Global Business Review

The study captures the COVID-19 lifecycle in different states of India using predictive analytics. Drawing upon the seminal susceptible–infected–removed (SIR) model of capturing the spread of viral diseases, this study models the spread of COVID-19 in the ten most infected states of India (as on 30 April 2020). Using publicly available state-wise time series data of COVID-19 patients during the period 1–30 April 2020, the study uses the forecasting technique of auto-regressive integrated moving averages (ARIMA) to predict the likely population susceptible to COVID-19 in each state. Thereafter, based on the SIR model, predictive modelling of state-wise COVID-19 data is carried out to determine: (a) the predictive accuracy; (b) the likely number of days it would take for the disease to reach the peak number of infections in a state; (c) the likely number of infections at the peak; and (d) the state-wise end date. The SIR model is implemented by running Python 3.7.4 on Jupyter Notebook and using the package Matplotlib 3.2.1 for visualization. The study offers rich insights for policymakers as well as common citizens.

This article examines the existence of a bank-lending channel in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) using a sample of 328 banks from 2009 to 2015. The findings confirm that a bank-lending channel is effective. In particular, we find that consumer loans and commercial loans are sensitive to changes in monetary policy, but mortgage and corporate loans are not. We also find that commercial banks are vulnerable to monetary policy changes, but both investment and Islamic banks are not. On the contrary, special purpose banks are able to overcome the effect of monetary policy tightening by supplying more loans. The effectiveness of a bank-lending channel in ASEAN also holds when we control for the differences in governance structure of the countries. Policymakers need to take these into consideration in designing an effective monetary policy.

In a globalized world, more and more firms inevitably have to deal with other businesses from a far distance that they perhaps have never met and thus hardly know each other. The escalating level of globalization of business has brought with it the increased importance of trust in international business. Various studies have confirmed the importance of trust as one of the key elements for a successful business partnership. However, less is known about how international small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) develop and maintain trust. This research investigates the characteristics of trusted business partners and how trust is built and maintained over time. In-depth interviews were conducted with the management of 20 international SMEs in Thailand. The essences of trust, namely competency and professionalism, honesty and integrity, empathy and caring and three-stage model of trust building and maintaining in international business are proposed.

Foreign exchange exposure or exchange rate exposure is the risk that a firm’s cash flows and earnings may be affected by exchange rate movements. For multinationals that have several subsidiaries overseas, exchange rate movements may have an adverse effect on a huge number of contractual transactions. The exchange rate movements may have an impact on future cash flows, generated by the firm’s production and marketing operations. For example, a rising Indonesian rupiah may result in Indonesian goods becoming more expensive, leading to Indonesian exporters selling less in the future, resulting in unfavourable future cash flows. Lower future cash flows mean the firm’s stock valuation may decline and investors may not be attracted to investing in the firm’s stock. In this paper, we examine the effect of exchange rate movements on Indonesian listed firms’ stock prices using a multivariate model with six bilateral exchange rates. We further add a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH (1,1)) model for each of 100 Indonesian listed firms’ monthly closing prices from the period of January 1994 through to November 2015, and the GARCH (1,1) results are summarized and presented in Tables 1–4, 7 and 8. We find a total of 80 per cent of our sample firms to have significant exchange rate exposure. The overall results show that most of the Indonesian listed firms under study are exposed to Japanese yen, Great Britain pound and Malaysian ringgit. We posit that this sensitivity of their stock prices may be due to the fact that most of these Indonesian firms are net importers. Interestingly, the agricultural sector comes out as the most stable sector, having the least exposure and exhibiting stable performance during the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998. For overall exchange rate exposure across all firms, we run a pooled generalized least squares model. We find that the exchange rate exposure of the Indonesian sample firms is time-variant, or in other words, very much dependent on the subperiods (before crisis, during crisis and after crisis) under study.

This study investigates the determinants of board of director compensation from the view of strategic management. Specifically, this study examines the association between product market competition and directors’ compensation for a sample of 524 listed firms in Malaysia from 2010 to 2014. We find that there is a positive relationship between a competitive firm and its compensation to its directors. Our research indicates that managerial incentives reflect more of talent appreciation, rather than purely for acknowledging better performance or a bigger size firm. This research contests the use of agency theory and managerialism in explaining directors’ compensation, especially for the developing country context of Malaysia. Our findings also imply that firms may pay higher compensation in a competitive market.

This study empirically verifies the evolving and time-varying efficiency of Indian foreign exchange market using the framework of adaptive market hypothesis (AMH). Whether market efficiency is time varying or static, and if time varying, identification of possible events causing such time-varying efficiency are the two major agenda of this study. We employ a set of recent methods which are robust and possess stronger power properties. Moreover, we follow a fixed-length rolling window approach to explore time-varying nature of market efficiency and to avoid data-snooping bias. Our overall findings suggest that market efficiency is not an all-or-nothing condition; it varies over time. We also find that episodes of efficiency coincide with emergence of major events and market microstructure issues. Particularly, changes in exchange rate regime, financial turbulence, major central bank interventions and trade volume are the prominent causes for time-varying efficiency in INR–USD exchange rate. The evidence of swing between efficiency and inefficiency can prompt currency traders to exploit arbitrage opportunities that emerge with different market conditions.

The article provides an empirical evaluation of self-attribution, overconfidence bias and dynamic market volatility at Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) across various market capitalizations. First, the investors’ reaction to market gain when they make right and wrong forecasts is studied to understand whether self-attribution bias causes investors’ overconfidence. It is found that when investors make right forecasts of future returns, they become overconfident and trade more in subsequent time periods. Next, the relation between excessive trading volume of overconfident investors and excessive prices volatility is studied. The trading volume is decomposed into a first variable related to overconfidence and a second variable unrelated to investors’ overconfidence. During pre-crisis period, the analysis of small stocks shows that conditional volatility is positively related to trading volume caused by overconfidence. During post-crisis period, the analysis shows that the under-confident investors became very pessimistic in small stocks and tend to overweight the future volatility. Whereas, the analysis of large stocks indicates that the overconfidence component of trading volume is positively correlated with the market volatility. Collectively, the empirical results provide strong statistical support to the presence of self-attribution and overconfidence bias explaining a large part of excessive and asymmetric volatility in Indian stock market.

This article examined the relative performance of aggregated and disaggregated earnings for valuation of equity and prediction of earnings in India. We measured three levels of earnings disaggregation: aggregate earnings, total accruals and cash flows, and four major constituents of accruals, then we estimated pooled as well as individual industry-wise regressions. We adopted Barth, Beaver, Hand and Landsman’s (1999, Review of Accounting Studies, 4(3, 4), 205–229; 2005, Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, 20(4), 311–345) linear information structure grounded on generalized version of Ohlson (1999) model. We compared our results with the studies based on developed market. Our findings say that aggregated earnings and its disaggregated components are value relevant, and the adjusted R-squares of every next disaggregated systems are higher than aggregated systems, but in varying range across industries. We also find that the investors are not capable of judging total accruals and cash flows separately for investment decisions in this emerging market.

We evaluate the monitoring and certification hypotheses associated with venture capital (VC) investors involved with Indian listed firms having the potential to influence firm performance. Empirical results of our study do not support monitoring and certification hypotheses associated for VC investors involved in publicly listed firms in India. On the other hand, we find the evidence of value erosion due to the presence of VC investors. The negative effect is justified through the opportunistic behaviour of the investor having a very easy route to exit investment through the secondary market in case of expected underperformance of the firm. The study also reveals that the origin of VC investors does influence firm performance. The results have a significant impact due to the regulatory framework defining the portfolio of VC investors.

Continuous innovation keeps running the businesses. The rise in environmental issues and, in turn, the awareness growing around have led people at large to make purchase of their most needed products and fulfil their requirements, which adhere to environment-friendly norms. Because of the environmental concerns and legal constraints, several organizations are producing green products. There is a stiff competition among the brands to establish themselves as the environment friendly green products. The sustainability for these green products depends on many factors. The important among these are packaging and pricing. To influence the purchase behaviour of consumers and thereby attracting them to purchase green products, innovative ideas in marketing for the longer shelf life of such products are required. The pace at which the green products move out of the shelf impacts an organization’s bottom line, and it has a tandem effect on the environment protection. The article aims at examining the effect of marketing innovations on the longevity (agility) of green product market agility (GPMA). Examining the effect of marketing innovations involves two aspects, and we have kept both aspects parallel to each other. One aspect is to examine the effect of packaging, that is, marketing innovation on packaging (MIPA), and the other aspect is to examine the effect of pricing, that is, marketing innovation on pricing (MIPR), with consumer purchase behaviour acting as a mediator between MIPA and GPMA and consumer purchase intention acting as a mediator between MIPR and GPMA.

While an increasing body of research has investigated the situational factors affecting balancing of work and family roles, there is still scarcity of research on the relationship between personal factors and work -family balance (WFB). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to estimate the effect of big five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) on the four dimensions of WFB i.e. work-to-family conflict [WFC], family-to-work conflict [FWC], work-to-family facilitation [WFF] and family-to-work facilitation [FWF] among Indian journalists. From the perspective of WFB, journalists are regarded as an interesting group that has rarely been examined by the scholars. The study validated the ‘fourfold WFB scale and ‘big five personality’ scale in the Indian context. Further, results revealed that big five personality variables emerged as significant predictor set for all the four dimensions of WFB. Unexpectedly, conscientiousness did not reduce WFC, given the unpredictable nature of journalism that pressurizes even a conscientious journalist to sacrifice his family life and work lousy hours. Openness behaved like a double-edged sword that escalate both conflict and facilitation experiences. However, extraversion did not increase facilitation experience for journalists. These findings suggest media organizations to conduct personality test for recruiting suitable candidates, whose personality traits make them best suited to the stressors of journalism profession. Moreover, knowledge of employees’ personality traits may increase the effectiveness of organizational interventions that aims to enhance employees’ WFB.

Organizational learning is a deep-rooted concept having a diverse body of literature. It primarily discusses ideas built around the philosophy of management of learning and knowledge in a firm. These approaches help an organization to improve its effectiveness and manage sustainability in a relatively dynamic world. This research article is an attempt to present a framework that shall discuss organizational learning in the Indian IT sector. Based on an extensive review of literature, some substantial observations for analysing organizational learning have been presented in this research article. The approach constitutes queries pertaining to reasons to learn, type of learning, management of knowledge within an organization, tools and techniques, values, relevance and end results of learning to come up with a research model that could discuss the metamorphosis of organizational learning in software firms in India.

Internal branding is considered as an Human Resource (HR) construct for creating, implementing and measuring the employee-based brand image in organizations. The purpose of this study was to empirically analyse the influence of internal branding initiatives on overall workplace well-being in which every stakeholder feels included, valued and respected. A study conducted on a sample of 443 respondents across four different Indian services sector examined how internal branding strategies help in psychological, physical, spiritual, financial and social well-being of employees. A conceptual framework based on the hypotheses was tested to establish correlations among internal branding, employee well-being and employee-based brand outcomes at individual and organizational levels. It shows that internal branding is an integral part of overall well-being programme and supports individual and organizational outcomes. Organizations can use this framework to improve their well-being strategies based on their internal brand creation process and also benefit from the increased organizational effectiveness.

The purpose of this research article is to examine the relationship between human resource (HR) practices and organizational performance. Though this research theme has been extensively researched in Western countries, very limited research has been done in the prevailing HRM scenario obtained in developing economies, especially in India. Hence, this article attempts to study the relationship and fill this research gap. A two-stage structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to study this relationship. In the first stage, the proposed measurement model is validated through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and, in the second, the structural model examines the hypothesized relationship between the HR practices and organizational performance. It is found that the two are positively related. The findings of this study strengthen existing literature in the area and have important implications for managers engaged in HR functions.

The current study is proposed to test the mediated effect of social exchange mechanism of leader–member exchange (LMX) between organizational justice and employee outcomes in the Indian banking industry. Stratified random sampling was used to collect the data from 346 employees of two Indian public and two Indian private banks listed in the CNX index. Data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis of the proposed model. Findings reveal that LMX partially mediated between all justice dimensions and employee outcomes. However, procedural justice is the strongest predictor of employee outcomes in public sector banks and weakest in private sector banks. This study has implications for both academicians and practitioners and adds to the previous literature by testing the projected model in the Indian settings, thus providing some empirical validity to justice–LMX–employee outcomes relationships.

An increasing number of organizations are adopting social commerce (SC) to engage and occupy customers in product development, sales and support activities. Therefore, it is imperative for retailers and marketers to know customers’ adoption behaviour towards SC websites and the benefits they gain through voluntary contribution of information on these websites. The study attempts to identify customer participation through development of a conceptual framework based on the uses and gratification (UG) approach. The importance of non-altruistic motives, that is, benefits shape member’s participation on SC websites, is confirmed by results. According to the results, two interaction characteristics, that is, human interactivity and member identity are essential for building trust in SC website. Findings of the study also conclude that interaction characteristics strongly affect three benefits, that is, personal integrative, social integrative and hedonic. Hence, it is implied that benefits gained by members on SC website interactions shape their participation intentions. Therefore, SC websites must be designed keeping in view both usage and benefits by members.