Longevity challenges and leadership interventions: Strategy journeys of two Indian banks

This article studies the strategic journeys of two Indian banks in evolving socio-political and economic environments, spread across eight decades. It provides a holistic view of longevity challenges by exploring interdependencies between a firm’s internal dynamics, external environment, and its leaders. This article covers the growth of Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank in distinct phases of unrestricted, regulated, and centrally planned economic environment, and in changing socio-political scenarios. It uses within-case and across-case analysis, contextualised in these conditions, to provide rich insights about measures adopted by firms for their long-term survival and sustenance.     

The quest for expansive intellectual property rights and the failure to disclose known relevant prior art

Expansive patent portfolios may be used by firms to fence off technological space for commercialization, impede the commercialization efforts of competitors, and enhance bargaining power in cross‐licensing negotiations. Low quality patents with claims that overlap those of other patents contribute to these portfolios and patent strategies. By failing to disclose known relevant prior art during the patenting process, inventors and their firms may be granted low quality patents with intellectual property claims which would not otherwise have been granted. We find that the failure of inventors to disclose known relevant prior art increases as they gain experience with the patenting process. Such failure is also greater among inventors employed by relatively small, poorly performing firms that rely on outsourced legal counsel during the application process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A quantitative model for the evaluation of technological alternatives

This paper presents a quantitative model that may be of use to the national development planners, investment funding authorities, and entrepreneurs, who are confronted with the problems of choosing the appropriate technology among many available alternatives. The model provides a systematic and analyst-independent methodology for the multicriterion technology selection process, which requires consideration of socioeconomic as well as technological factors. The procedure is mathematically straightforward and has the capability of integrating both objective and subjective aspects of the evaluation process, resulting in a unified technology measure as a guide for decision making. A case study is presented to illustrate the applicability and workability of the development model.     

Beyond Moulin mechanisms

The only known general technique for designing truthful and approximately budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms with good efficiency or computational complexity properties is due to Moulin [1999. Incremental cost sharing: Characterization by coalition strategy-proofness. Soc. Choice Welfare 16 (2), 279–320]. For many fundamental cost-sharing applications, however, Moulin mechanisms provably suffer from poor budget-balance, poor economic efficiency, or both.We propose acyclic mechanisms, a new framework for designing truthful and approximately budget-balanced cost-sharing mechanisms. Acyclic mechanisms strictly generalize Moulin mechanisms and offer three important advantages. First, it is easier to design acyclic mechanisms than Moulin mechanisms: many classical primal-dual algorithms naturally induce a non-Moulin acyclic mechanism with good performance guarantees. Second, for important classes of cost-sharing problems, acyclic mechanisms have exponentially better budget-balance and economic efficiency than Moulin mechanisms. Finally, while Moulin mechanisms have found application primarily in binary demand games, we extend acyclic mechanisms to general demand games, a multi-parameter setting in which each bidder can be allocated one of several levels of service.     

An Examination of Public Hospital Productivity and its Persistence: An Index Number Approach

This paper measures the level and growth of total factor productivity (TFP) of public hospitals in Victoria, Australia, using an index number approach. We further examine the persistence of productivity over time, and the extent to which productivity varies with hospital characteristics such as hospital size. Hospital administrative data from Victoria from 2007–08 to 2011–12 are used. We find substantial variation in TFP across hospitals: large hospitals perform significantly better than small hospitals, both in TFP level and growth. Productivity level is highly persistent over time, but not productivity growth.     

Assessment of technological appropriateness: The case of Indonesian rural development

It is commonly recognized at the present that technological appropriateness is not an intrinsic quality of any technology, but it derived from the surroundings (technological as well as sociocultural, politicolegal, economic, and environmental) in which it is to be utilized and the specific purpose of its application. On this basis, this paper presents two case studies for the selection of appropriate technologies for rural development in Indonesia. The first case deals with the problem of identifying a “set of appropriate technologies” to be promoted for accelerated rural development. The second case deals with the problem of selecting the “most appropriate one” among available technologies of one kind. The assessment exercises are carried out using existing methodologies and inputs (such as national priorities, assessment factors, and decision weights) from Indonesian nationals. It is shown that the analysis can provide useful guidelines for science and technology policy planning in developing countries.     

The business school scorecard: Examining the systematic sources of business school value

Stakeholder relationships are a critical resource that contribute to or inhibit value creation. Building on this assertion, we explore the value of the business school at a stakeholder level. We draw on research by the Canadian multistakeholder working group, the Business School Research Network (BSRN), which was established to facilitate collaborative interinstitutional research on the management and practice of business schools. We provide a conceptual model of the value chain and associated scorecard that take into account the sources of value judgments that pertain to a business school at the stakeholder‐level. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.