Entrepreneurship has been increasingly promoted as a means to achieve women’s empowerment in the pursuit of gender equal societies by international development organizations, NGO’s as well as national and local governments across the world. Against this, the paper explores the role and influence of multi-actor engagement on successful empowerment of women based on a case study of Kudumbashree program in a regional context of Kerala, in South India. Our objective is to examine the women empowerment outcomes of the Kudumbashree initiatives, implemented within a multi-actor engagement framework supportive of women’s empowerment through capacity building and social inclusion programs. The case study demonstrates ‘how multiple-level engagements help enhance women’s development and support broad sustainable social change, in view of their sensitivity to the embeddedness of women’s agency under specific socio-political and cultural contexts’. We find that Kudumbashree programs, through its multi-actor engagement, strives for an equilibrium between social change through policy and regulatory change (top down) and social change via mobilizing the people (bottom-up). From a policy angle, the key learnings from the successful outcomes of Kudumbashree may be considered for designing rural and urban community development programs with a focus on the multidimensional empowerment as well as social and economic inclusion of women and other marginalized communities.

This study presents a comprehensive analysis comparing the literacy levels of two Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools, ChatGPT and Bard, using a dataset of 134 questions from the Human Resources (HR) domain. The generated responses are evaluated for accuracy, relevance, and clarity. We find that ChatGPT outperforms Bard in overall accuracy (84.3% vs. 82.8%). This difference in performance suggests that ChatGPT could serve as a robotic advisor in transactional HR roles. In contrast, Bard may possess additional safeguards against misuse in the HR function, making it less capable of generating responses to certain types of questions. Statistical tests reveal that although the two systems differ in their mean accuracy, relevance, and clarity of the responses, the observed differences are not always statistically significant, implying that both tools may be more complementary than competitive. The Pearson correlation coefficients further support this by showing weak to non-existent relationships in performance metrics between the two tools. Confirmation queries don't improve ChatGPT or Bard's response accuracy. The study thus contributes to emerging research on the utility of GAI tools in Human Resources Management and suggests that involving certified HR professionals in the design phase could enhance underlying language model performance.

Human resource (HR) is one of the essential features of business activities. Moreover, the success rate of the business depends upon the people who are directly or indirectly involved with the activities. However, many firms ignore this key aspect of success and primarily target the production. This paper focuses on reviewing the impact of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) on HR practices from the literature arena. The study has reviewed 68 research articles through the adoption of Tranfield et al. (2003) methodology. The methodology consists of three phases: (1) planning the review, (2) conducting the review and (3) reporting the review. From the review, key findings concerning countries, authors and research methodologies were found. Further, the study has highlighted the research gaps found from the literature reviews. It is evident that LSS and HR go along very well and can be used as a strategy for organisational excellence. This paper can serve the readers in understanding the spread of LSS and HR practices in industries before LSS implementation. Moreover, for academicians, this work provides a comprehensive list of papers for research. Further, the study has proposed the managerial implication with the agenda for the future research.

Individualized learning plans and corresponding training programs are maintained and organized in most organizations. Employees may be averse to training if they do not see how it contributes to their professional advancement. This is an example of conflict between management and employee interests in a business. The misalignment between management’s offerings and employees’ desires is a significant factor contributing to such a situation. Our research focused on how companies and individuals put training resources to use from a perspective of divergent goals. It provides insights into making employee training more effective. We investigate the relationship between organizational, individual, and training efficacy using the principal–agent theory and the concept of bounded rationality. We attempted to validate three a priori conditions relating to goal congruence, training motivation, and decision-making through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. As per participant inputs, career aspirations drive employees’ training preferences. The significance of goal congruence in achieving corporate objectives is often neglected in the academic literature. Although goal congruence can be a useful tool in assisting organizations in achieving their stated objectives, enhanced communication and discussion between managers and employees are required in order to improve and align employee goals with the company’s, for the sake of the individual’s and organization’s development. Furthermore, firms should invest in technology-enabled learning that ensures better access to learning, in order to achieve the kind of productivity and profit margins that would benefit everyone involved. We have also proposed a training value transaction model that accommodates the diverse interests. The model depicts the role of goal congruence in enhanced value fulfilment of the principals as well as agents.

This study highlights the appropriateness of innovation management principles to successfully manage radical change in the e-commerce industry during the COVID-19 period. The study focuses on transforming delivery platforms in the context of popular e-commerce organizations in the U.A.E. We conducted the study through interviews, and the results reflect the development of three major themes (shifting consumer behavior, implementation of innovation, and innovation for effective change management) since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the transition stage, critical aspects concerning product delivery have emerged to stabilize logistics performance with sustainability. The study suggests that firms need to be faster and more flexible to address the market uncertainty through innovative practices. Similar organizations can use this study to develop mechanisms to improve their delivery systems. Additionally, the study also argues that collaborative innovation significantly contributes to the enhancement of consumers’ well-being and boosts economic growth.

Purpose: Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.Findings: Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.Originality/value: This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.