Business Analyst Journal

The present study attempts to re-examine the concept of well-being at work in the contemporary scenario. The nature of work and workplace are changing rapidly, increased competition, work pressure, 24X7 work culture, etc. has made it important to re-examine the current literature on well-being at work to address the growing issues of stress, anxiety, and work-life imbalances. An exploratory study was also undertaken with the aim to understand the perspectives that prevail amongst the working professionals concerning the concept of well-being at work. Based on literature and results of the exploratory study, the paper attempts to re-define the concept of well-being at work by collectively examining all of its dimensions, viz. psychological, physical, financial, social, career and spiritual well-being, to make it more holistic. In the extant literature the dimension of spiritual well-being has been studied separately, and never been integrated with the other dimensions of well-being. The present paper proposes a more holistic framework on well-being at work which considers all the dimensions collectively in the work context.

The present study is a humble attempt to examine the pricing and discount related practices of manufactures from the scientific instruments industry in Ambala Cantt in the state of Haryana. It divides the manufacturing units into micro, small and medium (MSME) enterprises, and compares the level of their practices. For accomplishing the purpose, a sample of 150 units is selected. Collected data are analyzed by using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation), and inferential statistics of ANOVA and Post Hoc Test. Results indicate that ‘skimming’ and ‘cost-plus’ pricing methods are highly employed in the industry; whereas, ‘penetration pricing’ is least preferred. Likewise, ‘quantity discount’ and ‘cash discount’ are in high preference, and ‘seasonal discount’ practice is rarely used. These are the medium units who apply all the pricing and discount practices firmly. Small units are also on their track. But, micro units lack behind in the level of usage of different practices. Hence, it is implied by the findings that micro units simply follow their counterparts. Correspondingly, this paper calls for further research to understand the complications involved in the decisions, and finding the solutions of enterprises’ problems.

The recent legislation making CSR discharge mandatory for qualifying firms has been a game changer as it requires all qualifying firms to form a CSR committee for planning and executing the CSR function. Different modes of implementation have been provided for discharging CSR namely- through other implementing agencies or directly. Firms generally choose between different implementing strategies depending on the cost benefit analysis, nature of activity, requirement of expertise, resources, etc. Since the CSR committee weighs the cost and benefits associated with each strategy, the effect of different strategies should be positive on CSR. This paper attempts to understand the effect of different strategies adopted by the firms on CSR. The result of the logistic model reveals a positive impact of the two strategies- directly and other implementing agencies on the probability of the firm to spend more than 2% on CSR or proactively perform CSR.

Indian economy has witnessed a positive shift in the perception of the role played by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from an era of concern and suspicion to the most important source of external finance for developing countries. Associated with bringing positive externalities and greatly augmenting domestic capital, FDI is sought by many countries. In the present scenario, employment creation is regarded as one of the important potential contributions made by FDI to the host economy. Thus, the study makes an attempt to analyze the impact of Foreign Direct Investment on employment in Indian Pharmaceutical Industry using recent firm level panel data for the time frame of fifteen years (2001-2015). Our analysis broadly concludes that increased FDI flows have led to higher levels of employment. It is also observed that export intensity and size positively affect the employment while capital intensity has a negative impact. A significant policy direction that emerges from the study is that in order to improve the employment, exports in the labor intensive industries should be encouraged.

This paper is an attempt to empirically examine the trends and Intricacies of ECB in India. It also tries to analyze the possible effects of new ECB policy announced on 16 January 2019. The study observes that ECB flows in last about three decades have been highly volatile, and the share of ECBs in the total external borrowing in India is rising fast. Though, government is progressively relaxing the ECB norms to boost the economy, there is need of careful management of ECBs by corporates as well as the government. While applying for ECB the corporates need to be cautious about the exchange rate risk and impact on balance sheet debt to use ECBs effectively; the government too should not be unmindful of the dangers of increasing reliance on such borrowings with external risks.

This paper examined perceived consumer effectiveness, and objectively worked upon investigating levels and segments of consumers as per construct. For the same, data from 300 respondents was collected and analyzed. Principal Component Analysis suggested that construct PCE was firmly measured by the statements. Descriptive statistics investigated a moderate level of perceived consumer effectiveness among Indian consumers. Further, Cluster Analysis suggested two segments designated as effective and ineffective in this paper. Effective segment has high PCE in comparison with ineffective segment, as analyzed by inferential statistics of z-test for difference between two means. Owing to findings, the requirement of a law for “protection by consumers” is implied, and further research directions are suggested.

In times of uncertainty, the risks related with participating in international operations have increased considerably. Additionally, such risks have moved towards becoming progressively hard to analyse and foresee for decision makers in the universal financial network. Country risk fundamentally showcases the risk state of an economy. In global business, the risks emerging from the national variations in monetary structures, arrangements, natural ecologies and social societies may change the outlook for success of a given venture or business. Analysing the country risk of foreign nations becomes crucial to investors for strategically planning their investments. Taking this complexity of country risk analysis, the current paper proposes an index for country risk, consisting of 12 nations under the Group of seven (G7) and BRICS nations. The CRI is compiled on the basis of seven risk dimensions namely: political, economic, social, technical, environmental, legal & financial and within these seven dimensions, 10 indicators are analysed to calculate the CRI for these 12 nations for even years from 2012 to 2018. All data used in this study is secondary and all sources have been acknowledged. Analysis is done in Microsoft Excel 2016. Ultimately, rankings are allotted to these economies, for both groups together and separately, to present a comprehensive analysis of country risk in these nations.

The present research paper comprehensively reviews the academic work on Corporate Governance and Sustainability Tourism Marketing and presents a précis of 60 research papers published in 29 reputed international journals, over a period of ten years, from 2007 to 2016. Tracing the concepts of corporate governance and sustainability, a detailed discussion of the importance and challenges in implementing sustainability marketing strategies in fast-paced tourism industry is illustrated with classification and pictographic models. A rigorous research in internationally reputed databases has been carried out to select research papers for reviewing them. Text books, international reports and research papers published in international journals only have been included for review. The literature for review spanned a period of ten years, from 2007 to 2016. The studies have been carried out in 23 countries and published in 29 International journals and include both empirical and conceptual papers. Findings suggest that there has been a general increase in the momentum of research in the area till 2015, with a sharp rise in 2008; Most researches have been authored by two or three authors; Majority of the studies have been carried out in the US and UK; A large number of research papers are Empirical and quantitative in nature; ‘International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management’; and ‘International Journal of Hospitality Management’ have published the highest number of researches. The paper concludes with highlighting developing trends; Directions for future research; and shortcomings of the present study.

This paper uncovers theoretical foundations of the factors influencing external debt and presents empirical model of the macroeconomic determinates of external debt in India for a period from 1990-91 to 2016-17. The OLS model reveal that gross fiscal deficit, net domestic savings, net domestic capital formation, exports, imports, real effective exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves, net terms of trade, consumer price index, debt service ratio, net foreign direct investment, gross domestic product and real interest rates (LIBOR) are the prominent macroeconomic variables and they explain 62 percent of the total systematic variations in India’s gross external debt.

The current study makes an attempt to investigate the month-wise seasonal variation in returns (& also volatility of returns) of four sector specific indices viz. Nifty Auto, Nifty FMCG, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Real Estate of National Stock Exchange for the ten year period April 2009 to March 2019. Besides this, the study would also investigate spill-over of volatility from one sector specific index to another and also ascertain asymmetries in their return and return volatility. The data for the purpose of the study includes log transformed monthly returns of the four sampled sector specific indices. The methodology employed for this purpose include OLS (NW) Regression for testing seasonal impact in returns and GARCH(1,1) framework for ascertaining seasonal impact in return volatility. Further for asymmetry of returns, ‘T’ GARCH Model has been employed & for spill-over impact, residual squared error terms has been included in the GARCH Model. The results of the study showed that seasonal variation in returns did exist in some of the sector specific indices. In terms of results of asymmetry in volatility, only one index Nifty Auto was found to have asymmetric returns , on the other hand the spill-over impact from one sector to another was not visible from the results. The data was also tested for stationarity using DF-GLS test & all sector specific indices were found to be I(1) stationary.