ECONOMICS

Indian Economy : Future Prospects & Challenges

India's economy is diverse, consisting of agriculture, manufacturing, and a multitude of services. The economy of India is currently the twelfth largest in the world, with a GDP of around $1 trillion. For the fiscal year 2007-2008, it recorded a GDP growth rate of 9.0%, thus becoming the second fastest emerging economy, after China. Despite much political turmoil, at this sustained growth rate, economists forecast that India would have a more pronounced economic effect on the world stage, in the coming decades. In 2003, Goldman Sachs predicted that India's GDP will overtake France and Italy by 2020, Germany, UK and Russia by 2025 and Japan by 2035. By 2035, India will be the third largest economy of the world, behind US and China. The paper has three parts. I part canvassed the condition of Indian economy in pre liberalisation period. II part represents an overview of Indian economy in post liberalisation period and III part has devoted to future prospects and challenges in Indian economy.To achieve the above objectives information and data has been collected from the secondary sources such as books, journals, research papers, websites, periodicals and reports of many government and non- government publications.
 

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Board Committes For Improving Corporate Governance : A Necessity

Modern day corporations are working on market based philosophy. Globalization and liberalization of economies has opened a number of opportunities and challenges for the corporate entities. The success of any company in the present scenario depends upon system of corporate governance prevailing in it. In fact the system of corporate governance prevailing in corporate entities shapes the growth and future of not only of a business enterprise but also of capital market and economy as such. The growing specialization and complexity of modern day business make it difficult for directors to deal with each and every matter of business. Hence the companies are realizing the need for establishing separate committees of the board to deal with specific tasks. Through this paper an attempt has been made to study the types of committees set up by Indian companies besides the ones which have been made mandatory by the clause 49 of the listing agreement and Companies Act 1956.Setting up of different sub committees of board depends upon the nature and requirements of the company. For the purpose of study, 70 companies were selected consisting of 35 companies each from Pharmaceutical and Information Technology sector. The annual reports of these sample companies for the period of six years 2001-02 to 2006-07 have been examined to study kind of committees formed by them to improve governance practices. Findings revealed that different types of committees have been constituted by sample companies depending upon their needs but number of companies constituting the board sub- committees was very small. Keeping in view the role and functions performed by these committees in sample companies, it is suggested that few committees like risk management committee, nomination committee and corporate governance committee should be made mandatory for the listed companies.
 

TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Decision Support System and Performance Evaluation of the Digesting System of a Paper Plant

The present paper deals with the decision support system and performance evaluation of the Digesting system of a paper plant. The paper plant is a complex and repairable engineering unit, which comprises of various systems including chipping, digesting, washing, bleaching, screening, stock preparation and paper making etc. One of the most important functionaries of a paper plant is Digesting system where the wooden chips from the storage silos through the belt conveyor are fed to digester (a large pressure-cooking vessel), the steam is forced from the bottom in the digester. The lignin and other fibers present in the wooden chips get dissolved. Then the cooked chips are passed through various systems like washing, bleaching, screening and paper making etc. to convert into the paper. The Digesting system of a paper plant consists of four subsystems arranged in series and parallel configurations. The decision support system for Digesting system has been designed with the help of mathematical formulation based on Markov Birth-Death process. Using probabilistic approach, the differential equations have been developed. Then these equations are further solved by using normalizing conditions so as to determine the steady state availability i.e. measure of performance of the Digesting system of a paper plant. So the performance of each subsystem of the Digesting system of a paper plant also has been analyzed. The objective of decision support system developed is to decide about the relative maintenance priorities for four subsystems of the Digesting system. Therefore, the findings of this paper will be highly useful to the plant management for timely execution of best possible maintenance strategies and hence to enhance the system performance.

Dr.P.C.Tewari
Asst.Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
NIT,Kurukshetra,Haryana
pctewari@rediffmail.com

Er.R.S.Chauhan
Asst.Professor
Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering
JMIT,Yamuna Nagar,Haryana
chauhan443@yahoo.co.in

Legal Framework for Mergers and Adcuisitions in India

Companies Come and Go, Chief Executives Rise and Fall, Industry Sectors Wax and Wane, but an outstanding feature of the past decade has been the rise of business combinations, which may take forms of mergers, acquisitions, amalgamations and takeovers, which are the important features of corporate structural changes. A merger is said to occur when two or more companies combine into one company. One or more companies may merge with an existing company or they may merge to form a new company. This paper aims to analyze the ways of Amalgamation, Merger or Amalgamation under Sections 391 to 394 of the Companies Act, 1956, to analyze the procedure of amalgamation of companies by Central Government and to analyze the mergers in India in general and to analyze the impact of Indian Competition Law on Mergers. This paper is useful for understanding the legal procedure for mergers and acquisitions in India.

kamatam_srinivas@yahoo.com

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Psychological Contract : Theoretical Dimensions,Literature Review and Research Agenda

The term ‘Psychological contract’ has been in the academic discussion since 1960s. As distinguished from a formal written contract of employment which only identifies mutual duties and responsibilities in a general form, a psychological contract represents the mutual beliefs, perceptions and informal obligations between an employer and an employee. It gives a practical approach to the contract of employment. Basically, the psychological contract gives the sum of beliefs held by an individual and his/her employer about their mutual expectations. A psychological contract creates emotions and attitudes in the employment relationship and hence to manage the employment relationship effectively it is necessary to understand the psychological contract with its various dimensions. The employment rights, duties and obligations emerge from the interpersonal relationships formed in the workplace and the way in which the managers, employees and supervisors behave on a day to day basis cannot be determined in a formal contract of employment. In fact, employees would negotiate to fulfil their side of desires and such negotiation more often takes the form of behavioural action and reaction. Therefore, a psychological contract determines what the parties to the contract of employment will or will not do and how they do it. However due to the unarticulated nature of the psychological contract, the fundamental problem is that the employees are not clear what they expect from their employers and some employers are not clear what they expect from their employees. It should be noted that the psychological contract governs the continuing development of the employment relationship but its impact may not be fully understood by the parties to the employment contract.

rekhaaranha@gmail.com

Transactional Analysis :  Measuring "Ego States"

Transactional Analysis (TA) is one of the most accessible theories of modern psychology. It highlights three ego states: Parent, adult and child (PAC) of every person. The objective of this paper is to analyze the different ego states of retail professionals in Jaipur city and thereby determines the “dominant ego” with the help of an “Egogram” a tool developed by Dusay in (1977) and a validated questionnaire used in the research paper “Transactional analysis: Measuring Ego States” written by “Jose T Payyappily, N. Rajagopal Anitha Zachariah”. The questionnaire is developed by ICTA (the institute of counseling and transactional analysis), Kerala for measuring the six ego statuses of the people. The another objective is to help retail professional to understand and adapt their behavior and develop more effective ways of communicating.
 

Nidhi Maheshwari
Professor
Adam Smith Institute of Management -ICFAI
Jaipur,Rajasthan
nidhimaheshwari1999@yahoo.com

Neha Tandon
MBA Student
Adam Smith Institute of Management -ICFAI
Jaipur,Rajasthan