Business Analyst Journal

Entrepreneurial intention is a conscious state of mind that precedes action and guides career decision-making. It plays a pivotal role in an individual's decision to set up a new business. In order to foster the entrepreneurial intentions of the youth an examination of their entrepreneurial intentions should be done. The aim of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurial intentions among university students studying in the public universities of Punjab. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), a tailor-made entrepreneurship intention instrument is developed and used to measure the entrepreneurial intention of a sample of 300 students from public universities in Punjab. Structural Equation Modeling was used to study the relative impact of identified factors on entrepreneurial intention. The findings revealed that attitude towards the behavior; perceived behavioral control and entrepreneurial education had a significant impact on the entrepreneurial intention. The present study contributes to body of knowledge of entrepreneurial intention by extending theory of planned behavior model and incorporating one of the most valued motivational determinants namely entrepreneurial education.

The banks encourage capital formation, promote innovation, monetization and enhance business activities in the economy. Banks also play the role of facilitator of monetary policy. The success of banking sector depends upon the financial performance of the banks. The main objective of the present study is to examine the influence of bank specific (internal) factors and macroeconomic (external) factors on the performance of Public sector banks in India. The bank specific factors include Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management Efficiency, Earning Quality and Liquidity. The macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth rate and average annual inflation rate were taken into consideration for analysis. The financial performance of public sector banks was measured by Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) variables. The results of the study reported that the except capital adequacy ratio variable all other bank specific variables (Asset Quality, Management Efficiency, Earning Quality, Liquidity) and macroeconomic variable gross domestic product had significantly influenced the financial performance of public sector banks in India. The implications of the study suggested that instead of optimum capital adequacy ratio maintained by banks, the other variables related with management and governance of banks had significant effect on financial performance of banks.

The introduction to the idea of path dependence and its relevance in development of historical Social Sciences begins from very common concept of history and historicity in narration. Contemporary research on this idea can be considered as part of broader intellectual movement which can be explained as quest for historical social sciences. One of the best descriptions of path dependence, in artistic sense, can be found in this book which is Paul Klee’s famous painting, Angelus Novus. The painting in which the angel gazes with mouth wide open and wings extended on the heap of the ruins of history has attracted many interesting interpretations. One interpretation by Walter Benjamin sees a strong wind blowing from paradise which prevents the angel from closing its wings. The wind drives the angel away from the past towards the future. This wind can be called progress. This interpretation has brought many comments: The landscape that angel sees, changes continuously. Can the journey of the angel through this landscape be conceptualized as path dependency? In certain sense yes, because there is no way it can escape its connection to the past.

The book The Toyota way to lean leadership by Jeffery K Liker and Gary L Convis is a piece of comprehensive and exhaustive account of the Toyota as a company and the practice of its successful concept of lean leadership at every level of the management which are responsible to making Toyota one of the most successful car manufacturing companies of all times. It also discusses the reasons for failure the organisation suffered between 2007 to 2011 and the factors which were responsible for it. The book goes in detail about the role of lean leadership in an organisation such a Toyota and the lean leadership in Toyota is discussed in depth which helps us to understand the effort the authors have put to study the company, its processes and systems and also its people to help the readers understand the implications of lean leadership which built world class organisation such as Toyota. It also discusses the five year period where Toyota was going through a crisis and there were lot of issues which pointed at lack of clarity and vision of the top management and the senior leadership in the global markets away from the domestic Japanese market and the lessons that Toyaota learnt from three major issues which impacted its market leadership position.

Indian economy started with economic reforms in 1991 which marked arrival of new era of the Indian economy, which definitely has raised its growth path at higher altitude. It becomes evidently clear if we compare the average GDP growth rate of 6.6 percent per annum for last 25 years (1990-91 – 2014-15) to that of 4.14 percent per annum for the pre-economic reforms 25 years (1964-65 – 1989-90). Such jump in average GDP growth rate of the Indian economy has brought India in quite a formidable position globally as an engine of world GDP growth as well as also a popular destination of global capital. If we look at the data of foreign exchange reserve, which highlights the directional flows of global capital, we find that it has risen from 5.84 billion dollar in 1990-91 to 341.64 billion dollar in 2014-15.i The foreign exchange reserves as percentage of GDP increased from 0.84 percent of GDP in 1990-91 to almost 34 percent of GDP in 2014-15.ii This clearly points out the degree of openness of the Indian economy to the global capital as well as the Indian economy as an important destination for global capital to extract the profits from India. We have also observed the decrease of inflation rate after the economic reforms period except few exceptional years around 2009-10, which points out an important objective achieved by the inflation targeting monetary policy of the RBI. Such transition of the Indian economy to better path of economic performance and economic stability is an outcome of sustained persuasion of economic policies conceptualised under the Washington Consensus.