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The case has been developed as an illustrative case study using primary data. The data and images used for developing the case have been collected from the Alipurduar Division of Indian Railways with suitable permissions. The specific newspaper studies used in developing the case content have been referenced as footnotes on the relevant pages of the case study document.

Train operations in Alipurduar Division of Northeast Frontier Railway zone of Indian Railways are difficult. The division provides the vital rail link between the northeast states and the rest of India. Railway lines in the Alipurduar Division pass through several forests with a significant elephant population. As an outcome of train–elephant conflicts, train operations on one of the railway lines operate under severe speed restrictions. Moreover, the region is known for heavy rainfall and thunderstorms for almost six months every year. For the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), the protagonist of the case, this implied repeated congestion, traffic disruptions, inadvertent delays and lack of time for critical maintenance of the tracks. A solution was planned several years ago for creating an alternative path to de-congest the traffic; however, it ran into a roadblock due to land acquisition issues.With all these limitations, could a solution be found and implemented? How could it be executed?The case illustrates how a simple yet innovative solution was proposed by the DRM in 2015 and implemented in 2016.With this case, students will be able to understand the innovation process that is embedded within long-term infrastructure projects. The case will help students understand how innovation can take place even in the later stages of project implementation, and how simple and creative solutions can have a long-term impact.

The case can be used in graduate and executive education courses in General Management and in Public Policy Management. It can also be used in Doctoral-Level Programmes such as those taught to scholars pursuing Fellow Programme in Management. Since the case brings out elements of problem framing and critical thinking, the case can be used for courses in strategic management. Many professionals, particularly those working in large organizations dealing with large infrastructure projects, will identify with the DRM and the challenges faced by him.

The paper attempts to frame the challenge of managing the transition to a sustainable economy by way of a conceptual model consisting of a zero-footprint regulatory regime and a sustainability fund.

A conceptual model of the sustainable industrial revolution has been developed based on the learnings from industries such as originators (mining), farming, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and chemicals and long-lasting artefacts against an overall perspective.

It is suggested to have an institutional structural mechanism in place to ensure that footprint is minimized through recycling including refurbishing, resale or transformation. This includes management of recycling businesses through execution of a zero-waste regulatory regime that will build and use a sustainability fund.

The limitations of the paper are arising out of the topic being an issue of gigantic proportions with immense complexity. An attempt has been made to bring out the inescapability and the imperative of a sustainable industrial revolution.

This paper presents practical aspects such as collusion between trash and recycling businesses, land use and social aspects of criticality of public support. If implemented, the suggested model can make a paradigm shift in the way firms, industry and governments can handle the challenge of sustainability.

The value of this conceptual paper lies in an attempt to extend the learning organization framework to the concept of a regulatory model for sustainability that is not limited to the definition of a firm but stands extended to industries and to the economics, land use and demographics of the planet.

Over the last decade, customer experience management has gradually emerged as the most important activity for organisations. Organisations have turned towards leveraging the ubiquitous and easy-to-use technology in enhancing and enabling experience for the time-crunched customers of today who are looking for greater convenience and choices. It is therefore not surprising that disruptive technologies such as smartphones, virtual and augmented reality, cloud computing, big data analytics, Internet of things, artificial intelligence and robotics have also found their way into the design of customer experience. This chapter aims to present an overview of the technologies that have transformed the customer experience landscape. This chapter contributes by showcasing two illustrative cases from very diverse domains, a private sector bank and a public sector transportation organisation, to elucidate how India, a rapidly developing economy, is embracing technology to enhance the customer experience.

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the research trends on the Indian Open and Distance Education (ODE) system as reflected in the articles published in the prominent journals of distance education across the world.

A study was undertaken to review the research articles on ODE in India published in 11 prominent peer-reviewed journals of distance education during the period 2010–2019. Content analysis was done to find out areas of research undertaken in the ODE of India based on a validated classification of research areas; types of research studies conducted; and authorship and publication patterns.

Out of a total of 2,571 articles published in 11 selected journals, only 191 (7.42%) pertained to ODE in India. The majority of these 191 articles (68.42%) were published in Indian journals. The Indian and Asian journals together accounted for 93.55% of total articles. Globally, the share of articles on the Indian ODE system was significantly low ranging between 4.27 and a maximum of 10.77%, which was much below expectations from a country having the maximum number of ODE learners in the world. Results further revealed that 63% of the contributors to research on ODE in India were affiliated to Indira Gandhi National Open University.

The limitation of this study was only analysing the research articles published in journals of distance education and other types of articles, namely, book reviews, editorials, field notes and workshop reports were excluded from the analysis.

The study is intended to help researchers, policymakers, and open and distance education institutions to draw a roadmap for the promotion and conduct of system-based research, which would be vital for strengthening the system.

The quantum of research is not proportionate to the number of faculty members working in the ODE system of India and the large number of learners that it serves, which is a matter of concern. For any system to grow its periodic systemic review is essential. The research outcomes need to be ploughed back into the system for its betterment.

The study is original. There is no such study undertaken till date. This study will be extremely useful to researchers, as the gaps in distance education research which are yet to be addressed, have been identified by the authors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of social media in creating an attractive employer brand for any organization. It investigates one of the social media Glassdoor, which is an online employer branding platform, where employees put their reviews which are both positive and negative. Analysis of these reviews can generate a lot of insights into employer branding.

The data was collected as 1,243 reviews from Glassdoor, an online crowdsourced employer branding platform for 40 top-rated employers across four different sectors, namely, Pharma, IT, retail and FMCG. Text and sentimental analyses were done using SAS visual analytical for these reviews.

Ten themes were generated from the text analytics which is nothing but the employer value propositions (EVPs), and they were social, interest, development and economic value as given by Berthon et al. (2005) and also others, such as work–life, management and brand value emerged. Social value came as a significant EVP followed by interest value and work–life values.

This research is providing only ways to show that crowdsourced data can also be used to understand the mindset of employees regarding an employer’s image but is not providing any idea regarding how to generate the right employee value proposition.

The research has shown that employers can use crowdsourced employer branding insights to see where they stand in the employer's attractiveness spectrum. They can use innovative data analytics techniques, such as visualization for text and sentimental analysis to create employer branding intelligence strategies.

This chapter examines and illustrates the judicial treatment of relevant concepts and norms of corporate sustainability and relevant implications for the implementation of the UN Global Compact.

This is a conceptual examination of relevant legislation, cases and concepts used by judges in giving practical content to the concepts of ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘corporate sustainability’.

The judiciary has been fashioning applicable policy, resolving and balancing the clash of interests, setting guidelines and parameters for statutory interpretation in elucidating the concept of corporate sustainability. To that extent ‘corporate sustainability law’ is developing, not only in municipal public law where legislation is the key driver, but as ‘soft’ international law.

This is a general survey of trends in judicial reasoning from different countries and legal traditions and is not applicable exclusively to any jurisdiction. The implication is that there is room for detailed study of applicable rules in each jurisdiction.

The chapter offers guidance for strategic implementation of the Global Compact, compliance to emergent obligatory principles, for shaping policy and corporate political management.

This chapter contributes to an understanding of the role and impact of the judiciary in developing corporate sustainability law and congruent principles of the Global Compact.

The steady rise in aged population has brought many challenges such as social, economic and health care that confront of the older people in their later life. The purpose of this study is to understand the nature of challenges among the older people and to assess the role of social security programmes for the welfare of the older people. The qualitative descriptive research has been applied in this paper.

The qualitative descriptive research has been applied in this paper. The study was conducted in a sample of 220 elderly living in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, using purposive sampling. The study was based on interviews. The order of questions and samples depended on the information flow during the interviews. The purposes of using the qualitative descriptive research in the present study are to satisfy the researcher’s curiosity and desire for better understanding to discuss the challenges faced by older people (these challenges are social vulnerability, poor economic conditions, poor health and no familiarity with government programmes), to understand the practicability of the study in extensive way and to explain why any phenomenon occurs or why older people face problems in later life.

The first finding demonstrates that the different challenges among older people such as social, economic and health challenges are affecting their way of life and sense of well-being and are fracturing their social bonds from the family and society. The second finding indicates that only 46.3% older people are benefitted from government pension programmes schemes. While the numbers of older people are unknown from other government welfare programmes such as health programmes, concession for older people and maintenance and welfare of parent and senior citizen act are not able to work properly due to lack of awareness and lack of proper communication between older people and government bodies.

This is an original work of the author. The research work is based on primary data that examine the nature of challenges such as health, economic and social challenges faced by older people in later life and impact of these problems on the well-being of older people.

Recent advancements in the domain of smart communication systems and technologies have led to the augmented developments for very large scale integrated circuit designs in electro-magnetic applications. Increasing demands for low power, compact area and superior figure of merit–oriented circuit designs are the trends of the recent research studies. Hence, to accomplish such applications intended for optical communications, the transimpedance amplifier (TIA) was designed.

In this research work, the authors present a multi-layer active feedback structure which mainly composes a transimpedance stage and a gain stage followed by a low pass filter. This structure enables to achieve improved input impedance and superior gain. A simplified cascaded amplifier has also been designed in a hierarchical topology to improvise the noise effect further. The proposed TIA has been designed using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 45 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. Moreover, the thermal noise has been analyzed at −3 dB bandwidth to prove the reduction in thermal noise with increase in frequency for most of the devices used in the designed circuit.

The proposed differential TIA circuit was found to obtain the transimpedance gain of 50.1 dBO without applying any external bias current which is almost 8% improvised as compared to the conventional circuit. In addition to this, bandwidth achieved was 2.15 GHz along with only 38 W of power consumption, which is reasonably 100 times improvised in comparison of conventional circuit. Hence, the proposed differential TIA is suitable for the low power optical communications applications intended to work on low supply voltage.

The designed work is done by authors in university lab premises and is not copied from anywhere. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is 100% original.

Superior functionality of smartphones makes them a potential retailing channel, despite their slow adoption. The purpose of this paper is to identify convenience factors that influence consumption experience and intention to continue shopping on a mobile phone.

This study was carried out on students using a survey method. This study was conducted in the National Capital Region of India due to its large and diverse population. A purposive sampling technique was used to contact 380 respondents.

The data were analysed using a structural equation model. The results indicate search and possession convenience to be positively related to consumption experience while search, evaluation and post-purchase convenience are positively related to continuance usage intention. The findings of this study provide evidence that mobile phone is an effective channel for shopping due to search, evaluation, possession and post-purchase convenience.

This study used student population between the age group of 20 and 30 years, thereby limiting the generality of the results.

This study provides insights to retailers and brand managers for crafting their mobile marketing strategies.

This study explores and uncovers, for the first time, convenience dimensions of a mobile shopping channel across various stages of consumers’ purchase cycle.