Vision: The Journal of Business Perspective

The purpose of this study is to review the knowledge base on capital structure decisions. The Scopus database was used for the bibliometric review of the area in question. The sampling process was performed employing the PRISMA approach. The VOSviewer software was used to analyse 2,979 articles. This identified the network growth, the most contributors, the context of the intellectual structure, the most studied topic and the research gap for future studies. We have found that the year 1989 marked the abolition of research on capital structure for articles in the Scopus database. As the period was divided into three sub-periods, the terms ‘capital structure’ and ‘leverage’ appeared throughout. Also, the recent themes as depicted in the density map are corporate governance, dividend policy, testing the trade-off theory against pecking order theories, speed of adjustments and corporate social responsibility. However, there are research gaps found due to the newness of the terms and the frequency of terms’ persistence in the current sub-period. The findings will provide researchers with knowledge about the past, current and future implications as well as the gaps for their studies.

The agile supply chain is focused on speed, responsiveness, cost efficiency, flexibility and an increase in the productivity of goods and services. Since agile companies offer higher service levels with lower inventories, this field is receiving increasing attention over the last two decades in the manufacturing and service industry. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the literature on the agile supply chains in the manufacturing and service industry. It maps previous research in this field, across a gamut of journals, organizations and countries. The analysis demonstrates the evolution of agile supply chain research in the last few decades by employing various methodologies. Highly influential authors, organizations and keywords were analysed with the help of the multiple visualization tools. Important publications, citations and co-citation network clusters were formed. This article would be helpful for researchers and practitioners exploring or interested in this seeking research guidance. Future research could focus on the relationship between agile capabilities and the financial performance of the organizations. Researchers can focus on conducting the in-depth market research on agile implementation in construction management, aerospace and pharmaceutical industry.

This study explores the impact of customer incivility (CI) on service recovery performance (SRP) of Indian frontline banking employees with emotional exhaustion (EE) as a mediator. Whether job crafting behaviour of the employees would assuage the effect of uncivil customer interactions and, thereby, help in maintaining superior recovery performance is further investigated. Data from 428 dyads of employees were gathered to test the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling in AMOS 23. The results indicated that CI negatively influences SRP, and EE significantly mediates this relationship. Increasing social and structural resources significantly alleviate the negative effect of (a) CI on EE, (b) CI on SRP and (c) EE on SRP. On the other hand, increasing challenge job demands and decreasing hindrance job demands do not moderate the relationship between (a) CI and EE and (b) CI and SRP. However, decreasing hindrance job demands significantly moderate the negative effect of EE on SRP while, surprisingly, increasing challenge job demands strengthens the relationship between EE and SRP.

Do people show fads and fashions in their attention searches? With the Google online search data during COVID-19, particularly from January to May 2020 for the socio-economic keywords, this study examines if online searches show short-run and long-run attention dynamics leading to fads and fashions in attention to the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex indices. This study employs the methodology of cointegrating relationship with autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and explains investors’ attention search dynamics at the ‘NSE Nifty Index’ and ‘BSE Sensex Index’ caused by socio-economic attention searches. It also examines if the dynamics of attention coordination are parsimonious in nature and it explores the same with the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH-X) model. With the ARDL models, this study finds robust and unbiased cointegrating impacts of socio-economic attention searches on the attention search for the NSE Nifty index but these are not the best linear unbiased and efficient (BLUE) ones, while the same on the BSE Sensex Index are BLUE. For the NSE Nifty index, the attention dynamics at the GARCH-X specification are BLUE while for the BSE Sensex index, the GARCH-X specification also has some additional information in terms of the ARCH effect only.

The present study reports an investigation on identification of priority areas of improvement for small passenger car segment in the Indian market. A total of 750 responses on importance and satisfaction rating of 16 attributes in a 7-point Likert-type ordinal rating scale were collected from small car owners in Delhi using a paper and pencil instrument. Revised importance-performance analysis with fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm was used to identify the priority areas of improvement in small passenger cars. The analysis technique effectively identified the factor structure of consumer satisfaction and derived various management schemes for small passenger cars by analysing consumers’ importance and satisfaction data. The priority areas of improvement were obtained by comparing the factor structure with the management scheme. The results indicate that safety, security and advanced vehicle technology options are the priority areas of improvement for small passenger cars. The study identified that the consumers are satisfied with the performance of purchase price, driving range, annual fuel cost, annual maintenance cost, top speed, seating comfort, appearance/style, emission, acceleration time and resale value in small cars, indicating the need to retain these attributes at their present levels to maintain competitive advantage. The engine power is identified under ‘possible overkill’, which indicates an opportunity for automobile manufacturers to possibly reduce the engine power to save some resources and reallocate the same for improvement of priority attributes. The findings of the present study provide valuable insight into the product specifications that the automobile manufacturers should focus on, to make new-generation small cars more attractive to Indian consumers.

The study examines the moderating and mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and CSR expenditure on the association between listed firms’ financial performance and gender diversity. There are 80 listed firms with 800 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2019 that qualified for the study using the Indian stock market. The first finding shows a negative association between financial leverage and gender diversity. The second finding shows that the implementation of CSR disclosure hurts the improvement of gender diversity. The third finding shows that CSR expenditure improves gender diversity of listed firms in an emerging market. The fouth finding shows that CSR expenditure positively mediates the negative association between financial leverage and gender diversity. The fifth finding shows that CSR disclosure does not mediate the association between financial performance (return on assets, price to book ratio and financial leverage). The sixth finding shows that CSR expenditure negatively moderates the negative association between return on assets and gender diversity.

This study’s main objective is to assess the relative importance of fiscal and monetary policies on the Asia-Pacific Economies. We have empirically investigated both the original St. Louis equation and its expanded version to study the comparative relevance of one over the other. Our empirical results indicate that both monetary and fiscal policies are essential in promoting economic growth. In both models, monetary policy is more effective than fiscal policy. In the expanded St. Louis model, exports, exchange rate and inflation variables substantially impact gross domestic product than the conventional monetary and fiscal measures.

This case study presents the delicately poised situation of the workers who were on strike, demanding better wages from their employer, during wage negotiations in India. It highlights the dispute resolution mechanisms, the rubric to evaluate the strike as well as whether wages are to be paid for the duration of the strike period within the framework of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, of India. This case study is based on the strike, which occurred in September 2019, during the wage settlement at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). It is developed completely from secondary and publicly available reports and information. The researchers have used the specific legislative framework of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, of India to understand certain practical aspects of the applications of the legislation.

The major issues highlighted in this specific case study are the process outlined for the workers to go on a strike, rubric to evaluate a strike and whether wages are to be paid for the duration of the strike period. It is also a good case study to explore the strategies for effective collective bargaining when one is at a relative disadvantage as opposed to their opponents.

Anil K. Khandelwal, Transformational Leadership in Banking: Challenges of Governance, Leadership and HR in a Digital and Disruptive World, 2021,. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 514 pp., $45.00. ISBN: 9789353887568 (Hardback).