Search results

This paper aims to consider the effects of a merger on technology adoption and welfare in the presence of passive cross ownership. Merger increases investments in process technology and may increase welfare. The results are important for antitrust policies and suggest that the antitrust authorities may not need to be too concerned about mergers in industries with cross ownership.

Game-theoretic analysis.

Merger increases investments in process technology and may increase welfare.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is original.

The purpose of this study is to propose an effective unsupervised one-class-classifier (OCC) support vector machine (SVM)-based single multivariate control chart (OCC-SVM) to simultaneously monitor “location” and “scale” shifts of a manufacturing process.

The step-by-step approach to developing, implementing and fine-tuning the intrinsic parameters of the OCC-SVM chart is demonstrated based on simulation and two real-life case examples.

A comparative study, considering varied known and unknown response distributions, indicates that the OCC-SVM is highly effective in detecting process shifts of samples with individual observations. OCC-SVM chart also shows promising results for samples with a rational subgroup of observations. In addition, the results also indicate that the performance of OCC-SVM is unaffected by the small reference sample size.

The sample responses are considered identically distributed with no significant multivariate autocorrelation between sample observations.

The proposed easy-to-implement chart shows satisfactory performance to detect an out-of-control signal with known or unknown response distributions.

Various multivariate (e.g. parametric or nonparametric) control chart(s) are recommended to monitor the mean (e.g. location) and variance (e.g. scale) of multiple correlated responses in a manufacturing process. However, real-life implementation of a parametric control chart may be complex due to its restrictive response distribution assumptions. There is no evidence of work in the open literature that demonstrates the suitability of an unsupervised OCC-SVM chart to simultaneously monitor “location” and “scale” shifts of multivariate responses. Thus, a new efficient OCC-SVM single chart approach is proposed to address this gap to monitor a multivariate manufacturing process with unknown response distributions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the interrelationship between process recovery, employee recovery and customer recovery in a financial services call centre. The authors also investigate how process recovery affects customer recovery via employees – the bridge between organisation and customers.

A case study–based approach is adopted in this study, and data triangulation is achieved through multiple data collection methods including semi-structured interviews, employees’ survey and company reports. Justice theory is the theoretical lens considered to understand the “service recovery (SR)” phenomenon.

This paper helps in understanding the relationship of process and employee recovery with customer recovery. Findings suggest that SR could be used for complaint management as well as in understanding and addressing the gaps in internal operations and employee skill sets. Factors such as training, operating systems, empowerment, incentives, and feedback were identified as critical in providing effective SR. Process improvement is necessary to control complaints by conducting root cause analysis and learning from failure.

Findings are limited to a case company in financial services sector and thus limit its generalisability to other context. Questionnaire distributed to employees only included important dimensions of SR, which would be further developed in future research.

This paper explores the specific reverse exchange strategies, termed in this paper as SR, and analyses the different factors responsible for better performance in the exchange process. The paper highlights how the imbalance in the process and employee recovery dimensions can impact on customer recovery. Closing the customer complaint loop by using the SR perspective may help organisation to not only deal with complaints in a better way but also prevent such complaints in the future.

India has taken a successful step towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by providing access to basic amenities such as safe drinking water, waste management, drainage systems and bio-compost pits in households. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that significantly impact access to such basic amenities in villages in two states in the hilly regions of India.

Village-level secondary data collected from the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) website has been analyzed using multiple linear regression and non-parametric statistical tests. Socio-economic and demographic variables are the independent factors in regression whereas availability of basic amenities is the dependent variable.

Findings reveal that in Himachal Pradesh, gender ratio, annual income per family, percentage of BPL households, percentage of pucca houses, and percentage of village population above graduation, significantly impact access to piped water in village households. Also, literacy rate and percentage of population with education above graduation significantly impact availability of compost pits. Further, in Uttarakhand, percentage of pucca houses influences access to waste collection system and availability of compost pits. Availability of drainage systems is influenced by literacy rate. A comparison between the two hilly states reveals that Himachal Pradesh is better off in terms of ease of access to drinking water whereas Uttarakhand is ahead in terms of other amenities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other studies have used socio-economic and demographic variables to study access to basic amenities in villages in hilly states in India.

This paper aims to extract colour from micro-organisms (as a source of natural pigments) using agro-industrial substrates to replace synthetic media by solid state fermentation. Nature is filled with colours. Due to health and environmental consciousness among people, use of synthetic colour has declined, and so the need to develop colour from cheap and easily available natural sources (plants, animals, micro-organisms and algae) using a cost-effective technique with higher yield and rapid growth. Monascus purpureus colour is a potent source of compounds (Dimerumic acid, Monacolin-k and -aminobutyric acid) having antimutagenic, antimicrobial and antiobesity, which helps in combating diseases.

Response surface methodology was used to optimise the biopigments extraction from Monascus purpureus using solid state fermentation.

The best optimised conditions for biopigments production using Monascus purpureus MTCC 369 were pH 5.4 at 32°C for 8 days 9 hours (8.9 days) from sweet potato peel and pea pod powder, 7.8 (w/w) and 3.9 per cent (w/w), respectively, which gave a final yield of 21 CVU/g. The model F-value of 69.18 and high value of adjusted determination coefficient 96.00 per cent implies high level of significance of the fitted model.

Extracted colour can be used in beverages, confectionery and pharmaceutical industries.

Colour produced using Monascus purpureus MTCC 369 is a natural source. As consumers are reluctant to use synthetic colour because of the undesirable allergic reactions caused by them, so a biopigment produced is natural colouring compound with wide application in food sector.

Selected sources of carbon and nitrogen were not used earlier by any researcher to extract biopigment from Monascus purpureus MTCC 369.