor in Accounting and Finance at the Indian Institute of Management Bodhgaya. She did her Fellow Programme in Management from the Management Development Institute Gurgaon. She is a commerce graduate from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. Priti specializes in ESG, CSR, Corporate Governance, and Sustainable Finance. Priti has published her research in reputed journals, including the Journal of Applied Accounting Research, International Journal of Bank Marketing, and IVEY publishing, and has presented at international conferences, including India Finance Conference and Elsevier Finance Conference. Her long-term research goal is to streamline the environmental and social responsibilities of businesses along with their financial responsibilities and she is keen to work actively with institutional bodies and industry in this direction.

About the Speaker:

Aswin Kannan is currently a Faculty member and Group Leader at Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin in Germany. He holds a Doctorate from Penn State, US (2014, Advisor: Dr. Uday Shanbhag), a Masters from Univ. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, US (both in Industrial Engineering), and a Bachelors from College of Engineering Guindy (India). Prior to joining Humboldt, he had worked for IBM Research (2015-2021), Oracle Analytics, and Argonne National Labs (in the US and India).

Abstract of the talk:

Globally, most countries have hard and soft commitments to reduce emissions in the next few years. While this is an arduous task in itself, with a decade of experience after the Paris Agreement, it may be noted that hardly any country has succeeded even in reducing emissions since then. Nevertheless, many countries are coming up with detailed plans to net zero pathways. The implications of these on the global and national economies as well as the trade-offs and opportunities offered by such pathways to the poorer countries in the world have not been explored yet in the literature. A related and interesting issue to explore is the impact of such plans on Global Value Chains. We fill this gap in the literature by looking at South East Asia and Africa, in a global multi-country multi-sectoral computable General equilibrium framework.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan serves NITI Aayog - Government of India, as a Non-Resident Fellow, wherein he previously headed the verticals of Trade and Commerce, Strategic Economic Dialogue, International Cooperation and Vision India@2047. Prior to joining the GoI, he has been an economist working to analyse a wide range of economic (mainly international trade), disruptive technology, environmental/energy, labour and public health policies. He has informed the process of decision making in several major economic policies such as free trade agreements, technology regulations, etc., both through his academic research and consulting/advisory projects. Dr. Badri completed his doctoral degree in Economics from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. Since 2015, he has been an affiliate Faculty Member and Senior Economist, _Center for International Trade in Forestry, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences_, University of Washington, Seattle. He is the co-founder of an economics consulting firm, Infinite Sum Modelling.

Abstract of the talk:

Autonomous driving technology stands at the forefront of innovation, promising safer and more efficient transportation systems. Central to its success is the ability to accurately detect and classify objects in real time, particularly in dynamic and unpredictable road environments. However, current CNN architectures, while effective to a degree, exhibit limitations in handling challenges inherent in road object detection, such as occlusions, varying lighting conditions, and complex traffic scenarios. My research endeavored to address some of these limitations by proposing and developing advanced CNN architectures tailored explicitly for both large and small road object detection tasks in autonomous driving scenarios. I aimed to push the boundaries of detection accuracy, robustness, and efficiency through innovative architectural modifications while considering complexity and integrating cutting-edge techniques from computer vision. Building upon the findings of my PhD work, the postdoctoral research work intends to address the identified limitations and advance the state-ofthe-art in autonomous driving object detection. We will conduct an extensive review of the literature to identify gaps and challenges in existing approaches. Drawing insights from recent advancements, we will design and implement novel frameworks optimized for road object detection. This research will focus on some key aspects like improving generalization performance through dataset fusion, exploring the depth information of the images, and addressing energy efficiency considerations. Dissemination of our findings will be a priority, with plans to publish results in top-tier conferences and journals in the fields of computer vision and autonomous driving. By sharing our research outcomes, we aim to contribute to the wider scientific community and facilitate further advancements in autonomous driving technology. In conclusion, my postdoctoral research aims to address key challenges in road object detection for autonomous driving systems by refining existing methodologies and introducing novel approaches. Through extensive validation, we seek to advance the state-of-the-art in autonomous driving technology and contribute to the development of safer and more reliable autonomous vehicles.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Bharat Mahaur received PhD degree in the Computer Science and Engineering Department from MNNIT Allahabad, India in Dec 2023, MTech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from GLA University Mathura, India in 2018, and BTech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from AKTU Lucknow, India in 2016. His areas of interest are deep learning, wireless networks, and autonomous vehicles.

Abstract of the talk:

Purpose – This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and financial performance (FP) in Indian firms.

Design/methodology/approach – Data for CSRD is collected by conducting content analysis of CSRD in annual reports of the sampled firms. A multidimensional measure of CSRD is constructed based on the stakeholder theory, consisting of six stakeholder groups – employees, customers, investors, community, environment and others. The aggregate CSRD measure is created by combining disclosure of the six CSR dimensions. Multiple regression analysis is used to examine the CSRD–FP linkage, controlling for the confounding effects of size, risk, age, industry, ownership and period.

Findings – The results of this study indicate that the aggregate CSRD measures, both for quality and quantity, have a positive association with the accounting measures of firms’ FP. However, the market measure of FP is observed to have a statistically insignificant association with aggregate quality and quantity of CSRD of Indian firms.

Practical implications – The results reveal that adopting transparent and extensive CSRD is relevant for the profitability of firms, and that government interventions are required to promote CSR programs, with a specific focus on the CSR dimensions that provide no apparent financial gains.

Social implications – This study recommends the adoption and reporting of CSR practices by Indian firms for their stakeholders.

Originality/value – This study contributes to the scarce literature on the CSRD–FP linkage in the context of emerging economies by using a more inclusive data set, creating a reliable measure of CSRD applicable to a large universe of firms and including relevant control variables that affect the CSRD–FP relationship.

Keywords: CSR disclosure, Content analysis, Financial performance, Emerging economy

Paper type: Research paper

About the Speaker:

Dr. Aditi Singh is an Assistant Professor at O.P Jindal Global University, India. She has also served as assistant dean of academics and course coordinator of the B. Com Capital Markets Program at Jindal School of Banking and Finance. She holds a PhD in Finance and Accounting from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (India). Her research interests are corporate social reporting, corporate social responsibility, and corporate finance. She holds an MBA from the University of Lucknow.

Abstract of the talk:

Purpose:

This research aims to develop a comprehensive model for prioritizing climate finance interventions in India, focusing on establishing essential infrastructure to support climate finance initiatives. By integrating financial economics and climate finance insights, this research addresses critical constraints in mobilizing resources for climate-compatible projects and offers actionable recommendations for policymakers, investors, and practitioners. The urgent need to confront climate change and develop infrastructure conducive to climate finance in India underscores the significance of this model. This proposal emphasizes the importance of robust institutional frameworks to effectively finance and implement climate-related projects, ensuring the country can effectively mitigate and adapt to climate challenges.

Methods:

This study employs a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods to comprehensively explore challenges and opportunities in mobilizing resources for climate finance in India. Quantitative methods include surveys administered through online platforms and in-person, employing stratified random sampling to ensure representation across diverse demographics. Financial data analysis is conducted using various research tools, such as NVivo and AMOS, examining existing financial flows and investments in climate projects. Qualitative methods involve in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, facilitated by a semistructured interview guide, and case studies selected based on specific criteria. These rigorous research techniques enable a robust examination of the effectiveness of current financial mechanisms and inform the proposed comprehensive model for prioritizing climate finance interventions. Additionally, snowball sampling will complement the sampling strategy by identifying initial participants who meet the study’s criteria and asking them to refer other potential participants, thereby expanding the sample size.

Novelty:

This manuscript contributes novelty by proposing a novel framework integrating financial economics, sustainability, and climate finance. By prioritizing price-based national policies, the model offers a forward-thinking approach to addressing climate change while advancing sustainable development objectives. The emphasis on aligning international climate finance with local priorities and ownership represents a novel contribution to the discourse on climate finance mobilization. Implications: The findings of this study have several implications for policymakers, investors, and practitioners. Firstly, it underscores the need for policymakers to prioritize the development of robust institutional, fiscal, and regulatory frameworks to attract private investment in climateresilient investments. Secondly, the proposed model highlights the importance of aligning international climate finance mechanisms with local priorities and ensuring recipient ownership to maximize the impact of climate finance interventions. Thirdly, the emphasis on price-based national policies suggests the potential for leveraging carbon pricing as a critical instrument for driving climate mitigation efforts and sustainable development.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Pooja Chaturvedi Sharma, an Assistant Professor specializing in Accounting and Finance at Apeejay School of Management, Delhi, boasts over 13 years of academic experience. With a strong background in management (finance), she is dedicated to delivering quality education, mentoring students, and fostering critical thinking. Dr. Pooja has authored 24 research publications and contributed to books on behavioral and sustainable finance. She plays pivotal administrative roles in outcome-based education, alumni relations, event organization, and campus life enrichment. Dr. Pooja contributes actively to the National Education Policy and Accreditation Committees for NBA and NAAC. Actively engaged in national and international conferences, workshops, and faculty development programs, she continuously enhances her research prowess. With a Ph.D. in Finance, she strives to ascend to the associate professorship, driven by her scholarly contributions and educational leadership.

Abstract of the talk:

Stochastic modeling has played a crucial role in supporting scientific and industrial advancement by providing the tools necessary to achieve goals of interest, such as analyzing system performance and making optimal strategic decisions. This proposed work aims to contribute to the revolution of the industrial landscape by integrating Machine Learning (ML) approaches, the Internet of Things (IoTs), and big data analytics, focusing on development aspects that involve performance prediction and optimal parameter selection. This research addresses the complexities of delay service stations where analytical methodology-based techniques encounter difficulties. The study is driven by three objectives: 1) identifying the strengths and needs of training-based predictions and metaheuristics optimization techniques in stochastic delays; 2) enhancing system performance by analyzing equilibrium strategies to understand strategic behavior from a game-theoretic perspective; and 3) collaborating with industrial experts to provide recommendations for enhancing system efficiency, addressing optimization issues, and choosing necessary control policies.

About the Speaker:

Dr Shobha completed her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) from CCS University Meerut, India, in year 2012. Then she pursued Master of Science (M.Sc.) in mathematics from the CCS university Meerut in year 2014.

In 2023, Shobha earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Her doctoral research, titled "Performance Modeling and Analysis of StateDependent Markovian Queues". Research interests are diverse and include Queueing Systems, Optimization Techniques, Machine Learning Algorithms, and Metaheuristic Techniques. She has a good experience with computational tools and programming languages, including MATLAB, Maple, and Python.

Abstract of the talk:

A multi-state weighted K-out-of-n system is of great importance in system engineering due to its generalized nature. Previous studies often assumed that all components of this system were steady in nature, but in reality, the state of components can change over time. To address this, the current study introduces an algorithm based on Lz -transform to determine the reliability of multi-state weighted K-out-of-n systems in a dynamic setting. The system's parts are assumed to follow a Markov process and are repaired only when they completely fail. This study calculates reliability, availability, expected performance at any moment, and performance deficiencies for the system. Finally, a case study of a warship's power system is also used validate the proposed approach.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Vaibhav Bisht is currently working as an Assistant Professor at Chandigarh University, Mohali. Prior to that, he completed his Ph.D. in April 2024 from G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India. His area of research is Reliability Theory. He has published several research articles in international journal of repute. Last year, he was also awarded the Young Scientist Award by Govt. of Uttarakhand at UCOST-2023

Abstract of the talk:

Despite rising global steel production, the share of steel in global exports has dropped to 22%. However, the sector contributes to about 8% of total emissions, leading many major steel-producing countries to implement decarbonization policies.

As a net-steel importer, the EU has taken measures to limit its domestic carbon emissions through stringent commitments. Since international trade of goods contributes to about 27% of global CO2 emissions, the EU intends to control embedded emissions from imported goods. This is proposed through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). However, this mechanism could have negative effects on the growth and trade prospects of developing economies like India, which is a net-steel exporter with a diversified supply chain.

Using a partial equilibrium approach, the present study estimates the export demand and supply responsiveness with changes in product prices. Using these estimates, an estimate of the effect of CBAM on India’s exports of steel products to the EU is made. Applying the GTAP-E-based model, a more detailed analysis is undertaken. The study results indicate that CBAM is likely to have a major impact on India’s steel exports to the EU, causing a fall in India’s steel exports to the EU in the range of 8-14%, which in certain circumstances could go up to 34%.  The paper also gauges if the imposition of CBAM would lead to a significant reduction in carbon emissions and finds that a reduction of 1% in aggregate emissions will occur in the global steel industry.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Poulomi Bhattacharya completed her Ph.D. from Jadavpur University, Kolkata on firm-level issues related to ‘Corruption and Red tape’. Further, she also has teaching experience in the Techno India University, Kolkata for a brief period. Her research interests broadly lie in the intersection of New institutional economics and the Economics of Climate Change, interspersed with financial development issues. She has working knowledge on climate modelling using general equilibrium model and wishes to further her skills on that. She has presented in national and international conferences, has worked with government organisations for projects at ICRIER, and has been involved in several academic knowledge sharing engagements at different forums. She has published in reputed national and international journals. Recently she won the Women Young Scientist Award by Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow for her research contribution.

Abstract of the talk:

We examine the spillover effect of Federal Reserve Board of Governors' speeches on sovereign credit risk and find that the tone of speeches negatively impacts sovereign credit spreads. Speeches that are forward-looking have a stronger impact. Cross-sectionally, the impact is stronger for countries with high external debt and those with high exchange rate stability. We further decompose the sovereign credit spread to examine the impact of speeches on the credit risk premium and find a significant positive impact on it. Our results indicate that while Fed speeches contain important information about economic conditions in the US, they can have a major influence on the perceived creditworthiness of other countries as well.

Keywords Federal Reserve Speeches; Speech Tone; Sovereign Credit Risk; Credit Default SwapsJEL Classification: G12, G14, G18, M41

About the Speaker:

Abhinav Anand is a financial economist and game theorist currently working as faculty in the Finance & Accounting Area at IIM Bangalore. Prior to joining IIMB, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster at University College Dublin; and before that, he did his PhD in economics from SUNY Stony Brook.

Abhinav's research output has appeared in leading international peer reviewed journals such as the Journal of Banking and Finance; Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory; Operations Research Letters; European Financial Management etc. His research interests include banking, corporate finance, mathematical and quantitative finance, game theory and mechanism design among others. Abhinav has also consulted for the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India; DBS Bank Limited; Federal Bank; and the Union Bank of India.

Abstract of the talk:

Prior research examining unethical behaviour within organizations, from the observing employees’ perspective, have primarily concentrated on the observers’ negative emotions and its subsequent effect on their behaviour. In this study, we argue that observers may also feel positive emotion if the observed unethical behaviour has a pro-organizational context, i.e., unethical proorganizational behaviour (UPB). Using the moral foundation theory (MFT), we proposed that individuals would differ in their feeling of positive emotion of admiration as per their loyalty and fairness inclination. Further, we propose that this admiration emotion may subsequently induce the prosocial silence (organization focused and peer focused) among the observers. We have collected two-phased data in vignette-based field surveys from 285 full time employed individuals. We found that observers experienced greater admiration in case of UPB, and admiration was positively related to prosocial silence- organization-focused but not peer focused. The loyalty moral value was found to be moderating the relationship but not the fairness. Our study underlines the potential dark side of admiration emotion and indicates how individual loyalty may protect organizational wrongdoing.

Keywords Unethical pro-organizational behavior, Moral foundation theory, Silence, Admiration.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Vivek Mishra has completed his B.E. in 2010 in Marine engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Then, he joined one of the largest shipping company- Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Japan as a Marine engineer. After approximately 9 years in the shipping industry, he joined IIM Lucknow in 2019 to pursue his Ph.D. in OB&HRM area. His research topic was Unethical proorganizational behavior. He received his Ph.D. degree on 16 March 2024. He has two published articles in ABDC-A category journals; three AOM proceedings and many others articles are in the advanced stages. He has presented his work at many renowned conferences, such as AOM2022 & 2023, Pan-IIM 2023 and INDAM-2023 & 2024. He has also received best paper awards at international conferences at IIM-Lucknow and MDI-Gurgaon. He has joined Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow as Assistant Professor on 29 Feb 2024.

Authors: Subhamoy Ganguly, David J. Robb

Abstract of the talk:

Food Loss and Waste (FLW) is a major problem for humanity, with a third of all food grown for human consumption being wasted. While FLW happens at every stage of the food supply chain, in developed economies, 40% of the wastage happens in households (FAO 2011). The extant literature identifies several factors that drive wastage in households, but scalable interventions to reduce this wastage remain elusive. We contend that the idiosyncratic nature of households’ behaviour in regards purchase, consumption, and wastage makes such interventions difficult, and that an analytical model characterising these behaviours will be helpful for furthering work in this direction. With this goal, we develop an analytical model incorporating factors (parameters) that influence consumption and wastage in households. While our model applies generally to perishable items including dairy products, we focus on Fresh Fruit and Vegetables (FFV) as it constitutes a large fraction of food wasted in households, even as many people consume far less FFV than the amount recommended for a healthy diet. Using numerical experiments for a range of parameter values obtained from the extant literature and from a survey, we identify the parameter combinations that result in larger volumes of wastage. Our findings will be useful for future research focusing on recommendations for reducing wastage and improving intake of FFV in households.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Subhamoy Ganguly is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School.

Subhamoy has a B.E. from Bengal Engineering College (now IIEST, Shibpur), an MBA from Michigan State University, and PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. Before moving to New Zealand, he has been a faculty member at IIM Udaipur and a visiting faculty member at Purdue University. Prior to becoming an academic, he has worked as an information technology analyst and as a supply chain manager.

Subhamoy’s research uses optimisation methods to address problems in operations and supply chains. His current research interest includes understanding and reducing food wastage, particularly in the lower levels of the supply chains – in households and in retail stores.

Abstract of the talk:

In this work, we develop Frank-Wolfe-based first-order algorithms for composite convex optimization problems. More specifically, for problems whose objective involves a logarithmically-homogeneous, self-concordant function. Recently developed first-order methods for this class of problems assume that we can solve linear optimization (sub)problems over the given feasible set exactly. In our work, we relax this assumption and propose a first-order method (a variant of Frank-Wolfe method) for this class of problems. Our method relies on an approximate (rather than exact) solution to the linear optimization (sub)problem. We show that our ‘inexact’ first-order method enjoys a similar convergence guarantee to the ‘exact’ version proposed in the literature, while at the same time allowing more flexibility in solving the linear (sub)problem. In particular, our approach is applicable in both cases: when (sub)problem can be solved approximately up to (1) some prespecified ‘additive’ error, or (2) up to some prespecified ‘relative’ error. Furthermore, we also develop a first-order algorithm that can handle the situation where, with some nonzero probability, the (sub)problem might fail to generate an approximate solution within the prespecified error. The motivation for our ‘inexact’ method comes from large-scale semidefinite programming problems, where solving the (sub)problem exactly is not practical. Finally, we implement our method compare its performance against existing first-order methods, and show that the performance of our method (in terms of the number of iterations required for convergence) is similar to that of existing methods.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Nimita Shinde is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Lehigh University. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral fellow at ICERM, Brown University. She received her Ph.D. in 2023 jointly from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IE&OR) and Monash University (ECSE). She has been awarded the IEOR Alumnus Endowment: Excellence in Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2023, and Institute Silver Medal in 2016 at IIT Bombay. Her research interests include convex optimization, large-scale optimization techniques, semidefinite programming, and data clustering problems including subspace and manifold clustering. She also has about 3 years of industry experience, including experience in developing models and methodologies for classical problems in road transportation.

Abstract of the talk:

Global supply chains are largely driven by container shipping with container seaports being critical nodes in the supply chain network. Container ports are traditionally very capital-intensive thanks to civil infrastructure for mooring ships and heavy machinery used to handle the containers unloading from a ship or loading on it, or being stacked in container yards while awaiting the next move. Labour scarcity has also led to more automated container handling operations in ports. On the other hand, daily operational planning has also become more knowledge intensive to cope with increased variability in demand from shipping lines and shippers (cargo owners), and optimise capacity utilisation. Some of the complexities are peculiar to a major transhipment port like Singapore which could connect well over 300 ships calling regularly every week and exchanging more than 250,000 containers between them! Increasingly, Digitalisation and Environmental Sustainability are 2 critical ingredients to deliver what the customers need from the supply chains -- cost efficiency (just in time) and risk-resilience (just in case). In this context, Data Analytics capability has become very important to generate insights into the behaviour of customers, equipment, labour and planning/control policies and algorithms, and other stakeholders, and thereby uncover wastages which are also opportunities to reduce costs and increase service levels by streamlining processes and improving efficiency. The current wave of AI applications are heavily data intensive and built on the foundations of predictive and prescriptive analytics. The talk aims to introduce the above topics and highlight some of the challenges and opportunities along the way.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Satya graduated from IIT Kanpur in 1991 with a MTech in IME. Previously, he had worked with Eicher Goodearth Limited at Pithampur/Indore (Eicher Motors) and Alwar (Eicher Tractors) for a year in Automotives Quality Control after graduating from IIT Kanpur in 1988 with a BTech in Mech Engg. He received his PhD in Economics from IGIDR Mumbai in 2000 and was a PhD Fellow at United Nations University Tokyo/Institute of Advanced Studies in 1996.

He started work in Singapore in 1998 as Operations Research Consultant and since 2002 has been placed in a similar role with PSA Corporation Limited (www.singaporepsa.com), which is a fully owned subsidiary of the leading global port operator PSA International (www.internationalpsa.com), both of them headquartered in Singapore. He is currently heading the Insights and Analytics function for PSA Singapore and is focussed on container port and adjacent logistics businesses. PSA Group has port operations in India too: Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Tuticorin, and they also provide cargo logistics and trade solutions in India through PSA BDP (www.psabdp.com), which is also a Group company headquartered in Philadelphia (USA).

Abstract of the talk:

The research shed light on maximizing resource efficiency, by creating facilities for a circular economy-based supply chain to handle the massive e-waste generated by solar PV panels in India. Results show that India expects 2.95 million tonnes of waste from EOL solar PV and its BOS beteween 2020 and 2047. This waste is worth 645 billion USD, out of which 70% of the waste (worth 452 billion USD) could be recovered only by recycling while revenue of 779 billion can be generated if we use the concept of the circular economy. Waste generated in 2021 itself is sufficient for running 229 Recycling plants of 1850 tone with a gross profit of 440933$ while with the CE (Recycling, remanufacturing, Reuse) 23 Remanufacturing plants, 149 refurbish plants and 57 recycling plants can be run with profit gross profit of 58779$. This study address CE by expanding the conventional forward and reverse supply chain analysis to CSC design and providing the policy modifications for better implications of the CE. The study can be a database for future researchers to explore the area. Proposed CEBM can help stakeholders to understand and apply circular economy for EOL solar PV and other e-waste in developing countries by modifying the current policies of EPR and PRO

About the Speaker:

Dr. Ayush Gautam was a fulltime research scholar at Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Presently, he is working as Analytics and Modeling Specialist at Accenture. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He earned his MTech from CTRANS, IIT Roorkee. His areas of interest include supply chain management, circular economy and sustainable transportation. Currently, he is working in the area of modeling circular supply chain business model for waste management. Ayush was selected for prestigious Newton Bhabha PhD fund by British council, he visited Loughborough University, UK for four months as Visiting Scholar during his PhD.

Abstract of the talk:

Seller and product authentication problems are inherent in online markets, particularly in the time-constrained setting of online auctions. While trust-building mechanisms such as seller feedback can mitigate these problems, they are retrospective, providing information about a transaction only after it is completed. Also, they have only _indirect effects_ on buyers' trust in sellers because they are not based on direct interactions between a trustor (buyer) and a trustee (seller). On the other hand, direct engagement between transacting parties during an online auction, particularly open and public engagement, reduce information asymmetry between buyers and sellers and has a _direct effect_ on buyers' trust. In this paper, we analyze how public buyer-seller engagement via Q&A (question and answer) during online auctions impacts bidding behavior. Analyzing auction data from a large auction platform that supports public Q&A between buyers and sellers, we show that the seller's engagement with buyers during an auction can significantly impact the behavior of both buyers who ask questions as well as lurkers who passively observe the engagement (spillover effect). Our analysis also shows that the impact of the seller's engagement depends on features such as product type and seller reputation. A key insight from our study is that the impact of seller engagement on bidding behavior is moderated by seller feedback ratings, which indicates that trust-building mechanisms in online markets interact in their effects on buyers' decision-making. As sellers gain positive (negative) feedback, the impact of buyer-seller engagement on bidding behavior increases (decreases); furthermore, the cost of an additional negative feedback rating outweighs the benefit of a positive one. Overall, this study provides valuable insights for online auction platforms and their stakeholders.

About the Speaker:

Arvind Tripathi is an Associate Professor of Analytics and Information Systems at the University of Kansas. He received his PhD in Management of Information Systems from the University of Connecticut. His research interests are in digital markets, online communities, open innovation, and social media. He has served/or serving on editorial boards of ISR, POMS, MISQ, etc., and has published in top-tier academic journals such as Management Information Systems Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Production and Operations Management Journal, Journal of Retailing, Research Policy, and European Journal of Operations Research, among others.

Abstract of the talk:

In recent years, researchers have considered green entrepreneurship critical for creating new business opportunities in circular economy for sustainable development. Though many studies have been carried out in this domain recently, there are dearth of studies on how enablers of green entrepreneurship help businesses and progress toward achieving a circular economy. To fill this research gap, this study aims to identify the enablers of green entrepreneurship in the circular economy in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) of the manufacturing sector. The aim also includes prioritizing and developing a contextual and hierarchical relationship between the identified enablers. Enablers are identified via a comprehensive literature review under the purview of management theories (namely “Dynamic Capability Theory,” “Critical Success Factor Theory,” and “Stakeholder Theory”) and are validated by expert opinions. The “Best Worst Method” (BWM) and the “Interpretive Structural Modelling” (ISM) have been used to prioritize and develop a hierarchical contextual relationship among the identified enablers respectively. Moreover, “fuzzy Matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment” (MICMAC) analysis is employed, to compute the driving and dependence power of the enablers. The obtained result revealed that “technology-based enablers” and “effective technological infrastructure facilities” are the key enablers of green entrepreneurship under main and sub-category enablers. The findings highlight the strength of the relationship among the enablers of green entrepreneurship based on the corresponding “driving” and “dependence” power. The result also suggests that ‘social norm and culture’, ‘an attitude towards acceptance of new technology,’ ‘R&D innovation capability,’ and ‘environmental regulation and waste management policies are critical in influencing the driving green entrepreneurship enablers of the circular economy. The study contributes to the decision-making process of government, policymakers, and all other stakeholders and also acts as a point of reference for entrepreneurs to run green-driven business practices and create sustainabilitydriven goods to offset the socio-economic and environmental challenges that mankind faces.

About the Speaker:

Sourav Mondal is a Ph.D. scholar in Management Studies & Industrial Engineering at IIT Dhanbad. His research focuses on Circular Economy, Digital Entrepreneurship, and Sustainable Development. With a background in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from NIT Durgapur, he brings a diverse skill set. Sourav has published in reputable journals, presented at international conferences, and contributed to a book chapter. He published various papers in international journals of repute like the Journal of Cleaner Production, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Environment, Development, and Sustainability, and Global Business Review. His expertise extends to teaching areas like Green Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management. As a reviewer for various journals, including Business Strategy and the Environment, he actively contributes to the academic community.

Abstract of the talk:

In this research, the aim was to study the impact of team sponsorships on IPL viewers' purchase intention and word of mouth related to the sponsor. Specifically, a conceptual model linking attachment points, team identification, event-sponsor fit, attitude towards the team sponsors, and behavioral intentions concerning the team sponsors in the context of the Indian Premier League (IPL) was tested and validated. The moderating effects of age and gender were also examined. A quantitative approach was employed, and data was collected through a questionnaire-based survey method. Existing scales available in the literature were used to design the survey instrument. Non-probability sampling, particularly the convenience sampling (snowball sampling) technique, was used to collect data from 1,053 participants through online and offline surveys. Data analysis included exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that attachment points influenced team identification formation, which, in turn, affected attitudes towards the team sponsors. Notably, player attachment had the most significant impact on team identification. Age and gender were found to have a moderating effect on the study's constructs. Team identification was stronger among females due to their attachment to sports, whereas males exhibited stronger team identification based on player attachment. In terms of age, the 21-30 age group had a stronger attitude towards sponsors based on the perceived degree of fit between the event and the team sponsors. The younger age group (under 21 years) demonstrated a greater intention to spread positive word of mouth compared to other age groups considered in the study.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Giridhar B. Kamath is an Associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Management, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, Karnataka. He holds a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering, a Master's in Engineering Management, an MBA in Marketing, and a PhD in Marketing. He has 3 years of industrial experience and over 11 years of teaching experience. He has a strong interest in exploring interdisciplinary research opportunities. His current areas of research interest are consumer behavior, sports marketing, and sustainable tourism, and has nearly 30 journal publications in various Scopus-indexed, Web of Science, and ABDC-indexed journals. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Travel Research, and the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Abstract of the talk:

Pricing is the single most critical management function that generates profitability and revenue for the firms. In the era of global competition, determining price is not a one-time decision, due to the dynamic nature and size of the business market, which are growing at an exponential rate and creating intense market rivalry and tremendous pricing pressure among firms, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) functioning in developing nations with an unstable and unpredictable market environment and a lack of pricing transparency. In such conditions, the notion “pricing capability” enters into the picture, and has increasingly piqued the interest of practitioners and researchers alike in the industrial pricing domain. Nevertheless, a thorough examination of pricing capability literature has discovered some potential and substantial research gaps, including a shortage of contextual emphasis and a limited number of antecedents and consequences, all of which demand further attention from academics.

To address the aforesaid research gaps, the present study draws on theoretical rationale of organizational learning and resource-based view for identifying market-focused learning and firm innovativeness as potential antecedents of pricing capability, whereas pricing value and business performance are consequences. The composite data collection technique, including online-email and onsite-paper based questionnaire surveys, was employed and obtained 384 valid responses from the Indian SMEs functioning in service and manufacturing industries. The collected data was statistically tested with the help of partial least square structural equation modeling technique, viz., measurement model and structural model.

The research findings indicate that market-focused learning and firm innovativeness have a substantial and direct effect on pricing capability, which in turn positively affects both pricing value and business performance. Moreover, pricing value acts as a partial mediating effect on the relationship between pricing capability and business performance. From the theoretical perspective, it adds to the pricing capability literature by showing that market-focused learning and firm innovativeness contribute substantially to the development of pricing capability. From the practical perspective, SME managers need to understand the relevance of pricing capability development in delivering superior pricing value to their clients and achieving greater business performance.

About the Speaker:

Piyush Ranjan is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at XLRI - Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur. As an Assistant Professor of Marketing, he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to his role, providing valuable insights to students and colleagues alike.

Having completed his Doctoral Degree in Marketing Specialization at the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India, Dr. Ranjan has demonstrated a profound understanding of contemporary marketing theories and practices. His research interests primarily revolve around the dynamics of SMEs, price decision-making processes, and the impact of pricing capability on SME business performance, making him a thought leader in the ever-evolving landscape of business marketing.

His research work has been published in the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing and Australasian Marketing Journal. He also reviews articles in reputed journals like the Journal of Strategic Marketing, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Management Decision, and Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.

Committed to fostering a stimulating learning environment, Dr. Ranjan is deeply invested in mentoring and guiding aspiring marketing professionals, encouraging them to think critically and creatively in the ever-changing realm of marketing. With his passion for research and teaching, Dr. Piyush Ranjan continues to make a significant contribution to the academic and professional landscape of marketing.

Abstract of the talk:

This study aims to test the relationship between repurchase intention and its influencing factors by applying a meta-analysis approach. Also, the moderating effect of culture on the relationship between repurchase intention and its influencing factors is examined. The relationship between repurchase intention and its influencing factors is identified using a systematic literature review. A total of 41 closely related empirical studies are employed to produce combined effects. From the results, trust, perceived shopping value, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, convenience and e-service quality are found the major influencing factors of online repurchase intention. Except for the perceived risk, all hypotheses have shown a significant positive relationship with repurchase intention. Further, the study presents a moderating effect of culture between the relations of repurchase intention with three influencing factors, i.e. trust, perceived shopping value and perceived usefulness.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Ajay Kumar is Assistant Professor in the Marketing area with a passion for research and teaching. Currently, He is associated with Sharda University, Greater Noida. He did his Ph.D. in Business Management (Marketing) from the Department of Business Studies, Dr. Harisingh Gaur Vishwavidyalaya, Sagar (A Central University). Dr. Kumar published 11 research papers in high repute journals (ABDC & Scopus) and presented papers in various national and international conferences. His area of research interests includes marketing, consumer behaviour, online shopping. He is a guest reviewer of several journals; Emerald, Sage, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis. He has worked as a Research Assistant on a research project titled "Assessing the User Satisfaction of NPTEL and Extricating Policy Implications for E-Learning in India" funded by the IMPRESS scheme sanctioned by MHRD.

Abstract of the talk:

This study aims to investigate the relationship between oil prices and stock returns of renewable energy firms in India under different market conditions. The authors use the panel quantile framework with Fama–French– Carhart’s (1997) four-factor asset pricing model. All renewable energy firms listed in the National Stock Exchange of India are considered in this study. The West Texas Intermediate spot price is used in the regression. The analysis is done for the whole sample and its subgroups. This study finds that the relationship between oil price and stock returns of the renewable energy sector firms is significant and positive. This relationship is stronger in the bearish market conditions. The contribution of the study is explained as follows. First, this study helps to explore the relationship between oil and stock returns of the renewable energy sector under different market conditions in the Indian context. Second, existing studies explore the effect of oil prices on stock returns of the renewable energy sector at the industry level, and most of the studies are in developed countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the context of India. Third, this is a firm-level study.

About the Speaker:

Latatendu Mishra is a research scholar (submitted thesis and is waiting for viva-voce) at the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management (SHSSM) of the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal in the area of finance and accounting. He qualified the UGC NET assistant professor examination in 2012. He has both extensive academic and industry experiences. He has two publications in the peer reviewed journals indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and ABDC (International Journal of Energy Sector Management and OPEC Energy Review). He also served as a reviewer for the Financial Innovation Journal.

About the Speaker:

Dr Mohit Kumar have earned his PhD in the area of marketing focused on organizational learning and knowledge management in delivering customer satisfaction. Apart from that he has done MBA and has qualified NET eligibility test for Assistant professorship. He has experience of more than 7 years (pre and post PhD total) in academics as an Asst. Professor in a PG College located at Prayagraj itself. Some published research works of his are categorized in journal of high repute (ABDC & SSCI) like Journal of Knowledge management, Journal of business and industrial marketing, South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, etc. that shows his exposure to business research and academic research.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

In food supply chains (FSCs), sustainability is much more challenging. The most considerable difficulty humankind will confront is how to feed a population of 10 billion people sustainably by 2050. Nearly one-third of the globe's total food production is currently lost or wasted. About 70% of all wasted food consists of perishable food products. Wastage of these foods results in the loss of a tremendous quantity of natural resources, which accounts for a significant percentage of the resources that could be used for the food products' manufacture, distribution, and marketing. The sustainability of the perishable food supply chain presents a significant obstacle in India. This country accounts for approximately 17% of the global population, nearly half of whom are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. The agricultural economy is under severe strain, employing half of the population and generating substantial waste, contributing to a lag in accomplishing the aspects of the triple bottom line (TBL). However, there is potential for improvement concerning TBL sustainability in the realm of perishable food supply chains in India. Thus, determining the significant obstacles to perishable food supply chain sustainability would be the main focus of the proposed study.

About the Speaker:

He has recently completed his Ph.D. in management area at Aligarh Muslim University. Before his Ph.D., he did his MBA and B.Tech. from AMU, Aligarh, and JNTU, Hyderabad, respectively. During his doctoral programme, he has published four research papers in reputed ABDC-listed journals (3 papers in the B-category and 1 in the A-category). He could also present six research papers at both international and national conferences. His current research focuses on achieving sustainability in the perishable food supply chain.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: Fuzzy Predictive Modeling for the Hierarchical Structure of Strategic Innovation Management.
Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) constructs a hierarchical structure with interpretations of nodes and interrelationship links. While TISM performs qualitative research when conceptual modeling is preferred, it lacks quantitative capabilities at present. Conducting a quantitative study on TISM is difficult, especially when the model elements are qualitative. TISM enables the development of a predictive model based on fuzzy set theory. The proposed methodology benefits from using surrogate variables to quantify qualitative variables and fuzzy set theory to simulate the hierarchical model. The proposed method is exercised to conduct a simulation-based study on the existing hierarchical model of strategic innovation to generate multiple scenarios. Additionally, through simulation and scenario building, relevant decisions can be made to enhance productivity and performance in particular functional areas. In this article, multiple scenarios generated by the simulation provide a comprehensive view of the system's behavior in new ventures, which aids in the multicriteria decision-making process.

About the Speaker:

Dr K Dinesh has a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Dr K Dinesh’s research focuses on strategic innovation, current and emerging issues in strategic management, systems thinking, system dynamics, technology management, and entrepreneurship. From a research methods point of view, his research interests also extend to interpretive research methods. His work has been published in journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Journal for Global Business Advancement, and Journal for Internal Business and Entrepreneurship Development. His research has been well-received by peers and cited in several other studies. Apart from publications, he is also a peer reviewer for the Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Technology in Society, Scandinavian Journal of Management, International Journal of Global Business and Competitiveness, and the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. He has substantial research experience in international project work besides doctoral work. For the project “COVID-19 Vaccination Roll Out” by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), he has experience in handling research tasks and publishing papers out of studies from project work. One of his recent studies from the project on COVID-19 has been published in the journal Vaccines.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: AUTOREGRESSIVE CONDITIONAL DYNAMIC SEMIVARIANCE MODELS WITH VALUE-AT-RISK ESTIMATES
A variant of the autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (ARCH) process called as autoregressive conditional dynamic semivariance process (ARCDS) that closely relates to semivariance in the residuals is introduced in the volatility formulation. As in ARCH formulation, the conditional volatility varies over time. The conditions for stationarity and regularity for the ARCDS process and the information matrix for the process are derived. To test whether the disturbances follow the ARCDS process, the Lagrangian multiplier test is adopted, where the squared ordinary least square residuals are regressed on the squares of the minimum of the past residuals and zero. A second model employs the peaks over the threshold (POT) approach. The Hill estimators are used to estimate the parameters and the threshold is computed based on the mean excess function. The model is used to forecast mean, volatility and value-at-risk (VaR) in the returns of the equity growth funds in India during November 2012 to December 2021. With an exception, the model provides superior 90% in-sample and out-samples forecasts. Combination of the ARCDS process with POT approach provides superior VaR forecasts in comparison to normal distribution across various significance levels.

About the Speaker:

Sree Vinutha V completed Ph.D from IIT Bombay and taught at IIT Kharagpur, Great Lakes Institute of Management and IIM Rohtak. Prior to joining IIT Bombay, she worked in the Analytics division of GE and subsequently pursued Financial Risk Management from IIM Bangalore. Her graduation was in Mathematics and post graduation was in Management. Her current areas of interest include Financial Econometrics, Financial Management, Econometrics and Investment Analysis. She has also presented papers in the conference organized by the International Finance and Banking Society in UK in association with the University of Cambridge, University of Warwick and University of Leicester and has published in risk management, the journal of quantitative economics, international journal of finance and economics. She is currently working with Mphasis on optimization.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: Deregulating labour laws in Rajasthan: A boon or a bane?
The existing theoretical and empirical understandings of the association between labour market institutions and economic outcomes are ambiguous. Against this background, we analyse the impact of deregulations in labour laws on the employment and performance of establishments. After several years, in 2014, the Indian state of Rajasthan deregulated the labour laws in four major Acts, namely, Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Factories Act (1948), the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970), and the Apprentices Act (1961). We exploit this unique quasi-natural experiment and apply a difference-in-difference framework using the longitudinal data of organised manufacturing establishments in India to analyse the impact of the reforms. We find the deregulations in the labour laws to cause a decline in labour. The decline is disproportionate for directly employed permanent workers, whereas the use of contractual workers increased, indicating a deterioration in both quantity and quality of employment. The reforms positively impacted capital, gross value added, and emoluments but reduced inputs, productivity, and profits. The efficacy of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and reform structures. The evidence-based assessment of the labour reforms holds several critical policy implications.

About the Speaker:

Diti Goswami is working as an assistant professor (on contract) in Economics and Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak. She completed her Ph.D. on July 2022 from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Prior to joining IIM Rohtak, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and as a research fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University. Her research has been published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals like the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, International Journal of Manpower, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. Her work has been presented at many international conferences and has also served as a reviewer for some reputed journals.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Topic: Driving Electric Vehicles Into the Future With Battery Management Systems
Electric vehicles are poised to replace diesel and gasoline-based vehicles all over the developing world. The benefits are many, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reducing overall design complexity leading to lower repair costs. One central area of investigation in this regard is battery’s efficient operation. Estimating the battery's health is essential in successfully adapting electric vehicles. Two critical parameters of interest in the battery management system are the state of charge (SOC) and a cell's state of health (SOH). The state of charge depicts the battery capacity percentage. It informs the end user about the remaining performance in the current cycle. The state of health suggests the battery’s remaining life before it must be replaced. This research work proposes a simulation model approach to understand a Lithium-ion battery’s dynamic behavior. The model precisely describes the behavior of the lithium-ion battery, with high concordance between simulation results and reality. Further, a prediction-based model is introduced with the help of crucial battery parameters. The data synthesis, eventually estimates possible failures and life of the battery. In the next step, it has been observed that the data has been created through a simulation model only; this demands an application to real battery system. Hence, we endeavor to develop an accurate physical model and collect real-time data when it moves on different roads. A product prototype has been developed to verify and validate the results obtained for battery’s performance. The work then presents comparison results and identifies avenues for future work.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Shikha Singh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Studies & Industrial Engineering at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India. She holds her Ph.D. degree from IIT, Kanpur and B.Tech. degree from IIT (BHU), Varanasi. Prior to joining IIT Dhanbad, she worked as a visiting faculty in IIM, Amritsar. Before starting her academic journey, she has worked with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, India, for over a decade and has hands-on experience in international and national aerospace projects. Her research interest lies in Industry 4.0 technology management, Product Lifecycle Management, product development, Product data management and other allied domains. During her academic journey she has published her research works in esteemed journals such as IJPR, IJPE, IEEE TEM, BPMJ, IJQRM etc. She is a senior member of IEEE and recognized as a certified PMP professional.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Topic: An analysis of privacy policies of public health and disaster management apps
Governments around the world are utilizing their digital ecosystems for public health and disaster management. To increase awareness among the beneficiaries about privacy risks, they must proactively publish the data handling practices for their digital initiatives through appropriate privacy policies. This study analyzes the privacy policies of public mobile applications (apps) introduced to provide public health and disaster management support during the recent pandemic in India. We found a total of 63 such government initiated apps in India out of which 38% were found to have an app-specific privacy policy. These policies were analyzed further to assess their coverage of key data protection principles, such as "Purpose," "Data Categories," and "Data Retention," derived from legal requirements. We also analyzed the extent of the specificity of policies with a high coverage. In India, only one national-level app stood out to have both considerable coverage of key principles as well as a high level of specificity. Other apps fail to display the desired levels of coverage and/or specificity. The broader policy recommendations of this study are that the government should better address privacy concerns regarding its existing and future public health and disaster management apps as well as its other digital initiatives by (a) establishing and enforcing a comprehensive legislative framework for data protection and (b) increasing privacy awareness among the beneficiaries.

About the Speaker:

Sourya Joyee De is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems area at IIM Raipur since 2019. She is a Fellow of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (PhD). Prior to joining IIM Raipur, she held research positions at Inria, France from 2015 to 2019. Her research has been funded by French ANR project BIOPRIV, Cisco San Jose, USA and Samsung GRO Grant. Sourya was also a Visiting Scientist at Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata, India. Her research interests include data protection, privacy, and security. She has published in various reputed journals and conferences. She has also published two books with Morgan & Claypool Publishers, USA. Sourya teaches various courses to MBA, executive MBA, Senior Management Programme, and General Management Programme batches at IIM Raipur.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: A minimum buyback requirement in open market repurchases: Impact on the signalling role
The paper investigates the impact of the imposition of a minimum buyback requirement on open market repurchases in India. We find that the regulatory change has led to a significant increase in the abnormal stock returns earned around buyback announcements. There is lower market timing through buyback execution, accompanied by a change in the execution-style, implying a weaker instinct for opportunistic buybacks. Insiders increase their purchase of firms' stock as against increased selling before the regulatory reform, during the buyback execution period. These findings suggest that the regulation has strengthened the information role of open market buybacks. Furthermore, implying a significant decline in the option value associated with open market buybacks after the regulatory change, we also document an increase in the propensity of firms with lower stock liquidity to buyback through fixed price tenders. Our findings suggest that the regulatory change has lowered the ``cheap talk'' motives associated with the announcement of open market buybacks.

About the Speaker:

Pranjal Srivastava is a Ph.D. (2023) in Finance and Accounting from IIM Ahmedabad. His research interests lie in the areas of corporate finance and empirical research and techniques in derivatives. The two areas also make up his Ph.D. dissertation titled “The role of information in financial markets”. His co-authored papers have appeared in Quantitative Finance and International Review of Finance. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program, he worked at Ford Motor Private Limited as a Senior Analyst and at Bank of India as a Finance Executive, where he underwrote MSME credit proposals. He is an MBA from DoMS IIT Roorkee (2012) and a B. Tech. from VIT Vellore (2010).

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: Milk Adulteration Testing and Impact of Farmers Efficiency Heterogeneity: A Strategic Analysis
Milk adulteration is a major concern as it poses serious hazards to public health. Driven by economic motives, dairy farmers adulterate milk to increase its perceived quality. The risk of milk adulteration is higher in developing countries due to less stringent monitoring. We analyze a milk supply chain where smallholder dairy farmers can adulterate milk and explore the feasibility of them selling milk to end consumers either through an aggregator or directly. Our modeling framework examines the impact of two testing strategies offered by the aggregator to curb adulteration - (i) individual (testing milk procured from each farmer individually) and (ii) composite (testing the milk after aggregating the portions procured from all the farmers) testing. Using a non-cooperative sequential game between the aggregator and farmers, we compare the outcomes of these testing strategies with the benchmark case, where the farmers sell milk directly to the consumers. We identify conditions under which it is profitable for the farmers to sell milk to the aggregator. Our analyses reveal that the aggregator can judiciously use testing and penalty mechanism to control milk adulteration done by the farmers. We find that a higher market price (aggregation effect), fetched by the aggregator because of its bargaining power owing to the consolidation of milk supplies, is essential for its operation. It leads to higher revenue for the aggregator and expands the zone in which it is profitable for the aggregator to operate. However, our results show that the efficiency heterogeneity among the farmers which leads to the lesser efficient farmers free-riding on the more efficient ones has a detrimental effect on the aggregator operation also. It is not profitable for the aggregator to operate at higher efficiency variability, which leads to a reduction in the zone of operation. We also explore the impact of external uncertainties on the supply chain and observe that as the external uncertainties increase, the composite testing strategy becomes more profitable for the aggregator. Our results provide important policy recommendations for aggregators adopting optimal testing strategies.

About the Speaker:

Samir Biswas is a Ph.D. scholar in Operations Management at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He recently submitted his dissertation, Essays on Improving Quality in Agricultural Supply Chain. His research interest also includes logistics and transportation. He presented research articles at various international conferences, such as POMS, IFORS and NACRA. He published teaching cases in Ivey Publishing, Emerald Emerging Market Case Studies. He received Paul R Lawrence Fellowship from Case Research Foundation. Samir completed B.E. and M.E. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He received multiple scholarships and gold medals throughout his academic career. He worked as an Assistant Professor at Jadavpur University for six years. He qualified Engineering Services Examination conducted by UPSC and worked for Indian Railways for three years.

Title of the workshop: Workshop on Research Writing and Publication
This workshop is an introduction to the essential elements of crafting research papers for publication in reputed peer-reviewed international journals. The focus will be on empirical research papers. Some of the questions that the module will address include:

• What is the process involved in publishing research papers?

• What do we understand by theory? What is the role of theory in empirical research?

• How to construct a “story” for your research manuscript?

• How does the peer review process work in reputed journals? What are the appropriate ways to respond to peer review reports?

• What are the major ethical concerns in the process of publishing research?

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: Cutting Planes for Capacitated Multi-Pickup and Delivery Problems with Time Windows
The Pick-up and Delivery problems (PDP) are contemporary extensions of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP), which have been an intense research area in logistics. With the emergence of e-commerce, the PDP has been extended to handle multiple vehicle and multiple pick-ups against each delivery along with Time Windows (TW), termed as Multi Pick Up and Delivery problem with Time Windows (MPDPTW). MPDPTW finds practical usage in the ecommerce industry in general and the food industry in particular. The goal is to model the capacitated MPDPTW, proposing an improved two-index formulation and development of dedicated valid inequalities for enhanced solution performance. The cutting plane method is used widely and effectively to solve otherwise difficult Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problems, by introducing the violated valid inequalities at the root node as cuts. The cuts essentially improve the lower bounds of the problem. The strength and effectiveness of such cuts depends largely on the amount of search space that is pruned after they are incorporated. The identification (separation) of these cuts is a critical step/ process and is termed as separation procedure. The cuts corresponding to different families of valid inequalities are introduced, as additional problem constraints, by identifying the violated valid inequalities in the current fractional (LP relaxation) solution, using separation heuristics. We then solve the problem using a cutting plane method. Well-known existing valid inequalities are used and their lifting (to strengthen them) is proposed, wherever applicable. Sub-tour breaking constraints are used to prevent sub-tours among any given set of nodes not containing the depot node. Infeasible path cuts are used to prevent formation of any path among a given set of nodes, which is infeasible. Infeasible paths like drop path, pick up path, drop to pick up path are considered. Fork cuts, which considers a group of infeasible paths comprising of common arcs, are also used. Their strengthening is also proposed. k-partition (flow-based) cuts are used to assign vehicles based on the net demand among the given partition of node sets. We consider only two-partitions. Further, novel valid inequalities viz. Incompatible requests sets’ based valid inequalities (IRS) and Minimum Vehicle required cuts are also proposed. The IRS cuts prevent the assignment of a given set of requests (corresponding pickup and delivery nodes) by a common vehicle, if the said set is incompatible. We introduce node and request based sub-families for these cuts, based on the way the propagation of the connection among the set of requests is considered. Minimum Vehicle required cuts ensure that the total time taken by any vehicle to serve all requests assigned to it, starting and coming back to the starting node, cannot exceed the available time window at the depot node. The lifting (strengthening) of these inequalities, wherever applicable, considering precedence relationships, along with the elaborate separation procedures, are also proposed. Solution performance improvements with respect to the related works in the literature and formulations used therein is reported. Up to 38% more Instances solved to optimality, up to 34% improvement in the Root Gap, up to 40% improvement in the Final Gap and up to 18% Solution Time illustrate that the cuts introduced significantly improve the solution performance.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Amit Kohar is an AGM at Food Corporation of India (FCI), Asia’s largest food grain supply chain. He has over 16 years of diverse professional experience, from multinational companies (GE: aircraft engine design, ALSTOM: steam turbine design), Indian Conglomerate (Essar: business development) to Public Sector Enterprise (FCI) and a strong academic background, with Masters in Mechanical Engineering (2004) from IIT Kharagpur, PGP (2010; Exchange student CBS, Denmark, 2009) and PhD (2022) from IIM Lucknow. He developed a pan-India movement planning tool and received the Digital India award (2020) from Hon’ble President of India for various e-Governance initiatives at FCI. In his Doctoral thesis, he worked on improvement of solution technique (novel valid inequalities) for Multi pickup and delivery problems with time windows (MPDPTW).

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Title: Development of fuzzy based ergonomic-value stream mapping (E-VSM) tool: a case study in Indian glass artware industry
In a competitive working environment, conscious workers and stringent labour regulations have forced Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to focus on operational performance along with workers’ performance and their health issues. Evidence from literature uncovered that lean implementation in the manufacturing industry worsens the workers’ health and safety due to the lack of consideration of social aspects. This ignorance has forced SMEs to focus on considering social aspects along with economic and environmental aspects for improving their workers’ health and safety. Therefore, this study aims to develop a tool that integrates lean and ergonomics to improve the workers’ health and safety, along with operational performance. Hence, Human Factors and Ergonomic (HFE) indicators were incorporated into the VSM tool under a fuzzy environment. The Fuzzy-based Ergonomic-Value Stream Mapping (E-VSM) tool identifies the area of scope for ergonomic and managerial interventions at the workplace and evaluates the HFE indicators with lean indicators. This integrated tool helps management to improve the Workers’ health and safety and enhance operational performance synergistically.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Bhawana Rathore is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Operations Management area at Institute of Management Technology, Hyderabad. She obtained her Bachelor of Technology degree (B.Tech.) in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and she completed Master of Technology (M.Tech.) degree in Industrial Engineering from VNIT Nagpur in 2014. After completing the M.Tech. degree, she worked as an Assistant Professor at GLA University for three years. Further, she received her Ph.D. degree from National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai in the area of Operations and Supply Chain Management in 2021. In her thesis, she has examined the operational performance and worker’s performance of Indian Glass Artware industry through lean and ergonomics tools. During her Ph.D., she has published several research papers in reputed ABDC and ABS listed journals and few research articles are in the minor revision stage. Moreover, she has also won two international prestige awards during her Ph.D. First, she secured II prize globally in INFORMS mini-poster competition- 2020 with the certificate and Cash prize and second, she won Dieter W. Jahns Student Practitioner Award-2021 by Foundation for Professional Ergonomics with an acrylic award and Cash prize. Her research interest is focussed on work system design, lean, supply chain risk, and application of multi-criteria decision-making techniques.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Rotavirus is an infectious disease that affects millions of children every year in developing and developed nations. According to the world health organization estimates of 2013, approximately 0.2 million children under five years died of rotavirus globally, of which 22% of children were from India. We study the rotavirus vaccine supply chain (VSC) of child immunization program, India with universal immunization program (UIP) as purchaser and Rotavac (one of the four types of rotavirus vaccine) producer as the supplier. We examine the traditional wholesale price (WSP) contract for the existing procurement practice of UIP and indicate that it cannot coordinate the VSC. To achieve channel coordination, we propose a subsidy contract. Additionally, we model the existing contract using demand and supply uncertainty and offer the following contributions to the existing literature. First, we propose a hybrid pay-buy-back contract to achieve channel coordination when the supplier's production cost is known to UIP. Second, we develop an optimum menu of contract parameters with hybrid pay-buy-back contract where the government has demand uncertainty, the supplier possesses private information about its production cost (adverse selection), and an unverifiable production quantity (moral hazard) owing to random yield. We validate our findings with a case study reference in a real field setting. Our findings will be beneficial to the policymakers of UIP India and other nations' child immunization programs to optimize rotavirus VSC performance.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Dheeraj Chandra is an Assistant Professor at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, Delhi. He has about 4 years of experience in research and teaching and about 2 years of experience in industry. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Industrial and Management Engineering Department, IIT Kanpur for about 2.3 years. He holds a Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from IIT Roorkee, M. Tech. in Industrial Engineering from IIT Delhi, and B. Tech. in Production Engineering from G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. His research interests include supply chain contracts, healthcare operations, optimization in operations management, multi-criteria decision-making. He has published research papers in international journals of repute such as Omega, Vaccine, Expert Review of Vaccines. His paper published in Omega is among the Top 25 cited articles of 2021. His pipeline papers are also under review in Operations Research (FT50) and Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review (A*). He has peer reviewed about 27 research papers for various international journals like Production Planning & Control, Sustainability, International Journal of Emerging Markets, etc.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

This workshop will lay the conceptual and empirical foundation for social network analysis (SNA). The sessions will cover topics generally about drawing insights from network data. The main topics of the workshop will be data collection, network representation, summaries of networks such as density, centrality measures, and clustering. It will also cover introductory session on Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM). Drawing on the rich multidisciplinary history of network science the workshop will incorporate perspectives from social science, physics, and sports analytics. Finally, the instructor will demonstrate the empirical applications of SNA using Python and R programming languages.

About the Speaker:

Satyam Mukherjee is an Associate Professor at the School of Management and Entrepreneurship, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Greater Noida, India. His research interests include network science, data analytics, open digital innovation, and sports analytics. His works have been published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), IISE Transactions, Nature Human Behavior, Nature Scientific Reports, Interface, and Physical Review E, and featured in The Economist, Times of India, and Wall Street Journal.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

It is very common in survey research to collect data on multi-item scales or constructs with Likert or categorical response options. Low quality data (LQD) in such samples has been a well discussed issue but is gaining further traction due to the rise in online data collection. Low quality data can be defined as those responses where the respondents have not put in sufficient thought and effort into responding. This leads to the responses not reflecting their true position on the construct being measured. Consequently, there has been a surge in literature on methods for identifying LQD, however, there is a lack of comprehensive study assessing the impact of LQD on psychometric properties of scale. In this study, we provide an overview of LQD and its extent and impact on psychometric properties of scale such as dimensionality, reliability, convergence of factor model, model fit indices, and the correlation between factors. Results of a simulation study will be provided in brief.

About the Speaker:

Nivedita Bhaktha is a senior researcher at GESIS, a Leibniz institute for the social sciences in Germany. Prior to this, she worked as the research lead of the Centre for Science of Student Learning, in New Delhi. She completed her Ph.D. in quantitative research, evaluation, and measurement from the Ohio State University in 2018. She has had extensive training in both theoretical and applied statistics. Her main research interests are in psychometrics, generalized linear models, and research methods. She has also provided statistical consultation to intra-governmental organizations such as OECD and World bank. Nivedita enjoys teaching statistics and conducting workshops on software implementation of quantitative methods.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

In this seminar, discussion related to a ranking approach called weighted aggregation of sum product assessment (WASPAS) is presented. At first, some basics of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) are presented along with discussion on classical WASPAS approach. Later, the limitations of the classical WASPAS are pointed out and a modified formulation of WAPAS is put forward to tackle the limitations. Numerical example to understand the difference in the working of both the WASPAS formulations is provided. Finally, simulated experiment results are shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the developed ranking algorithm.

About the Speaker:

Dr. R. Krishankumar is currently serving as an Assistant Professor in the CS department of Amrita University. His area of interest is in decision-making under uncertainty and he has published more than 40 articles in high quality journals with more than ten articles in ABDC ranked journals from A to C category. He was the recipient of the Founders’ chancellor award for best Ph.D. thesis and UGC fellowship during his Ph.D. He got nominated into the top 2% world scientist list by Stanford University for 2022. His citation is around 1000 with H index 20.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

We present new methods for time series classification and clustering based on Topological Data Analysis (TDA) techniques. We present a new clustering method SOM-TDA using which we examine the topological similarities and dissimilarities of some well-known time-series models. A new classification method RF-TDA based on TDA is introduced to examine if the topological features can be used to distinguish between time series models. The RF-TDA method is then used to classify stock price time series of different sector stocks traded at the National Stock Exchange. The results imply that the topological features of the time series of stock prices in the different sectors are different, and one can discern their sectors from the stock price using TDA. Consequently, using a TDA-based measure, we investigate the presence of statistical arbitrage in simulated and real data.

About the Speaker:

Sourav Majumdar obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in February 2023. He obtained an Integrated M.Sc. in Mathematics from Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat in 2018. His research interests are in Quantitative Finance, Circular Statistics and Topological Data Analysis.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

National culture 'profiling' in machine learning applications: The utility of applying value ascriptions in global alert models

We examine the utility and ethics of incorporating national culture profiling in bank-level machine learning informed alert models, which relate to financial malfeasance. At a globally important financial institution, we use binary classifier type alert models and establish the utility of including aspects of national culture in formulating anti-money laundering predictions. For corporate (individual) accounts, Hofstede individuality (individuality, and national-level corruption perception and financial secrecy) scores of the country in which a customer is resident, or from which a wire is sent/received, are of paramount importance. When combined with extensive account and transaction data; as well as even a proprietary institutional algorithm, national culture traits markedly enhance the models' predictive performances.

About the Speaker:

Parvati Neelakantan is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Dublin City University Business School. Her research lies in the areas of Environmental Finance and Financial Data Science. Her papers have appeared in The European Journal of Finance and in the Springer book, Applied Operations Research and Financial Modelling in Energy Practical Applications and Implications, edited by Dorsman, et. al. respectively. Parvati teaches Financial Instruments and Strategies, Financial Statements and Ethics, Financial Econometrics, Financial Risk Management, and Data Analysis. Across the undergraduate, executive and graduate levels, she has lectured and tutored in machine learning modules at University College Dublin, Institute of Bankers in Ireland, and 2021 Financial Time-Series Modelling in R Workshop organised by the Department of Economic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.

Parvati holds bachelors and masters degrees in Mathematics from University of Delhi and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, respectively. She also earned a masters degree in Finance at University College Dublin (UCD) with a full scholarship and the distinction of being inducted as a Global Ambassador of UCD Michael Smurfit Business School. She was awarded the Valuation and Risk Partnership (VAR), Science Foundation Ireland fellowship to pursue her PhD in Finance at the Business School in UCD in 2018. She has earned several awards and laurels from University of Delhi and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, University College Dublin in addition to the prestigious international scholarships awarded by the European Erasmus Program. Parvati completed her PhD in Finance from UCD in May 2022.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

There is a significant body of evidence available which shows that all life style and old age diseases are caused due to poor diet and life style. To cure or prevent those diseases all one has to do is modify the diet and life style. Mr. Kapoor will share his experiences on how to get rid of chronic diseases and reinvent oneself.

About the Speaker:

Lalit M. Kapoor, a 1971 graduate of IIT Kanpur and MBA from UCLA, is a successful serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. With age he developed lifestyle diseases and decided to reverse them by changing diet and lifestyle. This led him to study and research the field of nutrition and the work of eminent experts of this field.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Nearest Neighbor Matching is a powerful research technique, used when selecting a closest eligible control unit to be paired with treated units. The lecture will first introduce the Nearest Neighbor Matching technique and discuss the various methods for choosing the criteria for closeness. We then discuss its application in research with the help of some examples from different domains. Towards the end we demonstrate its application in corporate finance using R software.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Vikas Sangwan is an Assistant Professor in Finance and Accounting area at Jindal Global Business School. He holds a doctorate (Ph.D.) from Department of Management Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and is a recipient of “Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, 2021”. His research interest includes Dividend Policy, Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurial Finance, Micro-Financing and Financial Technology (FinTech). He holds PGDM (International Business) from FORE School of Management and Diploma in International Banking, and Diploma in Treasury Investment and Risk Management from Indian Institute of Banking and Finance. He is UGC-NET qualified in Management and Commerce subjects. He has passed CFA level 1 and CFA level 2. He is also Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Banking and Finance. He has an industry experience of more than 4.5 years including Bank of Baroda in Foreign Exchange and Credit department, and with Vardhman Textiles Limited in production department.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Event study methodology is one of the most frequently used analytical tools in financial research. Event study methods are used to examine whether there is a statistically significant reaction in the market post some well-defined events (earnings announcements, merger & acquisition announcement, dividend announcement, insider trading, new product launch, leadership change, policy change by govt. etc.) through the observation of security prices around such events.
This workshop will help the participants to understand how a particular event could change a firm's prospects by quantifying the impact of the event on the firm's stock

Prerequisite & other Requirements for Workshop:
Beginner level understanding of Statistics; Familiarity with R Software & MS Excel, personal Laptop Packages needed in R : Dplyer, Data.Table packages.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Suman Saurabh is an Assistant Professor at Department of Management Sciences IIT Kanpur. He obtained his Ph.D. from IIM Ahmedabad. His primary research interests are in Corporate Finance, Asset Pricing, Behavioral Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions and Financial Derivatives.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Online consumer reviews have become a promising source for revealing consumers’ experience, reaction and perception of the product or brand. These reviews are unstructured textual content which makes information extraction a challenging task. There are very few attempts have been made to compute consumers’ brand perception from online reviews covering three attributes of brand associations namely – favourability, strength and uniqueness. Brand image is perceived in consumers’ memory through the network of brand associations. However, before computing brand image it is essential to identify reviews which are informative or helpful enough to provide details about the brand associations. My work addresses the issues involving helpfulness assessment of textual reviews and computation of brand image score with novel use of Deep Learning models and Natural Language Processing techniques. Helpfulness score of a review has been assessed from three different qualitative perspectives in association with deep learning models. Brand image is estimated from the Co-word network and Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis. The contributions are towards both text analysis and brand management domain. The study contributes text analysis with novel approach for estimation of reliable helpfulness score. Brand image score reveals consumers’ reaction towards individual brand associations which assist in visualizing the current state of the market, business decisions or taking measures for improving the brand.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Satanik Mitra, is a B.Tech and M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from HIT Kolkata and SRM University, Chennai. He did his PhD from the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering IIT Kharagpur. In his PhD research, he address consumer perception estimation problem through deep learning and NLP techniques. He published his works in high impact journals and conferences. He has total of 5 years of industrial experience inclusive of before and after PhD. Before submitting his PhD, he secured a job with HCL Technologies as Senior Technical Lead AI/ML R&D on February 2021. Currently working with BOSCH Research as Research Architect. Apart from research he is fond of classic literature and playing Indian classical instrument Sitar.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

This talk will provide an early-career academic’s perspective on building a career in management academia. We will start with an overview of the different stages – early, mid, and late – of an academic career. We will talk about what should be our primary objectives – research, teaching, and professional service – at the various stages and how to make a balance among the three. Further, since research is the most important objective of an early-career academic, we will have a detailed discussion on how to build and execute a publishable research agenda.

Biography of the speaker:

Rajeev Tripathi is an assistant professor at IIM Bangalore. He obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Madras. His primary research interests are in cooperative game theory, competitive and cooperative strategies in operations management, and platform business models. His research work has been published in leading journals such as the European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, and Operations Research Letters. His research articles have received best paper awards at multiple conferences. He also writes thought leadership articles in popular press such as Forbes India, The Hindu Business Line, and the Economic Times. Prior to joining IIM Bangalore, he worked as a senior analyst at Ford Motor Company in Chennai.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Using a natural experiment setting of an executive order designed to spur competition in labour markets, we study differential valuation effects of labour market competition. We find that a few industries showed deviations from the competitive market outcomes in the labour market. Barriers to labour market competition like non-compete contracts get priced in the stock price but their effect is significantly moderated by the product markets concentration and labour contract enforceability. Finally, firms operating in concentrated industries elicited a negative market reaction, while those employing a higher share of the employees in their industries witnessed a positive reaction.

Biography of the speaker:

Puneet is an Ex-faculty IITK IME, now a Professor of RMI and holder of Baker Chair of Risk and Insurance at Missouri State University, Springfield Missouri.

We look forward to your attendance!

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

Information Dissemination Across Global Markets during the Spread of COVID-19 Pandemic
This study examines the information dissemination process across 25 major global market indices during the times of COVID-19 pandemic spread. The results suggest that the information from nonsystematic sources contributed to the price decline and increased volatility. In contrast, the systematic information lowered the volatility and facilitated the recovery process towards more stable markets. These results have important implications for policymakers and regulators in the development of efficient markets.

Biography of the speaker:

Prof. Abhinava Tripathi is a faculty in the Finance & Accounting area at the Department of Management Studies at IIT Roorkee. Prof. Abhinava’s research focuses on the areas of Financial Markets and Market Microstructure. He has published articles in international journals, including Finance Research Letters, International Review of Economics & Finance, Applied Economics, Journal of Asset Management, and Studies in Economics and Finance, among others. He is a PhD from IIM Lucknow. Previously, He has done his B-Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Roorkee and MBA from IIM Kozhikode. He has more than six years of corporate experience in investment banking and financial services industry.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

Abstract

While the possibility for investment A to dominate investment B under the first and second order stochastic dominance framework can be tested only at the points of jumps in the probabilities of the distributions, the comparison at interior points is also essential under third order, due to the non-linearity in the difference in the third order stochastic dominance integral. Further, it was established that the quantile approach used to test for the first and second order dominance does not work under the third order. If these points are overlooked, it is possible to conclude that an investment is third order inefficient when it is actually efficient. Also, an inefficient investment may not be relegated to the inefficient set. In this work, to test for third order efficiency, we derive the functional forms for testing the possibility of third order stochastic dominance at the interior points and arrive at their restrictions on the common grid of the pair-wise investments under consideration. We also develop a program to determine the efficient funds and the funds superior and inferior to the benchmark indices. We find that the size of the efficient set reduces drastically under third order. Also, several funds are found to be superior to the indices under second and third order, advocating the case for active fund management.

While Government bond is expected to be default free, corporate bond with the highest rating is generally associated with low probability of default. Given the risk-return profile, neither Government bond nor corporate bond is expected to dominate the other under second order. However, if we look at bonds that did not default in the past, the bond category with the highest rating is expected to have offered higher return without risk, and therefore is expected to have dominated the Government bond. Now, from the cumulative distribution of the corporate bond, a new distribution is generated to incorporate the probability of default. This probability is determined such that the no dominance criteria of the Government bond over the corporate bond no longer holds true. Empirical examination ascertains riskiness of AA+ category over AA and AAA. Further, comparison against Government bond yielded the highest default probability for all bond categories than comparison against any other bond category.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Sree Vinutha V completed Ph.D from IIT Bombay and taught at IIT Kharagpur, Great Lakes Institute of Management and IIM Rohtak. Prior to joining IIT Bombay, she worked in the Analytics division of GE and subsequently pursued Financial Risk Management from IIM Bangalore. Her graduation was in Mathematics and post graduation was in Management. Her current areas of interest include Financial Econometrics, Financial Management, Econometric Analysis and Investment Analysis. She has presented papers in International Conferences including the conference organized by the International Finance and Banking Society in UK in association with the University of Cambridge, University of Warwick and University of Leicester and has published in journals such as risk management, the journal of quantitative economics, international journal of finance and economics.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Optimizing Time-Cost Trade-off Decisions in an Interval Transportation Problem with Multiple Shipment Options
Purpose - In this work, an attempt to extend the concept of multi-choice programming (MCP) to the broad field of well-known transportation problem is made. The increasing competition in the business world has given rise to the situations where decision makers are offered with multiple options to optimally decide on a single task. There are plenty of use cases in our daily lives that involve an MCP e.g. Shipping carriers charge different shipment cost for the same cargo based on the mode of transport (truck, ship, train, aircraft). Making optimal decisions in these scenarios are critical to an organization and have a direct impact on its profitability. In such cases, if the selection criteria is single objective (say cost), the problem is trivial; it becomes challenging as well as interesting if multiple objectives such as cost and time are considered simultaneously. The current Covid 19 pandemic has shown that the buying behavior of customers is highly unpredictable, and many consumers have shown panic-buying, resulting in empty shelves at supermarkets. Thus, the demand for certain products has gone up considerably whereas it has declined significantly for some other products. Further, due to supply chain disruptions, the supply of goods has become highly volatile. The main idea is to agglomerate today’s world of multiple shipment options along with the uncertainty in demand/supply requirements to the traditional transportation set-up.
Methodology - A bi-objective transportation model with multi-choice cost and time coefficients along with interval demand and supply constraints is introduced. Such a transportation framework is more generalized and provides a much broader view to a decision-maker. The research proposes an efficient iterative algorithm to generate the Pareto Frontier that solves a minimum cost flow problem at each iteration. The special structure of this network flow problem is exploited to obtain computationally efficient results. The presented method is applied to a real-world case study on UPS Express Critical in the United States.
Findings - The introduced multi-choice model provides improved decision making and better solutions. Significant savings on cost as well as time have been accorded over the conventional transportation models.
Practical implications - Proposed framework can allow online retailers such as Amazon to chalk out an optimal transportation plan by balancing the time-cost trade-off for a given customer segment. It also empowers them with valuable route-specific information to have well-informed negotiations with shipping carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS etc. On the other hand, similar analysis can also be carried out by the shipping carriers themselves to analyze the competitive landscape.
Value - As opposed to conventional transportation models, this work agglomerates all the shipment options into a single multi-choice transportation model and thus makes it more relevant in practical multiple option scenarios. The current model provides the decision-maker the much needed flexibility by incorporating demand/supply as intervals rather than fixed values.
Keywords - Multi-choice programming, time-cost trade-off, transportation problem, interval transportation problem

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Shalabh Singh is an Assistant Professor in Operations and Quantitative Methods at the Indian Institute of Management, Raipur. He completed his Fellow Program in Management in Decision Sciences from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He has worked as an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) specialist at Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), Pune. He obtained his B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow. His teaching interests include Business Statistics and Operations Research. His current research interests are multi criteria decision making, multi-choice programming, transportation, and drone logistics. He has publications in Annals of Operations Research, Engineering Optimization, Optimization and Central European Journal of Operations Research. He is also a reviewer for international journals such as Engineering Optimization, Computational and Applied Mathematics etc.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Unbiased Scalarization Technique for Multi-Objective Fractional Programming Problem with Application
This article proposes an efficient technique to solve multi-objective fractional programming problems (MOFPPs). The MOFPP is converted into a multi-objective programming problem (MOPP) by introducing a generalized Charnes-Cooper transformation. Equivalency is established between parent and daughter problems. A scalarization technique is then developed to find efficient solutions for the converted MOPP using a modified goal function. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using some closeness measure to the ideal solution for several test problems. A real application of the proposed method is illustrated in finding the best locations to establish municipal solid waste (MSW) management intermediate facilities in Nashik city (India). The model selects the three best locations out of the given eight potential locations to establish facilities by considering environmental and economic objectives. Overall, this study provides a theoretical advancement supported by a real-life MSW management application.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Sujeet Kumar Singh is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Operations & Supply Chain area and as Chairperson (Research) at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Jammu. He completed his Ph.D in Operations Research (Mathematics) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee; subsequently, he had worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore for 3 years. Dr. Singh has worked with several optimization problems, including polynomial optimization, multi-objective optimization, fuzzy optimization, Fractional programming, vehicle routing, transportation, and supply chain optimization. He has published 13 (SCI-10, NonSCI-3, Q1-5, Q2-5, Q3-3) journal papers in reputed journals, including International journal of production research, Annals of operations research, Applied mathematical modelling, International Journal of fuzzy systems, Soft Computing etc., two conference proceedings, and one book chapter.
Dr. Singh wrote a proposal on developing an incentive mechanism for plastic waste collection and recycling while working as a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore. He is also a member of International society of global optimization; and is/was editorial board member of Modern management forum and American journal of operations management and information systems. He served as a reviewer in several reputed journals such as in Annals of Operations Research, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Computer and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Fuzzy Systems (Springer), Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems, International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Information Sciences, IJOR, IJSAEM, IJFSA, etc.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Strategic Balance of Employer and Employees Perspectives: Key to Effective Work from Home
Work from home is one of the major shifts in the working environment that has changed organizational concerns in several aspects. Both employer and employee have different expectations from work from home system. Making a balance between employer and employee’s perspectives is one of the critical issues organization should consider for strategizing work from home. This study has been conducted to explore the diverse perspectives of employer and employee during work from home and its effect on performance and employee well-being. Exploratory and survey research have been used for identification and finalization of factors for employer and employee perspectives, and outcomes of effective work from home. Total 85 responses have been used for the study. Factor analysis and univariate analysis have been conducted to finalize the factors and explain the significance of the employer and employee perspectives in work from home. The results suggest that for effective work from home there should be a strategic balance of employer and employee perspectives. Effective work from home considering these two stakeholders’ perspectives lead to higher performance and employee well-being.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Sumant Kumar Bishwas is currently working as Assistant Professor (OB & HR) and Chairperson-Doctoral Program at IIM Jammu. Previously, he worked with NITIE, Mumbai, and Goa Institute of Management. He has done his Ph.D. from IIT Delhi, and MBA and B.Tech from ABV-IIITM Gwalior. His research and teaching interest are in the area of HRM, Strategic KM and Vitality, Flexible HR with a specific focus on Work from Home/ Anywhere, Green HRM, and Social Media and HR. He has published 21 articles in Journals, Book Chapters, and Conference Proceedings. He is associated with 13 peer-review journals as a reviewer. He has completed one Consultancy on Ease of Doing Business in Goa, and has taken sessions in various Executive Education Programs/ MDPs.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Re-examining the Relationship between Creditor Rights and Corporate Leverage through a Cultural Lens
Two opposing effects govern the impact of creditor rights strengthening reforms on corporate leverage. On the one hand, the income effect states that creditor rights strengthening leads to a higher supply of loans from lenders and higher debt capacity of the borrowers, which may increase corporate leverage. On the other hand, the substitution effect states that creditor rights strengthening leads to a higher threat of bankruptcy and thus may lead to lower credit demand and lower corporate leverage. Single country studies from different countries have documented contradicting results on the impact of creditor rights on firm leverage. In this multi-country study, we postulate that national culture determines risk-taking behaviour of borrowers and lenders, which in turn determines whether the income effect or the substitution effect dominates in a given country. Thus, we examine how culture moderates the impact of creditor rights strengthening reforms on firm leverage. We use DIDID in a generalized setting on data of over 24000 firms in 23 years from 31 countries to test our hypothesis. We find that individualism, which is associated with high risk preference, has a positive moderating effect while power distance, which is associated with low risk preference, has a negative moderating effect on the impact of creditor rights strengthening reforms on corporate leverage. We see similar results for economy-wide aggregate bank credit in the sample countries. Further, we document that firms in individualistic and low power distance countries tend to issue less equity and hold fewer cash balances in response to strong creditor rights.

Biography of the speaker:

Harshal Mulay is a doctoral candidate in the Finance & Control group at IIM Calcutta. In his dissertation titled “Essays in Law, Culture and Finance”, he explores how bankruptcy law reforms can lead to several unintended economic and financial consequences and how national culture moderates their impact. His research has been accepted and presented in 18 reputed conferences like AIB, EFMA, EFA, SWFA, MEA, EEA and others. Prior to his PhD, Harshal attained his dual degree (B.Tech. + M.Tech.) from IIT Madras and MBA (PGDM) from IIM Calcutta. He has worked on multi-billion-dollar debt syndication and project finance deals in the power and railwayssectors at SBI Capital Markets. Harshal is a recipient of NTSE, MTSE and Australian Maths Olympiad Scholarships. He has also cleared two examinations of the CFA program.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

IT Labor, Trade Credit and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation
Trade credit, a regular market transaction component, is a business-to-business agreement that allows buyers to purchase products and pay at a mutually agreed future date. Instead of upfront cash payments from buyers, such arrangements also help sellers secure product sales and increase customer stickiness. Supply chain financing and operational activities are heavily dependent on efficient account receivable (i.e., trade credit) management to ensure a seamless and timely working capital flow. Efficient trade credit management ensures a smooth flow of working capital for future operations and warrants upcoming demand commitment. Large companies are exploring alternative arrangements, e.g., engaging third parties (also known as factors) to outsource sub-processes within accounts receivable management (e.g., receivables follow-up). As important as the external factors, it is equally important to explore firm-level internal variables that can improve the firm’s overall trade credit management initiatives. IT labor can be a valuable resource to fulfil this need by absorbing, assimilating, and internalizing the various semi-structured and unstructured information generated from internal and external sources. Using data on US-based manufacturing firms, we explore the relationship between IT labor investment, trade credit, and firm performance. Our results indicate that IT labor investment has a significant positive impact on current year firm performance, whereas increasing the trade credit cycle has a significant negative impact on firm performance. Moreover, our results show that IT labor indirectly impacts the subsequent year’s firm performance, and trade credit mediates this effect. We add to the existing IS literature on IT-related intangibles and long term firm-level benefits. Our study establishes IT labor as a valuable internal resource that a firm can leverage to improve trade credit management and its overall performance.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Suvendu completed his Ph.D. in management from IIM Calcutta with a specialization in Management Information Systems. He defended his dissertation on “Empirical Studies on the links between IT, Operational Effectiveness and Firm Performance” in Nov’2021. Suvendu has 11+ years of work experience in the IT service domain in manufacturing as well as banking and finance domain. He joined Industry immediately after his PGDM in Business Administration from the IIM Kozhikode, with majors in Information System, Operations, and Finance. He has presented his research at several national and international conferences. His broad research interest lies in exploring the effects of IT/ICT components in the operational and financial performance of an organization. He completed his BE in electronics and telecommunication from Jadavpur University.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

We analyze the impact of political uncertainty on firm's investment in India using a natural experiment framework. Political movements are endogenous and are determined by the existing economic and social conditions. Exogenous causes for political movements are rare in history. A political movement for a state bifurcation in India was reinvigorated after the sudden and unexpected death of the legislative head in Sep- 2009. We use this setup to study the impact of political uncertainty on investment. We observe an economically and statistically significant drop in investment in the process of bifurcating a state in India.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Sesha Meka is Assistant Professor of finance in KREA University (IMFR Graduate School of Business) and has worked as a full-time visiting faculty at IIM Nagpur in the Finance and Accounting area (May-2019 to Aug-2021). He did his Ph.D. from IIM Bangalore (2021), M.S. in Economics from ISI Delhi (2009), and B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras (2007). His research interests are in corporate investments, financing choices, credit rating agencies, earnings management, and political uncertainty and his work is largely empirical. His work is published in the Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting. Prior to joining Ph.D., he worked as a researcher at ISB, Hyderabad. One of his papers is under review in the International Review of Finance and two in Journal of Prediction Markets. His work was presented in national and international conferences.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Stigma among subaltern participants in a consumer environment is prevalent due to the historicity of their maligned identities. This paper enquires through the basic needs of subaltern participants and examines the prevalence of stigma from colonial era in India to its present times. Through an ethnographic study, we study consumption as a signifier within community down to how such consumption can invite problems and intersect with other issues to cause stigma. We discuss the findings in terms of routine subaltern issues as part of their everyday life, and a need for their redressal.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Giridhar was awarded PhD in Marketing Management in the year 2019 for his original ethnographic research work on marginalized communities presented in his doctoral thesis titled “Identity, Resistance, and Transition among Indian Subaltern Communities.”

Prior to joining IIM Shillong, he has held managerial positions in Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, Vishakapatnam and State Bank of India, Hyderabad. He holds a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; and a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering (BE) from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

After obtaining his doctoral degree, Dr. Giridhar worked as Assistant Professor in Indian Institute of Management Bodh Gaya for an year, where he taught courses like Marketing Management and Retail Management. His research interests include consumer culture, subaltern consumers, and retail management.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Industry 4.0 Maturity and Readiness Assessment: A Case of a Manufacturing Organization
The manufacturing sector is the economic backbone of a country and has traditionally played a key role in the growth of almost every country in the world. In India, the manufacturing sector contributes 17 percent to the country's GDP and is expected to increase by 25 percent by 2025. Of late, the manufacturing sector is entering into a dynamic phase due to the emergence of new technologies leading to the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. The Industry 4.0 market is projected to reach US dollar 214 billion by 2023. As a result, manufacturing organizations are adopting new technologies, hardware as well as software, to improve the operational efficiency and productivity. In this regard, it has become imperative for organizations to assess their status as well as capability to transition towards Industry 4.0. In this regard, we have developed a multidimensional Industry 4.0 maturity and readiness assessment framework and validated with a case study in a large steel manufacturing organization. The results revealed that the supply chain dimension has a dominant influence on Industry 4.0 maturity and readiness while the production technology dimension has the lowest influence. Meanwhile, the case organization is in between2-3 level in terms of I4.0 maturity and readiness level. Finally, based on the results and findings, we derived managerial and practical implications for the case study organization.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Pinosh Kumar Hajoary is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science, University of Stuttgart, Germany. He completed his PhD from the Department of Management Studies, IISc Bangalore, specializing in Technology Management. His doctoral work focused on assessing Industry 4.0 maturity and readiness of a steel manufacturing organization. He received his MBA from University of Hyderabad (Central University) and B.Tech from Central Institute of Technology and worked as a Business Associate in Tech Mahindra. He was selected for a prestigious Newton-Bhabha PhD Placement Exchange Scholarship funded by the UK Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). His work was also selected for the prestigious “Sakura Science Exchange Program in Science” funded by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency. As part of this exchange program, he spent some time in Toyohashi University of Technology in Aichi, Japan, in 2018. In addition, he also received a prestigious DAAD fellowship for Summer and Winter School in Germany in 2018 and 2019. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and PLS-SEM by MSME, Govt. of India and Northern Institute of Technology Management, Germany. In free time, he loves playing football, cricket and takes part in social activities like career counseling to underprivileged students in remote villages.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Policies for Managing Peak Stock of Food Grains for Effective Distribution: A Case of the Indian Food Program
The Indian food program has encountered a significant shortfall in storage due to slow expansion of storage facilities in comparison with procurement. The open storage of food grains results in substantial loss and deterioration of quality. While increasing storage capacity is a viable but costly and time consuming option, the adoption of policies for peak storage reduction would go a long way towards effective food grains management. On this background, this study proposes policy adoption for peak storage reduction for effective inventory management. A dynamic simulation model was built by replicating the complex flow process and incorporating the process variability for finding the bottleneck and significant factors. It was found that steep wheat procurement is the critical bottleneck factor for peak storage requirements. Two practical and straightforward, yet effective policies are proposed from the few existing strategies for peak storage reduction owing to the constraints associated with the food program. With the actual data of the food program, reduction in peak stock was estimated for the recommended policies, including the operational cost saving in storage. The practical implications of these policies within the system were also discussed. Through peak reduction, the use of open storage can be significantly reduced, and this leads to better food grains management for effective food distribution.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Mahapatra obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Kharagpur in 2020 from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He completed his MTech as the department topper from the same place in 2015. Before that, he did his Bachelor in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2005.
He worked as a Data Specialist at IBM India Private Limited for seven years before joining the M.Tech programme. Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor at FLAME School of Business since November 2020. He has published eight research papers in reputed international journals, such as ‘CIE’, ‘SEPS’, ‘Operational Research’, ‘JQME’, and ‘Sadhana’ etc. Few more works are under process. His areas of interest include supply chain management, optimization, systems modeling, and policy analysis.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Integrated supply chain model with product recovery for a clean and green system
The issue of environmental sustainability is a significant subject in the supply chain province across the world. This is attributed to growing industrialization, public awareness, the dire effect of manufacturing and allied activities, etc. that significantly contributes to environmental problems. The emergence of conservation practices has motivated numerous researchers and businessmen to adopt such practices in their research and respective organizations. Conserving our natural resources, waste minimization, curbing carbon footprints, smart management of defectives in the supply chain, etc. are the most pressing need in today’s situation of planetary emergency. Owing to this, the present study discusses a sustainable supply chain problem with a single vendor and a single buyer. The vendor administrates the production process and delivers the demanded lot to the buyer as per the single setup and multiple delivery policy. The buyer performs the first-hand inspection to separate the defectives from the received lot and return these secluded defectives to the vendor. Further, the vendor and buyer initiate a sustainable drive to make sure that less waste is dispatched in the environment. In this sustainable drive, the end customers can return the used products through a proper channel. Product recovery management is incorporated by performing the assembly of these defective and used products for a strong inspection that bifurcates these products into different useful categories. The findings of the model suggests that the organizations can generate profits from the defective lots and at the same time contribute towards a cleaner environment.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Prerna Gautam is presently working as a Guest Faculty at the prestigious Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi. She received her doctorate in the field of Inventory Management in 2021 from the Department of Operational Research, University of Delhi. The title of her thesis is “Strategic Inventory Management of Defective Items” which develops state-of-the-art inventory and supply chain models and contributes majorly to the competent management of defective items. She received her M.Phil. and M.Sc. degree from the same department. Dr. Gautam possesses sound knowledge of her subject and has taught different subjects during her teaching tenure at various institutes. To her credit, she holds a good publication record in the journals of high repute viz. Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Production Research, RAIRO- Operations Research, Scientia Iranica, and many others. She is a lifetime member of the prestigious Operational Research Society of India and Association of Inventory Academicians and Practitioners. She also serves as a reviewer of the various international journals related to her expertise. She has actively participated in various national and international conferences in different capacities. She holds expertise in inventory and supply chain management and is currently working in the area of environmental sustainability.

Everyone is cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Role : Global Head & Principal Consultant: CIO Transformation & Advisory Function

Biography of the speaker:

LinkedIn profile of Speaker : https://www.linkedin.com/in/avnishkshatriya/

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

This article examines the information content of order imbalance (OIB), using 195 most active stocks of the National Stock Exchange of India. The private information of order flow has a persistent impact on prices, and makes the short-term returns predictable. The predictability appears strong for the first five minutes, and perishes within thirty minutes. Furthermore, the information inherent in the order flow impacts the deeper levels of limit-order book, indicating the presence of informed traders beyond the best quotes. Overall, the results support the information asymmetry hypothesis for the pure order-driven market of India.

Biography of the speaker:

Mr. Abhinava Tripathi has done his B-Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Roorkee and MBA from IIM Kozhikode. He has more than five years of corporate experience in the banking and financial services industry. This includes managerial and analytical roles in investment banking (SBICAPS, Project Advisory and Structured Finance division), corporate banking (ICICI, Large corporate banking division), and credit rating (ICRA). He is in the final stages of his FPM program at IIM Lucknow. His current research focusses on the area of “Liquidity and Market Efficiency” in the context of the Indian market, employing high-frequency trade-book and order-book data.

Tea will be served at 11:45 am.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Despite findings that the adoption of environment-friendly practices helps firms improve competitiveness and performance, firms differ in their adoption of such practices. Studies suggest that both organizational and institutional factors matter in determining firm behavior regarding environment-friendly practices. We argue that in the face of institutional heterogeneity, the way firms are governed can have different effects on their adoption of environment-friendly practices, depending upon the institutional context. Studying a sample of Indian firms operating across diverse institutional environments within India, we find that family firms with concentrated ownership are generally more likely to switch to renewable sources of energy. However, this influence is reversed among firms operating in institutionally less developed environments. This suggests that family ownership may dampen substantive change in firms in the context of low enforcement and regulation, even if the change is environment-friendly.

Biography of the speaker:

Santanu Bhadra is currently a PhD student of Strategic Management at IIM Calcutta. He has recently submitted his thesis titled "Climate Change Discourse and Environment-Friendly Practices: A Study of Renewable Energy Adoption by Indian Firms". His primary research interest lies around environmental sustainability as firm strategy, specifically understanding firm behaviour in the context of climate change. He is also interested in family business research to understand the heterogeneity among them. He primarily uses econometric analysis for his research, but is also interested in experimental studies. He has presented his papers in top international conferences such as Strategic Management Society, Academy of Management, and Academy of International Business. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Santanu had a work experience of around 9 years in the IT industry. He did his Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from Jadavpur University.

Tea will be served at 3:15 pm.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

The generation of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has increased proportionally across the world, and the developed countries due to regulatory pressures have made technological upgradations and practices to manage this huge quantity of waste. However, the developing countries like India are facing numerous hurdles in managing the huge quantity of WEEE. Therefore, this study aims to first identify the barriers of WEEE management in the context of India and subsequently analyze those barriers that need to be addressed urgently to manage this issue. Through extensive literature review, expert inputs, we have identified seven primary barriers and forty-four sub-barriers and then rationalize with various socio-economic theories. Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is applied in this study to prioritize the barriers and then identify the interdependence of these barriers on each other. The results indicate that the policy and regulatory barriers and the infrastructural barriers are the prominent barriers for effective management of WEEE. Further, the results obtained through DEMATEL analysis indicate that the policy and regulatory barriers as well as the socio economic barriers are the most prominent barriers with maximum driving effect on the overall system

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Ashwani Kumar is an Assistant Professor of operation management and decision science with 4 years of experience in Academics and Industry. He did his PhD work as a MHRD research fellow in the area of Operations Management from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He is Engineering graduate in Mechanical engineering from University of Kashmir and Masters in Industrial engineering from Thapar university. He has published his work in peer reputed journals like Tourism Management (A* journal), Journal of Cleaner Production (A category), Environmental science and Pollution research (SCI journal), Resource conservation and recycling (Q1 journal), Sustainable production and consumption (Elsevier), society of education and environmental and others are under review in top journals. Also, he has presented his research work in various national and international conferences. His current research interest area- Waste management, Sustainable supply chain, Sustainable aviation, Green or sustainable supplier development and assessment, Industry 4.0, Operational excellence in supply chain, Sustainable tourism.

Tea will be served at 03:45 pm.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Askeskin, a subsidized social health insurance program for the poor was instituted by the Indonesian government in 2005. Since its introduction, contrary to expectations, this program 'crowded in' participation in Arisans-an inherently risky informal credit market. Our theoretical model suggests that the introduction of social health insurance mitigates background risk and lowers observed risk aversion and therefore results in greater investment in Arisans. Empirically, using longitudinal data from the Indonesian family life survey, the study finds that Askeskin holders have, 8 percent higher probability of participating in Arisan and 11 percent increase in number of Arisans and 24 percent increase in monetary contributions. Askeskin holders also have a 16 percent probability of falling into the least risk averse category. Consistent with our theory, after controlling for observed risk aversion, the independent effect of Askeskin on Arisan disappears, thereby suggesting the role of social health insurance on observed risk aversion by mitigating background risk.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Kalyan Kolukuluri is a fellow, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, with specialization in Economics. His dissertation, looks at the efficacy of public insurance in smoothing consumption during episodes of health shocks. The setting of his study is in developing countries which traditionally lacked formal insurance. His thesis explores the side effects of expansion of formal insurance, namely, the displacement of informal insurance channels or the strengthening of such mechanisms. His thesis also explores the impact of insurance coverage on health care use and positive health outcomes for dependent children. An underlying theme in his research has been to understand the interaction between public schemes and its beneficiaries. He has taught the core Macroeconomics courses for post-graduate students and Introductory course on Econometrics for PhD students (ongoing). He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, followed by a stint in the industry and Post-graduate degree in Public Policy and Management.

Tea will be served at 03:15 pm.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Rapid changing scenario in the knowledge era has increased the threat of survival and growth for organizations. In this kind of environment, merely good financial performance may not reflect healthiness of the organization. Organization vitality is an issue that is important for long term survival and growth. What may be the measures of vitality for organization, what are those vitalization processes that can be used to achieve high vitality, remain unanswered. This study has been done to explore the concept of vitality, and how it can be achieved using strategic knowledge management and vitalization processes. This study has been done in two phases; empirical, and case study. In the empirical phase, survey has been conducted on IT and Automobile Industry. Total 225 samples have been used for the final analysis. To find the interrelationships between the dependent and independent variables, Stepwise regression analysis have been used. The final framework for organization vitality has been developed using Structure Equation Modelling (Path Analysis). Finally, four case studies (two from IT industry and two from Automobile industry) have been done to cross-validate the empirical results. The results suggest that organization vitality is an important concern for long-term survival and growth, and it can be achieved through effective strategic knowledge management and vitalization processes.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Sumant Kumar Bishwas is currently working as Assistant Professor (OB & HR) in NITIE, Mumbai. He has worked with Goa Institute of Management for 3 years prior to joining NITIE, Mumbai. He is working in the area of Human Resource Management, Organization Vitality, Strategic Knowledge Management, Flexibility and Organization Vitality, Green HRM, Social Media and HRM. He has published 20 articles in the form of Journal publications, Book Chapters, and Conference Proceedings, and is associated with 9 reputed peer-review journals as reviewer like Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Business Process Management, Journal of Organizational Analysis, The Learning Organization, International Journal of Knowledge Management, etc. He has been associated with various international conferences as reviewer/ organization committee member held at institute of repute like IIM Kozhikode, University of Vienna, University of St. Gallen, IIT Delhi, and Goa Institute of Management. He is a Life member of Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management and Global Online Member of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Apart from the research related activities, he has completed one Consultancy assignment titled “ENABLE GOA: Ease of Doing Business in Goa State” sponsored by Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry, and facilitated leadership development workshops for Group ‘A’ Administrative Officers and Engineers in Higher Educational Institutions like IIT Delhi.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Effective and efficient implementation of intelligent and/or recently emerged networked manufacturing systems require an enterprise level integration. The networked manufacturing offers several advantages in current competitive atmosphere by way to reduce, short manufacturing cycle time and to maintain the production flexibility thereby achieving several feasible process plans. The first step in this direction is to integrate manufacturing functions such as process planning and scheduling for multi-jobs in a network based manufacturing system. It is difficult to determine a proper plan that meets conflicting objectives simultaneously. This paper describes a mobile-agent based negotiation approach to integrate manufacturing functions in a distributed manner; and its fundamental framework and functions are presented. Moreover, ontology has been constructed by using the software Protégé which possesses the flexibility to convert knowledge into Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema of Web Ontology Language (OWL) documents. The generated XML schemas have been used to transfer information throughout the manufacturing network for the intelligent interoperable integration of product data models and manufacturing resources. To validate the feasibility of the proposed approach, an illustrative example along with varied production environments that includes production demand fluctuations are presented. The results show that the proposed scheme is very effective and reasonably acceptable for integration of manufacturing functions.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Vijay Kumar Manupati is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT Warangal. He received his Ph.D. in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and M-Tech with specialization in Industrial Engineering and Management from National Institute of Technology Calicut. His current research interests include intelligent manufacturing systems, Centralized and Decentralized manufacturing systems, integration of process planning and scheduling in manufacturing, agent/multi-agent/mobile-agent systems for distributed control, Simulation, Optimization, Soft computing techniques, Supply chain: Cross-docking, Humanitarian and Sustainable supply chain. He has published more than 30 publications which include Journals like /International Journal of Production Research, Computers and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Journal of Engineering, Journal of Measurements, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, etc., 10 book chapters, 25 International conference papers and 1 book authored. /He received Young Engineer award for production and industrial engineering area in the year 2018 from the Institute of Engineers India (IEI).//He is acting as an International reviewer for the most reputed peer-review Journals. Currently, he is acting as an Editorial Review Board member of International Journal of Web Portals (Scopus), IGI Global publications. He received Early Carrier Research Grant from Department of Science and Technology (DST) for his research work on Telefacturing Systems. He is a member of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE), Institute of Engineers (IEI) India, a Life Member of the International Association of Engineers, US and also acting as a technical committee member of various international conferences.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

This talk is primarily intended for M.Tech. and PhD students and may be helpful for MBA students interested in pursuing research . Dr. Shivam will talk on the theme of 'How to Conduct Literature Review', largely based on the below published work of Dr. Shivam and his co-authors. Interested students are encouraged to go through the paper to benefit the most from attending the seminar.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Shivam Gupta is an Associate Professor at Montpellier Business School, France and he has been working in the field of Technology and Operations Management. He has pursued his PhD research from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India. He has done his Postdoctoral Research from South University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTC) and previously he has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He has been the recipient of the International Young Scientist Award by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in 2017 and winner of the 2017 Emerald South Asia LIS award. He has also received “Best Paper Award” at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada (ASAC) conference at Halifax, Canada 2015. He has published in journals like Journal of Business Research; Technological Forecasting and Social Change; International Journal of Information Management; Annals of Operations Research; Information Systems Frontiers; International Journal of Production Research; Industrial Marketing Management and many more.

All interested are welcome.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Reality of climate change threats have spurred mitigation interventions across the world. For electricity sector, the interventions are predominantly in terms of mainstreaming renewable energy sources. Consequently, there is a consistent increase in the share of renewable energy-based electricity systems which has caused emergence of several new challenges. The challenges have emerged both with respect to planning and management of the transitioning electricity systems. These new challenges are because of shift away from supply-chain influenced conventional energy resource supply to nature influenced dynamic renewable energy resource supply; shift from conventional firm power to renewable intermittent power; operational complexities due to frequent and steeper ramps; and need for matching dynamic demand for power. We propose, develop and validate a novel approach for better representation of these resource-supply-demand dynamics in evolving suite of generation expansion models with operational details. First, we discuss development of an electricity generation expansion planning model with operational details. Second, to model the dynamic nature of renewable energy resources and demand for power, we develop an approach for generating annual wind and solar resource profiles, and representative load curves respectively, and harmonizing them before they are fed into the generation expansion model. We validate this approach using India’s electricity system data and use the model to evaluate implications of varying levels of renewable energy integration. We find that this increased penetration of renewable energy while bringing significant climate change benefits creates substantial capacity redundancy leading to lower capacity utilization of the overall system.

Biography of the speaker:

Tarun is currently a postdoc at Hong Kong Institute for Asia Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tarun's research focuses on development and maintenance of suite of analytical models such as optimization and agent based models, optimizing their workflow including stakeholder engagement and their application to answer questions related to energy transition. He has actively engaged with Energy Technology System Analysis Program (ETSAP) of International Energy Agency (IEA) and successfully secured funding and delivered projects on cross platform implementation, high performance computing and open sourcing TIMES (The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM system). His PhD is in Energy Transitions, M.S. in Engineering Management and B.Tech. is in Mechanical Engineering. He has published in bench marking and modelling of electricity system transitions. His previous work involved enhancing the temporal and operational resolution of models used for long term power system planning and to estimate optimal levels of renewable integration in the power system. This was done by building a large scale mixed integer linear program. He is a DAAD-WISE fellow.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Innovations are introduced in the society to promote welfare. The newness associated with innovations may be observed as products, policies, technology or simple ideas for reform. The diffusion of innovations through any socio-economic environment, however, depends on the information transmission mechanism involved therein. Why do some innovations spread more and faster in some societies than others? Variations in patterns of innovation propagation found across social networks are governed by the preference for an innovation and the topology (or the connectivity pattern) of the network. I will talk about my research that incorporates the interplay of these two features in a simple model to study temporal evolution of innovation through a social network. The connectivity pattern signifies the level of heterogeneity in the ability of different individuals to acquire information, decide to accept, and influence others. For instance, the dispersion in the number of connections tends to be very large in scale-free networks as compared to that in random networks. Further, some individuals or firms have a greater inherent inertia or lower preference toward an innovation than others. This model brings out variety of patterns. The time of emergence of innovation has power-law dependence on preference and connectivity. I show analytically and computationally the conditions in which the propagation in random networks can lead or lag behind that in scale-free networks. Hierarchical propagation is evident throughout, though the hierarchy tends to be insignificant in scale-free networks for highly preferred innovations. I will close with a brief description of my ongoing work on a related (macroeconomic) model of firms with imperfect information and how their reactions to financial innovations affect the inflation-output dynamics.

Biography of the speaker:

Varsha S. Kulkarni is conducting research studies at Harvard University, USA. She has a PhD in Information sciences with Statistics minor from Indiana University Bloomington, USA. She is trained in Physics from Delhi University and in Statistics from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked at the Harvard Business School as a researcher specializing as a statistician and in applied math areas of research. She has also taught on data analytics and applied mathematical sciences. Her research is interdisciplinary between quantitative data analysis and mathematical modeling and socio-economic areas of research.

Tea will be served at 3:45 pm.

All interested are cordially invited.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Brands are the necessary source of identification and differentiation of firm's products from competitors but mere creation of brands is not sufficient in the age of competition. Making brands stronger is how brand management is redefined and there comes the role of customer engagement with the brands. 'Customer brand engagement' reflects the customers' total investment or their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural activity in the interactions with the brand that goes beyond traditional purchases and transactions. Since its inception the research on engagement has made a significant progress and management found it an influential tool to manage customers; today it has achieved a feat such that the customer engagement marketing is poised to replace traditional relationship marketing aimed at repeated transactions. Customer brand engagement is contingent on customer-brand interactions which makes the role of engagement inside brand communities of great importance because the brand communities act as unique platforms for multiple direct or indirect customer-brand interactions. The brand communities hold a special place in offering brand relationships a broader meaning as the members not only interact with the brands but other users of the same brand. Despite a significant growth in the number of studies on customer brand engagement, the concept has still remained in its infancy and the scope for further exploration has been reiterated time and again. The limited number of empirical studies, insufficiency of brand engagement drivers and consequences, absence of contextual focus in its exploration constitute some of the crucial gaps in academic research that require further research attention. Engagement of customers inside brand communities remains underexplored and important as it brings favourable brand based outcomes. To address these gaps in the literature, this study proposes a conceptual model depicting brand engagement drivers and consequences. Grounded in psychological ownership theory and value-congruity theory, brand psychological ownership and brand value-congruity, respectively, have been proposed as the drivers of customer brand engagement in the context of brand communities. There is evidence in existing literature that brand psychological ownership and the value-congruity can impact consumers' relationships with the brands. The proposed model portrays brand attachment and behavioural brand loyalty as the outcomes of customer brand engagement as well. Following the descriptive, cross sectional research design, the conceptual model is empirically tested with the data collected from brand community members through self-administered survey questionnaire. The data was analyzed with the help of multivariate analysis techniques, viz., confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The findings of this study confirmed the positive effect of brand psychological ownership on customer brand engagement. The results also supported that value-congruity with reference to the brand positively influences customer brand engagement. Additionally, it was found that customer brand engagement affects customers' attachment with the brands and behavioral brand loyalty positively. Overall, the empirical support was obtained for all the proposed structural relationships, thereby supporting the validity of the proposed model. This study contributes to the theory and practice in certain ways. From an academic standpoint, this study provides support for the application of psychological ownership theory and value-congruity theory in 'customer engagement in the context of brand communities', an area that remained largely obscure of the application of different marketing theories. Psychological ownership towards brands has been covered in a handful of studies and this study adds in that direction by conceptualizing the role of brand psychological ownership in stimulating customer brand engagement. Similarly, this study extends the reach of congruity theory in influencing brand engagement from the perspective of values, i.e., value-congruity with reference to the brand. Apart from this, the study helps in elucidating on the debated ties between brand engagement and brand attachment in existing literature. Lastly, the support for creating brand based loyalty from brand engagement is also offered through this study. From practical standpoint, the brand managers and brand community managers can benefit from the findings of this study in the direction of engagement of customers with their brands through brand communities. To engage customers with the brands, managers should try to instill a sense of brand psychological ownership towards the focal brands inside their communities. The managers should focus on creating a sense of value-congruity with regard to the brand inside brand communities by identifying the human-values of the target segment. This study can prove beneficial for the managers in a sense that they can achieve the crucial objectives of having emotionally connected and loyal customers through customer brand engagement. Managers are therefore advised to create brand communities to engage customers with the brands and reap the benefits of having strongly connected and loyal customers that will help them in making the brands stronger.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Jitender Kumar is working as an Assistant Professor in the Marketing area at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida. He holds a PhD in Brand Management in the Marketing area. He holds an MBA in Marketing and carries four years of industry experience in Marketing, Brand Management, and Customer Relationship Management at ICICI Bank. He left the corporate world to pursue full time academic research at IIT Roorkee. He also qualified the UGC NET and JRF in Management discipline after his MBA. His research interests include Customer Experiences, Customer Brand Engagement, Online/Offline Brand Communities, Brand community Engagement and other Brand relationship variables part of larger 'Brand Management' area. His research works has appeared in International journals of repute like Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Product & Brand Management, and Journal of Consumer Marketing, among others. He is a regular reviewer of Journal of Business Research, Journal of Product & Brand Management, Marketing Intelligence and Planning etc. He carries a strong interest in recent trends in brand management arena in terms of research and practice.

Tea will be served at 3:45 pm.

All interested are welcome.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Achieving fast and inclusive economic growth concurrently with greenhouse gases (GHG) emission control could have wide-ranging implications for the Indian economy, predominantly fuelled by fossil energies. India faces high income inequality with the bottom 50% of its population owning only 2% of total national wealth. Other developmental challenges include 304 million people living in poverty, 269 million without access to electricity, 92 million without access to safe drinking water, and around 2 million homeless. Despite such challenges, India has committed to reduce the GHG emission intensity of its GDP 33% to 35% below its 2005 level by 2030, including via turning 40% of its power-generation capacity away from fossil sources. To explore the macroeconomic consequences of achieving development along low-carbon pathways, we use a hybrid modelling architecture that combines the strengths of the AIM/Enduse bottom-up model of Indian energy systems and the IMACLIM top-down economy-wide model of India. This hybrid architecture stands upon an original dataset that reconciles national accounting, energy balance and energy price statistics. With this tool, we demonstrate that low-carbon scenarios can accommodate yearly economic growth of 5.8% from 2013 to 2050 i.e. perform close to if not slightly higher than our business-as-usual scenario, despite high investment costs. This result partly stems from improvement of the Indian trade balance via substantial reduction of large fossil fuel imports. Additionally, it is the consequence of significant shifts of sectoral activity and household consumption towards low-carbon products and services of higher value-added. These transitions would require policies to reconcile the conflicting interests of entrenched businesses in retreating sectors like coal and oil, and the emerging low-carbon sectors and technologies such as renewables, smart grids, electric vehicles, modern biomass energy, solar cooking, carbon capture and storage, etc.

Biography of the speaker:

Dipti Gupta is a doctoral candidate in the Public Systems Group at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and presently in the job market after submitting her thesis work. Before joining the doctoral programme, she completed her B.E. (Electronics and Communication) from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh. She also has two years of corporate work experience at Freescale Semiconductor. She has published in reputed journals such as World Development (A category in ABDC), Energy (A category in ABDC), Climate Policy (Impact factor- 3.8) and Economic and Political Weekly. Her research interests are energy environment policy, corporate environmental performance and energy economy modelling.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Selecting appropriate locations for municipal solid waste (MSW) management facilities is an important issue in rapidly developing regions. Potential alternatives and evaluation criteria need to be analyzed for finalizing the locations of these facilities. Operations research (OR) techniques are found to be effective for selecting the best among them based on the identified criteria. However, conventional models fail to include (i) all realistic conditions of study area; (ii) inherent uncertainty of parameters; and (iii) assessment of combinations of potential locations. To address these issues, a framework has been developed that encompasses all economical, environmental, social and technical attributes under uncertainy. The framework is illustrated on the Nashik city with realistic conditions, which is also replicable for most of the Indian urban centres due to almost similar MSW characteristics. A Python based open source tool PyTOPS is also developed to facilitate stakeholder under multi attribute decision making scenarios. Moreover, some other emerging OR applications in healthcare systems and agricultural management will be outlined with future prospects.

Biography of the speaker:

Vinay Yadav is currently working as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow at Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Prior to join DTU, he earned his masters and doctoral degree from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai; and Bachelors degree from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. His expertise include optimization under uncertainty, interval analysis based operations research techniques, mathematical modeling and multi-attribute decision making.

Tea will be served at 3:15 pm.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Stringent environmental regulations, improving technology, and growing incomes have shortened vehicle life-cycles that led to an increasing number of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). ELVs form a valuable source of materials when they are recycled efficiently. Recycling of ELVs for material recovery is one of the sustainability themes in the automobile industry. Regulated ELV recycling markets ensure an efficient material recovery, unlike unregulated markets that are present predominantly in emerging economies. The unregulated markets are close to perfectly competitive markets with low entry and exit barriers for the informal dismantlers, and the scrap from dis-mantled vehicles is traded as a commodity. Dismantlers' entry and exit decisions - dismantlers' dilemma - are based on profitability. Increased sales of new vehicles coupled with decreasing vehicle retiring time and emerging norms on emission and safety standards have increased the generation of ELVs in emerging economies. This new opportunity for resource recovery has attracted formal dismantlers into emerging economies. But, high initial investment creates a barrier to entry and exit for formal dismantlers. In this talk, I discuss the system dynamics models developed to analyze the ELV recycling in an unregulated market. Using Indian data, two situations of an ELV recycling market are considered: a market where only informal dismantlers exist and a market where a formal dismantler compete with informal dismantlers. The first model considers a market where only informal dismantlers exist. The dismantlers' dilemma constrains the dismantling capacity and bring out fluctuations in scrap supply. The simulation results show that the unregulated market will lead to lower dismantling capacity, which may further worsen by an increase in dismantling costs. The analysis suggests that lowering dismantling costs through coordination among the dismantlers and providing support for scrap prices through regulation can improve the dismantling situation in these markets.

The second model considers an oligopsony market for ELV recycling. The market has a formal dismantler and few homogeneous informal dismantlers, and the dismantlers compete by offering a higher price for ELVs. The ELVs generated is assumed to be directly proportional to the offer price of ELV and the dismantler with the higher price receives the major share of ELV (constrained by capacity). The dynamic nature of competition is analyzed where the increase in the price of ELV affects dismantlers' profitability, which affects the dismantlers' decisions to increase prices, and also lead to the free entry and exit of informal dismantlers. This varies the aggregate dis-mantling capacity and quantity, which in turn fluctuates the market scrap price thereby creating fluctuations in revenue and profits of dismantlers. The simulation results show that the competition adversely affects the dismantlers' profitability with the formal dismantler operating at a very low profit and the informal dismantlers gradually exiting the market, thereby lowering the total dismantling capacity. The results suggest that the formal dismantlers with higher capacities can abate competition. Establishing formal dismantling units with higher capacities supported by suitable policy instruments are recommended to ensure more environmentally sound recycling.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Krishna Mohan T V obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, M. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering (Industrial Engineering and Management) from National Institute of Technology Calicut, and B. Tech. in Production Engineering from University of Calicut. His research interests are Sustainable Operations Management, System Dynamics Modeling, and Automobile Ecosystems. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on closed-loop supply chains particularly on the dynamics of end-of-life vehicle recycling in unregulated markets. Based on his Ph.D. thesis he has a publication in the journal Annals of Operations Research. He received the `Best Paper Award' in the Industrial and Management Engineering Doctoral Colloquium, IIT Kanpur in 2018 for the paper titled `Dismantlers' Dilemma in End-of-Life Vehicle Recycling Markets: Insights from Emerging Economies'. Prior to his Ph.D., he has worked as an Adhoc Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut.

Tea will be served at 3:45 pm.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Re-internationalization, or firms' re-entry into international operations after exiting their initial international operations, is a scarcely researched phenomenon, although it has been found that intentions for re-entry to international activities among firms that exited initial international operations are high. Equally scarce is the detail available comparing firms' approaches in their initial and later stages of internationalization. And more so, the essential processes firms go through each stage leading to reinternationalization has not received much attention of researchers. This research aimed at investigating the re-internationalization phenomena for developing a holistic view of re-internationalization process in organizations. We studied how a firm acquire, modify, and/or complement various resources, capabilities, and competencies during its initial internationalization phase, the exit process, and the time-out period before re-entry to international activities, and how these lead to successful re-internationalization. We also tested antecedents that contribute to firm performance during re-internationalization. Further, we identified the differences in firm performance and other characteristics of firms during initial internationalization and re-internationalization stages. We used mixed research methods for elucidating the research questions. A multiple case study approach was undertaken to understand the intricacies of the process on how and why the phenomenon has evolved; whereas a questionnaire survey was directed at top management officials of re-internationalized firms to test some hypothesized relations. We also undertook secondary data based analysis to understand differences in firm performance during initial internationalization and re-internationalization phases. Apart from bringing forth more clarity on the evolutionary process, the case studies helped us to build useful propositions, most of which were later corroborated with the results we found from other modes of analysis used in this study. Analysis of survey data using PLS-SEM found support for the following hypothesized relationships – initial international experiences, organizational commitment to internationalization, and the presence of dynamic capabilities are positively related to re-internationalization performance. However, contrary to our hypothesized relationship, continuity in networks and key personnel from initial through re-entry phases of internationalization were not found to have a significant effect on re-internationalization performance. We also obtained triangulated results that indicated firm performance is indeed better during reinternationalization as compared to initial internationalization both on perceptual and financial parameters using primary and secondary data respectively. The comprehensive nature and the all-encompassing scope of this study made it more complex. Being one among the first ever empirical studies conducted on an almost unexplored phenomenon, and that too using a mixed method approach with triangulated research outcomes, this study is expected to serve as a foundation for scholars to scrutinize and work further upon, besides having predictive value for practitioners and policy implications.

Biography of the speaker:

Salman Ali is a faculty in Business Policy & Strategic Management Area at IIM Raipur. He obtained his PhD (FPM) from IIM Ahmedabad specializing in the domain of Strategy and International Business. His major research interests include internationalization and re-internationalization of firms, firm movements from developed to emerging economies and vice-versa, strategies and challenges in emerging markets, strategy and innovation, and corporate diversification strategy. He graduated in Instrumentation & Control Engineering with First Rank from Calicut University. He has over ten years of experience across industry and academia including roles such as Branch Director at Universal Business Links India (H.O. United Kingdom), Lecturer at MES College of Engineering, and R&D Engineer at EG Kantawalla Pvt. Ltd.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

We present new evidence on the trading behavior of machine traders around systemic distraction events. Using tick-by-tick proprietary data on NSE listed firms, our study provides a client-wise response to positive and negative news sentiment. Our paper offers insights on how value-irrelevant competing stimuli impact the decision-making of machine traders. Using a novel data set, we find that non-algorithmic traders are more susceptible to extraneous distractions compared to machine traders. Even, within non-algorithmic traders, inattention phenomenon becomes more pronounced with higher ownership of retail investors. Using proprietary news sentiment scores from Reuters, we find that traders behave differently to firm-specific positive and negative news during periods of inattention. Time-varying patterns in investor attention interact with news sentiment to influence firm value. The trading pattern of market participants suggests a significant decline in the trading volume during various distraction periods indicating that investor inattention inhibits decision-making of investors.

Biography of the speaker:

Kamran Quddus is currently a job market candidate in the Finance & Accounting area at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He also holds a previous degree in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. His research interests include Behavioral Finance, Asset Pricing, Market Microstructure and Investments.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Term structure estimation in emerging markets has an additional complexity of concentrated trading in a few securities and infrequent trading in most other securities. Using the arbitrage-free Affine Nelson-Siegel model (AFNS; Christensen, J.H., Diebold, F.X., Rudebusch, G.D, Journal of Econometrics 2011, 164:4–20), we explicitly incorporate this phenomenon using a proxy for liquidity based on observable data in the bond pricing function and estimate the term structure for Indian Government bond markets in a nonlinear state-space setting using the Unscented Kalman Filter. We find strong empirical evidence in support of the extended model with both i) a better in-sample fit to bond prices, and ii) the likelihood ratio test rejecting the restrictions assumed in the standard AFNS specification. In an alternative specification, we also model liquidity as a latent risk factor within the AFNS framework. The estimated implied liquidity is found to be strongly correlated with the standard market benchmarks of overall liquidity and the VIX index.

Biography of the speaker:

Sudarshan Kumar is a doctoral student in the finance and accounting area at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. His research interests include yield-curve modelling and financial networks. His doctoral dissertation explores three different strands of yield curve modelling literature and propose methodological modifications to adapt them to the context of emerging markets. He is also a CFA charter holder and a B. Tech (Civil Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Before joining the doctoral program, He also worked for seven years in various roles in the fixed income industry.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Closed loop supply chain (CLSC) can play a crucial part in achieving sustainable development goals. Based on the institutional theory, this study empirically tests a theoretical model about institutional antecedents which motivate organizations to implement CLSC practices and commensurate performance outcomes (environmental, economic and social performance). The study also tests the moderating effect of resource commitment (technological, managerial and financial resources) on the relationships between CLSC practices and performance factors. The proposed hypotheses are tested using the data collected from 89 manufacturing organizations in Indian automobile sector by partial least squares - structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results indicate that regulatory and normative pressures drive organizations to implement CLSC practices, and significant positive effect of CLSC practices on all the three performance outcomes. The analysis further reveals the partial effect of resource commitment as a moderator on the relationships between CLSC practices and performance outcomes. The study contributes to the literature by identifying institutional determinants of CLSC practices and examining the moderating effect of resources on the relationships between CLSC practices and performance factors.

Biography of the speaker:

Manjot Singh Bhatia is currently Fellow Programme in Management (Ph.D. Operations Management) candidate at Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. Earlier, he has done MASc. (Industrial Eng.) from Concordia University, Canada and B.E. Hons. (Mechanical Eng.) from BITS, Pilani. His current research interests include sustainability, closed loop supply chain management, Industry 4.0, and applications of blockchain technology. He has published in reputed international journals such as International Journal of Production Research, Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, etc. Before coming to academics, he worked as Engineer in Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. for two years. Manjot Singh Bhatia is currently Fellow Programme in Management (Ph.D. Operations Management) candidate at Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. Earlier, he has done MASc. (Industrial Eng.) from Concordia University, Canada and B.E. Hons. (Mechanical Eng.) from BITS, Pilani. His current research interests include sustainability, closed loop supply chain management, Industry 4.0, and applications of blockchain technology. He has published in reputed international journals such as International Journal of Production Research, Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, etc. Before coming to academics, he worked as Engineer in Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. for two years.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

Gini index is a widely used measure of economic inequality. Apart from measuring economic inequality, the Gini index is used to measure inequality in education, inequality of health related quality of life in a population and others. The problem is to construct a narrow confidence interval for Gini index with a specified confidence coefficient and a specified width without assuming any specific distribution of the data. Fixed sample size planning methods cannot give a sufficiently narrow width with high coverage probability. In this presentation, we propose a sequential procedure for constructing sufficiently narrow confidence intervals for Gini Index using smallest possible sample size, importantly without specific distributional assumptions. The sequential procedure can be used to construct a sufficiently narrow confidence interval. The characteristics of this sequential procedure will also be discussed in the presentation. An extension of this work and its application will be discussed briefly.

Biography of the speaker:

Bhargab Chattopadhyay has done his PhD on Statistical Inference from Department of Statistics at University of Connecticut. Prior to Ph.D., he worked as a Research Assistant at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He has taught several Statistics courses at undergraduate and post graduate levels at University of Connecticut, University of Texas at Dallas, Indian Institute of Information Technology Vadodara, Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam. His main research interests include statistical inference, sequential analysis, dimension issues, change point detection with application in Econometrics, Psychology, Actuarial Science and others. He has secured two External Research Grants, one from the Actuarial Science Foundation, US (Joint PI) and second one from Science and Engineering Research Board, India: 2018-2021.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a stylized analytical model to study the impact of environmental tax on the environmental and economic performance of a firm. Government (Social planner) sets the per unit environmental tax for a product, and the firm decides its effort on product quality and process improvement. Furthermore, the firm’s effort on product quality improvement not only reduces the environmental impact but also increases the demand due to improved quality. Similarly, the process improvement in the production stage also reduces the unit cost of production. Moreover, the firm also decides the price of the product and may charge a premium for a higher quality product. The firm’s problem is to decide on the price and the level of product quality improvement and process improvement effort such that its profit maximizes. We find conditions under which environmental tax is effective and results in reduced impact (lower emission, etc.) and conditions under which environmental tax is counterproductive and increases the environmental impact (Jevons Paradox). We also derive conditions under which the firm has an incentive to invest in process and product improvement. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of environmental tax on the firm’s economic performance, and we derive conditions under which imposition of environmental tax can increase the firm’s profit. That is, the conditions under which both environmental and economic performance would improve.

Biography of the speaker:

Prakash Awasthy is a faculty in Production and Operations Management area at IIM Nagpur. He has completed FPM in Production and Operations Management from IIM-Bangalore and Master's in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. He has more than six years of experience in industry and academia. His teaching interests include Operations Management, Quantitative Methods, Supply Chain Management, and Service Operations. His research interests are Sustainable and Humanitarian Operation Management, Service Operations, and OM-Marketing Interface, etc.

Abstract of the talk:

{slider=Read Abstract & Abstract of the talk}

Abstract

The majority of the Enterprise Systems (ES) research is conducted around the implementation phase. It usually reports a myriad of critical success factors (CSFs) that are generally conceived to be static throughout the ES lifecycle. Furthermore, quite often the ES literature does not pay attention to the implementation context and it is sometimes implicitly assumed that findings from the private sector organisations would also apply to the public service organisations (PSO). Therefore, this study goes beyond a list of CSFs and offers a mechanism-based socio-technical account that captures the multilevel dynamics of the ES lifecycle in the PSO context. The fieldwork was conducted in an Irish PSO that engaged in three ES implementations over the period 2000-2015. The explanatory theoretical framework identifies four mechanisms underpinning the ES lifecycle – affordance, control, institutionalisation, and market mechanism. These mechanisms manifest themselves via the emergence of various factors across the phases (Adoption, Acquisition, Implementation, Use and Maintenance, and Evolution) of ES lifecycle. The affordance mechanism at the work-system level is primarily associated with the features and constraints of the enterprise/legacy systems and business process requirements. The control mechanism operates at different levels during different phases of the ES lifecycle and public/health service context is found to be a major imperative for the prevalence of the control mechanism. The institutionalisation mechanism at the organisational level is associated with how different ES lifecycle activities are embedded in organisational activities. Finally, the market mechanism at the macrosocial level plays a crucial role due to the information asymmetry of the ES market and due to the existence of a dominant supplier in a niche market. These mechanisms and the interaction among them manifest in various CSFs during different phases of the ES lifecycle. A major finding of this study is that the relative importance of the CSFs varies not only during the phases of ES lifecycle but also across different instances of the ES lifecycle.

Biography of the speaker:

Dr. Deepak Saxena is currently working as a Research Fellow with the Trinity Centre for Digital Business. He has taught at Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, and American College Dublin. He holds a PhD in Business from Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and an M. Tech. (Industrial and Management Engineering) from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Before moving to Ireland for his PhD, he has worked with the Indian Space Research Organisation, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and Defence Research and Development Organisation. At present, he is actively engaged with the Office of the Government CIO in Ireland on studying and improving citizens’ digital journey when availing public services. He is also coordinating a project with ThinkHouse, a youth marketing agency on studying youth behaviour in the era of digital business.

About the speaker:

{slider=Read Abstract & About the Speaker}

Abstract

The talk starts with discussing the optimal production and export decisions of the firms at the intensive margin of trade, facing uncertainties owing to the exchange rate volatility under mean-variance preferences. The evaluation of the impact of uncertain exchange rate fluctuations on trade is portrayed in a partial equilibrium framework, using the concept of risk-aversion elasticities. These elasticities measure how sensitive the firms are towards substituting between return and risk at the margin, with respect to changes in the distribution of the spot exchange rate. This simplest possible analytical framework is useful for explicit empirical estimation of risk-aversion elasticities in the literature of international economics. This part of the talk is primarily based on the publication Broll & Mukherjee(2017, Economic Modelling).

Then the talk extends the decision problem of a risk averse foreign investor regarding how much to invest abroad optimally under uncertainties stemmed from the exchange rate movements, with the presence of a dependent background risk, again in terms of the mean-variance preference structure.

Finally, the talk discusses the decision dilemma of an exporting firm regarding the optimal domestic production and export decisions at the intensive margin of trade, when the firm faces an unfair background risk (e.g. unprecedented technology shocks, shocks owing to the terms-of-trade externality or political externality), in addition to the exchange rate risk.

About the speaker:

Dr Soumyatanu Mukherjee is presently an Assistant Professor of the Economics Area in the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. He has completed his PhD in International Economics from the University of Nottingham (UK) (degree awarded in July 2016), and has been the recipient of the prestigious ESRC (UK Economic & Social Research Council) scholarship for his doctoral studies. He has published in the peer-reviewed reputed academic journals like "Economic Modelling", "International Review of Economics & Finance", and so on. He has contributed too to a chapter of an edited book “Trade, Investment and Economic Development in Asia: Empirical and Policy Issues, published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group). He is also an external fellow of CREDIT & GEP, University of Nottingham (UK). He belongs toa Alan Deardorff's "Family Tree of Trade Economists" with some of the stalwarts in the field.

About the speaker:

{slider=Read Abstract & About the Speaker}

Abstract

Advertising plays an important role in contributing to the supply of returned items and market expansion. In this paper, advertising is considered as a means to entice consumers to return used-items in a remanufacturing environment. We investigate the impact of sharing or of not sharing advertisement cost on the total profit gained and the quantity of used-items acquired under the uncertain demand of remanufactured/new products and uncertain returns. For analysis, we develop mathematical models for the following closed-loop supply chain configurations: (i) advertising by manufacturer with cost-sharing, (ii) advertising by retailer with cost-sharing, (iii) advertising without cost-sharing. These models have been illustrated through a numerical study, and the results reveal that the closed-loop supply chain model with “advertising with cost sharing” performs better over other model, and also, that advertising provides positive economic and environmental benefits.

About the speaker:

Dr. Sarat Kumar Jena is an assistant professor in the Operations Management area at Goa Institute of Management, Goa. He holds a PhD in supply chain from Industrial & Systems Engineering IIT Kharagpur, India and Masters in Industrial Engineering and Management from IIT Kharagpur, India. He teaches operations research, supply chain management, production planning and control, operations management and project management. His research interests lie on mathematical model on closed-loop supply chain, tourism supply chain, and sustainable supply chain management. He has published papers in leading research journals such as Computers and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Production Economics, INFOR: Information Systems and Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Tourism Economics, Journal of Cleaner Production and Business Process Management Journal. Dr. Jena is a reviewer of many international journals such as Journal of Operations Research, IJPE, CIE, Journal of cleaner production, and Transportation Research Part E., etc. In March 2018, he was selected for the “Future Talent Postdoc Carrier Days program” at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.

About the speaker:

Mr. Sivananth Ramachandran leads Morningstar Indexes in Mumbai. He is responsible for new Product Development and Index Management functions within Indexes. A professional with over 10 years of experience in the investment industry while holding positions in a variety of leadership roles in research, business development over the course of his career at Morningstar and MSCI. His expertise includes portfolio construction, factors, and sustainability research.

About the speaker:

Mr. Alok Gupta is the Strategic Marketing & Business head with 17 years of work ex. across India & International markets with blue-chip MNCs like Hewlett Packard, Philips, Cargill foods (FMCG foods) & LG Electronics in the Consumer good domain. His key mandate is to build lifestyle premium brands, profitable businesses across mature & emerging markets of Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, South East Asia, SAARC & India region. A strategic business leader with expertise in Organization building, General Management, and People development. Inspirational team leader with agility and positive leadership skills are few of his long list of responsibilities. He has a strong Sales & Marketing background with expertise in Business Strategy, Brand Management, Marketing, Product Management, New product development, Market research & Channel development.

About the speaker:

Associate Professor and Baker Chair of RMI, Missouri State University.

About the speaker:

Mr Aniruddha Khekale is in charge of strategic oversight for Human Resources - Emerson Automation Solutions Group, India. He has 24 years of experience at Leadership Positions for Large and Medium Multinational and Indian Organizations. His key mandate is to create strategic direction and lead the Human Resources vertical of company that binds all the other departments together. A culture of happiness, high engagement and a work climate that improves the workplace productivity and support Business Growth are a few of his long list of responsibilities .He has also done extensive work in the area of Organization Development, Talent Management, Organization Design, Mergers and Acquisitions, Integrating and Assimilating new businesses, Positive Employee Relations, Developing HR Systems and Infrastructure.

Abstract

The multi-armed restless bandit framework allows to model a wide variety of decision-making problems in areas as diverse as industrial engineering, computer communication, operations research, financial engineering, communication networks etc. In a seminal work, Whittle developed a methodology to derive well-performing (Whittle’s) index policies that are obtained by solving a relaxed version of the original problem. However, the computation of Whittle’s index itself is a difficult problem and hence researchers focused on calculation of Whittle’s index on a problem-to-problem basis. Our main contribution is the derivation of a closed-form expression for Whittle's index when bandit has Markovian evolution, which is valid as long as the technical condition of indexability is satisfied. Our solution approach provides a unifying expression for Whittle’s index, and as particular cases, we retrieve many known results from the literature including classical machine repairman problem, content delivery network, transmission control protocol (TCP) etc.

About the speaker:

Manu Gupta received his masters and PhD degree in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at IIT Bombay. His research is focused on stochastic operations research, in particular on controls of queues and sequential decision making. He is a recipient of CIMI postdoc fellowship since August 2017 at Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse (IRIT) where his work is related to multi-armed restless bandits. He also received best thesis award for his PhD work in dynamic priority queues at IIT Bombay.

Abstract

“Impact of supply chain disruptions on competitors: Propagation of disruption impacts through supply chain”.
Investigating the spillover effect of supply chain glitches on competitor firms who themselves are not involved in the glitch,measured through abnormal returns and return on assets, the competitors gain when a firm announces a major glitch but the gain is watered down by the number of shared suppliers, vertical relatedness and supplier exposure, but exacerbated by event exposure.

About the speaker:

Started as the Ph.D. scholar in Fall 2016 at the University of Maryland-College Park in Supply Chain Management , his research interests include Transportation and Supply chain risk management. He has a Master’s degree in Information systems from Iowa state university and a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from National Institute of technology, India. His current research paper, “U.S. Motor carrier Exit: Prevalence and Determinants” is in the second round of review at Transportation Journal.

Abstract

This talk is motivated by a problem of checking blowout preventer valves. Blowouts are accidents that occur in oil rigs. They are ecological hazards and are financially damaging for drilling companies. Hence blowout prevention equipment including blowout preventer valves are critical infrastructure for drilling companies and need to be checked regularly for malfunction. However these valves are often physically inaccessible, they are checked in batches called test sets. In this talk we describe an efficient way of checking whether or not all blowout preventer valves in a rig are functioning properly, and of identifying malfunctioning valves if they are present using as few checks as possible. To the best of our knowledge this has not been studied in the literature. We present an exact method to check the functional status of all blowout preventer valves using a minimum number of test sets. We also present a heuristic approach and five heuristic methods to identify malfunctioning valves if they exist. We report our computational experience with these heuristic methods.

About the speaker:

Diptesh Ghosh is a professor in the Production & Quantitative Methods Area. His research interests are in the application of metaheuristic techniquest to hard combinatorial optimization problems, especially in the areas of discrete facility location and layout. He obtained a Bachelor of Technology (Honours) degree in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur and a Fellow of IIM Calcutta diploma in Operations Research and Systems Analysis. He has been a postdoctroral researcher in the Faculty of Economics, Department of Econometrics and Operations Research at the University of Groningen and a member of the faculty of Decision Sciences at IIM Lucknow prior to joining IIM Ahmedabad.

About the speaker:

Mr. Sameer Seth , Media professional with 14Yrs+ diverse experience in P&L Management, Business Planning, Revenue & Content Strategy, Brand Management, Marketing Communications & Sales. He has handled brand launches (including a category launch) & brand repositioning mandates across some of India's largest Media Corporations and in the Consumer Durable Category. Disruptive marketing leading to delivery of high impact marketing campaigns, while being innovative in operational management & creating non-conventional revenue opportunities is his forte. He has previously worked for Network18 Media & Investments Limited, Star TV Network, CNN-News18 and so forth and an alumni of Delhi University, XLRI Jamshedpur.

About the speaker:

Mrs Tandon is a self-motivating and innovative HR Professional with an illustrious career spanning over 15 years. For starters roles of, Talent Acquisition Head at Stryker, Ex-Associate Director- HR, Snapdeal. She has worked in diverse industries like Medical Technology, E-commerce, Automobile, ITES and has proved her mettle in numerous areas like Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding, Organisation Design and change management amongst others. Fittingly so, her extraordinary contributions to the organisations that she has been associated with have manifested into coveted honours such as Golden Peacock Award for HR Excellence, Best in Candidate Experience in TA League Awards, and Best in Diversity Practices in LnD League awards, for the organisations she has been a part of. Adding to this, her individual brilliance has also been recognised with The Magical Motivator Award and The Best in HR Excellence Award. She has an impeccable level of passion for innovative HR practices and her zeal for developing new Talent Acquisition Strategies is unparallel.

Abstract

In most markets, customer satisfaction is viewed as a valuable intangible asset that firms should invest in creating and managing. However, it is unclear whether this also makes sense in regulated markets such as those for public utilities. For firms operating in such markets, economic theory posits that providing anything above a minimum level of customer satisfaction will lead to reduced profits. However, marketing theory suggests that investing in customer relationships may still have positive economic pay-offs. Thus, utility managers are unsure whether or not it makes sense to invest in creating and increasing customer satisfaction. To address this question we empirically examine whether and how customer satisfaction may affect utility firm profits. Using data from the U.S. public utilities industry, we show that customer satisfaction positively predicts future profitability in utility firms. We find that this relationship is driven by higher customer satisfaction reducing the utility firm's costs to serve customers.

About the speaker:

In most markets, customer satisfaction is viewed as a valuable intangible asset that firms should invest in creating and managing. However, it is unclear whether this also makes sense in regulated markets such as those for public utilities. For firms operating in such markets, economic theory posits that providing anything above a minimum level of customer satisfaction will lead to reduced profits. However, marketing theory suggests that investing in customer relationships may still have positive economic pay-offs. Thus, utility managers are unsure whether or not it makes sense to invest in creating and increasing customer satisfaction. To address this question we empirically examine whether and how customer satisfaction may affect utility firm profits. Using data from the U.S. public utilities industry, we show that customer satisfaction positively predicts future profitability in utility firms. We find that this relationship is driven by higher customer satisfaction reducing the utility firm's costs to serve customers.

Company Profile

A Fortune 6 company, focused on helping people live healthier lives while making the health system work better for everyone. UnitedHealthcare and Optum, both subsidiaries of UnitedHealth Group. Optum is a healthcare service arm of UnitedHealth Group and the largest healthcare IT company in the world by revenue ($84 billion in 2016). Together, Optum and Unitedhealthcare serve approximately 115 million individuals in 2016. In 2016, the company reported an operating income of $13 billion

About the speaker:

An IIT kanpur Alumnus . Mr Ashish is a Decision Scientist and leader in analytics industry for the past 12 years. He has hands on experience in analysis, design and implementation of solutions. Experience in setting up new capabilities, delivery centers and skills. He has worked for top tiered pharma and health care companies. He is currently the Associate Director, at United Health Group.

Company Profile

Novartis International AG is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies by both market cap and sales. A science-based and patient-oriented healthcare company, we strive to be a global leader in growing areas of healthcare. Following a corporate transformation Novartis globally is focused on three divisions with global scale and innovation power – pharmaceuticals, eye care and generic medicines

About the speaker:

Mr Utsav Rawat has an extensive experience of more than 11 years in various multinational pharmaceutical & medical devise organizations leading country,regional & global roles in public & private markets (leading innovation, new product development, strategic marketing, advocacy, key account management, portfolio strategy, brand management and sales) Thorough understanding of healthcare industry in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC's) and Emerging Markets (EM's). The ability to coordinate cross-national, multi-partner initiatives and work through members in a matrix structure to achieve results is his USP.

Abstract:

We examine the influence of market irrationality on share repurchase outcomes and motives. The paper investigates how open market repurchases (OMRs) announced in markets characterized by high-irrational sentiment differ from those announced in the low-sentiment markets. Our findings indicate that while announcements in low-sentiment phase earn lower abnormal returns in the short-run, in the long-run, they outperform announcers in the high-sentiment phase. In addition, the long-run operating performance of announcers in the low-sentiment markets is superior. The evidence on long-run stock returns and operating performance suggest that announcers in the low-sentiment markets are more likely to be motivated by the need for signaling. We find differences in their completion rates as well, with low-sentiment OMRs achieving higher completion. We further examine how announcers across the two phases differ in their potential motives. A logit regression indicates that announcers in the low-sentiment market are more likely to signal undervaluation, distribute excess cash, and increase leverage through repurchases. Announcers in the high-sentiment phase, on the other hand, are more likely to be motivated by the price-support and anti-dilution role of repurchases. Overall, our results suggest that the market irrationality influences both the firms' decision to repurchase and the market reaction to the announcement.

About the speaker:

Suman is an FPM student in Finance & Accounting area at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). His research interests encompass topics in payout policy, investments, and behavioral corporate finance. His dissertation work focuses on market irrationality and share repurchases. Three of his papers have been presented at Midwest Finance Association (MFA) annual meeting, Emerging Markets Finance Conference (EMFC), India Finance Conference (IFC), Academy of Economics and Finance (AEF) annual conference, and International Conference on Financial Markets and Corporate Finance (ICFMCF). He holds undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT (BHU), Varanasi and postgraduate degree in Business Economics from University of Delhi. He has three years corporate experience in the Information Technology sector.

Company Profile

Medicover is a leading international healthcare and diagnostic services provider. Established in 1995 in response to the growing demand for high-quality healthcare services in Poland, Medicover subsequently expanded to other countries fulfilling similar needs. Today, Medicover's largest operations are in Germany, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. Medicover provides a broad spectrum of healthcare services via an extensive network of ambulatory clinics, hospitals, specialty-care facilities and laboratories through two divisions – Healthcare Services and Diagnostic Services.

About the speaker:

Mr. Gaurav Malhotra is the Managing Director of Medicover Healthcare a leading European healthcare group. He has been recognised as 100 Most Impactful Healthcare Leaders by eminent jury at World Health and Wellness Congress.He has been recognised as Top MedTech Leader of India.He is the member of exclusive Director's Club.He was earlier M.D & C.E.O. of Bourn Hall International which had won Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Excellence award for 2014 and Best Single Speciality Brand of the year in 2015 which is a reflection of clinical and commercial excellence under his dynamic leadership. He has twenty two years of experience in healthcare domain, in leading business and change management across MNCs, start-ups, joint ventures and re-engineering organisations.He is the Charter Member of TiE-Delhi.He was the M.D. & C.E.O. of Patni Healthcare Ltd. He was the Founder & C.E.O. of Medfort Hospital. He was the Managing Director and Board member of all the acquired healthcare companies for providing strategic and operational direction to ensure delivery of sustainable profitable growth

Abstract:

Facility location problems reported in the literature generally assume the problem parameter values (like cost, budget, etc.) to be known with complete certainty, even if they change over time (as in multi-period versions). However, in reality, there may be some uncertainty about the exact values of these parameters. Specifically, in the context of locating primary health centers (PHCs) in developing countries, there is generally a high level of uncertainty in the availability of servers (doctors) joining the facilities in different time periods. Furthermore, for transparency and efficient assignment of the doctors to PHCs, it is desirable to decide the facility opening sequence (assigning doctors to unmanned PHCs) at the start of the planning horizon.

The extant facility location literature does not account for such an uncertainty regarding server availability. This uncertainty may lead to a facility opening sequence being considered, which may be far from an optimal ex post decision. We work on the uncapacitated and capacitated versions of this problem where facilities can only meet demand which falls within a covering distance. Further, in place of a crisp covering distance, we generalize the problems by considering a gradual covering where coverage function is a non-increasing function of distance. We provide two formulations for each of these versions using minimax regret approach and show that one of the formulations is stronger. We provide Benders decomposition based solution method, along with several refinements for each of the problem variants. For instances that CPLEX MIP solver could solve within a time limit of 20 hours, our proposed solution method turns out to be of the order of 100 - 5000 times faster. To solve larger size problem instances, we also provide tabu search (TS) implementations that give good solution for most of the test instances.

About the speaker:

Amit is working as a functional architect at JDA software, Hyderabad. He is undertaking product development in various supply chain domains using operations research. He has worked in "Air Cargo" and "Tour & Travel" sectors, and received "Pillar Team" awards for his innovative contributions to each of these products.

He completed his fellowship in "Production & Quantitative Methods" from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). He obtained PGDM from Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML), and B.Tech in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kgp).

Prior to MBA, he worked in Engineers India Ltd as a process design engineer for 3 years. His provided consulting services to refineries and petrochemical plants for their capacity enhancement/ product up-gradation or setting up a new plant. Post MBA, he worked in IMS Learning Resources as a Centre Manager. Before commencing FPM at IIM Ahmedabad, he joined BBD University, Lucknow as an Asst. Professor, where he taught operations research and project management.

Amit's academic research lies broadly in the area of Facility Location Problems as they arise in Health Care; Service System Design; and Supply Chain Management. He is interested in history, geography and geopolitics; and keeps himself updated with the economic and political developments across the world. He loves to play table-tennis, badminton and cricket, and has represented his organizations in sports events. As an environmental enthusiast, he strives to reduce his carbon footprint.

Company Profile

Fidelity International, formerly Fidelity Worldwide Investment, is a company that provides investment management services including mutual funds, pension management and fund platforms to private and institutional investors.Fidelity offers its own funds and, through its platforms in a number of countries, other managers' funds. It currently manages or administers over US$300bn on behalf of private individuals and institutions around the world, offering investors the opportunity to further their medium and long-term investment goals.

About the speaker:

Ruchita Bansal Sharma is a HR professional with 15yrs. + of industry experience with exposure to various roles across various geographies and business lines in HR with increasing leadership responsibilities. Working with CXOs and manage HR team autonomously with a drive for professional excellence in diverse cultural environments while maintaining strong ethical and cultural values. Driving change, growth and transformation across business.

Abstract:

We investigate whether and how family ownership and management influence firms' internationalization strategy in an emerging economy in which family firms are dominant. Anchoring on the willingness-ability framework and drawing on the socio-emotional wealth perspective and agency theory, we theorize how the heterogeneity among family firms in their ownership structure, concentration, and family involvement in management shapes the firms' internationalization strategy. We also theorize how certain contingencies, such as the presence of foreign institutional ownership and family management, moderate the relationship between family ownership and internationalization strategy. We test our predictions by using a proprietary, longitudinal panel data set of 303 leading family firms from India and find support for most of our theoretical predictions.

About the speaker:

Arindam Mondal is 2017 Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in Strategic Management area. He has been researching in the broader area of multinationals from emerging economies and their international business strategies. He has published his research work in reputed international journals such as, Global Strategy Journal (#2 in International Management), Journal of General Management etc. Also, he is an equal co-author on multiple other working papers, three being under review at various stages in very reputed international journals. He has presented his research work in many peer-reviewed national and international conferences such as Academy of International Business Annual Conference, Academy of Management Annual Conference, Pan IIM World Management Conference etc. Until recently, he was working as Assistant Professor (Marketing & Strategy) at Management Development Institute, Murshidabad campus. His teaching interest lies in the fields of Strategic Management, Global Strategic Management, Emerging Market Strategy, and Family Business Strategy. He has received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, in the year 2009.

Abstract:

In this talk, I shall discuss analysis of left truncated and right censored competing risks data, under the assumption of the latent failure times model. The results are developed assuming that there are two competing causes of failures, although most of the results can be extended for more than two causes of failures. The lifetimes corresponding to the competing causes of failures are assumed to follow Weibull distributions, with the same shape parameter but different scale parameters. The maximum likelihood estimation procedure of the model parameters is discussed, and confidence intervals are provided using the bootstrap approach. When the common shape parameter is known, the maximum likelihood estimators of the scale parameters can be obtained in explicit forms, and when it is unknown we provide a simple iterative procedure to compute the maximum likelihood estimator of the shape parameter. The Bayes estimates and the associated credible intervals of unknown parameters are also addressed under a very flexible set of priors on the shape and scale parameters. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare the performances of the different methods. A numerical example is provided for illustrative purposes. Finally the results are extended when the two competing causes of failures are assumed to be independent Weibull distributions with different shape parameters.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debanjan Mitra completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in statistics from University of Calcutta, India, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Then, he earned his Ph.D. from McMaster University, Canada in 2012, under the supervision of Professor N. Balakrishnan. From December 2012 to May 2014, Dr. Mitra was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at IIT Guwahati. Since June 2014, Dr. Mitra is an Assistant Professor in the Operations Management, Quantitative Methods and Information Systems Area at IIM Udaipur. His research interests include reliability and survival analysis, ordered data analysis, censoring methodologies, and their applications.

Abstract:

This paper examines the role of performance feedback as an antecedent to entrepreneurial orientation and how it is affected by heterogeneity in risk-taking ability across ownership categories. Using a behavioral agency theory perspective, we argue that loss-aversion leads managers to adopt risk-oriented strategic postures such as entrepreneurial orientation, contingent on the risk-taking ability of the owners. A panel dataset of 247,052 observations pertaining to 27,528 firms over a period of 22 years, provides supporting evidence that higher performance aspiration gap leads to higher entrepreneurial orientation among firms. However, even when faced with a loss frame, the risk taking behavior is contingent on the ownership category, due to differences in the resource configuration and governance arrangements.

About the speaker:

Dr. Amit Baran Chakrabarti is an Assistant Professor at TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal. Prior to joining TAPMI he was engaged as a Senior Researcher at the Thomas Schmidheiny Center for Family Business at the Indian School of Business. He joined academia after completing 8 years of corporate work experience which included stints at IndianOil and KSA Technopak. He has completed his B.Arch. from Jadavpur University in the year 2000; MBA from IIM Bangalore in the year 2004 and FPM from IIM Calcutta in 2017 respectively. His research interests are in the areas of international business, public sector management and entrepreneurship. He has published in the Journal of Economic Policy Reforms, Journal of General Management and Journal of East West Business, apart from presenting his research work at several national and international conferences.

About the speaker:

Mr. Sameer Seth , Media professional with 14Yrs+ diverse experience in P&L Management, Business Planning, Revenue & Content Strategy, Brand Management, Marketing Communications & Sales. He has handled brand launches (including a category launch) & brand repositioning mandates across some of India's largest Media Corporations and in the Consumer Durable Category. Disruptive marketing leading to delivery of high impact marketing campaigns, while being innovative in operational management & creating non-conventional revenue opportunities is his forte. He has previously worked for Network18 Media & Investments Limited, Star TV Network, CNN-News18 and so forth and an alumni of Delhi University, XLRI Jamshedpur.

About the speaker:

Mrs Tandon is a self-motivating and innovative HR Professional with an illustrious career spanning over 15 years. For starters roles of, Talent Acquisition Head at Stryker, Ex-Associate Director- HR, Snapdeal. She has worked in diverse industries like Medical Technology, E-commerce, Automobile, ITES and has proved her mettle in numerous areas like Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding, Organisation Design and change management amongst others. Fittingly so, her extraordinary contributions to the organisations that she has been associated with have manifested into coveted honours such as Golden Peacock Award for HR Excellence, Best in Candidate Experience in TA League Awards, and Best in Diversity Practices in LnD League awards, for the organisations she has been a part of. Adding to this, her individual brilliance has also been recognised with The Magical Motivator Award and The Best in HR Excellence Award. She has an impeccable level of passion for innovative HR practices and her zeal for developing new Talent Acquisition Strategies is unparallel.

Abstract

In most markets, customer satisfaction is viewed as a valuable intangible asset that firms should invest in creating and managing. However, it is unclear whether this also makes sense in regulated markets such as those for public utilities. For firms operating in such markets, economic theory posits that providing anything above a minimum level of customer satisfaction will lead to reduced profits. However, marketing theory suggests that investing in customer relationships may still have positive economic pay-offs. Thus, utility managers are unsure whether or not it makes sense to invest in creating and increasing customer satisfaction. To address this question we empirically examine whether and how customer satisfaction may affect utility firm profits. Using data from the U.S. public utilities industry, we show that customer satisfaction positively predicts future profitability in utility firms. We find that this relationship is driven by higher customer satisfaction reducing the utility firm's costs to serve customers.

About the speaker:

In most markets, customer satisfaction is viewed as a valuable intangible asset that firms should invest in creating and managing. However, it is unclear whether this also makes sense in regulated markets such as those for public utilities. For firms operating in such markets, economic theory posits that providing anything above a minimum level of customer satisfaction will lead to reduced profits. However, marketing theory suggests that investing in customer relationships may still have positive economic pay-offs. Thus, utility managers are unsure whether or not it makes sense to invest in creating and increasing customer satisfaction. To address this question we empirically examine whether and how customer satisfaction may affect utility firm profits. Using data from the U.S. public utilities industry, we show that customer satisfaction positively predicts future profitability in utility firms. We find that this relationship is driven by higher customer satisfaction reducing the utility firm's costs to serve customers.

Company Profile

A Fortune 6 company, focused on helping people live healthier lives while making the health system work better for everyone. UnitedHealthcare and Optum, both subsidiaries of UnitedHealth Group. Optum is a healthcare service arm of UnitedHealth Group and the largest healthcare IT company in the world by revenue ($84 billion in 2016). Together, Optum and Unitedhealthcare serve approximately 115 million individuals in 2016. In 2016, the company reported an operating income of $13 billion

About the speaker:

An IIT kanpur Alumnus . Mr Ashish is a Decision Scientist and leader in analytics industry for the past 12 years. He has hands on experience in analysis, design and implementation of solutions. Experience in setting up new capabilities, delivery centers and skills. He has worked for top tiered pharma and health care companies. He is currently the Associate Director, at United Health Group.

Company Profile

Novartis International AG is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies by both market cap and sales. A science-based and patient-oriented healthcare company, we strive to be a global leader in growing areas of healthcare. Following a corporate transformation Novartis globally is focused on three divisions with global scale and innovation power – pharmaceuticals, eye care and generic medicines

About the speaker:

Mr Utsav Rawat has an extensive experience of more than 11 years in various multinational pharmaceutical & medical devise organizations leading country,regional & global roles in public & private markets (leading innovation, new product development, strategic marketing, advocacy, key account management, portfolio strategy, brand management and sales) Thorough understanding of healthcare industry in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC's) and Emerging Markets (EM's). The ability to coordinate cross-national, multi-partner initiatives and work through members in a matrix structure to achieve results is his USP.

Abstract:

We examine the influence of market irrationality on share repurchase outcomes and motives. The paper investigates how open market repurchases (OMRs) announced in markets characterized by high-irrational sentiment differ from those announced in the low-sentiment markets. Our findings indicate that while announcements in low-sentiment phase earn lower abnormal returns in the short-run, in the long-run, they outperform announcers in the high-sentiment phase. In addition, the long-run operating performance of announcers in the low-sentiment markets is superior. The evidence on long-run stock returns and operating performance suggest that announcers in the low-sentiment markets are more likely to be motivated by the need for signaling. We find differences in their completion rates as well, with low-sentiment OMRs achieving higher completion. We further examine how announcers across the two phases differ in their potential motives. A logit regression indicates that announcers in the low-sentiment market are more likely to signal undervaluation, distribute excess cash, and increase leverage through repurchases. Announcers in the high-sentiment phase, on the other hand, are more likely to be motivated by the price-support and anti-dilution role of repurchases. Overall, our results suggest that the market irrationality influences both the firms' decision to repurchase and the market reaction to the announcement.

About the speaker:

Suman is an FPM student in Finance & Accounting area at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). His research interests encompass topics in payout policy, investments, and behavioral corporate finance. His dissertation work focuses on market irrationality and share repurchases. Three of his papers have been presented at Midwest Finance Association (MFA) annual meeting, Emerging Markets Finance Conference (EMFC), India Finance Conference (IFC), Academy of Economics and Finance (AEF) annual conference, and International Conference on Financial Markets and Corporate Finance (ICFMCF). He holds undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT (BHU), Varanasi and postgraduate degree in Business Economics from University of Delhi. He has three years corporate experience in the Information Technology sector.

Company Profile

Medicover is a leading international healthcare and diagnostic services provider. Established in 1995 in response to the growing demand for high-quality healthcare services in Poland, Medicover subsequently expanded to other countries fulfilling similar needs. Today, Medicover's largest operations are in Germany, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. Medicover provides a broad spectrum of healthcare services via an extensive network of ambulatory clinics, hospitals, specialty-care facilities and laboratories through two divisions – Healthcare Services and Diagnostic Services.

About the speaker:

Mr. Gaurav Malhotra is the Managing Director of Medicover Healthcare a leading European healthcare group. He has been recognised as 100 Most Impactful Healthcare Leaders by eminent jury at World Health and Wellness Congress.He has been recognised as Top MedTech Leader of India.He is the member of exclusive Director's Club.He was earlier M.D & C.E.O. of Bourn Hall International which had won Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Excellence award for 2014 and Best Single Speciality Brand of the year in 2015 which is a reflection of clinical and commercial excellence under his dynamic leadership. He has twenty two years of experience in healthcare domain, in leading business and change management across MNCs, start-ups, joint ventures and re-engineering organisations.He is the Charter Member of TiE-Delhi.He was the M.D. & C.E.O. of Patni Healthcare Ltd. He was the Founder & C.E.O. of Medfort Hospital. He was the Managing Director and Board member of all the acquired healthcare companies for providing strategic and operational direction to ensure delivery of sustainable profitable growth

Abstract:

Facility location problems reported in the literature generally assume the problem parameter values (like cost, budget, etc.) to be known with complete certainty, even if they change over time (as in multi-period versions). However, in reality, there may be some uncertainty about the exact values of these parameters. Specifically, in the context of locating primary health centers (PHCs) in developing countries, there is generally a high level of uncertainty in the availability of servers (doctors) joining the facilities in different time periods. Furthermore, for transparency and efficient assignment of the doctors to PHCs, it is desirable to decide the facility opening sequence (assigning doctors to unmanned PHCs) at the start of the planning horizon.

The extant facility location literature does not account for such an uncertainty regarding server availability. This uncertainty may lead to a facility opening sequence being considered, which may be far from an optimal ex post decision. We work on the uncapacitated and capacitated versions of this problem where facilities can only meet demand which falls within a covering distance. Further, in place of a crisp covering distance, we generalize the problems by considering a gradual covering where coverage function is a non-increasing function of distance. We provide two formulations for each of these versions using minimax regret approach and show that one of the formulations is stronger. We provide Benders decomposition based solution method, along with several refinements for each of the problem variants. For instances that CPLEX MIP solver could solve within a time limit of 20 hours, our proposed solution method turns out to be of the order of 100 - 5000 times faster. To solve larger size problem instances, we also provide tabu search (TS) implementations that give good solution for most of the test instances.

About the speaker:

Amit is working as a functional architect at JDA software, Hyderabad. He is undertaking product development in various supply chain domains using operations research. He has worked in "Air Cargo" and "Tour & Travel" sectors, and received "Pillar Team" awards for his innovative contributions to each of these products.

He completed his fellowship in "Production & Quantitative Methods" from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). He obtained PGDM from Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML), and B.Tech in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kgp).

Prior to MBA, he worked in Engineers India Ltd as a process design engineer for 3 years. His provided consulting services to refineries and petrochemical plants for their capacity enhancement/ product up-gradation or setting up a new plant. Post MBA, he worked in IMS Learning Resources as a Centre Manager. Before commencing FPM at IIM Ahmedabad, he joined BBD University, Lucknow as an Asst. Professor, where he taught operations research and project management.

Amit's academic research lies broadly in the area of Facility Location Problems as they arise in Health Care; Service System Design; and Supply Chain Management. He is interested in history, geography and geopolitics; and keeps himself updated with the economic and political developments across the world. He loves to play table-tennis, badminton and cricket, and has represented his organizations in sports events. As an environmental enthusiast, he strives to reduce his carbon footprint.

Company Profile

Fidelity International, formerly Fidelity Worldwide Investment, is a company that provides investment management services including mutual funds, pension management and fund platforms to private and institutional investors.Fidelity offers its own funds and, through its platforms in a number of countries, other managers' funds. It currently manages or administers over US$300bn on behalf of private individuals and institutions around the world, offering investors the opportunity to further their medium and long-term investment goals.

About the speaker:

Ruchita Bansal Sharma is a HR professional with 15yrs. + of industry experience with exposure to various roles across various geographies and business lines in HR with increasing leadership responsibilities. Working with CXOs and manage HR team autonomously with a drive for professional excellence in diverse cultural environments while maintaining strong ethical and cultural values. Driving change, growth and transformation across business.

Abstract:

We investigate whether and how family ownership and management influence firms' internationalization strategy in an emerging economy in which family firms are dominant. Anchoring on the willingness-ability framework and drawing on the socio-emotional wealth perspective and agency theory, we theorize how the heterogeneity among family firms in their ownership structure, concentration, and family involvement in management shapes the firms' internationalization strategy. We also theorize how certain contingencies, such as the presence of foreign institutional ownership and family management, moderate the relationship between family ownership and internationalization strategy. We test our predictions by using a proprietary, longitudinal panel data set of 303 leading family firms from India and find support for most of our theoretical predictions.

About the speaker:

Arindam Mondal is 2017 Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in Strategic Management area. He has been researching in the broader area of multinationals from emerging economies and their international business strategies. He has published his research work in reputed international journals such as, Global Strategy Journal (#2 in International Management), Journal of General Management etc. Also, he is an equal co-author on multiple other working papers, three being under review at various stages in very reputed international journals. He has presented his research work in many peer-reviewed national and international conferences such as Academy of International Business Annual Conference, Academy of Management Annual Conference, Pan IIM World Management Conference etc. Until recently, he was working as Assistant Professor (Marketing & Strategy) at Management Development Institute, Murshidabad campus. His teaching interest lies in the fields of Strategic Management, Global Strategic Management, Emerging Market Strategy, and Family Business Strategy. He has received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, in the year 2009.

Abstract:

In this talk, I shall discuss analysis of left truncated and right censored competing risks data, under the assumption of the latent failure times model. The results are developed assuming that there are two competing causes of failures, although most of the results can be extended for more than two causes of failures. The lifetimes corresponding to the competing causes of failures are assumed to follow Weibull distributions, with the same shape parameter but different scale parameters. The maximum likelihood estimation procedure of the model parameters is discussed, and confidence intervals are provided using the bootstrap approach. When the common shape parameter is known, the maximum likelihood estimators of the scale parameters can be obtained in explicit forms, and when it is unknown we provide a simple iterative procedure to compute the maximum likelihood estimator of the shape parameter. The Bayes estimates and the associated credible intervals of unknown parameters are also addressed under a very flexible set of priors on the shape and scale parameters. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare the performances of the different methods. A numerical example is provided for illustrative purposes. Finally the results are extended when the two competing causes of failures are assumed to be independent Weibull distributions with different shape parameters.

About the speaker:

Dr. Debanjan Mitra completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in statistics from University of Calcutta, India, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Then, he earned his Ph.D. from McMaster University, Canada in 2012, under the supervision of Professor N. Balakrishnan. From December 2012 to May 2014, Dr. Mitra was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at IIT Guwahati. Since June 2014, Dr. Mitra is an Assistant Professor in the Operations Management, Quantitative Methods and Information Systems Area at IIM Udaipur. His research interests include reliability and survival analysis, ordered data analysis, censoring methodologies, and their applications.

Abstract:

This paper examines the role of performance feedback as an antecedent to entrepreneurial orientation and how it is affected by heterogeneity in risk-taking ability across ownership categories. Using a behavioral agency theory perspective, we argue that loss-aversion leads managers to adopt risk-oriented strategic postures such as entrepreneurial orientation, contingent on the risk-taking ability of the owners. A panel dataset of 247,052 observations pertaining to 27,528 firms over a period of 22 years, provides supporting evidence that higher performance aspiration gap leads to higher entrepreneurial orientation among firms. However, even when faced with a loss frame, the risk taking behavior is contingent on the ownership category, due to differences in the resource configuration and governance arrangements.

About the speaker:

Dr. Amit Baran Chakrabarti is an Assistant Professor at TA Pai Management Institute, Manipal. Prior to joining TAPMI he was engaged as a Senior Researcher at the Thomas Schmidheiny Center for Family Business at the Indian School of Business. He joined academia after completing 8 years of corporate work experience which included stints at IndianOil and KSA Technopak. He has completed his B.Arch. from Jadavpur University in the year 2000; MBA from IIM Bangalore in the year 2004 and FPM from IIM Calcutta in 2017 respectively. His research interests are in the areas of international business, public sector management and entrepreneurship. He has published in the Journal of Economic Policy Reforms, Journal of General Management and Journal of East West Business, apart from presenting his research work at several national and international conferences.