School of Management and Entrepreneurship

While renewable energy is growing in terms of its production and usage, the oil & gas industry is still the major contributor to world energy production. The rapid decline in oil & gas demand is not foreseeable in the near future unless there is a drastic shift in current policies. Hence, considering its impact on the world, it becomes crucial that the oil & gas sector functions efficiently. However, the execution of oil & gas projects, particularly Large Oil and Gas Projects (LOGPs) have a sluggish track record of execution in terms of time and cost. The execution of LOGPs within the allocated time frame and budget is of paramount importance to keep the investors' faith for receiving budget allocations in future investments and remain a prime target to attract investment expected as per world energy outlook, 2020. Project management tools such as identification of Success Factors/Critical Success Factors (CSFs) help the project management team in the successful implementation of a project. This study aims to find out and enumerate success factors for different phases of project life cycle specific to oil & gas projects.

Collecting relevant and appropriate data when conducting research in the Global South and other resource-constrained environments can be challenging. This is particularly true when the researcher originates from a different country and has different social, cultural, and political beliefs to the research participants. Data collection in such contexts can be challenging for a variety of ethical, philosophical, theoretical, and methodological reasons which may arise resulting from the use of research approaches designed in the Global North. There are also many practical and infrastructural issues which may be relevant in resource-constrained countries. This paper provides examples of challenges encountered by the authors in a variety of ongoing research projects in the Global South. We propose approaches to address the identified challenges, and we conclude by calling for additional work on this important topic.

We investigate the association between global value chain (GVC) integration and export competitiveness for 34 Indonesian industries from 2007 to 2020. Using panel unit root, panel cointegration, panel long-run estimator, and panel granger causality, we find the following key findings: First, we find that GVC integration and export competitiveness are cointegrated or share a long-term association. Second, we find that GVC integration favorably impacts export competitiveness over time. Third, we confirm the existence of a unidirectional causal link between GVC integration and export competitiveness. Fourth, we also discover results linked with the kind of GVC integration (forward, backward, and two-sided) and the industry type (manufacturing, services, labor-intensive and capital-intensive industries). These findings aid policymakers in the formulation of suitable measures to enhance GVC integration to strengthen the export competitiveness of Indonesian industries.

Data collection in resource-constrained environments, particularly in the Global South, is challenging for a variety of philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and ethical reasons. Challenges may involve using research approaches designed in the Global North that are not appropriate when using data from the social and cultural contexts in the Global South. Adopting a reflective approach, this paper examines research projects in Bangladesh, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda and highlights the challenges encountered on these projects. Along with the problems, attempted ameliorations are discussed, and insights are offered on how the authors overcame these challenges. The paper posits that these challenges can be mitigated by adopting contextualist methodology resulting in theories that are based on local social and cultural processes. The paper proposes that a critical realist-philosophical approach and methodology are appropriate because of contextual specificity and the innate ability to alleviate problems associated with the Global North methodology and generalisable theory.

The world is witnessing a paradigm shift in technology-based development. The latest trends in research are gaining traction toward exploring the previously neglected Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) and its innovation practice for sustainability. However, there is a scarcity of literature analyzing the development aspects of BoP technologies considering the developers' outlook. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate and extract the critical factors relating to the prime intentions of technology developers essential for effective BoP technology development in emerging economies. The empirical data is extracted from associates of BoP technology interventions across different Indian organizations followed by an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) method to obtain the essential factors. The results yield distinct factors that describe the unique dimensions of technology developers' intention while engaging in formulating a viable technology. The formative contribution of this study radiates the salient role of unique technology development in a novel discourse of BoP and emerging economies. The findings provide opportunities for the upcoming technology developers in designing their strategic formulation for technology creation that is governed by need-oriented, inclusively developed innovations catering to environmentally sound technology solutions for the long-term development of the BoP population.

Utilizing a daily data of 29 Asian Economies from June 2021 to June 2022, this study investigates the impacts of economic growth, health infrastructures and Government measures on COVID-19 cases. Our results demonstrate that GDP, Government intervention, testing and vaccination exert positive impacts on COVID-19 cases. We incorporate factors like weather to know how temperature impacts COVID-19 Cases. Our results demonstrate that magnitude of COVID-19 cases goes on upward fashion in winter days more. With reference to co-morbid conditions like diabetes, we notice that people with diabetes are more vulnerable to the infections, however due to the greater behavioral response, we obtain a negative association between co-morbid conditions and new COVID-19 cases. However, the intensity of COVID-19 cases is decimated with the improvement in health facilities and behavioral changes. Besides basic regression estimates, our instrumental variable estimates hold true in the line of regression results while underlying the relation with the COVID-19 cases. Interestingly, our results from alternate specification ensures that high human development with greater openness has resulted in more COVID-19 cases. Overall, our study belies the fact that vaccination and higher govt intervention can prevent COVID-19. Rather, a comprehensive policy is recommended on cross-country basis to overcome such challenge. • The Study analyzes the relation among COVID-19, economic growth and health infrastructure on a daily basis from June 2021 to June 2022 for 29 Asian Economies • Our empirical strategy involves regression followed by robustness tests of instrumental variable regression model. • Results show that higher growth, human development, lesser vaccination and trivial govt intervention post 2020 have resulted in more COVID-19 cases.

Remotely operated robotic systems have gained importance in executing tasks in complex and challenging environments which are difficult to automate. This paper focuses on developing reference hardware and software architectures for haptic-based teleoperation under various physical and network conditions. The system consists of a 6-DOF haptic device as the leader and a 6-DOF robotic manipulator as the follower. The control architecture used for teleoperation is Jacobian inverse control, which enables the follower to follow the leader when commanded. The performance of the proposed architecture is determined in terms of the error between current and commanded motion for different input velocities, communication delays in different network configurations, and the stable haptic force feedback at the haptic end.

The rapidly growing empirical studies find that reallocating physical and financial input across and within firms can be an essential productivity growth source. This paper examines the process of credit reallocation across Indian businesses by applying the methodology proposed by Davis & Haltiwanger (1992) for measuring job reallocation. Using the unique firm-level dataset for over 30 years, we find that substantial gross credit flows are masked by underlying net credit growth at any business cycle phase. Our results reveal that credit reallocation is intense, and the majority of credit reallocation occurs within a group of firms similar in size, governance, or industry. We also find that credit destruction is more volatile than credit creation, and excess reallocation fluctuates countercyclically over the business cycle. The findings suggest that heterogeneity in credit market dynamics is a prime source of credit reallocation evolution.

The present study aims to investigate the motional dynamics of risperidone within polylactic co-glycolic acid (PLGA) microsphere by employing solution state 1H and 19F nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements. Risperidone, a second-generation fluorinated antipsychotic drug used for the treatment of schizophrenia is commercially marketed as PLGA microsphere formulation resulting in prolonged release of the drug in solution. Although the current trend in the pharmaceutical market is to develop drug formulation with long-acting release (LAR) products, complete physicochemical characterization of such formulations are scarce. Especially the effects of microsphere encapsulation on the motional properties and diffusion behavior of the drugs are not discussed adequately in any of the earlier reports. We therefore, have employed NMR relaxation and diffusion measurements to decipher the interaction of PLGA cavity water with risperidone. A detailed analysis of NMR relaxation rates confirmed the event of encapsulation and the presence of local motion in the non-fluorinated end of risperidone. Further, the relaxation data indicated a significant alteration in 19F chemical shift anisotropy (CSA) and CSA/dipole-dipole (DD) cross-correlated relaxation mechanism and decreased effect of solvent relaxation pointing out reduced water concentration within the microsphere cavity. 1H and 19F diffusion coefficients of risperidone led to the information about hydrodynamic radius of risperidone in free and encapsulated states. Measurement of hydrodynamic radius supported the presence of limited water in PLGA cavity allowing higher translational mobility of risperidone after the encapsulation.