Business Perspectives and Research

Effectiveness of e-learning systems is a matter of debate in corporate and academics alike, with researchers viewing it from course content and instructional design perspective, learner / teacher perspective or delivery medium and technology perspective. We argue that e-learning systems should not consider either of these perspectives in isolation. We analyze the e-learning systems using the socio-technical systems approach, which treats a work system to be made up of two jointly independent, but correlative interacting systems - the social and the technical. The technical system is concerned with the processes, tasks, and technology needed to transform i nputs to outputs. The social system is concerned with the attributes of people such as attitudes, skills, values, the relationships among people, reward systems, and authority structures. Outputs of the work system are the result of joint interactions between these two systems. We use Leavitt's model to analyze e-learning systems as socio-technical systems. The model suggests that organizations form multivariate systems consisting of four interacting components - task, structure, actor, and technology. We observe that an e-Learning system can fit the definition of a sociotechnical system, as they involve teachers and learners (actor), the organization and the environment (structure), the knowledge and skills being imparted (task) and the technology used for elearning (technology). In this research, we measure variables that represent these four components and understand their significance individually and their combined effect on effectiveness of e- learning systems. The outcome of this research tries to understand factors that influence the effectiveness of e-learning systems.

An e-commerce website would taste its success only through its strong business models and loyal customers. Customer loyalty is given the prime weightage as the customer on the internet web are highly volatile and switch the brands very quickly than a brick and mortar store due to the lesser degree of physical evidence. In this scenario it becomes highly essential for management of the e-tailers to understand the behavior of the consumers at various situations as this may provide an important insight of the consumer which may be grabbed to create a highly sustainable website to provide highest customer satisfaction. This paper examines the relationship between purchasing decisions and intentions to shop online and the factors affecting the decisions regarding the same in the minds of the consumers. Consumer intention in web based shopping is analyzed through the comparison of the factors that facilitate or inhibit online purchasing of products and services using the theory of planned behavior. A theoretical model that explains purchase intentions was tested with a sample of 120 consumers.

The main objective of the present study is to examine the consistency in the performance of various portfolios constructed on the basis of three fundamental factors (E/P, B/M and Size). It has examined whether the investment strategies based on three major fundamentals, i.e., Earnings- to- Price Ratio, Book-to-Market Price Ratio and Size of the firms result into extra ordinary returns to the investors in the short run or not. The short-term analysis based on yearly performance of various portfolios has not given any sound base to believe on these parameters as short-term stock selection criteria. But out of three fundamental factors considered in the present study, the highest inconsistency was found in the performance of portfolios based on market cap of the firm rather than portfolios based on E/P ratio or Book to market price ratio.

In the current globalized era, an increasing number of firms in the services sector require employees to work longer, frequently interact with customers and work across varied time zones. This has resulted in dilation of the boundary between work and family. This review explores the meaning, antecedents, consequences and moderators of work - family balance from conflict as well as enrichment perspectives. Further, the paper discusses the role of turn over intentions which have given mixed results in different settings. The review also focuses on the role of individuals' personality dimensions such as core self evaluation which are yet to gain prominence in work-family studies but are important enough to invite further research. The paper finally suggests the development of an integrated framework to understand the concept of work - family balance.

The study investigates the role of gold as a strategic prophecy against inflation and exchange rate. The main research question of the present study is whether gold has acted as a hedge against inflation and exchange rate for India. Study has evaluated monthly data of gold price, inflation and exchange rate over the period January 1991 to September 2012. By applying Augmented Dickey Fuller unit root test, Johansen Cointegration test and Granger Causality test in Error Correction Model framework, study concludes that Gold Price and Exchange rate are I (1) and Inflation is I (2.. It also concludes that there exists long run equilibrium relation among all three variables. However, study provides evidence of no Granger Causality among these variables. By applying ARCH-LM test, heteroskedasticity was detected and Gold price can be modeled as GARCH (1, 1). A negative relationship was found between gold and inflation which suggests that gold acts as an internal hedge against inflation for India. Major implication of this study is that Indian investor should prefer gold investment in the time of inflation boom.

In the era of globalization, emerging market economies are surfacing into centers of innovation. These innovations associate with low-cost products like healthcare devices, wind power, micro finance, electric cars and many more. The success of these frugal innovated products enable developed countries to adopt well. Hence, reverse innovation refers to those innovations which are adopted by developing countries first and then by developed countries. These innovative products are a result of cutting edge technology, common sense and ingenious use of local commodities with the price range that is affordable to a huge mass of consumers like Tata's one lakh ($ 1677) car Nano, Nokia's sturdy mobile phones, the Chottu Cool' refrigerator and many more. These products might be conceptualized for the customers at the bottom of the pyramid still not limited by scaled down versions meant for the lower end. This paper is an attempt to evaluate how reverse innovations are possible in emerging markets and how it can unlock business opportunities at a global scale.