• The journal endeavours to promote quality research in the field of business.
• The editorial team follows an elaborate process for selection and improvement of papers for publication. Each article passes through a blind review by two or three subject experts.
• Each issue contains atleast one article from a foreign author. The present issue contains two articles from foreign authors, one each from the UK and Botswana. The foreign contributors in earlier issues were from the UK, the USA, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Nepal, Botswana, and Japan.
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• We follow the British spellings and take great care of grammar, and pattern of bibliographical citations and references, even though it is a daunting task to obtain full and precise information in some cases.
• The journal has been accepted well among the academicians and the practitioners. Besides the paid subscriptions, we have exchange arrangement with more than 150 business journals, including almost all the well-known Indian journals, such as those published by IIM-A, IIM-B, IIM-C, IIM-L, IIM-I, XLRI, MDI, IMT (Ghaziabad), ASCI, IMI (New Delhi), IIFT, SRCIR, Amity Business School, BIMTEC, Asia-Pacific Institute, and FORE School of Management.
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• The journal has made rapid progress in a short span of time, it has carved out its place among the reputed, peer-reviewed, business research journals published in India.
• Its Editorial Board and Manuscript Review Board consist of eminent experts from the relevant fields, including professors from reputed universities, IIMs, and IIT-D, and vice-chancellors and directors of universities and business schools, from India and the USA, the UK, and Australia.
• The journal has, as its Editor, a former Professor of Delhi University, who has long experience of teaching post-graduate classes and conducting and guiding research, and has a large number of publications to his credit.

I feel privileged in placing before the readers the new issue (Volume 6, Number 2: July-December, 2011) of the NICE Journal of Business. The issue contains a panorama of research papers on topics of current interest in business. These include: strategic management; marketing, including consumer behaviour and advertising; finance, including banking and stock market operations; human resource management; organisational behaviour; and business environment.

In today’s turbulent business environment, it is difficult to run a business successfully. Professor Pikay Richardson reflects on how running a business successfully is becoming an increasingly complex affair and a daunting task. He discusses how strategic leadership and strategic thinking can help corporate executives in achieving market leadership in the fast-changing global economy.

For any business organisation, a consumer is the most important person, as his satisfaction is a pre-requisite for its ultimate success. A dissatisfied consumer can voice his grievances to various forums. Through a survey of complaining consumers and company executives, Dr. Deepa Sharma identifies the nature of dissatisfaction and grievances of the life and non-life insurance policyholders, their grounds, and the various dimensions of their complaining behaviour. Her study has revealed interesting results.

Derivatives have recently become an important device of portfolio diversification, risk-hedging, and price discovery in the stock market. Dr. Kapil Choudhary and Mr. Sushil Bajaj investigate the impact of the introduction of derivatives on the volatility of the spot equity market of India, so as to examine the relationship between market information and volatility. They also measure the effect of the shocks emanating from the US stock market on the volatility of the stock market in India. They find that the volatility has decreased, but to a small extent, after the inception of the derivatives. Their study has supported the assumption that positive and negative news have diverse impact on the volatility of the daily stock returns.

Work-life stress hampers employees’ capabilities and lowers their productivity, causing numerous problems in their personal as well as work life, which tend to lower their morale. Dr. Patiraj Kumari examines the level of organisational stress among the entry-level and middle-level officers of public- and private-sector banks in the State of Uttarakhand. She finds significant differences in the stress levels among the bank officers in the two sectors.

Banks use various performance measures to improve the quality of their services. Dr. Pankaj Kumar Gupta and Ms. Seema Garg explore the extent of competitiveness of commercial banks in India. By measuring their performance through the Data Envelopment Analysis, they compare the efficiency of all the 49 commercial banks and demonstrate significant variations in the technical as well as the scale efficiency of most of these banks.

With increasing competition, organisations have to look for new ways to maximise their profits and wealth. Outsourcing is one of them. Dr. Jeevan Jyoti and Ms. Himani Arora examine the phenomenon of outsourcing and its impact on employees’ attitudes, consisting of five constructs. They discover that while outsourcing positively affects the employees’ morale and job security and negatively affects their job satisfaction and intention to leave, it positively affects employees’ commitment but to a insignificant extent.

Celebrity endorsement is one of the major tools in the hands of companies, which attempt to promote their products and services, using the celebrity’s name and fame. Ms. Indrani Majumder examines the demographic aspects of some of India’s popular celebrities and the effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed TV advertisements, through a survey conducted in the Nadia district of West Bengal. She proposes that advertisers should develop celebrity-endorsement strategies for TV advertisements, with a clear understanding of the demographics of target audience.

The South African region has been in the grip of a severe problem of HIV/AIDS, which adversely affects the investment in the industry. Dr. Lisbon Simeon Ketshabile investigates the impact of HIV/AIDS on investment in tourism industry and the economic development and diversification in Botswana. He argues that the policy-makers and investors should focus their strategies for a fight against the deadly disease and should not limit their reach to tourism development only.

The section on book reviews contains eight items, written by subject experts in the relevant fields. The books reviewed pertain to various subjects, such as production and operations management, team-building, customer relationship management, entrepreneurship and small business management, international financial management, legal aspects of business, and e-business strategy.

I express my gratitude to the eminent scholars and expert book-reviewers for their precious contribution to the journal.
Several experts devoted their time and expertise for assessing the articles received for publication and making critical comments and suggestions for improving their quality. They richly deserve my applause and sincere thanks.

The readers and authors shall be glad to know that the world renowned research database company, EBCO Publishing, Inc. of the USA, has entered into a License Agreement for marketing of our journal. Thus, our journal will be accessible to readers worldwide.

I owe a special word of thanks to Dr. Shobhit Kumar, Chancellor; Kunwar Shekhar Vijendra, Pro-Chancellor; and Professor Rajendra P. Agarwal, Vice-Chancellor of Shobhit University; for their valuable guidance and keen interest in this endeavour to promote, preserve, and spread business research.

• The contribution must be original, neither published nor under consideration for publication anywhere else.
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  (i) For books written by a single author: Vohra, N.D. (2010), Quantitative Techniques in Management, 4th ed. (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill), p.41.
  (ii) For books written by two or more authors: Kotler, Philip, Gary Armstrong, Prafulla Y. Agnihotri, and Ehsan ul Haque (2010), Principles of Marketing: South Asian Perspective, 13th ed. (New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley (India) Private Limited), pp. 3-9.
  (iii) For journal articles: Chattopadhyay, Tanmay, Shraddha Shivani, and Mahesh Krishnan (2010), “Marketing Mix Elements Influencing Brand Equity and Brand Choice”, Vikapla, Vol. 35, No. 3 (July-September), pp. 67-84
  (iv) For unpublished Ph.D. theses and M. Phil. dissertations:
  Sharma, Deepa, Corporate and Public Redressal Systems for Consumer Grievances, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Delhi University, Department of Commerce, Delhi, 2008, pp. 42-49.
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