A. Shivakanth Shetty

The forces of globalization and subsequent trade across the borders have necessitated the firms to have their presence across the globe to meet the needs of their customers. The employees or expatriates will be sent on assignment to different countries for a period of time ranging from few weeks, months to years. This sudden exposure to the different environment not only makes these expatriates vulnerable to cultural shocks, but also may significantly affect their job performance. Their failure to acclimatize to the foreign conditions will not only hurt the confidence, career and life of the expatriate, but it will also cost a lot to the company. The present paper aims to understand of the process of expatriate adjustment in the Indian Information Technology (IT) industry by examining demographic variables and few organizational variables of expatriate’s adjustment process. A structured questionnaire was distributed to the expatriate employees working in 50 IT companies in the Silicon city, Bengaluru. The study uses Chi-square test and linear regression for testing the hypotheses and found that there is a significant influence of demographic variables like gender, work experience and length of assignment on acclimatization of expatriates to their host country culture. The findings of the study proved that there is a significant relationship between demographic variables and the cultural acceptance of the expatriates. Hence, it is suggested that multinational companies should create an enabling environment within the organizations to make international assignees compatible and comfortable with different cultural values and inculcate cultural acceptance to make them successful in their international assignments.

The banking sector in India has contributed to economic growth, parity and equity while equally keeping focus on profit and social objectives. The successive prudential and regulatory reforms introduced in the banking sector have made it more robust and stronger to withstand the bubbles and external shocks. Still, the Indian banking sector in general and public-sector banks (PSBs) in particular have been suffering from the bank frauds. This study endeavors to cover the increasing incidences of banking frauds in PSBs and probes the weaknesses and chinks in the operational risk architecture at the PSBs in India. This study selects Punjab National Bank as a true representative of PSBs and treats it as a critical case study to apply the learning and findings to the PSBs in India. This qualitative analysis of the study revealed that the chinks in the operational risk control mechanism and lax corporate governance are the main reasons behind the increasing incidences of frauds at PSBs. The findings of the study showed that a strong corporate governance and compliance framework, robust risk management architecture, investment in people, technology and systems will go a long way in achieving tighter control and supervision, streamlining processes and, most of all, adhering to a culture of checks and balances.

The reckless pursuit of social, environmental, political and cultural issues and brands may alienate the very customer base, whom they try to impress, especially the millennials. Hence, this study intends to study the perceptions of millennials towards brand activism, so that the findings from the study can help the brand managers to steer their brands into the troubled waters of brand activism. The methodology followed is HTAB (Hypothesize, Test, Action, Business), a popular analysis framework given by Ken Black in his book titled “Business Statistics: Contemporary Decision Making (6th ed.)” A sample comprising of 286 respondents was collected. The final data had 286 observations and 45 features across seven categories.

It was found that millennials prefer to buy a brand if it supports a cause or purpose and they stop buying if brand behaves unethically. It was also observed that there is no gender difference amongst the millennials towards their perceptions concerning brand activism. Moreover, millennials across different income categories have similar perceptions of brand activism. It was also substantiated that the emotional tie of the millennials with the brand existing for a cause goes beyond price shifts and brands taking a political stance, cherry-picking of issues and being disruptive prompts and creates profound backlash for the brands.