Building the BoP Producer Ecosystem: The Evolving Engagement of Fabindia with Indian Handloom Artisans

Recent research on the base of the pyramid (BoP) has called on firms to initiate market‐driven interventions directed at the BoP population with the objective of identifying and pursuing mutually profitable means of attaining meaningful poverty alleviation outcomes. In response, firms as well as scholars have engaged at length with the creation of new products and services for the BoP consumer but paid far less attention to the BoP producer—a member of the BoP population who creates value by producing goods and services for sale in nonlocal markets. Additionally, extant studies have largely focused on snapshot views of BoP interventions by firms, thereby limiting our understanding of the emergence of meaningful poverty‐alleviating outcomes over time from these interventions. This paper seeks to redirect attention toward the dynamic of the long‐term engagement between the firm and the BoP producer. Using rich qualitative data from Fabindia—an Indian handloom retailer—this paper examines how the engagement between Fabindia and communities of handloom artisans in India has persisted over a period of five decades. We found that, even as it encountered changes in the external environment and pursued newer organizational goals, Fabindia repeatedly renewed its engagement with handloom artisans and facilitated progression in poverty‐alleviation outcomes. Building on the insights from the case study, this paper presents a process model that highlights the role of innovative management practices in sustaining engagements between firms and BoP producers over time. Additionally, this paper proposes the concept of the “bridging enterprise”—a business enterprise that originates at the intersection of specific BoP communities and the corresponding nonlocal markets—as an interpreter and innovator reconciling the interests of stakeholders across the pyramid.     

INCOME‐GENERATING ACTIVITY: AN AVENUE TO IMPROVE THE SUSTAINABILITY OF SHGs

Self‐help groups (SHGs) are formed to work for increased income through collective effort and use of banking facilities by initiating some income‐generating activities taking advantage of the financial strength of a group. Taking into consideration the significance of SHGs to economic growth, the present study analyzes and compares the management of the income‐generating activities of SHGs in rural and urban areas. It also explores the extent of resource mobilization through various income‐generating activities, and the constraints faced by the SHGs while undertaking these activities. It is an exploratory research in which a multi‐stage stratified cluster random sampling technique was used for the selection of SHGs. Data were collected at group level and member level through purposely developed interview schedules and focused group discussions. The study revealed that, because of various financial and marketing‐related problems occurring while initiating and conducting the activities, very few SHG members actually started new income‐generating activities. Testing of hypotheses indicated that SHGs do not fulfil all the requirements of income‐generating activities carried out by its members. An overall low to medium level of resource mobilization by a majority of the SHGs presented a poor picture of SHGs in generating resources for undertaking entrepreneurial activities.     

Interpretive structural modeling for E-electricity utility service

Service quality has been recognized as one of the major factors for an organization's sustainability. It is one of the driving forces for an organization??s achievement. Service quality may be represented by the comparison between customers?? expectations of how a company or organization should perform and the customer??s perception of the service performance. For successful delivery of public services, use of online technology has rapidly become a benchmark for effective public sector management. Governments worldwide are attempting to harness the potential offered by these new technologies to create new dimensions of economic and social progress. The present article discusses the important aspects of customer's satisfaction in service quality of E-electricity utility service by interpretive structural modeling method.     

Institutional versus non-institutional credit to agricultural households in India: Evidence on impact from a national farmers’ survey

A goal of agricultural policy in India has been to reduce farmers’ dependence on informal credit. To that end, recent initiatives are focused explicitly on rural areas and have a positive impact on the flow of agricultural credit. Despite the significance of the above initiatives in enhancing the flow of institutional credit to agriculture, the links between institutional credit and net farm income and consumption expenditures in India are not very well documented. Using large, national farm household level data and IV 2SLS estimation methods, we investigate the role of institutional farm credit on farm income and farm household consumption expenditures. Findings show that, in India, formal credit does indeed play a critical role in increasing both net farm income and per capita monthly household expenditures of Indian farm families. Finally, we find that, in the presence of formal credit, social safety net programs like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) may have unintended consequences. In particular, MGNREGA reduces both net farm income and per capita monthly household consumption expenditures. On the other hand, in the presence of formal credit, the Public Distribution System may increase both net farm income and per capita monthly household consumption expenditures.     

Examining the success of women of color-owned small and medium-sized enterprises in the United States: A system dynamics perspective

The objective of this study was to unravel the challenges confronting women of color (WoC)-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United States. This is based on findings that most WoC-owned SMEs fail within the first few years of establishment. The impact of the global financial crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic on WoC-owned SMEs was also explored. System Dynamics (SD) is a computational modeling approach useful for understanding changes in a system over time and is applied in this study to illustrate WoC entrepreneurs' navigation through the startup and maturation of SMEs. The authors calibrated and validated the model with publicly available data. Findings revealed that more emphasis should be placed on failure reduction in the early years of establishment of these businesses. Also, there is the need for early intervention rather than focusing on the improvement of the successful business exit from the system. Results indicated that the creation of new businesses by WoC after the failure of existing businesses produced an increase in the number of failed enterprises. The authors assert that attention must be paid at the individual level through support to the entrepreneur. This study contributes to the extant literature by providing the first known SD model useful in depicting the SME system for WoC entrepreneurs in the US. The model serves as a potentially useful tool for informing effective policy making, education, and programmatic approaches to support the success of WoC entrepreneurs in the US.