The paper examines the public procurement experiences of India and China during the Covid-19 pandemic and locates them in a framework it proposes. The paper aims to enrich the knowledge of how public procurement could be strategically used in emergencies. It is found that as compared to China, in India (a) despite the presence of significant flexibilities, (b) there was a little divergence from standard procurement practices, perhaps explained by (c) weaker governance capacity and legitimacy, (c) more allocative (rather than structural) goals of procurement and (d) higher levels of centralization.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-07-2021-0046

1 Th. 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Many have worried that praying without ceasing seems impossible. Most address the problem by giving an account of the true nature of prayer. Unexplored are strategies for dealing with the problem that are neutral on the nature of prayer, strategies consistent, for example, with the view that only petition is prayer. In this article, after clarifying the nature of the problem for praying without ceasing, I identify and explore the prospects of five different strategies that are neutral in this sense. I also raise problems for each strategy.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412522000087

Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter with its deeply troubling, turbulent and yet unwavering chaos allows us to rethink how the past is never really lost. It is in the uneasy dialectic between individual lives, social structures, and emotional states that The Lost Daughter finds an unexpected gerontological articulation. Specifically, this article utilizes one of the assured tools of gerontology- the life course perspective- to argue that the persisting effects of social-psychological states (e.g. guilt, reprieve, and resentment) experienced earlier in life have been overlooked in this paradigm due to its empirical emphasis on macro processes of cohorts, trajectories and family transitions. The article concludes with reflections on how this intersubjective reading of the life course contributes to the practice of gerontological social work.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2022.2059797

A distinct feature of the India’s path of financial liberalization is that it led to the emergence of the corporate, non-financial sector, rather than the financial sector as the key wedge for the penetration of global finance. Neoliberal reforms eroded the traditional role of development banks and state-directed credit and empowered a section of large corporations and non-financial companies in India. The partial, calibrated path to capital account liberalization has meant that this section of the Indian non-financial corporate sector, rather than the commercial banking system came to be the conduit integrating the Indian economy with international financial markets. Where the Indian state had earlier harnessed finance towards developmental priorities, it shifted to channeling finance in service of the internationally embedded segment of the corporate sector that enjoys disproportionate access to both the domestic financial system and international financial markets.

https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294211068102

Servitisation is a business strategy adopted by companies worldwide. This paper attempts to find out whether servitisation is a runaway success and if not, the reasons for holding it. Further it is explored whether servitisation help improve the ecological well-being of a country. Methodology adopted was a systematic literature review. Results show that servitisation has been successful but not to the extent of companies adopting it as a blind strategy. Among the factors that led to its failure, pricing was the prominent factor as branded companies compete with local unorganised service providers. A pricing model incorporating brand equity would make it possible for branded companies to price their services right the first time itself. Researches show that the current cases of servitisation do not add much value towards the cause of ecological sustenance. But they also say that servitisation and sustainability complement each other, and commercial success of servitisation will enhance sustainability and therefore circular economy.

https://doi.org/10.1504/WREMSD.2022.120785

The study provides a fresh perspective on the default drivers in the Indian housing finance market based on micro-level data. In our analysis, the authors find clear evidence of endogeneity in LTV and argue that any attempts to decipher the default drivers of housing loans without addressing the issue of endogeneity may lead to faulty interpretation. Therefore, this study is unique in recognizing endogeneity and has gone deeper in identifying the default drivers in the Indian housing market not addressed by earlier papers on the Indian housing market. The authors also control for the regulatory changes in the Indian housing finance market and include state-level control variables like per capita GDP and the number of workers per thousand to capture the borrowers' ability to pay characteristics.

https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-10-2020-1272

Phase separation of proteins play key roles in cellular physiology including bacterial division, tumorigenesis etc. Consequently, understanding the molecular forces that drive phase separation has gained considerable attention and several factors including hydrophobicity, protein dynamics, etc., have been implicated in phase separation. Data-driven identification of new phase separating proteins can enable in-depth understanding of cellular physiology and may pave way towards developing novel methods of tackling disease progression. In this work, we exploit the existing wealth of data on phase separating proteins to develop sequence-based machine learning method for prediction of phase separating proteins. We use reduced alphabet schemes based on hydrophobicity and conformational similarity along with distributed representation of protein sequences and biochemical properties as input features to Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithms. We used both curated and balanced dataset for building the models. RF trained on balanced dataset with hydropathy, conformational similarity embeddings and biochemical properties achieved accuracy of 97%. Our work highlights the use of conformational similarity, a feature that reflects amino acid flexibility, and hydrophobicity for predicting phase separating proteins. Use of such “interpretable” features obtained from the ever-growing knowledgebase of phase separation is likely to improve prediction performances further.

https://doi.org/10.1109/TCBB.2022.3149310

Though academic libraries do not compete with others in the real sense, every ambitious librarian would want his or her library to be better than the others. How would a librarian be able to achieve this? Traditionally, librarians have focused on building excellence in processes and operations. However, such processes and operations can be imitated and implemented by other libraries, resulting in those competencies being short lived. Researchers in strategic management have developed theories on how organizations can build competencies that cannot be imitated, and thus be ahead of their competitors. One such theory – referred to as the dynamic capabilities – is adapted to identify the micro-foundations including the roles, activities and competencies required to build these capabilities for academic libraries. Four themes – searching & sensing, shaping, seizing, and transforming – related to developing dynamic capabilities of academic libraries have been identified. Potential research questions have also been formulated to direct future research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102502

After abandoning Bretton Wood, the foreign exchange market has been dominated by three types of economies: export-oriented economies (China and other Asian countries), commodity economies (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and oil exporting nations) and reserve-currency economies (US, EU, UK, and Swiss). As a result, the asymmetric development of the foreign exchange market has reduced the monetary and fiscal space for PSIDS, which face structural challenges such as a low population base, import dependence, aid dependency, climate risk, and political uncertainty. The ‘Exchange Market Pressure Index’ (EMPI) for Fiji is developed in this article to quantify the pressure on the exchange rate and monetary authorities' responses to micromanaging balance sheet impacts. The calculated EMPI accurately reflects four instances of financial distress in Fiji, including significant exchange market pressure in response to growing trade deficits and external debt, the global financial crisis's contagion effect, and political uncertainty. Our EMP Index's robustness is attributed in part to the employment of a dynamic time series estimate method, a time-varying weighing scheme, and a high-frequency monthly dataset.

https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2654

It is surprising that although 12 million people in India suffer from epilepsy this remains a thoroughly under-researched area in the sociology of health and practice. We address this intellectual and policy neglect by reviewing the social, psychological and legal challenges governing the lives of people living with epilepsy (PWE) by paying particular attention to negotiations in arranged marriages and employment. Drawing on the analytical frameworks of the sociological study of stigma, critical race theory and paying attention to the cultural models of health and suffering, this study utilized a combination of (online) survey data (N = 100) and in-depth qualitative interviews (N = 10) with PWE and their families. The online survey was administered to map the level of awareness about epilepsy and its clinical management among the general population, whereas the in-depth interviews were conducted to understand the experience, self-perception and everyday struggles of those diagnosed with the condition. Findings from the survey on non-PWE suggest a general lack of awareness and fearful misconceptions around epilepsy related seizures. In-depth interviews with PWEs revealed concealment (of the illness) as a dominant coping strategy to attenuate the social alienation and rejection associated with epilepsy. Further, PWE participants reported persistent discrimination, harassment and prejudiced understanding of diminished cognitive capacities at workplaces as a result of cultural myths and popular representations of epilepsy-related seizures. The study also demonstrated the significance of institutional support groups in assisting PWE to cope with symbolic violence and forge solidarities. We conclude with reflections on the ethical dilemmas faced by medical practitioners while dealing with social-medical interventions of epilepsy treatment. Overall, results from this study undergird the significance to revisit the social-moral as well as legal frameworks that persistently restrict opportunities for PWE in India. In an attempt to reimagine inclusive futures regardless of disease, disability and affliction, we attempt to move beyond the biomedical gaze and instead privilege stories of individual personhood, struggles and aspirations.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2022.790145/full

On September 21, 1897, both houses of the Argentine National Congress approved the placement of an equestrian monument of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Parque 3 de Febrero. The monument was inaugurated in 1904, and the name of the plaza where the statue stands was changed from Plaza de los Portones to Plaza Italia. At around the same time, in the decades following Garibaldi's death in 1882, monuments in his honor sprang up in a number of cities throughout Italy.1 While it seems only natural that Garibaldi would be so ubiquitously honored in the country that he helped to unify, it comes as more of a surprise that a Risorgimento hero would receive such a great honor within Argentina, at a time when many Argentine national heroes had yet to be memorialized.

https://doi.org/10.5406/26902451.12.1.02

Institutional births increased in India from 39% to 79% between 2005 and 2015. Drawing from 17 months of fieldwork, this article traces the shift from home to hospital births across three generations in a hamlet in Assam in Northeast India. Here, too, one finds that most births have shifted from home to hospital in less than a decade, aided by multiple factors. These include ‘free’ birthing facilities and financial incentives offered by government schemes, idiosyncratic changes within the hamlet, such as the introduction of biomedical practices through home births where oxytocin was used, and changes in cultural belief systems among local people. The exploration reveals significant transitions between (and fluidities of) categories such as local/global, tradition/modernity, past/present and nature/technology, creating a complex and ambivalent narrative of change, in which the voices of mothers should not be ignored.

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F02627280221105126

Institutional births increased in India from 39% to 79% between 2005 and 2015. Drawing from 17 months of fieldwork, this article traces the shift from home to hospital births across three generations in a hamlet in Assam in Northeast India. Here, too, one finds that most births have shifted from home to hospital in less than a decade, aided by multiple factors. These include ‘free’ birthing facilities and financial incentives offered by government schemes, idiosyncratic changes within the hamlet, such as the introduction of biomedical practices through home births where oxytocin was used, and changes in cultural belief systems among local people. The exploration reveals significant transitions between (and fluidities of) categories such as local/global, tradition/modernity, past/present and nature/technology, creating a complex and ambivalent narrative of change, in which the voices of mothers should not be ignored.

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F02627280221105126

In response to controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government implemented a nationwide lockdown on 24 March 2020. We study the effect of lockdown on crimes against women. Using district-level panel data from 457 districts in India for five months (before, during and post-lockdown), we examine the interaction effect of COVID-19 containment zones and lockdown on crimes against women. Results suggest a differential impact of the lockdown on crime across different containment zones. Compared to the most COVID-19 affected zone, the less affected zones show a larger fall in crimes against women due to the imposition of a lockdown.

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F02601079221111006

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i2.687

Employer branding is an important measure to attract prospective employees and to motivate, engage, and retain their current employees. Employer branding is instrumental for the employer to position the organisation in the minds of current and potential employees by using a combination of economic, psychological, and functional benefits. In the current research the authors implement a set of natural language processing techniques (structural topic modelling) on the employee reviews posted on Glassdoor.com (an online platform where the employees can post reviews about their current and previous employers). The study has thematically structured the 35,075 reviews from 8 Information Technology companies, spanning 5 years from 2015 to 2019. The study compares the employer branding parameters and has identified the prominent dimensions across the expansionary (2015–2017) and contractionary (2017–2019) phases of business cycles. A significant difference in topical proportions were found across the business cycles, suggesting different priorities for different dimensions of the employer brand during expansionary and contractionary phases. The findings would serve as guidance for HR managers to understand the trends in the employee perceptions in the context of changing macro-environment situations and accordingly recalibrate their existing strategies for talent attraction and retention

https://doi.org/10.1080/2573234X.2022.2104663

"Sharmaji Namkeen opens with the farewell ceremony of Mr. Sharma, a 58-year-old widow who has been unexpectedly asked to take voluntary retirement from a middle-class home appliances company that he served for his entire professional life. A well-rehearsed farewell speech is cut short by the company secretary, who instead hurriedly sends Mr. Sharma off with a bouquet of flowers and advice to “have fun” in this new phase of postretirement life. This remarkable scene is juxtaposed with a jeering melody that asks older people to rest (aaram karo), a slow life marked by purposeless leisure, repose, and reflection. Sharmaji Namkeen sets its tone just right. It reflects the postretirement phase for middle-class older Indian men as a time warp caught in senile domesticity. I review this film through the feminist understanding of plural enactments of masculinities in the sociological corpus of food practices and experiences. This is significant because cultural gerontologists have shown how the culture of consumption has deconstructed the life course enabling older identities to be based on lifestyle preferences (Twigg & Martin, 2015). These studies include fertile examinations of postretirement leisure practices such as gardening, tourism, sport, volunteerism, opening up possibilities of affect, creativity, pleasure, and work. Surprisingly, a passion for cooking (especially among older men) is not always seen as a postretirement activity that can disrupt our understanding of traditional models of aging well."

https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnac122

Background: Loneliness has been recognised as a major public health concern in older adults in developed nations, with little focus on low- and middle-income countries such as India. While the protective nature of social relationships on loneliness has been explored in the context of marriage, typically these benefits are examined in individual spouses rather than within the marital dyad. Methods: A sample of 398 opposite-sex married Indian couples (mean age 54.8 years) was obtained from the pilot wave of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) conducted in 2010. These cross-sectional data were analysed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, with one’s own and one’s partner’s cognitive function, functional limitations, depressive symptoms, employment status and contact with friends included as predictors of loneliness. Results: There were no gender differences in the pattern of associations. Depression was positively associated with loneliness with actor and partner effects being significant. One’s partner being employed was associated with less loneliness. Conclusions: The sample showed low levels of depression, loneliness, and reduced functionality; however, depression still predicted one’s own and one’s partner’s loneliness. Future work using longitudinal data could examine the role of employment in loneliness, particularly within the context of gender roles.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095302

"Happiness of employees is an aspiration for an organization that believes in its contribution to organizational performance. Happy employees can positively contribute to performance in many ways. Happiness leads to altruistic behavior, good health due to higher immunity, and effective management of stress (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; De Neve et al., 2013; Layous and Lyubomirsky, 2014). These positive outcomes reduce absenteeism, promote bonhomie at the workplace and increase engagement. Consequently, organization benefits from higher productivity, collaboration, organizational citizenship behavior and performance. Thriving is one of the aspects of happiness that may be experienced by employees. It is a psychological state in which individuals feel that they are growing, developing, and are energized (Porath et al., 2012). Thriving is associated with a multitude of positive organizational outcomes such as occupational performance, low burnout or stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment (Spreitzer and Porath, 2012, 2014; Spreitzer et al., 2012; Parker et al., 2013; Gerbasi et al., 2015; Kleine et al., 2019). Spreitzer et al. (2005) has used self-determination theory to conceptually identify the measures organizations can take to enable an environment for thriving for employees. Self-determination theory suggests that individuals would perform well professionally and achieve personal well-being in environments that help satisfy their three fundamental psychological needs: need of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Arguing through this theory, Spreitzer et al. (2005) has postulated that decision-making discretion, broad information sharing and climate of trust are the aspects of organizational environment that can provide psychological satisfaction leading to thriving in employees. However, there is no existing research that has empirically tested the relationship of these environmental factors with thriving. In this paper, we examine (a) the relationship of decision-making discretion, broad information sharing and climate of trust with thriving, and (b) the role of self-determination theory in determining this relationship. The paper provides the conceptual background of thriving and self-determination theory, and the arguments concerning the hypothesized relationships. It presents a multiple studies approach using a combination of experimental and field study methods. The first study is experimental. It develops and tests scales for decision-making discretion, broad information sharing and climate of trust. For this purpose, new items for these three constructs are defined based on theoretical literature, and tested for convergent and discriminant validity and reliability. Experimental vignettes are also defined for high and low situations for the environmental factors, and are verified through t-tests on the developed scales. The second study series is experimental. It investigates the relationship of decision-making discretion, broad information sharing and climate of trust with thriving. For this purpose, the experimental vignettes and scales developed in Study 1 are used along with thriving scale, and the significance of the differential impact of low and high levels of these environmental factors on thriving, is verified using t-tests. The third study is a field study. It explores the direct relationship of these factors with thriving, and the mediating role of constructs of self-determination theory (autonomy, competence and relatedness). All the hypotheses are tested in this study using hierarchical regression analysis. Based on the findings of this study, we discuss the theoretical contribution, practical implication and research directions."

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.795262