Saroj Kumar Datta

Health care as a worldwide concern. Insights on the Italian and Indian health care systems and PPPs from a VSA perspective

Purpose – Health is a fundamental populations’ need and an integral part of the socio-economic development of a country. However, it is required to explain the growing role of the private sectors in addressing various health care needs. The purpose of this paper is to analyse potential contribution, criticalities and conditions of success of public-private partnership (PPP) as a strategy to face the complexity of nationally relevant Italian and Indian service systems. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is built upon the basis of the viable systems approach (VSA) integrated with the fundamental interpretative elements of service science and service-dominant logic to contextualize interpretation to the management of service systems benefitting from recent advances in these research fields. Findings – A VSA-based general framework of reference is built that is useful for analysing any relational context in which different aims and expectations need to be harmonized to make the collaboration effect...

High Performance Work System in India: Examining the Role of Employee Engagement

ABSTRACT The research aims at examining the relevance of “high-performance work system” in Indian context. Further, influenced by the concept of “black box,” the mediating role of employee engagement has also been tested. Agreeing with the universalistic perspective, the study result proves the relevance of high-performance work system to India. Consistent with ability-motivation-opportunity theory, the result also proved that high-performance work system aligned with employee engagement can significantly improve organizational performance. The finding suggests the Indian corporate practitioners to adopt high-performance work system by suitably aligning with employee engagement to improve organizational performance.

Impact of trust on the relationship of e-service quality and customer satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find the role of trust as a mediating variable between e-service quality and customer satisfaction in internet banking. Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for an exploratory study using closed ended questionnaire. The empirical data are drawn from 367 customers of internet banking. Factor structure of e-SQ, customer satisfaction and trust has been tested using EFA and CFA by gap values and perception values. Structure equation modeling has been used to analyze the effects of independent variable e-service quality on customer satisfaction and the role of mediating variable trust. Stepwise analysis has been done to examine the effect of trust on customer satisfaction. Sobel test has been used to measure the indirect effect. Findings – e-SQ was found to be strongly correlated with customer satisfaction. The results confirm trust as a mediating variable between e-service quality while analyzing the same model with gap value and perception value. Research li...

A Comparative Evaluation of Customer Perception and Satisfaction of M-banking and I-banking

Electronic banking is the latest delivery channel for banking services. Among the various channels of e-banking, Internet banking and mobile banking are considered to be the fastest developing areas. This research provides a comparative evaluation on some identified parameters of i-banking and m-banking. Primary data have been gathered from the three selected Indian PSBs from four major metro cities of India. The analysis indicates that for services like e-shopping, electronic fund transfer, utility bill payments, tax payments, and balance enquiry i-banking is more suitable as a channel of delivery. Those who have experienced m-banking have shown a clear inclination toward m-banking for value-added services like movie ticket booking. The factors identified from the perceptional analysis of i-banking indicate people like to use i-banking mainly for reducing the lead-time of operation and transaction intensive services. The analysis on the satisfaction level gives core service dimension and value added service dimension both for i-banking and m-banking. Both the channels have been found suitable to offer the various banking services that customers expect to receive from these services through these two channels because of the respective advantages of the channels. Therefore i-banking and m-banking can be regarded as complementary to each other.

Awareness and attitude towards corporate social responsibility

Purpose – This paper is an attempt to explore the awareness and attitude of the management students towards corporate social responsibility (CSR). Students are perceived as future managers of the corporate world and their perception about CSR is deemed important to business organisations. The students can make companies understand their responsibility towards various stakeholders. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – By doing a review of past literature, an appropriate scale consisting of forty-one items has been developed to measure the dimensions of CSR. Data were collected from 294 students of various business schools situated in Rajasthan (India). The data collected was subjected to exploratory factor analysis to extract the main dimensions that would bring out the attitudes of the students towards CSR. Findings – Results revealed that the companies should pay attention to accountability towards stakeholders, corporate governance, ethical commitment and humanitarian co...

The emerged trends in consumers' co-creation: a conceptual framework for extending or creating the brand

One area of business where co-creation can return significant dividends is on extending the brand or brand category. Whilst consumers have few unmet needs, having more choice of products and services than they have ever had, they do not appear to be entirely satisfied. However, they are in an ideal position to suggest improvements to a product or new category that they might have been using or looking for. It ensures fit with need, which creates value associated with innovation and business creation. The research methodology is a state-of-the art of this topic. This article presents a conceptual model of value co-creation activity. The study points to the critical role of creating visibility for change as well as the importance of the infrastructure supporting changes. It is ascertained that the findings support the need for a degree of freedom in communication with both customers and marketing departments in new product/brand development and changes.

Decomposed similarity effects on consumer attitude towards abrand extension

The most significant finding from brand extension research is that consumers evaluate brand extensions based on their perceived fit with the parent brand. In spite of this brand extension failure in the presence of high perceived fit prompts further investigation on the mentioned variable with a microscopic view. In this connection, the present study extends this research by addressing the various ways a consumer bridges a similarity between the parent brand and the extended product. According to Murphy and Medin (1985), other than object to- object similarity relationships, other aspects of a concept category, such as concept relationships among objects, need to be considered along with object similarity. Any association about the parent brand that consumer recall in their psychological cell may create the basis of fit perception. Further, we also investigated in there any particular fit perception is found to be more effective in making a logical association in consumers mind. The results suggest that concept consistency may have a greater effect on making logical association than category related brand extensions. Brand extension may have a dilution effect on the parent brand image but it is also true the best fitting extension or consistent one can reduce or nullify the effect and add more on the brand. Any type of fit perception associated with the extension, can be enhanced, through marketing mix variables.

'E-banking' initiatives in Indian banks – a case of business process reengineering (BPR) implementation

The intention of the paper is to find out whether e-banking initiatives in Indian public sector banks (PSBs) can be considered as a successful case of BPR implementation. Attempt has been made to study e-banking solutions adopted by Indian PSBs and to evaluate their performance in improving the level of customer satisfaction and the business performance of the PSBs. The study is based on secondary data on selected Indian public and private sector banks. The research shows that there is a growth in the usage of ATMs and in the volume of electronic funds transfer which reflects that customers prefer electronic delivery channel more than traditional branch banking. The growth of productivity indicators of reengineered banking process is higher than that of the partially computerised banks and banks following traditional mode of operation. The research work brings out that information technology (IT) application has a very prospective future in India.

Are online payment systems customer-centric? – A study on Indian public sector banks

Internet banking has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years. The paper has tried to identify the features which are affecting the experience of customers of Indian PSBs regarding payment systems of online banking. It has also studied the recent growth rate of payment systems of online banking. The research work is based on both primary data and secondary data. The paper points out that banking payment systems are making a shift towards paperless systems from paper-based systems. It also suggests that reliable network connection, improved privacy and security features and standardised process of online payment procedures are the crux to make it more customer-centric.