IIM-IN-SIGHTS
BRIDGING THE RESEARCHER-PRACTITIONER GAP
A MAGAZINE OF THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT INDORE
Volume 1 (May-October, 2018)
An initiative of Industry Interface Office, IIM Indore
FOREWORD
The mission of IIM Indore is to be a contextually-relevant business school with world-class academic standards. Excellence in research is an important dimension of this mission. Every year, our faculty and doctoral students undertake a variety of research projects on relevant themes in their respective domains which lead to publication in reputed academic and practitioner journals.
The objective of this newsletter is to give a wider audience a flavour of the practical implications and applications of a limited sample of some of our recent completed and ongoing research.
Here are the highlights of what is to follow:
- In recent times, we have all become painfully aware of the costs of disruption of state legislatures and parliament. But, can we predict when disruptions are more likely to happen? Recent work by Prof. Ajit Phadnis of IIM Indore’s Humanities and Social Sciences Area proposes and validates a model to do just this. This should help ruling parties across India plan their legislative agendas better. (pp. 4-6)
- India faces a number of societal challenges, and social marketing has the potential to help policy makers and social leaders address these challenges. Augmented reality is a new tool available to marketers to strengthen their message. Prof. Amrita Joshi of IIM Indore’s Communication Area uses creative analogies to vedantic literature to identify how augmented reality can make social change campaigns like Swacch Bharat work better. (pp. 7-10)
- Do conglomerates add or dissipate value? Prof. Manish Popli of IIM Indore’s Strategic Management Area adds to this debate through an empirical study which shows that thanks to their diversified resources and capabilities, Business Groups are able to get better long-term value out of their mergers and acquisitions. Prof. Radha Ladkani of IIM Indore’s Finance & Accounting Area is one of the co-authors of this work. (pp. 11-13)
- In spite of the transformation of distribution structures of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) in developed markets, multinational corporations continue to use traditional intermediary-based models in India. Prof. Omkar Palsule-Desai of IIM Indore’s OMQT Area explains why this is the case and how FMCG companies can design optimal contracts with stockists depending on some critical contextual variables. (pp. 14-16)
- With the growth of the Internet and Ecommerce, online marketers seek to guide users and consumers to help them make better choices by prompting them with suggestions. Prof. Rajhans Mishra of IIM Indore’s Information Systems Area proposes and tests a unique collaboration-based recommendation system that is modelled based on the collective behaviour of similar users rather than on the content of past visits. (pp. 17-18)
- Managing logistics and supply chain is key to competitiveness in several industries such as the automobile industry. Prof. Saurabh Chandra of IIM Indore’s Operations Management and Quantitative Techniques (OMQT) Area is working on powerful mathematical models that will help Indian automotive companies optimise their outward logistics through a combination of shipping and road transport. (pp. 19-21)
- Managing crises is one of the major challenges of executive leadership. In a provocative piece, Prof. Srinath Jagannathan of IIM Indore’s OBHRM Area argues that the language of crisis can be dysfunctional and instead has to be replaced by the poetry of ethical dialogue for a just and sustainable solution of the crisis to emerge. (pp. 22-23)
- Effective communication between subordinates and superiors helps organizations work better. Based on an empirical study, Prof. Sushanta Kumar Mishra of IIM Indore’s Organizational Behaviour & Human Resources Management (OBHRM) Area finds that to facilitate such communication creating an environment which is more conducive to communication within the organization is more important than selecting employees with higher willingness to communicate. (pp. 24-25)
Readers are encouraged to reach out to the authors for more details of their research. All research rides on the work done by peers earlier. And research by IIM Indore faculty is no exception. However, to make this newsletter reader-friendly, the summaries do not contain detailed lists of references. All prior work is gratefully acknowledged, and a full list of references can be obtained from the authors on request. Some of the studies here have co-authors who are outside IIM Indore. On behalf of the authors, we thank them for their collaboration and support.