India's Technology-Led Development

The following sections are included:

• About the Editors
• Contents

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Part 1. Civilizational Approach
• Part 2. Stakeholder Approach
• Part 3. Knowledge Partnership Approach
• Part 4. Strategic Development Approach
• Conclusion
• References

The business entities of today are aware of the vital role played by technological interventions in value creation. HR technological interventions are no exceptions either. These interventions are aligned to business goals and help businesses achieve their bottom lines. Nevertheless, some business owners are apprehensive about the way forward while adopting technology. This chapter focuses on the various technologies that aid HR functions, its implementation framework keeping in perspective the key apprehensions, considerations and competency requirements. The chapter highlights few Indian organizations that have adopted it. The findings show that emphasis is laid on business value creation for stakeholders due to HR technology adoption.

Lean is an accepted management philosophy in the Indian Industry deeply rooted in many industry segments since its initial adoption by the TVS group in 1985 (Prashar, 2014). Lean leadership is a specific set of leadership attributes to realize the lean outcome by leaders’ self-transformation and promote meaningful followership among their subordinates to meet common corporate objectives. This assumes significance for a traditional country like India, surviving with a vibrant ethos, rich cultural heritage and unique socio-economic patterns for more than two and a half millennia. Indian people are living by their cultural ethos.

The Indian ethos advocates wholesomeness both among leaders and followers, togetherness in the workplace, a sustained decision-making system with approval of all parties concerned and larger societal impact from organizations than achievement of merely short-term commercial goals.

The gap is found from the literature questions on how lean leaders from India can motivate their followers to break their limitations and how both leaders and followers get benefited from the Indian ethos. This review explores 793 journal articles from prominent databases.

This study provides guiding principles to enhance the lean leader’s decision-making process.

The study aims to review and evaluate the literature on Blockchain Technology (BT) and Human Resource Management (HRM) in businesses. The 6 W-Framework developed by Callahan (2014) is employed for the development of a conceptual framework on BT and HRM. The framework-based clustering of reviews from Indian cases allows researchers to address HRM saliency through the applications of BT. Further, it mitigates the challenges for potential recruiters and HR managers at the workplace. This study focuses on the major HR saliency, i.e. regulation, staffing and development, and change management.

The evolution of this study as a domain-based literature review offers diversified implications for modern organizations in India. Implementation of ledger technology in managerial functions will reduce the time, money and effort required by potential recruiters and HR professionals, advancing HR saliency. Furthermore, the management gains the opportunity to enjoy the tax-free source of the hiring system in Indian organizations.

Information and Technology Communication (ICT) is a blessing for students in the education sector. The education sector is facing many challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as the urban areas have progressed rapidly in use of technology for online classes and work for home, in rural areas there are barriers despite the interest of the teachers and students to accept the new technology. For example, poor network connectivity, electricity problems or low income to afford these facilities. In this chapter, we discuss the overview of the education system in India, the importance of ICT and challenges faced by ICT in India and what national policies are on ICT in school education.

Rural India faces severe technology deficits as it is struggling to fulfil even the basic infrastructural necessities such as provision of power, water, resilient health care facilities, roads, education system, etc. To cover these gaps, Government of India is actively taking initiatives to bring sophisticated technology for rural development. This is evident from the use of High Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds in agricultural activities, introduction to the concept of organic farming, digitalization of education in primary and secondary schools in rural areas, sophisticated technologies encouraging digital financial transactions, technological skill development for artisans, traders, etc., for enhancing productivity of village and cottage industries, technological upgradation for establishing strong infrastructure at the rural level, etc.

This chapter aims to highlight the enabling trends and challenges in providing technology education for rural development in India, especially during the pandemic situation. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the role of public–private partnerships in imparting education about sophisticated technology in rural India, initiatives taken by the Government by introducing various schemes for technology education and encouraging start-ups to invest in technology innovation for rural people to overcome the difficult times.

Various forms of informal activities, particularly in developing countries, have long played an under-recognized but significant role in e-waste management. Although the informal sector plays a pivotal role in the collection, dismantling, recycling and resource recovery of precious resources, as a societal responsibility, the integration of the informal sector will ensure the formalization by providing them the health benefits, secured income and legalization of their work. This will help in uplifting their socio-economic status, thereby enhancing compliance with e-waste rules.

The present case study is about an initiative or a campaign on awareness by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India with the name ‘Awareness Programme on Environmental Hazards of Electronic Waste’ under the ‘Digital India Initiative’. The campaign was built to enhance outreach and advocacy around the environmental and health hazards of improper disposal of e-waste in the country.

Launched in 27 States and 3 Union Territories of India, with involvement of all stakeholders as a part of the system, the campaign was executed and made a huge success through various digitalized initiatives like developing an IEC framework, websites, mobile applications, conducting workshops, activities, training the trainers and campaigns across cinema halls, creating logos, mascots, posters, leaflets and banners, etc. The mass awareness program witnessed a huge success with coverage to more than 200 million viewers, conducting around 600 workshops, with participation of 300,000 stakeholders and 6,000 government officials.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread at an alarming pace, infecting millions and bringing several global economic activities to a halt, as various countries have tightened regulations and steps to monitor and control the spread of the virus. In this context, this study was conducted to explore the growth of India’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity inflow amid the COVID-19 outbreak. This was based on the fact that previous studies found FDI as an engine that creates opportunities for employment development, increases productivity, increases domestic economic stability through introducing expertise and technologies, strengthened infrastructure, boosts exports, and contributes to long-term economic growth in countries around the world.

To achieve this objective, an in-depth review of current and previous literature from journals and periodic publications of legitimate organizations, both local and international, on the evolution and the trend of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on India’s FDI was conducted. However, the findings revealed a significant drop in net FDI flows globally, but a sustained growth and significant increase in India. Secondly, key sectors such as services, computer software and hardware, telecommunications, trading, automobile, construction development, chemicals and pharmaceuticals were revealed to have attracted the maximum FDI inflow to India amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it was recommended that a cohesive policy that further strengthens FDI by identifying and creating incentives for other main industrial sectors could further promote the continued attractiveness of FDI to India.

The goal of this study is to examine the opportunities and difficulties that exist in the financial technology business. It provides an overview of the history of the fintech industry in India, as well as an assessment of the current situation of financial technology in the country’s financial sector. Financial technology allows the digitization of transactions, which makes them safer for the end user. Fintech is enabling cheaper operational costs and a more user-friendly graphical user interface, for financial technology services in India. It is changing the attitudes and behaviours of persons in the Indian financial sector.

Entrepreneurs constantly need to innovate and come up with effective strategies to meet the ever-dynamic business environment and novel challenges thrown by it. COVID-19 pandemic has tested the innovative capabilities of entrepreneurs to the maximum. The challenges during the pandemic have been more pronounced for the start-ups who are vulnerable anyhow and also resource starved in most cases, unlike well-established organizations. Start-ups rely on their unique approaches to make optimum use of their limited resources and sustain in competitive and uncertain scenarios. Unique situations like the recent COVID-19 pandemic draw the best out of the entrepreneurs to survive and come out as winners.

The present study focuses on innovative strategies adopted by entrepreneurs to survive and grow during the pandemic crisis. The research suggests that the survival and growth rates increase when innovative strategies facilitated by latest technological tools are adopted.

Innovative strategies including creative utilization of available resources, maximizing the “human capital” opportunities available, adopting the technology in effective ways, coming up with constant product and process innovations, reaching out to the market in novel ways, and utilizing conventional and virtual social networks helped start-ups in their struggle for survival and growth.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought a drastic impact on the workplace and the ways of working. There is a rapid adoption of advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and many more. This is not only limited to changes in work but also has implications for the employees who are required to have a ‘digital mindset’. This chapter outlines the relevance of existing research in the form of an integrative review. It discusses how the changing work design, the requirement of new skills and competencies, leadership and changing hierarchies due to technologization have an impact on employees in the era of COVID-19. It also categorizes the influencing factors, discusses their interactions, suggests implications for practice and research.

Despite the popularity of traditional paper resumes, they have been largely discredited. It has been shown they can even undercut the impact of more useful information. In this chapter, we determine the challenges faced by recruiters in job screening as well as explore job applicants’ perception towards using video resumes for seeking a prospective job. Two studies were conducted utilizing interview and survey methods. Study 1 (n = 16) using in-depth interviews, demonstrates that major challenges faced by recruiters in candidate screening are hiring cost, hiring time and quality of hire. Building on the findings of study 1 and using a semi-structured survey design, study 2 (n = 206) determined the reasons for preference of job applicants’ usage of video resumes. Taken together, these studies reach out to the recruiters, job applicants and researchers for suggesting effective recruitment processes. Our studies relate to the role of the community of practice in structuring e-recruitment practices through video resumes and highlight the element of the “privacy” of video resumes.

Internet may play a critical role in increasing brand associations and company reputations in the new era of e-branding. It has enormous potential in comparison to traditional mass media. The ease with which consumers transition from awareness to action on the Internet is a significant distinction and a source of contention for e-marketers. In this chapter, the future outlook of ebranding in India is identified on four key elements.

Digital marketing is the promotion of goods or services via the use of digital technology, such as websites, cellphones, display advertisements and every other digital media. Since the 1990s and 2000s, online marketing has altered the way companies and organizations adopt new technologies for promotion. Digital marketing efforts are growing highly widespread and effective as social media platforms are more interwoven into marketing strategies and daily activities, and as individuals utilize digital gadgets rather than accessing physical locations. The study’s findings indicated that digital marketing messaging may even stimulate need awareness in product categories with a high level of participation. Customers are happy about digital communication, are influenced by other customers’ feedback, and share their post-purchase sentiments through digital media. However, the research found that, while customers have a positive use of digital channels across the choice process, they equally value the use of different channels.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science that is concerned with building smart machines that have the capability of performing tasks requiring human intelligence” (Sufyan, 2021). Due to consistent human and environmental interactions, historical sites have been subject to consistent depletion. To minimize the damage and decay of cultural heritage, newer technologies like Artificial Intelligence have become the need of the hour to conserve sites of historical prominence and to create a digital repository of sites for future generations to experience, access and understand. Therefore, use of Digital tools and technology is becoming a standard norm for collecting, preserving and accessing efforts of cultural heritage worldwide. “From 3D configuration of ancient artefacts to applying artificial intelligence to shed new light on how we perceive the lineage of humanities, cultural heritage is headed toward a digital future” (Boo, 2020).

Artificial intelligence aids in facilitating “a more rapid process of tracking a cultural heritage’s lifespan and the type of measures that should be taken to guarantee its existence into the future” (Boo, 2020). Cultural Heritage is a pivotal part of our humanity and comprehensive understanding of these unique heritages aids in developing a holistic understanding of our future. “Protection of Cultural Heritage is becoming increasingly important in our contemporary world where we are facing challenges from multiple fronts to preserve them” (Antony, 2020). This study aims to elabo-rate on the use of Artificial Intelligence made until recent times to preserve, access and experience the historic sites of Hampi and Ajanta Caves.

The objective of the Sustainable Development Goals, more specifically goal number 9 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is to develop strong, resilient and flexible infrastructure for sustainable and steady industrialization in nations and fostering technological innovations across the members of the United Nations.

SDG 9 focuses on improving the overall lives of citizens of a country by improving present infrastructural facilities and fostering the growth and introduction of new, advanced and sustainable technologies. For this goal to be achieved, it is the responsibility of the governments all over the world to work towards making their nations technologically advanced and bold enough to foster innovative projects. Developing countries like India show a lot of potential to adapt and make use of advanced infrastructure being offered to them to become the leading producers of the world.

This concluding chapter focuses on understanding the role of Navratna companies in India, i.e. the major public sector undertakings in India, to understand their role and contribution towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal in question. The study focuses on 10 Navratna companies based in India that come under the central public sector enterprises. The study talks about how the Digital India initiative by the Government of India mission has impacted the industries operating in India and how the incorporation of technologies has affected the overall productivity of Indian enterprise. The data were collected through secondary resources like websites, annual reports, research materials and other data available in journals. The implication of the current study is that other companies operating in India and abroad can learn about implementing the Sustainable Developmental Goal in their day-to-day practices to increase productivity and improve infrastructure, thereby fostering innovation and growth. This will help India reach its goal of becoming a major manufacturing hub and a digitally advanced nation.

The following section is included:

• Index