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The purpose of the current paper is to identify the factors responsible for achieving business sustainability. This paper further attempts to develop a conceptual framework that can help SMEs to achieve viable business growth through improved sustainable performance.

The study follows a methodical examination of literature published on SMEs during COVID-19. Specifically, the combination of keywords has primarily centred on SMEs, Business Practices, COVID-19 and Pandemic. The 155 research papers identified for the analysis have been classified as per geographical spread, type of papers, central theme, and theoretical foundations, which finally is followed by rigourous thematic analysis.

This research contributes to the SME literature by providing methodological, conceptual and practical rigour. The framework proposed by the research covers all the relevant areas which can be useful in preparing sustainable business trajectory for SMEs. It outlines the required directives for designing sustainable business practices for SMEs and includes macro and micro determinants. It also opens up future research avenues in different areas identified in the research. Future research can be performed on comparing business practices of SMEs across the emerging and developed economies.

In this study, we propose a framework that enables the design of sustainable business practices and thereby supports SMEs to combat any uncertain events or shocks. SMEs that can work on adopting sustainable business practices may sculpt novel avenues for growth and competitive advantage for their business.

The study is distinctive in nature as it is based on the examination of literature published during a phenomenological event (COVID-19) which depicts the sudden and unaccounted disruptions faced by SMEs and thereby strategies formulated around the significant glitches.

This exploratory study aims to investigate the financing issues faced by Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. It also classifies the financing constraints into four financing gaps, namely, demand, knowledge, supply and benevolence.

The study uses the convergent interviewing technique to highlight the key issues being faced by SME owners in financing. Forty-four owners from different industries and having dispersed demographics have been interviewed in the study.

The findings reveal the real-time issues being faced by SME owners. SMEs faced both demand- and supply-side constraints. The most common financing challenges are high cost of credit, complex procedures of lending institutions, information asymmetry, creditworthiness and self-abstaining from external financial resources. Issues pertaining to lack of knowledge and awareness about the financial products and services are also being noticed by the researchers.

This study identifies the major financing concerns of SMEs and thereby provides a directional approach to the policymakers in the area of SME financing.

The study offers a better and data-based understanding of financing issues being faced by the SME owners. The usage of convergent interviewing allows the researchers to highlight the common issues raised by the SME owners.

Numerous research tools exist but their usage among researchers across the different phases of the research cycle of scholarly communication remains unknown. This research aims to address this knowledge gap by mapping the research tools frequently used by global researchers against the various phases of the research cycle of scholarly communication.

This research adopts a descriptive research design and conducts a cross-tabulation of secondary data consisting of 20,663 useable responses in a global survey of research tools for scholarly communication. This research also administered a survey to academic experts to classify the research tools according to traditional, modern, innovative and experimental categories.

This research reveals the six phases of the research cycle (i.e. discovery, analysis, writing, publication, outreach and assessment) and the research tools of scholarly communication frequently used by researchers worldwide in each phase as a whole and by roles, disciplines, regions and career stages. Notably, this research indicates that most of the research tools used by researchers are classified as “modern” and “innovative”.

The original insights herein should be useful for both established and early career researchers to gain and share research insights, as well as policymakers and existing and aspiring service providers who wish to improve the utility and usage of research tools for scholarly communication. Notably, this research represents a seminal endeavor at enhancing a global survey (secondary research) using a follow-up expert survey (primary research), which enabled the organization of research tools for scholarly communication into four refined categories. In doing so, this research contributes finer-grained insights that showcase the importance of keeping up with the advancement of technology through the use of modern, innovative and experimental research tools, thereby highlighting the need to go beyond traditional research tools for scholarly communication.

This study aims to establish the factors affecting the financial investment decision-making of an investor, with specific reference to investors’ emotions and how various events such as festivals, the pandemic and sports matches affect their investors’ investment decision-making. The authors further intend to understand the role of these investor emotions in creating stock market anomalies.

Twenty-nine semistructured exploratory interviews with fund managers from the top 10 asset management companies in India, who deal with individual investors regularly, were taken. The interviews were conducted to identify and describe the underlying ideas and sentiments that influence an individual’s investment behavior.

Although risk and return are the primary motivators of investment decisions, fund managers’ daily interactions with individual investors are affected by unpredictability and technical ambiguity, and investing is an inherently emotionally arousing process, according to the findings of the in-depth interviews.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies in Indian market to report the views of financial professionals about the emotional aspect of investors in making an investment decision. With most of the research conducted using quantitative methods, the current study brings in the perspective of financial professionals using primary data.

The purpose of this paper is to study the status of studies on capital structure determinants in the past 40 years. This paper highlights the major gaps in the literature on determinants of capital structure and also aims to raise specific questions for future research.

The prominence of research is assessed by studying the year of publication and region, level of economic development, firm size, data collection methods, data analysis techniques and theoretical models of capital structure from the selected papers. The review is based on 167 papers published from 1972 to 2013 in various peer-reviewed journals. The relationship of determinants of capital structure is analyzed with the help of meta-analysis.

Major findings show an increase of interest in research on determinants of capital structure of the firms located in emerging markets. However, it is observed that these regions are still under-examined which provides more scope for research both empirical and survey-based studies. Majority of research studies are conducted on large-sized firms by using secondary data and regression-based models for the analysis, whereas studies on small-sized firms are very meager. As majority of the research papers are written only at the organizational level, the impact of leverage on various industries is yet to be examined. The review highlights the major determinants of capital structure and their relationship with leverage. It also reveals the dominance of pecking order theory in explaining capital structure of firms theoretically as well as statistically.

The paper covers a considerable period of time (1972-2013). Among very few review papers on capital structure research, to the best of authors’ knowledge; this is the first review to identify what is missing in the literature on the determinants of capital structure while offering recommendations for future studies. It also synthesize the findings of empirical studies on determinants of capital structure statistically.

This study aims to explore the impact of the containment measures during COVID-19 on individuals’ finances, financial resilience during such distress and identifying the most financially vulnerable among them. Tracing such impact during the pandemic has been challenging due to a lack of representative data. This paper addresses this gap in the present study.

A survey has been conducted using a structured questionnaire containing various items that portray the impact on income, spending, saving, investment, borrowing, insurance and retirement. The sample consists of 699 respondents and purposive and snowball sampling has been used for data collection. The results are presented and analyzed using infographics and frequency distributions. This study conducts an analysis of variance and Chi-square tests for significance.

This paper finds a fall in income and limited ability to cope with the current economic conditions. The survey highlights inadequate savings and insurance, weak retirement planning, outstanding loans and under-diversified investments inhibiting financial resilience even among the higher-income group. Particularly, lower-income strata, women and not much educated are most financially vulnerable. Further, no substantial financial benefits have been received from the government and people rely on their usual income sources.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that measures the pandemic’s impact on personal finances, especially in connection with a developing economy like India. Policy interventions are critical to the millions for whom financial literacy is required now more than ever.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of decolonial approaches (DAs) such as epistemic locus (Mignolo, 1995, 2000) in studying innovation.

This paper is based on a case study of a stem cell surgical innovation developed in India. A critical hermeneutic analysis method has been followed for data analysis.

Epistemic locus influences the framing of the problem, perceptions of risks/opportunities as well as the envisioning of alternate institutional systems. Persistent and strategic effort at building connections changes local improvisation into a globally legitimate innovation.

It indicates the value of using DAs for innovation studies especially epistemic locus, enactment and connections in understanding knowledge generation and innovation.

Innovation in Global South can be encouraged by giving more space to the innovator to attempt or experiment. More conscious conversation of epistemic locus of the researcher could help.

Countries have to move beyond a mere technological imitation to include discussions on epistemic imitation. Epistemic imitation prevents one from seeing what one has and one only looks at conditions from the eyes of the dominator.

This study documents the development of an innovation from an Indian epistemic locus which differs from a western epistemic locus and the impact this has on an innovation.

There is gap in literature on understanding of the issues of following headway behaviour of the driver and a lack of sufficient data in different traffic conditions. The purpose of this paper is to find the effects of type of lead vehicle on following headway in mixed traffic condition in India on different category of roads and flow.

Real-world headway data were collected through video and extracted. Data were analysed using tools and statically approach was adopted to present the results in detail.

Results shows the impact of type of lead vehicle on driver following time headway behaviour under different level of traffic and types of road characteristics. It was found that driver following behaviour is affected by the type of lead vehicle. It also shows that drivers are inconsistent in their choice of headway.

This research has special strategic study area of India in typical two cities Silchar and Shillong of northeast region of India. The traffic characteristic and composition is quite different as compared to other cities of India. Therefore the study results cannot be generalized for whole India.

The result of the study has focused on impact of type of lead vehicle on following behaviour. This can be useful to safety reduction and changing the driver behaviour through education and display of information. However, the real application of this result is to be implemented by local transport and road managing authority to reduce accidents and increase safety of drivers.

In mixed traffic conditions, the impact of type of lead vehicle on following behaviour affects the safety of drivers and the accounting for such behaviour is never been explored in mixed traffic condition. If the study is implemented, it can be useful to simulation modeller and intelligent transport systems (ITS) to design and operate many in-vehicle systems for smooth traffic processes.

This paper aims to examine the moderating role of organizational learning culture (OLC) on the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practices and employee competencies (EC) in enhancing organizational effectiveness (OE).

An integrated research model of HRD practices, EC, OE and OLC was developed. The validity of the model is tested by applying structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to data collected from 506 employees working in 4 medium-size cement manufacturing companies.

The results confirmed that training and career development had a significant impact on EC, the moderating effect of OLC on the relationship between HRD practices and EC was found significant and there is a significant and positive relationship between EC and employee perceived OE.

This paper contributes to the HRD literature, integrating HRD practices, OLC and EC. The research is unique as it has applied moderated SEM to test hypotheses of the study.