Nonfarm diversification,poverty, economic mobility,and income inequality: a case study in village India

This article assembles data at the all‐India level and for the village of Palanpur, Uttar Pradesh, to document the growing importance, and influence, of the nonfarm sector in the rural economy between the early 1980s and late 2000s. The suggestion from the combined National Sample Survey and Palanpur data is of a slow process of nonfarm diversification, whose distributional incidence, on the margin, is increasingly pro‐poor. The village‐level analysis documents that the nonfarm sector is not only increasing incomes and reducing poverty, but appears as well to be breaking down long‐standing barriers to mobility among the poorest segments of rural society. Efforts by the government of India to accelerate the process of diversification could thus yield significant returns in terms of declining poverty and increased income mobility. The evidence from Palanpur also shows, however, that at the village‐level a significant increase in income inequality has accompanied diversification away from the farm. A growing literature argues that such a rise in inequality could affect the fabric of village society, the way in which village institutions function and evolve, and the scope for collective action at the village level. Failure to keep such inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro‐poor impacts from the process of structural transformation currently underway in rural India.     

A novel hybrid multi-criteria method for supplier selection among SMEs on the basis of innovation ability

Today, small and large business houses operate collaboratively for the efficiency in the functioning of supply chains. Larger organisations mostly depend on small companies to supply majority of its components and thus they need to be careful while selecting their suppliers. Small organisations performing innovatively and supplying technologically upgraded as well as quality products at a cheaper rate can be a boon for the larger enterprise. This study develops a model for evaluating and selecting small firms as suppliers on the basis of their innovativeness. Best–Worst multi-criteria method is used to rank criteria of innovativeness and also to calculate their weights on the basis of expert opinion. Fuzzy TOPSIS methodology is used to rank the suppliers with respect to these criteria and finally select the best supplier among the available alternatives. A real-world application is illustrated by taking a case of auto component manufacturer and its seven suppliers, 5 main criteria and 23 sub-criteria are taken up for the study.

Abbreviations: AHP: analytical hierarchal process; ANP: analytical network process; DEMATEL: decision-making trail and evaluation laboratory; EMS: environment management system; ELECTRE: ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité (elimination and choice expressing reality); FPIS: fuzzy positive ideal solution; FNIS: fuzzy negative ideal solution; ISM: interpretative structural modelling; PROMTHEE: preference ranking organisation method for enrichment evaluation; SME: small and medium enterprises; TOPSIS: technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution; QFD: quality function deployment; VIKOR: VlseKriterijuska Optimizacija I Komoromisno Resenje; SP1; SP2; SP3; SP4; SP5; SP6; SP7: Various suppliers used as alternatives     

Stakeholder pressure for sustainability: Can ‘innovative capabilities’ explain the idiosyncratic response in the manufacturing firms?

This study explores role of innovative capabilities in determining a manufacturing firm's response to stakeholder pressure for adopting sustainable practices. Drawing on the theory of conservatism, we delineate that the firm's response is idiosyncratic and undergirded in the nature of its innovative capabilities. Our empirical investigation reveals that the response to the stakeholder pressure is mediated by the nature of the firm's innovative capabilities. Indian manufacturing firms are identified as unit of analysis for this study. The individual manufacturing facilities implement the environmental practices. The findings suggest that the manufacturing firm's exposure to exploitative/exploratory innovative capabilities triggers sustainable behaviours with ephemeral focus and enduring focus. Further, the exploratory/exploitative innovation is capable of explaining idiosyncratic behaviour for the firms' sustainability practices adoption. The findings delineate, with analysis, that unlike China, regulatory stakeholder pressures in India inhibit the adoption of sustainable practices with enduring focus in manufacturing firms.