Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers

The National Renewal Fund (NRF), set up in February 1992, aims to provide a safety net to protect the workers in industrial enterprises from possible adverse consequences of the new economic policy.

In this article, V R S Cowlagi examines the scope and the performance of the NRF and suggests various ways of enhancing its impact.

Programmes of change such as Kaizen, JIT, TQM, etc, which envisage a cultural change, are helpful in achieving improvement as a way of life in an organization. However, the existing practice of “management by crises' can act as a formidable barrier for devoting time to improvement activities.

This paper by N Narayanan explores the phenomenon of management by crises' and discusses an integrated approach aimed at facilitating development of a new practice of early detection of problems and solving problems at the source.

In this article, the author makes an attempt to study 144 strategic decisions from 94 business organizations in the Indian industry with a view to understand the strategic decision-making process. The decisions are analysed to structure the process of strategy making and a model of strategic decision-making process is developed. It can be observed that the strategic decision-making process is organizationally oriented with prominent information seeking characteristics.

Reforms in the financial sector would mean changes in financial institutions and financial markets. Financial institutions can be classified into banks and non-bank financial intermediaries.

In this article, R J Mody focuses on reforms in the area of non-bank financial intermediaries.

Keeping in mind the interests of the farmermembers, the Chairman of the NGCFVS is contemplating on the strategies the society should adopt in order to ensure reasonable price for the produce of the members if there is a glut in the production.

Readers are invited to send their responses on the case to Vikalpa office.

In the April-June 1994 issue of Vikalpa, we had published a Management Case titled “Agricultural Finance Corporation, Zimbabwe” by I M Pandey and SRamnarayan.

In this issue, we carry three diagnoses of the case by P P Gupta, S Vathsala, and Samar K Datta.

This section features abstracts of articles covering empirical studies, experiences, ideas, and theories published in Indian and international journals. Sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, this service is intended to facilitate Indian management research.

Authors desirous of having their publications considered for inclusion in this feature may please send reprints of their articles tc) Vikalpa Editorial Office.