S. Vijayakumar Bharathi

A Study on the Determinants of Work–Life Balance of Women Employees in Information Technology Companies in India

This research article identifies certain factors that strongly impact the work–life balance (WLB) of women employees in information technology (IT) companies in India. These factors are related to the challenges and enhancers to the professional and personal lives of 186 women working in various IT companies in India. The study also identifies the impact of social media (SM) in their work lives. Based on an extensive review of the literature, a set of 42 factors relating to WLB is grouped into five constructs, namely, professional challenges, personal challenges, SM involvement, professional enhancers and personal enhancers. Exploratory factor analysis is used to extract the highly impacting factors. The results show that the personal enhancers of WLB, such as regular exercises and fitness schedule, yoga and meditation, balanced diet as well as good sleep and involvement in the hobbies, loaded the heaviest as the most impacting factors; working from home heavily impacts as a professional enhancer in the WLB of women. The second heavily loaded component is comprised of personal challenges, such as inadequate self-attention, insufficient time spent on elders and children, feeling depressed or suffering with hypertension along with a professional challenge of extended or odd working time. We find that irrespective of challenges or enhancers, personal factors are perceived to be more impacting than the professional ones. Interestingly, the study shows that SM involvement has no significant impact. It is neither considered as a challenge nor an enhancer to the WLB.

Understanding the locus of control of management students - an exploratory study

This research examines the impact of locus of control in the academic life of management students. A customised locus of control inventory is proposed which was administered to a sample of 170 management students in India. Using exploratory factor analysis, seven components were identified as influencers of locus of control throughout the academic life of a management student namely destiny, academic performance, introversion, attribution effect, luck, self-efficacy and self-confidence. Moreover, the study finds that the predominant locus of control is external except in case of self-efficacy and self-confidence. The outcome of the research also suggested technology, participant-centred pedagogy and mentoring as the key constructs for future research work in locus of control.

A Case Based Approach on SAP Business by Design

This research paper covers a case based approach to demonstrate the working of SAP Business ByDesign (ByD).The paper underlines the functional, technical and organizational perspectives of introducing SAP ByD to its prospective SME client(s) or any subsidiary(s) of a large company. It also highlights the need for SAP offering over cloud. In this case-based approach a fictitious company data set ALMIKA Inc acts as a reference system. The data-set has pre-configured master data rules which help in underlining organization structure and in testing the various business transactions involved in the company. Business configurations act as a building block in realizing the business cycles at enterprise level which are discussed to give an overall understanding of ByD as a product. This paper also demonstrates the SAP by Design using an order-to-cash cycle to validate the advantages of ERP functionalities.