Vanita Yadav

Measuring fairness in franchisor-franchisee relationship: a confirmatory approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop, test and validate a measure of fairness in the context of franchisor-franchisee relationship and test for the dimensionality of fairness. Design/methodology/approach The authors surveyed 300 franchisees of a large-scale franchisor in India. The authors employ confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to analyse the data. Findings The authors tested four models of the fairness construct through CFA using structural equation modelling. The three-factor corrected model of the fairness construct exhibits comparatively better goodness of fit indices as compared to the other correlated models of the fairness construct. It clears the threshold level of validity and reliability test. The findings of the study suggest that the factor structure of fairness is three-factor correlated model with aspects of procedural fairness and informational fairness getting subsumed into one construct. Research limitations/implications Factor structure of fairness construct differs with earlier empirical research findings with both interpersonal fairness and informational fairness subsuming into each other to form one construct. Practical implications This measure can be utilized by franchisee managers to track perceptions of fairness among franchisees to manage the franchise relationship in a better way. Franchisees expect information sharing from the franchisor and not the representative of the franchisor. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to develop a valid and reliable measure of fairness construct in the context of franchise relationship. This study also identifies factor structure of fairness construct.

Research Review: Globally Distributed Requirements Engineering and Agility

Getting requirements right is considered the most important and difficult part of the software development process. As organizations and stakeholders become more globally distributed, getting requirements right will pose a greater challenge. Today, organizations are offered a sophisticated array of multimedia meeting systems with video, audio and computer support for remotely specifying requirements. In the context of present day’s global workforce scenario, distributed requirements engineering is now being explored by researchers as well as industry to build an understanding of the dynamics of this highly interactive phase in a globally distributed context. Accordingly, this paper addresses the timely need of reviewing the literature on globally distributed requirements engineering. Findings highlight paucity of literature in this area. Additionally, the paper presents an innovative approach to globally distributed requirements engineering by reviewing the literature on the applicability of agile development approach in a globally distributed setting. Contributing to academic and practitioner literature, the author discusses emerging directions for future research in this area.

Higher Education and Sustainable Development: An Exploratory Study of Indian Management Institutions

The objective of this paper is to explore the applicability of sustainability education in the Indian higher education sector. Specifically, we examine Business Management curriculum innovation for sustainability education with an emphasis on course design, content, and delivery mechanism. This study is exploratory in nature and adopts content analysis methodology for analyzing primary data from semi-structured interviews and secondary data from university websites and reports. Our findings reveal that sustainability education initiatives in Indian Business Management schools and departments attempts to create an understanding and build competence on social, environmental, and sustainable aspects of business. But there is still a very long way to go. The objective of self-reflection in students for the betterment of community and planet earth is yet to be achieved by the way of participative and engaged learning.

Technology-Enabled Inclusive Innovation: A Case from India

India is a country with a population of 1.2 billion and around 400 million poor people remain excluded from the formal economy. India does not offer a social security number for its residents. Rather, there exist variant forms of identification documents. In 2009, the Government of Indian initiated the Aadhaar project to create biometric technology enabled unique identities for Indian residents. In a short 8-year span, the project has made remarkable progress by enrolling more than 600 million people. The objective of this paper is twofold-i to review the emerging literature on inclusive innovation and ii to examine the case of Aadhaar Project in India from the perspective of inclusive innovation. Findings of the study reveal that the Aadhaar project has the potential to create an ecosystem of inclusive innovation and entrepreneurship, which can be beneficial for developing economies like India.

Considerations for Effective Requirements Analysis in Offshore Software Development Projects: Lessons from Multi-method Research

Offshore software development using geographically distributed teams is an accepted practice in software development today. However, software development companies have largely only offshored the software development lifecycle’s coding and testing phases. However, lately, offshoring the requirements analysis (RA) phase has become increasingly viable for several reasons including the software industry’s maturation and improved communication technologies. However, successfully evaluating this highly interactive phase between geographically dispersed client and provider teams requires special considerations. In this paper, we present practical insights garnered from conducting experiments and surveys of IS professionals from the Indian software industry and from extensively examining the literature. Our findings confirm that, subject to certain best practices, one can effectively conduct RA in software projects offshore. We present these practices as lessons learned and provide related recommendations for industry and academia.

Child In Need Institute (CINI): Changing Lives of Homeless Children on Railway Stations

The case is about a non-profit organization named Child In Need Institute (CINI), based at Kolkata, India. CINI is a respected name in the voluntary sector in India and has good credentials in nutrition, health, education and protection of women, children and adolescents. The case raises global concerns of child protection and homeless children. It discusses in detail CINI’s child protection programme at an Indian railway station. The programme was funded largely by a UK-based charity. Following the Indian government’s policy of disbursing funds to non-profits in the broad area of child protection, the funding pattern could substantially change. The case engages learners to comprehend the nature and extent of issues relating to homeless children on railway platforms in India, form a broad idea about the external environment and strategy of a non-profit engaged in child protection and understand the merits and disadvantages associated with governmental funding.

Social Entrepreneurship Innovative Solutions to Social Problems

The International Journal of Rural Management (IJRM) is committed to engaging with its global audience, contributing authors of the current and past issues, reviewers, editorial review board members and all other stakeholders. The journal aims to bring forward innovative thinking to build the field of rural management and to make it more useful for researchers as well as practitioners. The objective of this editorial is to highlight the topic of social entrepreneurship as a fertile area of potential research and briefly introduce the contents of the current issue. The 1980s saw the emergence of entrepreneurship as a significant area of interest among management and social science researchers. Historians, however, would argue that the interest in this area dates back to the 1940s with Joseph Schumpeter’s work describing entrepreneurs as agents of change. The 1950s and 1960s saw the concept of organizational entrepreneurship being explored in the works of Arthur Cole, Edith Penrose and Alfred Chandler. Late in the 1990s, social entrepreneurship became recognized as an area of study by academia. Nicholls (2006) reports that banks introduced the term Social Entrepreneur in 1972 suggesting that businesses or managerial practices can also address social problems. Practical relevance and recognition of social entrepreneurship grew with increased media attention on successful social entrepreneurs like Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank and Jeffrey Skoll of eBay and founder of Skoll foundation. Social entrepreneurship is a multidisciplinary concept that challenges economic and business assumptions. The traditional notion of entrepreneurship assumes that commercial profit maximization is the key motivation behind entrepreneurial success and that entrepreneurship primarily occurs in a market-driven context. However, this notion has witnessed a paradigm shift and there is a growing acceptance of ‘more than profitmission driven’ businesses. In other words, entrepreneurs need not be solely profitdriven. Rather, they can be mission driven and profit then becomes a byproduct. On the other hand, there are social entrepreneurs running not-for-profit organizations who are driven solely by a mission and do not expect any economic profit. Hence, the realm of social entrepreneurship now includes mission-driven not-for-profit as well as for-profit organizations. Much of the initial literature in this area has focused on defining the social entrepreneurship concept. A popular definition, given by Dees (1998, 4), defines social entrepreneurs as ‘change agents in the social sector, by (i) adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value); (ii) recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission; (iii) engaging in a process Editorial

Message from the New Editorial Team

IJRM has entered its eighth year of publication. During this period it has established itself as a pioneering international journal of repute globally. It has attracted articles from both the developed and developing world and has made its due contribution towards creating a field of rural management. It has also been recognized as an important journal in the field of management internationally. All this has been made possible by the efforts of contributors, reviewers and the earlier editors Saswata Biswas and Debiprasad Mishra. We also thank the editorial board and the editorial advisory board for making significant contributions towards building quality in and the reputation of this journal. As a result, the journal has enjoyed wider circulation and readership from across the globe. From the next issue, the new editorial team is taking over the responsibility of editing this journal. This is an onerous task but we hope to put our best at it. The journal would broadly remain the same with its focus on rural issues and its commitment to build knowledge that helps the poor and marginalized sections of society. However, we are adding a few sections to the existing format of the journal. Since the focus of the journal is on rural management it is important to allow voices from the field to be heard. For this we are offering a platform to practitioners/researchers to discuss the problems and issues encountered in the field. This section would be known as ‘Notes from the Field’. Editorial

Outsourcing Contract Success: A Quality Management Perspective

Despite the phenomenal growth in outsourcing of various business functions like Enterprise Systems outsourcing, IT outsourcing, and Business Process outsourcing, there has been relatively less attention given to the high-risk area of outsourcing contracts. In this regard, contract has been the conventional medium for governing outsourcing relationships. This study aims to bring forward the importance of quality in the entire contracting process, involving contract planning, pre-contract negotiation, contract formulation, and post-contract management. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to posit a quality framework for planning and analyzing outsourcing contracts that will in turn help in achieving outsourcing success. The framework proposed can be a useful guiding lens for practitioners and researchers associated with outsourcing work.