Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers

Climate change is a global environmental problem that has been associated with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Forest products definitely play a significant role in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, by increasing the level of carbon removals from the atmosphere. Different corporate governance systems impact the ability of industries to adopt and transform their activities to meet issues associated with climate change. Until recently, relatively little has been done, to measure the contribution made by forest-based industries to mitigate climate change.

This paper focuses on outlining adaptive management strategies that enhance the ability of forests and their products to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects through increased carbon sequestration and storage. Developing carbon credit markets that motivate true reductions in carbon emissions must address all carbon pools and their GHG emissions. To be effective in this area, the Indian management community must have a voice in defining the markets and policies, to the extent that it is of strategic interest to the future of the companies and the society. The Indian forest-based industry has a reasonable potential to sequester. However, domestic manufacturing is highly fragmented and unorganized, generally inefficiently managed, has low product quality, and lacks standardization. Nonetheless, there are various ways to positively influence the carbon balance; including sink enhancements and increasing the market share of the existing wood products. Globally, forest market is undergoing dramatic changes. The natural advantage in the forestry sector is gradually shifting away from countries with the highest levels of forest resources to countries where trees grow to commercial maturity at the fastest rate and where the cost of converting them into products is the lowest. It is thus obvious that many foreign companies view India as a country with a strong commercial appeal, both as an emerging market and as an economic partner in possible collaboration. These provide a unique link for dealing with climate change through the competitiveness of Indian forest industries and its livelihood impact.

The paper advocates a greater use of wood products in all forms, substituting fossil-fuelbased products, thus mitigating carbon emissions. A policy that lowers the cost of wood, for example, could motivate manufacturers and consumers to select wood products. Many companies are facing increasing pressure by governments, shareholders, and other stakeholders to reduce their CO₂ emissions. There is a need to develop a framework that conceptualizes a company's CO₂ strategy as the focus on one or a combination of several strategic objectives. Companies are looking for improved communication and a clear regulatory policy from the government to provide certainty so that they know where to focus their emission-saving efforts. Improved perception of wood through a better knowledge of its environmental, sanitary, and health properties by creating a ‘wood culture,’ needs social advertising support in the form of CSR activities by Indian corporations.

The success of a Six Sigma programme in an organization depends to a large extent on the success of the Six Sigma projects, which in turn depends on how the team handles the problem and whether the right combination of tools is being applied to address the root cause. The Six Sigma toolbox consists of a wide range of tools comprising, on the one hand, simple and commonly used tools like flow charts, Pareto analysis, and cause-and-effect diagram and the more advanced statistical tools like design of experiments, regression analysis and many more, on the other hand. While the simple tools are easy to apply, understand, and analyse, engineers perceive the more advanced tools difficult to comprehend. Design of experiments (DOE) is one such tool. Two well-known approaches of design of experiments are the Classical DOE, pioneered by Sir Ronald A Fisher and the Taguchi approach, pioneered by Dr Genichii Taguchi.

A third approach to experimental design—the Shainin DOE techniques, offered by Dr Dorian Shainin—can be considered as a very good alternative to the other approaches. They are much simpler than the factorial designs, response surface designs, and orthogonal arrays of the conventional approaches of DOE, but at the same time are recognized as being very powerful and effective in solving the chronic quality problems that plague most manufacturers. Shainin DOE basically works at eliminating suspected process variables by mostly using seven different tools, viz.,

Multi-Vari Charts

Component Search

Paired Comparison

Variable Search

Full Factorials

B vs. C (Better vs. Current) Analysis

Scatter Plots or Realistic Tolerance Parallelogram Plots.

Though not very well documented, these tools have proved to be the key drivers in the success of many companies, e.g., Motorola.

This article examines two projects of a leading automotive and general lighting lamp manufacturing company, in which a combination of the standard Six Sigma tools and Shainin tools has been successfully used to address the root cause of the problems. The advantage of using Shainin tools is that:

Very small sample sizes are required to analyse the problem. Often samples as small as 2 or 3 are enough to make statistically valid conclusions.

Statistical software is not required to analyse the data. In fact, Shainin DOE does not even require knowledge of complex statistical tools.

It involves employees at all levels, including workers and junior staff in problem solving that was hitherto a domain of senior technical experts.

Also, the success of the projects had a very positive effect on the morale of the employees in terms of convincing them that Six Sigma is not all about using complex statistical tools.

A broad review of existing literature on barriers to women's career advancement suggests that one of the most important reasons inhibiting women's rise to the top positions in management is the work-life conflict that women professionals experience because of their strong commitment to family responsibilities. The primary objective of this study is to understand the impact of family responsibilities on the career decisions of women professionals and also to find out the type of work-life support they would require from their employers to balance their work and life in a better manner. The study is conducted with 121 women professionals working in government services, public sector, private sector, and in NGOs across different levels. The perception of women professionals regarding the barriers against their career advancement is studied. The impact of demographic factors like managerial level, marital status, and family structure on all the above-mentioned issues are also analysed.

Following are some of the major findings of the study:

Apart from other factors, ‘commitment to family responsibility’ and ‘lack of gendersensitive policies by the employer’ are considered as important barriers which affect the career advancement of women professionals to senior positions. Senior and middle level professionals believe more strongly than the junior level women professionals that commitment to family responsibility hinders women professionals' advancement.

Family responsibility considerably affects the career decisions of women professionals. It is generally expected that the female spouse should take care of the family responsibility. Women professionals agree that children's responsibility hinders their ability to advance. They think that they are not able to utilize their full potential and at times they have to make career trade-offs because of the family responsibilities. They also believe that putting career ahead of family leads to social disapproval and rejection and at the middle level of their career, the pressure for conforming to the societal norms could be more.

The research reveals the expectations of the women professionals in terms of the support that organizations can provide to help them in achieving better work-life balance and advance in their career. A significant percentage of respondents have shown their strong preference for provisions like flexible working hours, childcare facilitates and emergency care for children and elders, support for non-work commitment, wellness, and personal development programmes. Half of the women professionals agree that “flexibility in work location” (working from home⁄telecommuting) can be taken up as an additional support provision. The requirement for all these work-life provisions are felt more at the middle and junior level rather than at the senior level.

Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) establishes the relationship between risks and returns in the efficient capital markets. A review of studies conducted for various markets in the world reveals that researchers have used a number of methodologies to test the validity of CAPM. While some studies have supported the validity of CAPM, some others have revealed that beta alone is not a suitable determinant of asset pricing and that a number of other factors could explain the cross-section of returns. This paper has attempted to test the validity of the combination effect of the two parameter CAPM to determine the security⁄portfolio returns. The results show that:

Intercept is not significantly different from zero.

The combination of size_i and ln(BE/ME)i explains the variation in security returns under both percentage and log returns series.

The combination of βi and ln(BE/ME)i, βi and (Rm-Rf)i, size_i and (E/P)i, and (E/P)i and (BE/ME)i explains the variation in security returns when log return series is used and the combination of βi and (Rm-Rf)i explains the variation in security returns when percentage return series is used.

In case of portfolios, the combination of βp and Rm-Rf explains the variation of portfolio returns when portfolios formed with market value weights under both percentage and log returns and βp and ln(BE/ME)p explain the portfolio percentage returns when market value weights are used.

It is observed that while combinations of some of the independent variables, as opposed to the univariate variable considered in Manjunatha and Mallikarjunappa's (2006) paper, explain the variations in security⁄portfolio returns, the other combinations do not explain the variation in the security⁄portfolio returns. Further analysis in this paper has shown that beta, with some of the combinations of the independent variables, explains the variation in security⁄portfolio returns. However, beta alone, when considered individually in the two parameter regressions, does not explain the variation in security⁄ portfolio returns. This casts doubt on the validity of the standard form of CAPM.

In the light of these findings, it can be concluded that beta alone is not sufficient to determine the expected returns on the securities⁄portfolios. The empirical findings of this paper would be useful to financial analysts in the Indian capital market. Further research on the combination of market factors, firms' specific factors, and macroeconomic factors is needed to enlarge the understanding of modern finance and to cover fresh ground to unravel the mysteries and ramifications of the CAPM puzzle.