Search results

"Developing countries worldwide have been embarking on 'smart cities' programmes using new technology solutions to improve public services. Faced with severe problems of the digital divide, poverty, unemployment, inequality, and financial and social exclusion, these cities have to negotiate hard in order to reach their goals. This book examines urban governance, digital divide, poverty, unemployment, financial and social exclusion and presents a theoretical perspective on inclusive cities, urbanization, migration, slums and affordable housing. The book aims at formulating and implementing an agenda for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable urban development in tune with the UN-SDGs, the New Urban Agenda of Habitat III, and India's new national urban missions. It probes into the scope of adopting inclusionary urban planning, zoning, and housing, financing inclusive city development and poverty alleviation through municipal finance reforms using findings and lessons from detailed field studies of Indian cities. It also suggests an Agenda for Slum-free and Poverty-free cities in an attempt to make these cities more people-focused, humane and inclusionary. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political science, policy studies, public administration, urban studies, urban planning and management, urban sociology and geography, besides being of interest to policy researchers, community workers, grass roots researchers, policy makers, and sociologists"--

AbstractCities are the drivers of economic growth and structural transformation in developing countries. Transport makes or mars a city. It connects people to opportunity and business to prosperity. Urban transport acts as a catalyst of growth through direct, indirect and induced effects, including those linked to agglomeration and networking externalities. Yet policy makers and planners in developing countries like India continue to neglect the economics of urban public transport. Hardly has there been any attempt to study relationships between city externalities, spatial planning, public transport infrastructure, economic growth and value capture financing. This paper delves into these aspects and presents lessons from theory for the strategies of development and financing of urban public transport in India. It is focused on the implications of urban externalities for transit‐oriented development, transport land use integration, strategic densification of growth nodes and public transport financing based on a value creation, capture and recycling paradigm.

Purpose
Social media remarkably changed the way of interaction between the consumers and organizations. The increased acceptance of social media has given rise to social commerce (s-commerce) and s-commerce usage is gradually increasing over the last few years. The progressive development of technologies suggests that s-commerce will become the mainstream for marketing and a literature survey indicates that there have not been many studies in this area. The purpose of this paper is to predict the factors influencing consumer intention towards the adoption of s-commerce.


Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a survey approach with reference to important behavioural factors such as satisfaction, ethics, trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure and awareness. The research model was developed to be in line with the available literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale and the research model was tested using least square regression.


Findings
The results showed that user intention is significantly and positively related to perceived trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure, satisfaction and awareness. Also, "intention" was found to be a significant mediating factor for actual usage.


Research limitations/implications
First, the questionnaire was a "snap-shot" instead of longitudinal study. Second, future research should use other moderating variables that may affect the usage of social media. Also the study could apply a variant of research methods to include other techniques such as interviews, which allow for deeper understanding of the problem and issues.


Practical implications
Social media represents an important platform for electronic commerce and has one of the most metamorphic impacts on business. Therefore, investigating the usage of s-commerce with reference to important behavioural factors could provide valuable information for companies in establishing policies and strategies. It could also be useful for management studies and researchers in understanding the consumers' attitude towards usage of social media for commercial purposes.


Social implications
S-commerce creates opportunities for firms. Based on findings this research provides insights with major implications for marketers, who would like to generate direct sales on social network platforms.


Originality/value
Existing literature focusses largely on the effectiveness of social media. Only a handful has endeavoured to analyse s-commerce systems and the literature on consumers' behaviour in using s-commerce is not mature yet. This study is one of the few studies in this field, and aims to predict and explain the user acceptance of social media for commercial purposes.

The present paper begins by introducing a number of observations on the applications of information technology (IT) in the field of human resource management (HRM) in general. This is due to the fact that IT and its wide range of applications have already made their presence felt in this area. This will be followed by a report on the findings of a survey on the present trends in organizations with in the different sectors in Turkey. Although the impact of IT on HRM has long been attracting the interest of academics, no empirical research has ever been realized in this field in Turkey, and few studies have been reported elsewhere. The survey was conducted among the 106 IT managers and professionals from various sectors, based on whose results, the data shows that IT is used extensively in the organizations to perform HRM functions in Turkey's dynamic economy. The results also indicated that, while IT has an impact on all sectors in terms of HRM to certain extent, the types of IT used vary significantly between recruitment, maintenance, and development tasks. However, the empirical results here reveal that these organizations are not applying these technologies systematically and maturely in the performance of HRM functions.

Cities are the engines of economic growth, drivers of structural and spatial transformation processes, and the generators of wealth. However, city finances in India are in an abysmal state, and its urban local bodies are progressively losing fiscal autonomy. The problem is deeply rooted in the hierarchy set up defined as per the fiscal federalism framework adopted by the nation. The objective of the paper is to critically review India's federalism, discuss its prevailing expenditure‐revenue assignment framework, and analyse the key issues in fiscal decentralization. This paper overviews the entire public finance system in India, brings out the anomalies in expenditure and revenue assignments between the higher levels of government and the urban local bodies, and addresses the areas of concerns at the urban local government level. It also suggests policy measures to put Indian urban local bodies on a strong footing in the public finance map of India.

Since independence in 1947, India has witnessed several changes in economic policies of governments. Economic reforms were started in India in 1984 and were accelerated later in 1991. It is believed that Bharatiya Janata Party won the 2014 parliamentary elections on the promise of economic development and growth. In this article, an attempt has been made to investigate the link between economic and electoral performances in Indian elections. The data for 1951–2014 period has been analysed by establishing regression equations using vote percentage received by a ruling party as dependent variable and sectoral economic growth during the ruling tenure as independent variables. Comparisons have been made between the pre- and post-1984 eras. An important contribution of this article is that it highlights the fact that electoral performances can be better explained using sectoral growth data as compared to overall GDP growth rates. The article also highlights a significant role played by volatility in growth rates.

Prema zadnjem izvještaju Gartnera, Turska se sada treba uzeti u obzir jer si je osigurala mjesto među 30 vodećih zemalja na svijetu u području inormacijske tehnologije (IT) i inozemnih usluga. Tijekom zadnjeg desetljeća postignut je izvanredan napredak u području izrade kompjutorskih programa, a to je rezultiralo porastom izvoza u mnoge zemlje. U ovom radu dajemo pregled pomaka koji je Turska učinila u izradi programa, uključujući postojeće trendove, ispitivanja, kvalitetu i prihvaćanje agilnih metoda zajedno s tehno parkovima i poticajima koje daje vlada. ; According to a recent Gartner report, Turkey is now to be considered in one of the world's outsourcing destinations since it has secured its place in the list of top 30 countries for Information Technology (IT), and offshore services. In the last decade, the country has made excellent progress in the software sector, and this is reflected in the rise of its exports to many countries. In this article, we present an overview of advancement of Turkey's software sector, including current trends in software process, testing, quality, and the adoption of agile methods along with techno parks and incentives provided by the government.