The Business Review

School of Business Studies

University of Kashmir

ISSN: 0972-8384

Jammu and Kashmir is a hill state having majority of farmers falling under marginal and small holding categories. Diffusion of modern agricultural techniques and practices to the farmers by way of strengthening and activating the extension machinery can go a long way in improving the situation. This adoption of new technologies depends largely on the state of infrastructure and resources available with the farmers. The cropping pattern of Jammu and Kashmir was based on the traditional system of the subsistence farming without any surplus. But with the advent of New Agricultural Strategy, there has been the complementary relationship between the commercialization and cropping pattern of the state. The farmers are gradually diversifying to commercial crops for the sake of higher earnings. An attempt has been made in this study to analyze the changes in cropping pattern in Jammu and Kashmir employing secondary data. This paper will also give some suggestion for improving the cropping pattern in Jammu and Kashmir.

The governance has taken a paradigm shift from being more administratively cohesive to more decentralized, agile and responsive. The arrival of information communication technologies has reconciled traditional barriers of distance and is playing vibrant role in promoting participatory, transparent, responsive and inclusive democracy to enhance grass root development. The achievement of sustainable development by harnessing benefits of information communication technology has become more attraction for researchers. The present research focuses on the evaluating various facets of e– governance in India and the application of same in creating instrumental platform for disseminating information, enhancing citizens participation, sending feedback, monitoring and evaluation of developmental government projects activities

The present study attempts to unveil the leadership styles employed by the principals/school heads in the public schools of Srinagar district of J&K. This study used quantitative methodology that helped in determining the leadership styles. In this regard, data for the study was collected using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X). The researcher discovered on the basis of an extensive literature review and in-depth research undertaken that principals/school heads mostly implement transactional leadership style followed by transformational leadership style and passive-avoidant style is barely exercised. “While noting the many challenges and demands made on the principals/school heads during the execution of their tasks, the study underscored the need for the development of management and leadership skills amongst them. The study established that unless the principals/school heads are well equipped with knowledge and skills in management and leadership, they would not be able to improve school performance significantly. Also, effective school performance requires transformational leadership, amongst others, which is recommended for education leaders

This paper seeks to examine the difference in leadership styles and organisational performance across three selected banks viz J&K Bank, SBI and HDFCin Kashmir division of Jammu and Kashmir. The paper presents the empirical evidence regarding the aforementioned differences among the selected banks. The leadership styles chosen for the study include transformational leadership style, transactional leadership style and autocratic leadership style. The organisational performance has been measured using the balanced scorecard approach which requires the measurement of performance from four different perspectives viz financial perspective, customer perspective, internal business perspective and learning &growth perspective. The study found that the leadership styles varied significantly across banks which in turn had a significant impact on their performance. Transformational leadership style was found to be most positively related to performance followed by transactional leadership style. Autocratic leadership style, on the other hand, had negative effect on the performance.

Women entrepreneurship is one of the important sources of economic as well as social empowerment of women. It helps in raising the economic status of women, provide them with an opportunity to utilise their potential to work and create job opportunities for others as well. However, when we consider the women entrepreneurship rate in Kashmir, it holds only 0.39 percentage share in total women-run establishments in India. Therefore, it can be inferred that women entrepreneurship in Kashmir is not satisfactory. This paper is an attempt to see the effect of psycho-socio and cultural aspects on women entrepreneurship. It tries to identify factors that make up the entrepreneurial intention of women. The paper lays stress on the impact of culture on entrepreneurial intention. It propounds the fact that culture has a role to play in the personality development as well as the motivational factors and social values that can drive an individual towards entrepreneurship. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to integrate, from a theoretical perspective, the socio-cultural factors and entrepreneurial intention. The paper suggests a framework which includes all the factors that are believed to form the intention of women towards entrepreneurship considering cultural aspects

Emotional intelligence has been a focal theme of researchers in the recent past. Emotions have a tremendous influence on leadership and quality of decisions in institutions of higher learning. Emotional Intelligence is all about teamwork, leadership, partnership and vision. The emotionally intelligent leaders help an organisation to excel consistently in all these areas. An organization which has emotionally intelligent leaders has motivated, productive, efficient and committed staff. Emotional Intelligence is applicable to every human interaction business: from staff motivation to customer service, from brainstorming to company presentations. An organisation/institution where people are emotionally intelligent can work together to maximum effectiveness. It is expected that academic leaders who are high on emotional intelligence are key to organizational success; therefore academic leader should have the ability to sense employees’ feelings about their work environments, to intervene when problems arise and to manage their own emotions. It is in this regard, the present study examines the level of Emotional Intelligence among academic leaders (HOD’s) as perceived by the faculty members working in the institutions of Higher learning in North India and also the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in academic success.

Motivation is the base for every human activity, personal or professional. No task is performed without a drive, urge or need. People are faced with different types of drive or motivation like basic needs, social and intimacy needs, need for power, success, achievement, competition and many others, as have been studied and researched by various eminent scholars resulting into theories of motivation. At the same time motivation, rather the source of motivation, directs a person towards performance and satisfaction. The current paper makes an attempt to understand the source of motivation, demotivation, satisfaction, relationship of work culture with the performance and other related aspect for employees and managers taking the Herzberg’s two factor Theory as a base.

In the current fast-changing business environment the most influential factor of change, probably, is computer and computing. The capacity of any IT firm to lure and hold the computer scientists and engineers ensure competitiveness within the industry. The present study is aimed at identifying the receivables today’s computer scientists and the engineers ordinarily look for. In addition to this, the study is also aimed at identifying the degree of preference of the said class over select receivables. The study utilizes a sample of computer science students from Assam University, Silchar, Assam, India. Identification of factors and the components of employer branding was done through literature review followed by a pilot survey. A questionnaire was developed incorporating a five-point Likert scale. Mean and rank was used to grasp the relative capability of each factor and components to allure the budding computer engineers. In addition to that standard deviation was also used to know the dispersion in opinion of the respondents. Direct monetary benefit, Opportunities for career development and Image of the organization were found to be the topmost alluring factors; and basic pay, free membership to corporate clubs, ease of connectivity, fame of the brand of the product/service, type of ownership of the firm, scope for learning and training, job related (timings of job, flexi-time, nature of hardship) and housing facility were found to be the topmost alluring components within each factors.

Individuals’ psychology varies from person to person. The financial decisions for investment may be driven by behavioral preconceptions, as the people are not always rational while making their investment decision. This paper provide an insight about the psychological factors having an impact on the financial decision making of an individual investors of Kashmir. These factors includes the different biases depending upon the preference and perspectives of the investors. The study conducted on the individual investors of Kashmir affirms that these biases have a significant impact on the investment decision of these investors. The cognitive bias includes the fear and greed of the investors. There are a number of fears related to investing which influences the decision of the investors like losing money, others finding about the loss of investors and the bad luck that may hinder the gains of investors. Some of the investors attribute the gains to the good luck attached to them

Service quality is considered a cornerstone for the success of any service organization. Tourism sector being one of the important service sector, it becomes imperative to focus on providing better service quality. Thus the sector requires employees whose performance exceeds expectation of the customers. The efforts of the employees should be to decrease the negative gap as much as possible between customer perception and their expectations of service quality. Existing research suggests that this gap between customer perception and their expectations of service quality was identified and presented in Gaps model by Parassuraman, et al. This gap was called as customer Gap or Expected Service-Perceived Service Gap. This Gap can be measured and estimated using SERVQUAL instrument also proposed by Parassuraman, et al. The study uses the SERVQUAL instrument to measure the Expected Service-Perceived Service Gap in hotels of Kashmir. The study uses the proportionate stratified sampling considering Srinagar, Gulmarg and Pehalgam as various strata. The data was collected from 300 customers of the 6 hotels (2 hotels and 100 customers from each strata) of Kashmir. Reliability and validity tests were conducted followed by basic descriptive statistics. The gap score was calculated and their significance was tested using ttest. The gap score was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results of the study reveal that there exists a significant gap between customer perception and expectation of service quality in hotels of Kashmir. Furthermore the average customer gap score is more in lower age group customers as compared to the higher age group customers. The possible reason being their exposure to other hotels of the country that contributes to development of higher expectations

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on social marketing and social well-being. The paper summarizes the major findings of the different research articles to determine the role of social marketing in improving the social well-being of the society. The paper has adopted review methodology by conducting a literature search concerning social marketing and social well-being for the period 2001-2016. A criterion has been set by the researchers for selecting the research papers. After literature search 40 papers were found to meet the set criterion. The findings have shown that social marketing interventions when applied to the fullest can be effective in improving the healthy habits and tackling the misuse of substances like alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs. More research is needed to better develop the effective social marketing campaigns aimed at improving the well-being of the society. The present study provides a base for the future research on social marketing and social well-being. It provides a basic theoretical background for a future action or empirical research. The study also assists social marketing managers in designing campaigns that are aimed to transform societies into a more competent, free, equitable, fair and sustainable community.

In the world tilted towards the passion for excellence, surpassing of contributions and customer delight, the only way to survive, is to adopt strategies for growth. With standardized techniques and automated equipment’s, only resource used to acquire competitive advantage is human resource. Internal marketing practices have been generated in organizations where Internal marketing is not only concerned with treating the employee as a customer; it is about that the organization should continuously develop Programs and strategies for enhancing employee competencies that will have an effect on the employee’s performance in the same way as external marketing plans and strategies are formulated to meet external customer demands. The study has identified constructs (job satisfaction, empowerment, employee motivation, employee development, strategic rewards) of internal marketing which are tested against business performance. The study will help organizations to design its own internal marketing plan by outlining the important elements so that it can improve the business performance of organizations.

Institutions of higher education like colleges and universities besides providing quality education to the students and scholars and training to the teaching and non-teaching staff include a myriad of activities. Just like corporate firms these institutions involve a chain of activities which add to the value directly (primary activities) or indirectly (support activities). If sustainability is to be brought into these institutions a holistic approach to the problem in hand must be made and as such both the primary and support activities must be taken on board the sustainability agenda in order to serve the essence of the concept of sustainability. In this paper we review the existing bodies of knowledge to determine the scope of both primary and support activities in higher education institutions using the value chain framework and determining how sustainability can be brought about in these institutions using the value chain framework. We use relevant examples of educational institutions from around the world to corroborate our discussion. (Note: This paper is funded by the UGC-JRF).

The number of institutions of higher education has increased enormously leading to the competitive environment among them as well. The educational institutions, like any other service provider, need to focus on their competitive advantages. One of the main competitive advantages is the service quality. The main objective of this paper is to examine whether any relationship exists between corporate image and the service quality or not. The study has been done on the basis of literature review of various studies. The study suggests that the positive significant relationship exists between the two.