Industrializing West Bengal? The case of institutional stickiness

While there is a clear policy shift towards large-scale industrialization in the state of West Bengal (WB) during the early 1990s, not much improvement can be discerned in the performance of the manufacturing output. Moreover, contrary to the Indian experience, more than half of the manufacturing output is still produced by small initiatives in the unorganized sector. We argue that it is the peculiarity of institutional behaviour that determines the policy outcomes in the state. The rigidities in the political as well as the economic institutions in the state are prompting us to look at WB as a classic case of "institutional stickiness" leading to "path dependency". Clearly the right institutions for creating a more enabling environment for industry do not seem to exist. Not only do they not exist, but also their growth or emergence is frustrated by an overarching institution - 'the party' which seems to keep encroaching upon every sphere. All this results in a veritable decline of organized manufacturing alongside a corresponding growth of the unorganized sector in the state. Apart from secondary sources this paper is based on information collected from some selected stakeholders : business associations, firms, trade unions and bureaucrats.formal and informal institutions, institutional stickiness, path dependency, India, West Bengal

Business Ethics and Consumer Buying: An Ethno-Regional Study in UAE

UAE has the largest number of expatriates from across the globe and has the presence of the largest number of products, services and brands from across the globe. Understanding the consumer consciousness or business ethicality of the products, services or the brands available is important for sustainable marketing. The present research explores the level of overall consumer consciousness about the business ethics adopted by different brands or products and whether consumer consciousness or perception remains different about the ethical practices followed by different companies, according to their places of origin. The results show that the overall consumer consciousness about the ethical practices of the products/brands available is significant and the consumer consciousness about the ethical business is different according to the regional groups

Persevere or Exit: What is the Right Strategy?

The teaching case describes India’s telecommunications market as it went through a major transformation due to its adopting mobile telephony. The country’s huge market size and low teledensity have provided an attractive opportunity for foreign multinationals. Telenor entered the Indian market through a joint venture with Unitech Wireless under the brand name of Uninor and targeted the value-conscious segment of mobile customers with its attractive pricing schemes. After a few years of rapid growth, Uninor faced a huge business risk when the Supreme Court of India ruled that its purchased spectrum was illegal. The case describes the aftermath of the 2G spectrum scam and how it adversely affected Uninor’s future. At this critical juncture, Telenor faced a strategic decision dilemma. Should it continue its operations in the ever-growing Indian mobile market or should it cut its losses and exit before receiving further damage to its global brand? This teaching case imparts important lessons about doing telecommunications-related business in an emerging economy with high returns and immense business risks

A Lagrangean Relaxation Based Scheme for Allocation of Bandwidth

In this paper we study the bandwidth packing problem in the presence of priority classes. The bandwidth packing problem is defined as the selection and routing of messages from a given list of messages with prespecified requirements on demand for bandwidth. The messages have to satisfy delay constraints and have to be routed over a network with given topology so that the revenue generated from routing these messages is maximized. Messages to be routed are classified into two priority classes. An integer programming based formulation of this problem is proposed and a Lagrangean relaxation based methodology is described for solving this problem. Several numerical experiments are conducted using a number of problem parameters such as percentage of messages, ratio of messages of lower to higher priority, capacity of links and high quality solutions to the bandwidth packing problem are generated under the different situations

Fourth Generation Wireless Systems: Requirements and Challenges for the Next Frontier

Fourth generation wireless systems (4G) are likely to reach the consumer market in another 4-5 years. 4G comes with the promise of increased bandwidth, higher speeds, greater interoperability across communication protocols, and user friendly, innovative, and secure applications. In this article, I list the requirements of the 4G systems by considering the needs of the users in the future. These requirements can be met if technical and business challenges can be overcome. Technical challenges include mobility management, quality of service, interoperability, high data rate, security, survivability, spectrum, intelligent mobile devices, middleware, and network access. I discuss the most plausible solutions to these technical challenges in this paper. Business-related challenges include billing, payment methods, pricing, size of investments, content provision and mediation, and the trade-off between richness and reach. If these technical and business challenges can be met, then 4G will become the next frontier in data and voice communication infrastructure

Lessons Learned from Distributed Agile Software Projects: A Case-Based Analysis

Agile software development in a distributed setting is challenging. The teams involved in the process face difficulties in communication, personnel selection, work culture, and knowledge management. The shortcomings associated with working in different time zones and the inabilities to develop trusting relationships between developers are well known. Companies often take recourse to agile software development methods in a distributed environment in search of reduced cost, higher efficiency, increased flexibility, and good customization. However, it is not clear whether agile methods can be successfully followed and their benefits realized in a distributed setting. This paper revisits and synthesizes the lessons learnt from twelve case studies detailing successful implementation of distributed agile software projects. The cases are analyzed from the perspective of the agile manifesto to determine how closely they follow its values and principles and to what extent they realize the benefits of the agile methodology. The cases lead to the discovery of disparate and innovative solutions adopted by different companies for overcoming the challenges of distributed agile software development. Some solutions are commonplace and others are unique and their combination in the context of the challenges is enlightening. The list of solutions can suitably guide companies that plan to adopt the agile methodology in distributed software development environments in future

Rabbit or Tortoise? Rethinking Customer Acquisition at Dravya Bank

A prominent bank in India has swiftly and consistently lost market share for a high-revenue product. It has diagnosed poor communication with customers as the underlying cause. As such, it has begun to contemplate whether to direct its resources towards analytics and digital advertising channels or to continue to improve its current advertising techniques that revolve around mass marketing initiatives and its large network of branches. The case expects participants to evaluate the costs and benefits of alternatives available to the bank and propose a comprehensive customer-acquisition strategy to address the crisis. We write the case in the form of a roleplay, which participants in class can enact to boost their interest and involvement in it

Application of Image Analytics for Disaster Response in Smart Cities

Post-disaster, city planners need to effectively plan response activities and assign rescue teams to specific disaster zones quickly. We address the problem of lack of accurate information of the disaster zones and existence of human survivors in debris using image analytics from smart city data. Innovative usage of smart city infrastructure is proposed as a potential solution to this issue. We collected images from earthquake-hit smart urban environments and implemented a CNN model for classification of these images to identify human body parts out of the debris. TensorFlow backend (using Keras) was utilized for this classification. We were able to achieve 83.2% accuracy from our model. The novel application of image data from smart city infrastructure and the resultant findings from our model has significant implications for effective disaster response operations, especially in smart cities

User-Generated Content and Online Product Search - The Case of the Indian Automobile Industry

The individual\u27s online search is done privately and is considered an accurate measure of purchase intention. Online product information influences purchases and can be expected to influence purchase intention. Using Google\u27s volume of online search trends and 23,000 online automobile reviews scraped from a popular Indian online forum, the relationship between product reviews and online product information search is examined. The reviews are divided into three groups based on the numerical rating associated with each review. Latent Dirichlet Allocation is used in each group to extract discussion topics from the review text. The study shows that online review valence significantly impacts online search volume. Further, while the topics of discussion across the 3 rating groups overlap, their impact on online search volume is different. The study demonstrates the need to look at rating information more closely and the influence of online UGC on online information search