Report of ICMAPRANE 2017

10-11 February 2017

Inaugural Session

Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida organized its’ second International Conference on Management Practices for the New Economy (ICMAPRANE-17) on February 10th – 11th, 2017. The conference was being organized in association with Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (SAMK), Finland and Eastern Mennonite University, USA and University of East London, UK.

For its inaugural ceremony, Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Ex Secretary General, FICCI, Chancellor of the Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics, Founder Director of Pahle India Foundation and Senior fellow at Centre for policy research was the Chief Guest. Prof. Rajan Saxena, Vice –Chancellor Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies was Guest of Honor and Mr. Abheek Barua, Chief Economist at HDFC Bank Limited was the Key Note Speaker for the conference.

Guests flew down from across the nation to be a part of this two days event.

The event commenced with the recital of the Saraswati Vandana and lighting of the lamp. , This was followed by floral welcome of the guests.

Chairman of Jaipuria Institute of Management, Shri Sharad Jaipuria in his welcome remarks spoke about the vast experience that the three speakers carry and briefed the guests and audience about Late Seth Anandram Jaipuria's pioneering initiative to set up Jaipuria College in Kolkata in 1945 and the Jaipuria family long journey since then in providing superior quality education with over 10,000 current students and close to 20,000 alumni. Jaipuria Institute of Management has strength of over 100 faculty members and more than 70 visiting faculty members.

He then dwelt upon the conference theme “Management Practices for the New Economy”. He said that the new economy has the potential to revolutionize a given industry through cost leadership. New business models are emerging every day breaking down the traditional differences between the supplier and the customer. He cited examples of world's largest taxi firm, Uber that owns no cars. One of the world's most popular media company, Facebook, creates no content. The world's most valuable retailer, Alibaba, carries no stock. And the world's largest accommodation provider, Airbnb, owns no property. Hence new economy incorporates a new way of doing things across industries and functional areas.

He desired to look forward to a new economy which does business activity for the benefit of the society, and takes care of the people who have historically been exploited by classism, gender bias, racism and other systems of oppression.

Director of the institute Dr. Rajiv R. Thakur welcomed the guests and participants and recalled how decision to hold with clear topic in mind was taken a year back in valedictory function of first international conference of Jaipuria, Noida. Since economy is a continually changing process hence the theme of conference will remain contemporary always and he announced that Jaipuria, Noida will be promoting the theme as a brand and organize its future conferences with same brand name.

Citing world as a global village today, businesses are affected by even the slightest change or issue in any part of the world. Sustainability of businesses therefore depend upon quick adaptation to the changed circumstances and adopting new management practices that are in tune and line with evolving new economy. He quoted examples of US President Election and demonetization as two key events that have shaken entire business scenario world over. He said that the new economy may see demise of once successful companies and can also witness emerging of new businesses from nowhere or from scratch. He also acknowledged the contribution of organizing team of Mr. Jitender Sharma, Dr. Vinita Srivastava and Dr. Shikha Bhatia who in spite of various difficulties and hurdles that keep coming regularly successfully organized the whole show.

He mentioned that for the conference over 200 inquiries were received, followed by 146 abstracts and finally 102 full paper were received. After double blind review process, 65 papers were selected and after last minute withdrawal of few papers, finally 59 papers were included in conference proceedings. Dr. Rajiv Thakur highlighted how the event was being broadcasted not only to all the three campuses live but to various colleges through online learning and training software, Impartus.

Mr. Abheek Barua, Chief Economist, HDFC bank in his key note address spoke about other facets of economy and the recent major events like Brexit and Demonetization in India and their effects on the new economy. He also spoke about how every nation is competing against each other trying to form their own kind of globalization. He described economic implications of international politics and mention China, India and Africa are the countries to look for in the coming years for growth after adopting protectionism policies by USA.

Chief Guest Dr. Rajeev Kumar, who started his career as a professor only and wittingly coining the term “lapse professor” for himself talked about how our youth needs to be trained in different dimensions of management as an initiative to fulfill the demands of the new and innovation prone economy. He also emphasized on how much it is important for our generation-Y to understand the importance of job creation highlighting the implications of the current scenarios portraying significant drops in the graph of the same. He talked about how the fourth revolution i.e. internetworking using technology has entirely changed the world after the earlier three revolutions wheel, industrialization and computerization. He provided key mantras of success in the new economy

Finally, Prof. Rajan Saxena, spoke about the revolution in the economy and how this 21st century belongs to Asia, specially China and India. He emphasized how the management education needs to be changed keeping in mind the changing environment and also mentioned leadership traits for the new economy.

At the end of inaugural session, Shri Shreevats Jaipuria, Vice Chairman, Jaipuria Institute of Management, delivered the vote of thanks and mentioned how listening such wonderful speakers was a treat to ears. He also advised the students to understand and adopt the learnings from these sessions into practice. Finally the inaugural session end with presentation of mementos to the guests and group photograph.

Report of the Technical Sessions held during International Conference on Management Practices for the New Economy (ICMAPRANE 2017) on 10-11 February 2017

There were total 7 technical sessions held during the two days international conference ICMAPRANE 2017.

The first technical session was on “Leveraging Technology and Digitization for the New Economy”.

In its first presentation, presented through skype, Dr. Pradnya V. Chitrao from Symbiosis, Pune talked about how marketing communication has evolved in the digital age and what are the new tools and techniques used for the purpose.

Second presentation was on “From Digital Divide to Facebook divide, reconstruct our target market segments with Facebook native and Facebook immigrant” by Chun Sing Yung from Macau, Hong Kong.

The researcher talked about Facebook segmentation. He discussed that both public and private entities program needed segmentation for policy and sales activity. Market segment could be defined through four main approaches, namely geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral which were applicable in different markets and products. The marketing segmentation shall be rewritten upon the divide society where previous market segmentation might not able to cover the ever-evolving market population. It made 4 profile types segmentation namely attention seekers, devotees, connection seekers and entertainment chasers. Four potential clusters of sharing consumers segments were sharing idealists, sharing opponents, sharing pragmatists, and sharing normative

Further this paper suggested to have three different approaches on segmentation upon Facebook divides dichotomy of online and offline segments & Facebook functional usage allow us to consider segmentation with these eight functional usage

Finally he concluded that in the era of Facebook divide, dual marketing strategies shall be in place to cover non-user and users. Further research shall focus on ever changing Facebook and social media environment with update segmentation. Facebook was a single social media platform, and it might be replaced with something new in technology or something we do not know in years. Something new would divide the society inevitably and segmentation shall change accordingly. The society shall invest public money to lessen the gap on the divide for the betterment of society as a whole.

Next presentation was on “An Empirical Analysis: Awareness of E-Commerce’s Regulatory Framework” made by Parveen Kumari, Research Scholar Punjabi University Patiala and her co-author was Dr. Satinder Kumar, Assistant professor Punjabi University Patiala.

The researcher began by stating that E-commerce is a technology mediated exchange between parties (individuals and organizations) as well as the electronically based intra or inter organizational activities that facilitates such exchanges. Electronic Commerce is associated with the buying and selling of information, products and services via computer networks.

She then discussed Research Methodology by stating that the present study is exploratory research. Data has been collected with the help of self-structured questionnaire. The questionnaire is based on the five point Likert scale ranging and the respondents were selected from the state of India i.e. Punjab and the Union Territory of Chandigarh. The data was analyzed through percentage method and chi square to extract whether the respondents were aware regarding online Laws and Regulations.

The Research hypothesis of the study stated that there is no significant relationship between awareness levels of respondents regarding regulatory framework of e-commerce and their gender as well as monthly income attributes

The authors have used the chi-square test on the data which shows that there is association between awareness level of respondents regarding Consumer Credit Act and their gender attributes as well as income attributes as the calculated value of chi-square (32.526) and (57.962) respectively is significant (P<0.05). Hence the null hypothesis Ho is rejected. In income variable, income ranges between 15000-30000 respondents were not at all aware as well as above 75000 income segment’s respondents were aware regarding the awareness of this act. 7.4% of male and 5.5% of female respondents were completely aware as well as 58.2% and 36.7% of male and female respondents respectively were not at all aware regarding Awareness of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 1996. In income variable, 50000-75000 income group respondents were aware and majority of respondents i.e. 61.5% which lies in 15000-30000 income groups were not at all aware regarding the act. 16.4% of male and 32% of female respondents were aware as well as 33.6% (male) and 22.7% (female) respondents were not at all aware about the act. This implies that female respondents were more aware as compared to male respondents. In income variable, majority of the respondent’s i.e.29.4% lies between 50000-75000 income category that were aware and very least percentage of respondents i.e. 12.5% were covered in 30000-50000 income group who were not aware regarding the awareness of the act.

Finally the authors concluded by stating that the study examined the awareness level of respondents regarding the regulatory framework of e-commerce and there are many acts which considered as most reliable legitimacy while dealing at e-commerce sites. The result of the study indicated that male respondents are not aware regarding the regulatory framework of e-commerce as compared to female because they don’t pay much attention towards e- privacy in e-commerce. Therefore, in order to increase the awareness level of male respondent’s marketer should have to use effective awareness campaigns of e-privacy so that they can augment awareness among male respondents. Moreover, they also must have to emphasize on the low income level groups who also not much familiar with e-commerce business and let them free to know about regulatory framework used in e-commerce which will connect the more numbers of customers with e-commerce business.

Fourth presentation of the session was made by Mr. Ashay Saxena, IIM, Bangalore on “Exploring Distributed Agile Software Development Practices: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective”

The author started by stating the Research Objectives i.e. to analyse processes and practices adopted by one of the leading practitioners of agile methodologies, i.e. ThoughtWorks and extend the literature by providing rich insights on the distributed form of agile software development (DASD). The Research Design in the study was Case Analysis of one of the leading adopters of agile methodologies, i.e. Thought Works .Secondary sources ranging from interview transcripts, articles, best practices and views of Thought Works senior management to analyse DASD.

The Findings show that Rich and dynamic interactions occur at various levels in multiple forms, formal and informal, within the organization. Different facets of emergence are observed through the practices being followed at development sites. Cross-functional teams emphasize division by feature Supported by speedy escalation paths, shared culture, shared environments and shared sense of purpose, priority and plan among people working across sites

The concluding remarks showed that Work practices followed at Thought Works merge seamlessly with the basic properties of complex adaptive systems : Being in touch with everyone involved with the project, including clients (interconnected agents), Autonomy provided to project members in taking decisions related to task-selection, prioritizing work & designing (self-organization), Development of working software collaboratively with involvement of clients (co-evolution) and Frequent releases resulting from short iterations (time-pacing)

Next presentation was made by Dr. Nidhi S Natrajan on “Organization sustainability through emerging technology - (SMAC)”

This is a part of exploratory study. Business sustainability means managing the ‘triple bottom line’— including financial, social, and environmental risks, obligations and opportunities. Sustainable businesses are resilient and create economic value, healthy ecosystems and strong communities. Sustainable businesses survive over the long term because they are intimately connected to healthy economic, social and environmental systems. It is a culture in which organizational members hold shared assumptions and beliefs about the importance of balancing economic efficiency, social equity and environmental accountability.

The suggestion made include that to enable sustainability organizations need to focus on Fostering Commitment, Clarifying Expectations, Building Momentum for Change and Instilling Capacity for Change. Another set professes following factors for organization sustainability: Internal and External (Hayes, 2002; Savaya and Spiro, 2011; Scheirer, 2005; Schell et al., 2013).

This was followed by next presentation by Dr. Vinita Srivastava & Dr. Banasree Dey on “Digital Addiction amongst Indian Youth: A Boon or Bane”.

The author started by introducing the topic. The key points included “It has been pointed out that a world driven by Internet may soon be headed for a health crisis in the shape of digital addiction (Keen, 2015). Already, digital addiction is found to be on the rise in several countries including India and is emerging as a cause of serious concern (Kosikowaski, 2015; Tait, 2015; Purie, 2015; The Times of India, 2014; Fox News, 2012). While the benefits of using the internet for enhanced communication and knowledge acquisition is well acknowledged, yet the addictive use of internet is increasingly being recognised as a significant problem across the world (Teong & Ang, 2016; Saato, 2006; Brand et al, 2014)”.

Literature Review of their paper emphasized on following points.

  • A majority of the studies exploring addictive behaviour in students are in relation to the issue of internet addiction. This term was used by Ivan Goldberg to suggest ‘pathological compulsive internet usage’ (Nalwa and Anand, 2003).
  • One popular tool that has been used by researchers to examine the prevalence of internet addiction is the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) developed by Kimberley Young (Sato, 2006; Singh, 2015; Pandya, 2015).
  • It has been pointed out that one group that appears to be particularly vulnerable to internet dependence is students due to the increased use of internet for improving student’s proficiency in studies (Nalwa and Anand, 2003).

The study had primary objective of examining the extent of internet addiction among students pursuing management education.

Research Methodology included the survey which utilized a questionnaire based on Young’s IAT as well as a few questions related to purpose of internet use (entertainment, work, gaming etc) and demographic variables such as age and gender.

Pilot survey conducted among students of Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida. A total of 82 students between the ages of 21 and 26 were approached to participate in this study. A total of 65 responses were collected and out of these only 44 were usable responses. Convenience sampling was adopted to reach to the respondents. Students filled out questionnaires in a classroom setting.

Results indicate the fact that such students comprising around 18 percent respondents who have scored higher than 70 points require some intervention as to get around the negative problems associated with excessive internet use.

Finally the conclusions show that he negative consequences of internet addiction include physical problems (such as disrupted sleep patterns, fatigue), relationship problems and academic problems and One of the solutions that may be suggested to overcome such negative problems is digital detox, a process that helps ‘to regain mindfulness, lowered anxiety, good mental health, better human relationships and increased output

Paper by Mr. Ashay Saxena was adjudged as the Best Paper of this session.

Theme of the second technical session was “Emerging Marketing Practices”. The session started with Prof. Poonam welcoming the participants, briefing audience about the theme of the session and detailing the guidelines of presentation to the participants. First presenter, Ms. Rupali Singh, presented on the topic ‘Impact of Advertising on Consumer Behavior: A special reference to Sarovar Hotels’. She presented her paper with co-author Prof. Nidhi Singh present in audience. In her study Ms Rupali has assessed the impact of advertisement on consumer perception and consumer behavior in Sarovar Group. The paper discusses about advertisement and varying effect in different demographics. After the presentation, sessions chairs thanked the presenter. They felt that the research orientation of the paper has scope of improvement.

Second presentation was done by Dr. Surjit Kumar Kar (in the absence of co-author Ms. Munmun Samantarai), on the topic ‘V: A twist in the tale of a brand’. The paper was a conceptual paper and had the objective of strategic understanding of the launch of the V-bike from Bajaj to capture their falling market share. After the presentation, session chairs felt that sales data after launch was necessary to compare and paint a relevant picture on the subject.

Third presentation was done by Ms. Kalyani Kalita (in the absence of co-author Mrinmoy K. Sarma) on the topic ‘Eating Out – Yielding to the Impulsive Temptation’. The paper talked about factors affecting individuals for impulsive buying of food. After the presentation, session chairs advised that ‘external factors’ and impulsive buying are not going well together, so the author has to re-think on the flow again.

Fourth presentation of the track was done by Mr. Taikhoom Maluki & Ms. Nishtha Trivedi with co-author Prof. Shalini Srivastava present in the audience. The topic was ‘Effect of Advertisement on Brand Awareness: A study on Mobile Users of India’. The objective of research was to find effect of advertisement on brand preference and brand awareness. After the presentation, session chairs suggested that for further work, other dimensions affecting brand preference should also be considered.

Fifth presentation was done by Mr. Rajesh Kumar on the topic ‘Service Quality Expectations and Perception Gaps of State Bank of India, Rohtak (Haryana)’. The author talked about various sub-dimensions affecting service quality. After the presentation, session chairs suggested that questionnaire should be customized according to banks rather than adopting a questionnaire applicable to general services.

Sixth presentation was done by Ms. Manvi (in the absence of co-authors Dr. Ashok Sharma, Dr. Amit Kr Pandey and Vinamra Jain) on the topic ‘Do Marketing mix strategies influence sensory behavior of Indian consumers?’ The paper was about how marketers exploit five human senses in oral care segment.

Seventh and last presentation was done by Ms. Manisha (in the absence of co-author Dr. Vinita Srivastava) on the topic ‘Consumer Perception of Herbal/Ayurvedic Products in India’. The paper talked about perceptions of consumers demographically.

This last paper by Ms. Manisha was adjudged as the best paper of the session by the chairpersons.

The third technical session on “Dynamics of Managing Human Resource in the New Economy” was co-chaired by Dr. Suresh Bhatt, Mr. Lee Bee Sen, IR Expert at NTPC & Prof. (Dr.) Swati Agrawal, PAN HR Area Chair, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida. In total there were eight empirical and theoretical papers were presented in this session.

The first paper was presented by Dr. Suresh K. Bhatt on the topic, “Efficiency analysis of garment manufacturing: In-house manufacturing versus outsourcing”. Dr. Bhatt shared in his paper that Indian culture has provided many opportunities to the world for business while emphasized lack of leadership in running business in India organizations.

The second paper was presented by Ms. Shipra Sharma on the topic “Training Practices in Indian Telecom Industry” wherein MTNL, BSNL, Airtle, Vodafone, Reliance JIO training practices such as job rotation, e-learning apprenticeship, classrooms, on-the-job and online courses.

The third paper was presented by Prof. Harold Andrew Patrick on the topic “Development and validation of work environment services scale (WESS)”. Most adopted work environment tools were studied in his paper. Social peer cohesiveness was discussed as main highlight as one of the evolving tools. This paper raised lot of debate and discussion as Prof. Patrick evolved a new scale which was centre point of discussion.

Fourth paper was presented by Dr. Sujit Singh and Dr. Anil Singh on the topic “Coping organizational stress through work-life balance” as a theoretical framework. Gist of his paper came us as a suggestion that, worry about actions and not about results to cope with stress.

The fifth paper was presented by Dr. Shalini Srivastava & Ms. Parul Yadav on the topic “Work Life integration Blurred Weekdays and Weekends: Study on male professional”. The paper talked about the shift in family structure, country’s changing culture various factors that ensure the work life integration in the lives of working male professionals.

The sixth paper was presented by Millo Yasung and Papori Baruah on the topic “Impact of professionalism on employee outcome: a study in Arunachal Pradesh”. The paper defended the variables such as demographics, employee professionalism and public service motivation factors which affect employee’s outcome at work.

The seventh paper was of Ms. Bornita Das and Dr. Shalini Srivastava on the topic “Job satisfaction and motivation among Coal India Limited employees: a comparative study between executives and non-executive employees. The paper reflected variables like, motivation and satisfaction relationship and presented the findings which proved to be opposite as expected. Non executives were found to be nor satisfied against their executives.

The last paper which was the eighth paper, presented by Ms. Tanu Goel and Dr. Shalini Srivastava on the topic “Linking personality to personal effectiveness: a study on B-school students. This paper talked about the various variables of personality such as character, behavioral traits and attitude corresponding to Type A and B personalities which show their own significant role in the success of a professional.

All the papers were well appreciated by the chairs and good engagement was received by the present audience.

Towards the end, Prof. Patrick paper was adjudged as the Best paper of the session.

Post lunch first session was on “Social Sustainability and Management Practices - I” and co-chairs for the session were Dr. Harold Patrick and Dr. Richa Misra. There were five presentations held in the session.

First paper “A CSR Strategy – Inclusion of Differently Abled People in the Manufacturing - Process of a Footwear Organization” by presented by Ms. Rina Gupta. Her co-author was Prof. Neeti Kasliwal.

She started with introducing the concept of CSR along with introducing the organization where she conducted this study. The company was a sports footwear manufacturer with 80+ employees, out of which 5 workers were differently abled. She then explained the recruitment and training process for these people. She designed a questionnaire for her study and collected the response from all the stakeholder’s of the company about their respective experience working with these people. She applied Cranbach’s Alpha to test the consistency of the questionnaire. As per her findings differently abled people performed accurately and growth in production was recorded in the same quarter. At last panel members put few questions about the relevance of this concept with the theme of the conference and she was able to justify it with proper argument. Panel chair also suggested her to convert her study in case form.

Next paper on “CSR in India: A journey towards Social Transformation” was presented by Ms. Purnima Singh. She started by explaining importance of CSR and it utility for improving work environment quality in any organization. She presented her literature review for justifying the relevance of her study. The basic objective for her study was to ascertain dynamic role of CSR to neglect the myth about the performance of differently abled people in any organization. It was an exploratory secondary data based research. She presented a KPMG audit report stating increase in CSR by Indian companies is increased by 27% in 2017. She concluded her session by suggesting the need of a collaborative effort from provider and beneficiary. She also suggested the government and regulating bodies to do a regular audit to ensure the effectiveness of CSR initiatives taken by govt. of India.

Next presentation was made by Prof. Nidhi Singh on “Views of Academicians on the role of higher education in promoting Sustainable Change”. She started with explaining the meaning of sustainable change and how to incorporate it to the youth. She emphasized on the role of higher education academic institutes to develop an environment and design their curriculum to make the youth aware about it. It was a working paper based on exploratory cum descriptive research. Presenter has developed a structured questionnaire to collect data and the sample size was 170. With the help of research tools like cluster analysis and ANOVA she compiled her results. Author has also identified 16 different variables with respect to test the effectiveness. The presentation was concluded by stressing on an urgency for all the higher educational institute to orient their course curriculum to support the objective. Presentation was well taken by the audience.

Mr. Saad Bin Azhar made next presentation on “Green Stress: A New Paradigm in Emerging Scenario”. It was a conceptual paper which urges the need of green practices by people, industry and Government. Presenter started with introducing the concept of Green Stress, its cause and how it is affecting the society as a whole. He emphasized by saying that objective of any organization must be wealth management, not just profit maximization. Panel members suggested the presenter to bring in more empirical aspect to the paper.

Final paper of the session “Is a Nishkam Karma Yogi an Effective Manager?” was presented by Ms. Anindita S. Chatterjee. She started with describing the three terms – Karma, Yoga and Nishkam and she justified her definition by referring to Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta verse – II/48. Then she explained the managerial effectiveness and tried to make connect between the two. Hence she came up with the objective of her study i. e. to explore correlation between Nishkam Karma Yoga and managerial effectiveness. She presented Wisedom Worker model from literature to justify her work. At last she presented the outcome of her study stating to have a significant relationship between Nishkam Karma Yoga and Managerial Effectiveness. Finally panel members shared their observations with the audience.

Paper by Prof. Nidhi Singh and Prof. Teena Saharan was adjudged Best Paper of the session.

The next session was on “Social Sustainability and Management Practices – II” and was co-chaired by Dr. Surjit Kumar Kar and Dr. Shalini Verma. Five papers were presented in this session.

Total five presentations were made in this session.

The first presentation was made by Ms. Priya Chinchwadkar on ‘Open Defecation’ where the speaker shared some data on the subject and concluded that changing mindset, awareness of the problem were some of the ways which can reduce the problem in India.

Prof. G. K. Deshmukh made the second presentation on ‘Innovation amongst textile retailers in Chhattisgarh’. The speaker spoke about Kano’s model and its application in innovation in textile retailing.

The third speaker was Prof. Chiang Kao, from Taiwan, China who spoke on ‘Efficiency Measurement Model in Garment Production’ and concluded that in house cutting process was inefficient and outsourced sewing was found to be efficient.

The fourth paper of the session was presented by Dr. Deepak Singh and Dr. Durgansh Sharma who spoke about ‘Innovation in business model of education’ and proposed a model for sustainable and economical education.

Final speaker of the session, Ms. Manika Sharma, spoke about demonetization and interacted with the audience on the subject.

At the end of the session, paper by Dr. Deepak Singh and Dr. Durgansh Sharma was adjudged as the best paper of the session.

Next session was on “Contemporary Issues in Finance” and was chaired by Prof. Subhrasil Basu and Dr. Pratibha Wasan. Five papers were presented in this session.

First paper of the session was on “Regulatory Capital, Competition and Risk Taking Behavior of Indian Banks” and was presented by Prof. Santi Gopal Maji. The paper focused on – does increase in regulatory capital help to reduce risk, does competition enhance bank stability in India and what is the role of human capital in managing risk. The paper concluded that the capital regulation is not sufficient to enhance the stability of Indian banking sector in India, completion improves the financial soundness of banks and there is a significant role of bank employees in managing risks.

Next paper by Ms. Sarabjeet Kaur was on “FIIs – An Analytical Study of Pre and Post Liberalization”. She presented a descriptive paper focusing on portfolio investment by FIIs in the pre and post liberalization in India.

Next presenter Mr. Sanjay Singh presented his paper on “Microfinance – Effect of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) on NPAs”. The paper explained different models of micro finance and different micro finance products, effect of NRLM on NPAs, NPAs of SHGs and comparison of region wise NPAs. The paper concluded that the number of SHGs was on the increase every year. The comparison between the NPAs of SHGs indicates the increased performance of NRLM supported SHGs

Next paper on “Analysis of Private Equity Investment Trends in India” was presented by Mr. Shikhil Munjal. The objective of his paper was to analyze the trend of private equity investment in India and to examine the flow of FDI in India.

Last paper of the session by Ms. Pragati Bhatnagar and Dr. Shikha Bhatia presented by Ms. Pragati was on “Performance Analysis of Zero Debt Firms of India”. Shepresented this preliminary research paper. Authors collected data of 254 zero debt firms out of 1684 firms listed on National Stock Exchange. The period of study was 2011-16. The paper focuses on the analysis of market and intrinsic performance of zero debt companies vis-à-vis debt companies.

Prof. Santi Gopal Maji’s paper was adjudged as the Best Paper of the session.

As most of the technical sessions were confined to first day due to Uttar Pradesh State Assembly Elections schedule in Noida region on 11th February, there was only one technical session and valedictory function on 11th February 2017.

The theme of this last technical session was ‘India and Global Economic Perspectives’. The session was chaired by Dr. Ravi Kathuria, Professor, Chapman University, USA and Dr. Ritika Gugnani, Professor, Jaipuria Institute of Management Noida.

The first paper tilted ‘Competitive Priorities as Trade-offs or Mutually Supportive: A Glimpse from an Emerging Economy’ was presented by Dr Ravi Kathuria himself. The paper was co-authored by Mr. Narindar Kathuria and Mr. Abhishek Kathuria. The researchers presented their findings from data collected by 78 Indian manufacturers who were further classified on basis of their competitive priorities. This paper generated lot of questions in terms of how to validate the data provided by the manufacturers which were satisfactorily replied by the authors explaining the tests used to validate the data.

Second presented Dr. Subhrasil Basu presented his paper on ‘New economy implores transformation of business of agri-input dealers in emerging markets’. The paper highlighted the state of agrarian economy in India and the impact of training of agri input dealers on agricultural productivity.

Next presenter Mr. Ashish Agarwal presented the paper on ‘Economic Performance and Interdependence among SAARC countries’ coauthored by Dr. Vranda Jain and Mr. Surender Kumar. The paper initiated a lot of discussion among the conference participants on the future of trade and cooperation in SAARC region. The authors based on their research findings suggested that the GDP growth of SAARC member countries is highly correlated and member countries should focus on regional integration.

Next paper was by Mr. Jitender Sharma on ‘Demonetization in India – A Study of Intent, Agenda, and Impact on Indian Economy’. The paper provided a vivid account of the Demonetization phase in India and raised many questions and comments by the participants. His concluding remarks of “crocodiles easily surviving on land” were appreciated by many participants.

The session came to an end by presentation of paper titled ‘A Study on Factors Influencing Customer Purchase Behavior towards Green Products in Indore City’ by Ms. MinalUprety and coauthored by Mr. Sarfaraz Ansari.

The research findings presented in the technical session were well received by audience and the session chairs. The session chairs also offered several suggestions to authors for developing future research agenda.

Paper by Prof. Ravi Kathuria was adjudged as the Best Paper of the Session.

Finally, it was turn of valedictory function. Director of the institute Dr. Rajiv R. Thakur delivered valedictory address acknowledging the contribution made by everyone at Jaipuria, Noida to make the conference memorable and especially thanked the participants to travel from different parts of the country and abroad in spite of elections going on in the area and quality of paper. He also thanked the publisher Bloomsbury for timely publication of the book. Administration team and staff members who contributed to make the conference successful were felicitated by the Director. Students Coordinators were also awarded with ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ for their whole – hearted coordination for smooth conduct of the event. He also announced to promote the name of the conference as a brand and organize next conference with the same name but with different themes and sub-themes.

Before proposing Vote of Thanks Dr. Shikha Bhatia announced the winner of the “Overall Best Paper” of the conference.

Prof. Harold Andrew Patrick paper was adjudged as the “Over All Best Paper” of the conference.

Dr. Shikha Bhatia then asked the participants to share their views. Participants were highly satisfied with the conference and its arrangements. According to Prof. Ravi Kathuria “I have attended hundreds of conferences across the world and this conference was smallest in magnitude but I didn’t find such nice discussions during the sessions and arrangements made anywhere”. He appreciated the education and facilities provided to the students based on his discussions with group of students before the start of technical session. He also mentioned that he didn’t hear the institute name before coming here but was going with very sweet memories and promised to return back next year.

Finally, program ended with Vote of Thanks to everyone by Dr. Shikha Bhatia.