Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers

The new service management school of thought acknowledges a set of new human resource management (HRM) practices, underpinned by the concept of satisfaction mirror between customers and front-line workers. HRM practices in the cycle of success include careful selection, high-quality training, well-designed support systems, empowerment, teamwork, appropriate measurement, rewards and recognition, and the development of a service culture. The model for achieving cycle of success in interactive service works is known as the high involvement work systems (HIWS). There is some research evidence about the positive influence of high involvement HR practices on effective service delivery.

This exploratory study examines the role played by HR practices in maintaining the quality of service delivery, in the context of healthcare services. It specifically studies the administrative factors and HR policies that aid effective service quality and the practices that bring down the quality of care provided in a private sector Indian hospital.

This being a relatively new area, an inductive approach was used. The study relied on semi-structured interviews for the purpose of data collection. Along with data collection, core theoretical concepts were identified and tentative linkages were developed between the theoretical core concepts and the data.

The findings show that the emphasis is more on supreme hospitality and patient amenities than medical treatment. The healthcare industry is witnessing a significant change. A consultant is no longer the ‘king’; this position has now been taken by the patients. Of late the emphasis is on patient satisfaction in terms of the facilities provided rather than the nature of medical treatment given. This is primarily so for organizations such as this hospital which aim at providing world-class care and for which ‘patient centricity’ is the hallmark. HR specific issues such as standardization of nursing activities, appraisal systems, effective communication channels, and compensation structure, all affect the quality of service provided in a hospital.

Similar research can be conducted across other healthcare organizations to replicate and validate the findings regarding the changing scenario in the industry.

Performance management has been considered as a critical tool aimed at strategically managing the contribution of human resources. As opposed to mere appraisal of performance, performance management as a process has a more holistic orientation which aims to define, facilitate, measure, and constantly improve performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

The primary purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of software professionals regarding certain performance management process dimensions (viz., performance planning, feedback, and employee participation in the process); system knowledge and justice dimensions (viz., procedural, distributive and interactional justice with respect to the performance management system) and their potential inter-relationship. The study was carried out on a sample of 341 software professionals in four software firms in the NCR region. Three survey instruments, i.e., perception of performance management process dimensions questionnaire, perceived system knowledge questionnaire, and perception of organizational justice dimensions questionnaire, were designed and used for the study.

Results revealed that:

Software professionals of all the four organizations were fairly satisfied with performance planning and their participation in performance management process; but only moderately satisfied with feedback.

Perceived system knowledge of the software professionals was moderate.

They perceived the performance management systems to be interactionally just to a large extent, but pointed towards a need for improvement on procedural and distributive dimensions.

Significant positive correlation was seen between justice dimensions, performance management process dimensions, and perceived system knowledge. Inter-correlations within performance management process dimensions and justice dimensions were also positive and significant.

Stepwise multiple regression analysis suggested feedback as the most significant predictor that explained maximum variance in each of the justice dimensions, viz., procedural, distributive, and interactional justice. The other two predictors were perceived system knowledge and employee participation in performance management process.

Findings of this research have significant implications for HR practitioners. Feedback, perceived system knowledge and their participation in performance management process were found to be significant variables influencing their perceptions regarding fairness of the system and hence, may need specific attention especially in the software industry context. Strong inter-relationship was found amongst all dimensions relating to performance management process; perceived system knowledge, and justice dimensions pointing towards the significance of an integrated and systemic approach towards the process and have significant implications for improving the overall design, implementation, and outcomes of the performance management system.

A whole host of researchers have modeled volatility as a non-constant stochastic process, based on the principle that volatility follows a stochastic process whose parameters are not directly observable in the market. The objective of this research paper is to empirically investigate the forecasting performance of three most dominant models of this species namely, Hull-White (1988), Heston�s (1993), and Heston-Nandi GARCH (2000) option pricing model. These three models have been collaterally compared and contrasted against Black-Scholes and market for pricing S&P CNX Nifty 50 index option of India.

The Hull-White model not only warrants a range of stochastic volatility specifications but also incorporates correlation of volatility of asset return and its price changes. The closed form Heston�s (1993) model explicitly and elaborately communicates non-lognormal distribution of the assets return, leverage effect, and mean-reverting property of volatility. The model of Heston-Nandi, also in closed form, successfully incorporates variance of asset returns as a range of GARCH process. It strongly permits correlation between returns of the spot asset and variance and also technically accepts multiple lags in the dynamics of the GARCH process.

To decide, determine, and delineate the effectiveness of stochastic models against the Black-Scholes and market, the current paper adopts a structured approach of relative error price, viz., percentage mean error (PME) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The most turbulent period of the Indian economy � January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 — was considered appropriate for testiing the suggested model. It was a testing time for the Indian economy as well as a critical period questioning the sustainability of all financial products/models and challenging their fundamental platform depicted as equity market. How to safeguard investors� faith and at least protect their investments if not multiply returns in the face of such financial hardships remained a burning question for all thinkers and experts on the subject. Data pertaining to the specific period of such drastic disturbance was analysed with the help of the proposed models. After rigorous churning of specific data taken across various models, the Heston model was found to outperform and surpass other models.

The basic problem with corporate finance is that it deals with the fundamental analysis issues while the tools used are those applicable for technical analysis. That is the reason why finance managers often arrive at wrong decisions which snowball into issues like the subprime crisis.

Initially, Markowitz model was used to calculate risk for portfolio management. It gave importance only to systematic risk as unsystematic risk could be avoided through diversification. Later on, CAPM model was developed for corporate finance and project finance for calculation of risk. Finance models dealing with risk management are applicable only for a short period and that too for an average of a large number of companies. The approach to apply risk measurement technique suitable for portfolio management to corporate finance is not correct. Even the econometric techniques applied to validate calculation of risk for portfolio management should be different from those applied for corporate finance.

The present article analyses the problems of applying such risk measurement techniques for corporate finance purpose.

A company faces mainly two types of risks: liquidity risk and bankruptcy risk. In case a company suffers from bankruptcy threat (which may or may not lead to actual bankruptcy), i.e., possibilities of closure due to losses, there will be two possibilities:

The company may move with market index in normal times while it may come down suddenly with index and may not bounce back (Kink in the beta curve), as in the case of MTNL and Jet Airlines.

There may be a sudden bankruptcy threat as in the case of Satyam.

The latter case does not allow investors to react. However, corporate managers will have to take account of the first possibility of bankruptcy risk which cannot be ignored by assuming beta to be constant. This paper examines three companies, Mastek, Jet Airlines, and MTNL, in this category. The author suggests that instead of segregating risk into systematic and unsystematic risk, it should be segregated into bankruptcy and liquidity risk. In this way, unsystematic risk is also priced while determining the value of a company.

During the last decade, the Indian banking sector has shown a remarkable advancement in terms of innovation, growth, and value creation. Behind this development of the Indian banking sector, several factors like customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth (WOM) are responsible. Literature has reported that pleasure and arousal play an important role in customer satisfaction. Investigations have been carried out on the influence of pleasure and arousal on behavioural intentions including satisfaction and WOM. However, there has been no such study for the banking sector. This gap in research has motivated this study.

This paper suggests a conceptual model in which pleasure and arousal directly influence satisfaction and WOM. It also tests the impact of satisfaction on WOM. Based on prior literature, several hypotheses stating the linkages among pleasure, arousal, satisfaction, and word-of-mouth were developed. Russell�s framework for pleasure and arousal (emotion) formed the basis of the model.

For the purpose of the study, face-to-face interviews with a structured questionnaire were conducted to collect data. Participants included customers above 18 years from both public and private sector banks in three cities namely, Kolkata, Durgapur, and Haldia of West Bengal, India. Data collection was done with the use of area sampling procedure. Out of 500 questionnaires administered, about 310 questionnaires were useable for analysis. The data analysis was done with SPSS 19 and AMOS 18. Structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 18 was applied to explore the links between the constructs in the conceptual model. The overall fit of the conceptual model was assessed using several indices furnished in the AMOS output. The fit index results suggested model fitness with the data.

The results of the study indicate that:

Pleasure has significant positive and negative impacts on satisfaction and WOM respectively.

Arousal has significant negative and positive impact on satisfaction and WOM.

Satisfaction has positive significant impact on WOM.