Flexible Strategies in VUCA Markets

Startups are living organisms, especially early-stage startups operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty in search of right product–market fit. As the challenges and opportunities in each development stage are different, understanding of development stages will not only aid an entrepreneur in anticipating challenges and being prepared but also assist an investor to set right expectation from the startup. Over its lifespan, a startup develops across interdependent dimensions like organization objectives, customer, product, finance, business model, revenues, team, and organization culture. Most of the researchers have proposed models of startups by measuring growth over only one dimension. However, in current business landscape, none of the growth dimensions can be ignored. This chapter proposes a multi-dimensional development model for early-stage startups and explains attributes of each dimension for well-defined development stages. This chapter also presents a comprehensive yet simple framework for quantitatively identifying development stage of a startup. While evaluating numerous startups across the globe, the framework also helps to identify unbalanced development of the startup for a particular dimension and proposes respective remedial measures.

Today survival of any organization depends on its innovative efforts in process, management, and product. Several studies have been conducted by researchers, focusing on enhancing creative ability of an individual and flaring organizational innovation, but significantly less work has been done on boosting organizational initiative as an input which addresses the influence of it on increasing creative instinct of an individual and innovation at the organizational level. Pertaining to the harsher reality of competition, the study explores the association between organizational initiative and organizational innovation, focusing on the mediating effect of employee creativity. The study examined 250 valid responses of employees working in private automobile units. The ideation of the hypothesized research model illustrates that employee creativity partially mediates the association between organizational initiatives and organizational innovation. The integral mediating effect of employee creativity signifies that the organization should show optimism toward employee encouragement, training, and challenges to enhance creative instinct within an individual. This convenient form allows managers to take corrective action for fostering innovation in its product and service by augmenting individual’s creative approach. A model was developed, which may provide the practitioners a conceptual framework while developing a methodical approach toward organizational innovation.

The emergence of the biopharmaceutical companies has led to transformation in the procedures of drug discovery within the firms and emergence of the whole organization within the industry. Patents are the most important form of intellectual property protection for these companies. The patent cliff from 2015 to 2020 is significant as it signals an opportunity for growth. Since 2005, with the new patent regime in India the competition in the domestic market has increased. This chapter aims to understand the patent landscape for biopharmaceutical companies by conducting a firm-level study. The overall industry analysis is not within the scope. The period for study was chosen from 2005 to 2015, and it provided a snapshot of the patent situation of these companies. The methodology adopted for the study required framing the research questions, defining objectives, identifying search strategy from the free patent databases and analysing the results of the search. An open source tool called “The Lens” was used for analysis. A variety of patent indicators (like date, jurisdictions, classification, document type, publications and infringements) were used to draw patent statistics. This was analysed based on number of factors like—publications by year, coverage by jurisdictions, relationship among technologies, economic and technical utility and patents being an indicator of innovation.

Clustering has been found to have a positive impact on firm innovation and performance across the world. Clustering leads to local knowledge spillover which is vital to innovation. This chapter attempts to study the impact of clustering on the quality of subsidiary innovation in a developing country context of India. Comparing the patent data of two semiconductor design subsidiaries located in India, this chapter analyzes the moderating effect of clustering on the relationship between subsidiary age, local knowledge spillover, internal networks and the quality of subsidiary innovation. Being located in a cluster is found to have a positive impact on the quality of innovation. Clustering has also been found to positively moderate the impact of subsidiary age and internal network on the quality of innovation, while it has been found to have no moderating impact of local knowledge spillover on the quality of subsidiary innovation.

Innovation is the key source of growth and sustainability of a nation as it determines the competitive performance of country as well as firms. The innovation activities carried out by the corporate sector in India are the outcome of strategic investment decisions made by top management. Directors play pivotal role in innovation with the greatest power to select Research & Development project and evaluate its effectiveness, which is crucial for efficient utilization of resources. However, the uncertainty in the expected results of Research & Development activities makes the attitude of manager towards risk an important determinant in corporate innovation. The board may deviate towards short-term investments to reduce risks associated with long-term Research & Development investments; thus, their decisions need to be monitored through corporate governance oversight mechanisms. The chapter examines the role of corporate governance in enhancing the level of Research & Development activities in firms, and it was found that the role of independent director is pivotal in the decision-making of firm, especially through their active participation in board meetings.

In recent times, research on workforce diversity is gaining momentum in the organizational circles. However, inclusion of people with disabilities as ‘diverse workforce’ has received less attention than other categories of diversity such as gender or race. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the factors influencing inclusion of people with disabilities at workplace. Using 31 semi-structured interviews of people with disabilities, various factors that facilitate their successful inclusion at workplace were found. Data was analysed thematically, and four themes were identified. Key factors that were identified are ‘inclusive pathways in terms of organizational culture’ that encourage participation of people with disabilities, need for due ‘accommodation’, adequate ‘job fit’ and the vital role of other ‘stakeholders’. The insights gained from this chapter hold importance for several stakeholders for designing and implementing strategies, interventions and policies to facilitate effective inclusion of under-represented diverse workforce that is ‘people with disabilities’.

In a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment, the dark networks are able to defy the much stronger police forces by successfully addressing these environmental risks, and instead creating these risks for police forces. Using the extended case study method, this study identifies effective counter-strategies by confronting an empirical case of CPI (Maoists), one of India’s oldest and most successful dark networks. This study also identifies the organizational changes that need to be adopted by the police forces if they have to defeat the dark networks. We highlight that a direct confrontation is not an efficient answer. Rather, the solution lies in attacking each of the strengths of CPI (Maoists) individually, in an orderly fashion. This case study also provides rich insights into the organizational design and peoples’ practices adopted by CPI (Maoists) that minimizes the impact of the VUCA environmental risks and adds to the literature on civil wars and criminal organizations.

The objective of conducting this research survey is to analyze the effect of gender on different factors affecting the job satisfaction among both public and private university academicians. The research problem undertaken in this study is that whether the gender of academicians affects the job satisfaction level of university academicians. Two public and two private universities of the Delhi and NCR region were taken for conducting this study. The data is primary in nature and is collected by distributing the questionnaire to the respondents. Data was collected from 405 respondents comprising 199 male respondents and 206 female respondents. Research instrument consists of 90 statements, and 11 factors were retrieved from those statements. These factors were named as: Attitude and Behavior of Authorities, Research and Development Facilities, Facilities (i.e. fringe benefits), Attitude and Behavior of Administrative Staff, Attitude and Behavior of Students, Coordination and Cooperation among Co-faculty Members, Technological and Informational Needs, Working Environment Conditions, Academic Environment Conditions, Service Condition Policies, and Compensation. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Research findings indicate that the female teachers are more satisfied as compared to the male teachers.

In twenty-first century, the top management in organization was facing the ever-changing marketing condition and was in an urge to pacify the versatile market need to attain a competitive advantage in external market. Organization competitiveness can be attained through continuous practice on competitive strategy known as Total Quality Management (TQM). The TQM in present era had set a path to achieve Total Employee Involvement (TEI) that provides opportunity for operator to involve in teams for solving the recurrence problem using a problem-solving approach. In present context, case narrows down on reducing the trainer turnover ratio in the Indian Training Institute (ITI) that lacks on trainer engagement, motivation and interpersonal trust. To identify the root cause for increase in trainer turnover ratio, the cross-functional teams (CFTs) have been formed that on first hand discuss with Human Resource (HR) team and trainers to identify the vital few reasons that impact turnover ratio as no employee engagement/involvement and ineffective trade-off between the performance and appraisal system in the ITI. The CFTs after data collection and analysis identify and implement the various improvement measures such as design, development of trainer index card, Kaizen/suggestion template, and trainers’ key result area (KRA) in the ITI. The CFTs then validate the continuous adherence and sustaince sustenance on aforesaid improvements during the pilot period through peer audit done in the ITI. The audit done during the standardization period of three months had identified the adherence of imperative improvement measure such as trainer turnover ratio, employee involvement index, peer audit feedback, customer feedback, new programme or trainer and Kaizen or suggestion scheme. The audit results reveal the improvement in reduction of trainer turnover ratio to 5% from 20% and reduction in overhead cost to 0.5 million from 4 million along with improvement in trainer morale.

Previous research showed that passenger car manufacturing sector gets affected due to economic volatility and customer behavior pattern. In course of economic slowdown, inventory builds up and production rate suffers. While during recovery, backlog increases causing customers to shift brand loyalty. Besides, customer’s preference tends to affect the supply chain of a firm too. In passenger car sector, changes in pre-designed models have significant bearing on the lead time. Delay in adopting changes sought by the customers’ results in longer production time and obsolescence of inventory. The impact of economic variations on sales of cars has been analyzed through multivariate regression, and the dimensions explaining the customers’ buying pattern have been identified through factor analysis of responses obtained from car buyers. The purpose of this chapter is to establish a system dynamics model, to study the effect of economic volatility and customer’s buying behavior on supply chain of passenger car firms. The proposed framework will enable supply chain managers to carry out policy experimentation under different volatile situations arising out of exogenous factors. The proposed model is expected to address the major challenge, i.e., when there is economic instability with changing customer preferences.

Change in oil prices may have a different impact on different countries due to various factors such as their relative position as oil importers or exporters, different tax structures. Oil price affects Indian economy. A small rise in oil price leads to an increase in prices of goods and services. It is also affected by the exchange rate and effects stock market too. Here, we propose to study the co-movement of crude oil prices and volatility spillover affect on stock market and USD–INR rate of exchange. Daily data for the period from June 01, 2014 to August 31, 2016 of BSE S&P Sensex (Sensex), prices of crude oil and USD–INR rate of exchange are taken. We used multivariate GARCH model to identify spillover of volatility. Besides, doing descriptive statistics, Unit Root, Johansen Co-integration and correlation test, we also put Granger causality test. Volatility spillover between exchange rate, Sensex and crude oil prices are found to be significant and bidirectional. Affect of crude oil price movement on Sensex is also significant.

Corporate restructuring now constitutes an important component of modern business enterprises to create new synergies to face the competitive environment and changed market conditions. This chapter aims at examining the short-run performance of Indian acquiring firms involved in cross-border acquisitions, a prevalent practice of corporate restructuring. Event study methodology has been employed to assess the magnitude of value creation or destruction of the acquiring companies. The results indicate that Indian firms experience statistically significant positive abnormal returns on the day of the acquisition announcement. Moreover, cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR) comes out to be positive and significant in all multi-day event windows observed. This work is a modest attempt to add to the existing literature on cross-border acquisitions by examining the short-run performance of acquiring firms from an emerging economy.

Uncertainty in financial stability of the organization is expected due to unpredictable energy market on account of diversity in system environment. The paper aims to analyze financial stability of the electricity utility system in the long-term and short-term period due to the impact of economy, weather, and political environment that may drive financial stability to instability or vice versa. And also to justify the role of technology diffusion as catalyst in restoring stability to corroborate the concept with reality by evaluating stability criteria with available data of different state electricity utilities. The analysis framed a mathematical expression linking market price of electricity and earnings per unit of electricity distributed to ascertain financial stability. Then the change in stability is derived by differentiating with different driving dimensions of economy, weather, and policy issues. Finally, evaluating the performance of the state utilities based on available data about their status justifying the concept involved in the analysis. There are changes in stability function from −ve uncertainty to +ve certainty because of the adaptation of technology in the system. Technology diffusion acts as catalyst to save the organization from instability that results in poor performance.

Corporate restructuring is essential for the sustainability and inorganic growth of corporations. Mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers are the prominent strategies, by which companies can restructure their businesses. The chapter focused on 31 large-sized takeover announcements (Open Offers) in India, during the period 2015–2017. The chapter includes only those open offers which have more than Rs. 100 crore payment considerations. For the investigation purpose, standardized event theory was used for the computation of CAARs during the event window of 61 days of selected 24 companies. The study found excessive abnormal returns during the post phase of announcements (0 to +30) as compared to pre-phase of event window (−30 to −1). Further, the findings showed consistent results with the results of prior studies mentioned in the literature. The chapter concluded that shareholders of the target companies can generate excessive returns by rigorously examining the open offer announcements. The chapter also supports the presence of semi-strong form of market efficiency in India.

Millennial employees have been a matter of concern and consideration for researchers for more than a decade. Past studies have tried to explore the attributes, values, beliefs and expectations of the millennials and the best mechanism to engage them. The IT industry is currently witnessing an interesting team constellation with Gen-Y employees occupying the team lead roles and Gen-X forming the major workforce that needs to be led for best business outcomes. The current research aims to study the leadership dynamics of Gen-Y managers by assessing relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), as reported by managers and their transformational leadership style as perceived by their Gen-Z followers. Gen-Y managers (194) were administered by the Mayer, Salovey and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Gen-Z followers were administered by the leadership effectiveness scale and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) 5X scale. Results indicated that transformational leadership had a significant positive association with perceived leadership effectiveness. Emotional intelligence and personality did not show a significant relationship with leadership effectiveness. Results have been discussed in the light of Gen-Y leadership patterns and Gen-Z followers’ expectations.

In changing times, leaders need to create new ideas and engage their teams in new beginnings. There are certain challenges that organizations face in order to help leaders move forward with new possibilities and choices available to them in VUCA world. By embracing volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment and still remaining hopeful involves lot of confidence, positivity, courage, and creativity. This chapter aims to study the two different leadership styles, i.e., transformational and resonant leadership style highly suitable for developing private Indian higher educational institutes as learning organizations in order to survive in VUCA world. It shows the way and indicates about the best leadership style as predictor of learning organization in Indian context. Sample for this study consisted of 150 faculty members from 20 Indian higher educational institutes in National Capital Region, India. It has been found that both the leadership styles, i.e., transformational and resonant significantly impacted the learning organization in VUCA landscape. However, the impact on resonant leadership is higher than that of transformational leadership style to thrive well in VUCA world. Discussions and implications are further highlighted in the chapter.

Economical success or failure of brands is not an outcome of one or two random variables, but it depends on the success of carefully planned and implemented array of marketing programs. This chapter aims to study the variables and factors, which play important role in the performance of small brands of clothing. In developing countries like India, small brands face more challenges than big brands. Marketers need to understand the factors or attributes, which are valued by consumers and then provide better value than competitors. Primary data has been collected from different channel partners like retailers, distributors, and wholesalers. Questions related to customer satisfaction, perceived quality, price, training and support to channel partners, terms and conditions of sales and payments, and replenishment policies have been asked. Factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis have been used to group correlated variables or attributes and identify underlying dimensions. It is found that the marketing programs designed by the declined brands were not suitable and were inappropriate. Studied brands have been rated low on customers’ perception of quality, price, durability, variety, and availability. Results, findings, and recommendations of the study can be helpful to entrepreneurs, managers, strategists, and academicians to understand Indian branded apparel market.

Non-tariff barriers have a significant impact on regular trading activities. This study is conducted to determine a relationship between non-tariff barriers and international trade in India. Eleven such factors have been identified and thoroughly discussed in the Indian context. An empirical study has been conducted taking the opinion of experts through convenience sampling method. The primary data is analyzed through multiple linear regression, and results have been discussed. Most of the observed factors encourage trade creation.

The demand for qualified personnel is increasing faster than their availability in India as well as internationally. Intensified market competition has influenced both large and small companies to continuously update their hiring strategies in order to distinguish themselves from their competitors. With an aim of differentiating and creating a unique employment experience, employer branding is continuously gaining reputation as a strategic approach in the current scenario. The aim of this study is to find the various dimensions of employer brand that attracts the potential employees in IT sector. The research presented in this chapter involves both exploratory and conclusive aspects of research. The interviews were conducted with the final-year student placement coordinators of MCA and B. Tech studying in central, state and deemed universities in India. The themes identified through interviews along with Employer Attractiveness Scale developed by Berthon et al. (Int J Advertising 24(2):151–172, 2005) have been included in the final five-point Likert scale questionnaire with 34 statements defining employer brand. Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis have been used to analyse the data using SPSS and AMOS 2.0. The findings and conclusion have been presented depending upon empirical evidences.