Empirical Study on Organisational Learning and Green Supply Chain Practices
In organisations, effective functioning of green supply chain practices is a challenging form of cooperation between different knowledge producers and ubiquitous types of experts. Organisational learning to support green supply chain management practices is a continuous learning process that is expected to develop an informed and involved organisational citizenry with creative problem-solving skills, scientific and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible individual and co-operative actions. The aim of the study is to understand how organisational learning impact and enhance green supply chain practices in the organisations. The study is primarily descriptive and exploratory in nature. For the study, twelve select companies from the manufacturing industry were identified using purposive sampling, based on the Pollution Index Score. Mixed method approach is used to confirm, cross-validate and corroborate findings. The results of the study draws a contextual relationship between organisational learning and green supply chain practices, and this relationship ascertains that in organisations, if green practices are accentuated through learning, any business can simplify, synergise, strategize and scale up the green supply chain practices for the benefit of both the organisation and the environment.
Research Areas
Environment responsibility as part of CSR: Development of Fuzzy Based Model to Assess Sustainability
Climate change and global warming have hit the boardrooms of corporations more than ever before. Sustainability indices have become important criteria in today’s parlance to assess the risk of investing or collaborating with any company as part of their supply chain strategy. Many international firms provide these indices used by corporations to assess sustainability and collaborate. In a competing scenario, there is a need for companies in developing economies like India to be on par with their counterparts across the world by obtaining good sustainability scores.
Towards this end, one of the measures the Government of India has taken is mandating transparency in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting through The Companies Act 2013. Since then, large amounts of money that have been spent in specific areas have been reported towards achieving societal needs, and part of it towards greening the supply chain. Using data obtained from the annual reports of NIFTY indexed companies, a published research paper developed a fuzzy-logic-based model to obtain a sustainability score for companies. The inputs used in the model deal with the triple bottom line criteria—Profit, People and Planet (PPP). Using fuzzy logic, rules that define sustainability have been created. The work discusses the patterns in the sustainability scores obtained with respect to the NIFTY indexed companies.
Credit Risk Management of Microfinance Institutions in India
With the rise in per capita incomes, ‘high consumption’ lifestyles are posing a threat to the sustenance of the planet. This over-consumption of resources needs an urgent check in order to lower the environmental impact of these unsustainable lifestyles. Hence, it is important to bring about a shift in the consumption practices to a new paradigm. This research is an attempt to understand the pro-environmental behaviours and its drivers, in an Indian context, given the relevance of sustainability to businesses, governments and society at large.
Sustainable Consumption Patterns of Indians
A scoping review of the field of behavioural economics that focused on health insurance was carried out using the five-stage framework provided by Arksey and O’Malley. A total of 120 studies were identified that met the eligibility criteria. From these studies, information pertaining to consumer behaviour in the health insurance market and means to channel consumer behaviour were extracted.
The state of research of the field found that 93% of the studies are based on samples drawn from western countries, 5% of the studies have used field experiments, 97% of the studies have used a positivist research paradigm, and more than half the studies have focused on just five behavioural factors. Building on these observations, the study provided directions for future research.
Assessment of Entrepreneurship Development Programmes with Respect to Rural Entrepreneurship
Rural Entrepreneurship is increasingly considered as the solution for several rural development related problems. Central and state governments are investing heavily on Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDPs) to aspire youth to take up the entrepreneurial journey. Many of these EDPs function with a motive to promote rural entrepreneurship, with an underlying assumption that these local ventures will create alternative employment in the rural areas and take off the burden from agriculture. The performance measurement of these interventions in the rural regions can pave way for more effectiveness and thereby increase the potential of rural entrepreneurship. This work studies how the objectives of these EDPs’ get translated into actionable items and what kind of Socio-economic impact is created as an output of this training. The study is expected to suggest a model EDP suitable for rural entrepreneurship considering the performance and impact generated by legacy programmes.
A Study to Assess Social Impact of Social Enterprises that Address Disability Issues
Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), SDG 10.2. (2015) aims to ‘empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status’. For most of the groups marginalised in the categories mentioned in this SDG, the barrier is mostly attitudinal. But the disabled demography also faces physical barriers along with the attitudinal ones. They have barriers in areas ranging from mobility and accessibility to performing basic everyday tasks like using a restroom; engaging in sports; or even eating food. Certain products and services can help them cross these barriers. But it may be unreal to expect the Government and NGOs to provide these products and services in a sustainable manner.
Social enterprises play a significant role in filling this gap. Social enterprises are considered to be enterprises that are ‘social mission driven’ and are also ‘for profit’ (at least for the purpose of this study). This duality in social enterprises leads to a kind of trade-off between purpose and profit orientations in terms of priority. If the social entrepreneurs are able to tangibly evidence the social impact they are making towards their purpose, it could be a motivation to give a tad more emphasis to their social mission. This study is meant to be an intervention in this regard. It aims to measure the social impact of social enterprises serving persons with disabilities.
The objective is to measure the social impact of selected social enterprises using the Social Return on Investment (SROI) tool and to conduct a secondary, qualitative evaluation of the same set of social enterprises and then compare the results arrived at by using the SROI model with that of the qualitative study.
Assessing the Impact of Financial Inclusion on Agrarian Incomes and Well-being
Agrarian Incomes are dependent on several variables like monsoons, irrigation facilities, government support, support from financial institutions, etc. The agrarian household is the most vulnerable in case of negative fluctuations in these variables. This research seeks to understand the concept of ‘Financial well-being’ of agrarian households, through the lens of Financial Inclusion. Agricultural activities extend to different dimensions and are impacted diversely. Can access to formal financial services strengthen the abilities of agriculturists in terms of income generation, and can it augment their efforts towards stable and sustainable incomes?