On the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the institute, this issue features a section of special articles to mark the milestone, along with our regular articles. It is also my pleasure to give all readers a brief account of the progress of the journal, and other associated activities.
Readers would recollect that IMR is now a Gold Open Access journal, with the article processing charges (APC) borne by IIM Bangalore, on behalf of the authors. As of calendar year 2023, IIMB Management Review (IMR) is being published only in digital form. Readers have free access to all articles published in the journal, to read and download, from ScienceDirect® - https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/iimb-management-review -
IMR has been making progress on many fronts, as reflected in the metrics of assessment. The journal is listed on several databases and citation indices, including the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Quality Journal List (ranked “B”), Web of Science, Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). We invite you to view more journal insights at https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/iimb-management-review
In the year 2023, IMR welcomed on board its panel of Associate Editors, Prof. Prasenjit Mandal, from the Operations Management area, NEOMA Business School, REIMS, France, and Prof. Debarati Basu, of the Finance, Accounting & Control area, School of Management & Entrepreneurship (SME), Shiv Nadar University. We thank the outgoing Associate Editors, Prof. Ashok Banerjee of IIM Calcutta, Prof. Ishwar Murthy of IIM Bangalore, and Prof. Ramadhar Singh of Ahmedabad University for their guidance and support during their tenures.
One of the events to mark the Golden Jubilee of the institute was the 15th edition of the IMR Doctoral Conference – IMRDC 2024 -- held on 2nd & 3rd Feb 2024 in conjunction with the PhD Alumni Reunion. The Co-chairs of the conference were Prof. Apurva Sanaria of the Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Management area and Prof. Aditya Shrinivas from Economics, from IIM Bangalore. IMRDC 2024 received a record 126 full papers from doctoral students across the country, of which 12 were invited for final presentation after a rigorous three-step selection process. We are happy to note that many of the papers presented at editions of IMRDC have gone on to be published in IMR, after completing the peer review process.
Apart from the paper presentations, the conference witnessed two keynote addresses: “Doing impactful research without (misusing) p-values”, by Prof. Sanjay Kallapur, Accounting, Indian School of Business, and “Managing the research and teaching challenges in an academic career”, by Prof. Balram Avittathur, Operations Management Group, IIM Calcutta. The joint winners of the IMRDC 2024 Best Paper Award were Anshika Mathur of Shiv Nadar University, for "Money matters: Evidence from a conditional cash transfer scheme on child and maternal health”, and Guneshwar Anand of IIM Visakhapatnam, for "Facets of the knapsack polytope from non-minimal covers”.
IMR’s initiative to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Institute, was to invite papers from a selection of eminent researchers in IIMB, on the themes of sustainability and innovation, which were the signature themes of the Golden Jubilee year. Building on the themes of sustainability and innovation, we invited researchers for their perspectives on the issues such as the current state of scholarly research in their respective areas, contemporary issues in Indian economy and society, and management pedagogy, among others. The papers were put through a single fast track review for publication in the special issue.
The Golden Jubilee Special section comprises four articles. In “Reflecting on management knowledge in India: Urgency to change the paradigm, decolonise and indigenise in the age of Artificial Intelligence”, Abhoy K Ojha notes that the pursuit of rigour in research in India has taken a “narrow” meaning resulting in an increase in the use of statistical tools and techniques, more suitable for the natural sciences, instead of a “broader” meaning that seeks to ensure that all assertions are adequately supported by theory and evidence. He underscores the need for management researchers in India to overcome natural science envy, colonial era British influences, and US-centricity and adopt ontological and epistemological positions more suitable for the social sciences and prioritise contextually relevant indigenous and emic management perspectives. This has become all the more important as AI based tools are changing the way knowledge is created, disseminated, and learnt. He stresses the importance of developing indigenous frameworks, constructs, and research methodologies that are widely accepted among researchers, to develop a robust paradigm of Indian management that informs research and practice.
In “Charting a sustainable future: Transformative policies for India’s energy, agriculture and transport sectors”, Haritha Saranga, Satyajit Roy, and Sayan Chowdhury preface their study with the observation that India, a rapidly industrialising and the most populous nation on earth, is struggling to find a balance between improving its citizens’ lives and pursuing sustainable development. To fulfil its commitments towards sustainable development, India is transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables in the energy sector, trying to shift consumption and cropping practices in the agriculture sector, and promoting alternative fuel vehicles in the transport sector. The study examines the Government of India’s policy focus in the three critical sectors from a triple-bottom-line perspective, and proposes an integrated policy framework which harnesses the synergies between the three key sectors, to advance India’s journey towards sustainability and decarbonisation goals.
In the commentary, “Disability inclusion in Indian workplaces: Mapping the research landscape and exploring new terrains”, Devi Vijay, Mukta Kulkarni, K V Gopakumar, and Michele Friedner trace the key frames, theories, and methods that demarcate disability research in the Indian workplace. They suggest that researchers can open new terrains of inquiry by situating disability in context, exploring heterogeneous forms of organising and workplace arrangements, and connecting workplace relations and interactions with wider institutional and sociopolitical discourses. They emphasise the need to constantly interrogate the concept and practice of “inclusion”, and also explore the particular experiences of disability in the Indian workplace. They conclude with reflections on disability and inclusion otherwise with implications for conversations worldwide on disability inclusion.
Our Golden Jubilee Special section features a Round Table article on “The future of incubation”, by Srivardhini K. Jha and Thillai Rajan A, in which they explore the role of incubators as effective intermediaries that promote and nurture new ventures, and how imperative it is for them to adapt to the changes in the ecosystem in order to stay relevant. They note the meteoric rise of the Indian startup ecosystem over the past decade and the emergence of incubators to support the rapid rise in startups. The discussion with experts on the future of incubators explores pertinent issues such as the support provided to startups by incubators, the impact of generative AI on incubation, assessment of the performance of incubators, and the business models of incubators. The discussion emphasises, among other things, the need for incubators to find an area of core competence, adopt a robust assessment framework and experiment with business models to arrive at one that works for their context.
Apart from the four Golden Jubilee Special articles, this issue includes three articles from our regular pipeline. In “Efficiency of financial production process and its dependence on price anchors: Evidence from India”, Sayantan Kundu and Aditya Banerjee examine how efficiently disclosed financial information is reflected in stock prices, and whether psychological price anchors (e.g., historical high or low prices) impact the efficiency of the process. The term “financial production process” (FPP) refers to how published financial information is reflected in stock prices and the efficiency of this process is called FPP efficiency. This study aims to analyse if FPP efficiency is a proxy of the behavioural bias in the price discovery process and whether it is determined by the proximity of the current price to price anchors. The FPP efficiencies of 611 listed Indian firms across 11 industries for nine years were computed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).
The paper presents two crucial findings related to the stock market behaviour, especially in the Indian context. First, firms’ stock prices do not uniformly reflect a given set of financial information available at a point in time. Long-short portfolios based on FPP efficiency generate positive returns, implying that FPP efficiency reverts to the mean in a year. Prices of those stocks that do not efficiently reflect the available information (relatively undervalued) eventually enjoy a higher return premium than the more efficient stocks in reflecting the available information (relatively overvalued). The study also analyses the determinants of FPP efficiency. It is found that the proximity of stock prices to the historical high/low price anchors is significant in determining FPP efficiency. The findings imply that stocks trading away from their historical low or near-term and long-term high prices are more likely to be FPP efficient. The research establishes FPP efficiency as a determinant of stock returns. It contributes to the literature by providing a possible explanation for the mispricing due to behavioural bias in the FPP by arguing that FPP efficiency is a proxy measure of behavioural bias in stock prices. It argues that investor attention to price anchors might affect the assimilation of published financial information into prices.
In “The nexus between financing pattern, firm-specific factors, and financial performance: Panel evidence of listed SMEs in India”, Pratiksha Jha and Satish Kumar analyse the financial performance of 226 SMEs listed on the BSE-SME and NSE-Emerge platforms from the period 2014–2019. Financing pattern was analysed using total debt financing (TDF), long-term debt financing (LTDF), short-term debt financing (STDF), and trade credit financing(TCF), while firm size, age, liquidity (CR), sales growth (SG), and asset tangibility (AT) were taken as firm-specific control variables. Return on Asset (ROA) was taken as the financial performance variable, whereas Return on Equity (ROE) was used to confirm the robustness of the result. The least-squares dummy variable (LSDV) variant of the fixed-effect model was used to examine the impact of financing on the performance of the manufacturing and service SMEs.
The findings indicate that TDF and STDF significantly and negatively affect Indian SMEs’ financial performance, whereas TCF depicts a positive relationship with financial performance. These results confirm that trade credit is being used as an alternative source of finance that positively influences the performance of SMEs. In addition, the result also explains that the sampled Indian SMEs prioritise the use of short-term debt over long-term debt, and by adopting this strategy, SMEs can reduce information asymmetry costs, thus lowering debt financing costs and increasing the financial performance of SMEs. The study chose two performance variables, ROA and ROE, to test the robustness of the results and discovered that the nature of the association between financing patterns and financial performance does not change with the nature of debt and shows a consistent negative relationship with ROA and ROE. Further, firm size and sales growth are positively and significantly related to ROA. This can be interpreted to mean that the larger the firm, the more access it has to the credit market and investment opportunities, and thus the better its financial performance. Asset tangibility and liquidity show a significant negative relationship with ROA and ROE. Furthermore, SMEs’ industry affiliation influences the relationship between financing patterns (FPs) and financial performance. The study provides an illustrative description of the relationship between financing decisions and the performance of SMEs and helps in developing an understanding of accessing the financial needs of SMEs.
In the final article of the issue, “Regulation of brands in the Indian pharmaceutical industry in the 1960s: Examination of the Tariff Commission Report, 1968”, Manu Kanchan begins with the observation that product patents and brands have long been identified as the main reasons for high drug prices in the pharmaceutical industry, and governments, including in India, have been attempting to regulate them since the 1960s. However, in India, the debate over drug prices has mostly focused on attempts to regulate product patents through policies, rather than on issues related to brands.
This article examines the Tariff Commission Report, 1968, which is considered a turning point in the price control policies of the 1960s, with the view to addressing the questions: Did the price control policy, which by 1970 had begun fixing drug prices, attempt to regulate brands? Did the policy, in the 1960s, go beyond price control in attempting to regulate brands? The examination shows that the Commission’s recommendations on price control policies were attempts to regulate brands, and that the Tariff Commission Report went beyond price controls in attempting to regulate brands. The report not only favoured regulating brands at the price level but also through generic drugs, with the industry resisting government efforts in the latter. Furthermore, resistance by all major industry players (multinational corporations and Indian drug companies) underscored the importance of brands to the industry. The similarity in the stance of multinational corporations and Indian drug companies was in contrast to their positioning on product patents, where they were on opposite sides. New questions emerge in light of these findings, especially in terms of how brands fared in the absence of product patents (between 1972 and 2005) and also how the industry responded to the government’s regulatory efforts during this period. Finally, the study highlights the importance of the Tariff Commission Report, 1968, in its assessment of the pharmaceutical industry in general and as a policy-driven attempt to regulate brands, which future studies may explore further.
Best wishes,
Jishnu Hazra
Editor-in-Chief
IIMB Management Review
E-mail address: eic@iimb.ac.in