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Logistics services are keys to the success of almost all the manufacturing firms. Logistics companies have great responsibility to minimise the supply chain risks. Third-party logistics provider has limited role in the supply chain, whereas fourth-party logistics provider performs series of operations in the supply chain. In this study, the role of logistics service providers has been quantified and the structure of 3PL and 4PL network is compared using social network analysis approach. A case study on logistics network has been discussed in this paper which is analysed with the help of social network analysis approach. The role of individual players in 3PL and 4PL has been described based on the outcomes of social network analysis of the networks. The work is an attempt to understand the role of key players in the network and thus can aid in making important decisions while collaborating with partners and making negotiations.

India (and by extension, Indians) has a notorious reputation of being 'dirty'. Such reputation is both embarrassing, as well as deeply ironic since the father of the nation himself put cleanliness next to Godliness. But despite our failures, successive governments have focused on various aspects of public health, hygiene and sanitation. The present government too has declared a war against unhygienic sanitation through the Swachh Bharat mission (SBM) launched on 2 October 2014. This mission will remain incomplete without creating a behavioural change among the Indian populace as also mentioned in the vision documents of SBM. Studies investigating the impact of the SBM on the attitudes and behaviours of people will help the government and other stakeholders to review and streamline the strategies to achieve the mission. This paper is an attempt to study such attitudes led by involvement in responsible waste management of employees working in government organisations located in the National Capital Region of India regarding the SBM.

Particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is a population-based powerful evolutionary computational technique inspired by social behaviour simulation of bird flocking and fish schooling. PSO has been applied successfully to a wide range of applications like scheduling, artificial neural networks (ANN) training, control strategy determination and ingredient mix optimisation. Fuzzy logic can easily cope up with vagueness and uncertainty in time series data. This has been applied for prediction of water table elevation, in our earlier work and results are quite promising. But, the optimisation of length of fuzzy intervals was a big constraint for researchers. In this research paper, the optimal length of fuzzy intervals in the universe of discourse is been selected using particle swarm optimisation. The results obtained after applying this combined approach to prediction of water table elevation are better than the previous method.

The phenomenon of job burnout has had a focus on traditional helping professions (e.g., nurses, doctors, lawyers, teachers). However, today, newer forms of service organisations like call centres have surfaced and provided new meaning to the way work is structured and customer service provided. Telephone call centres provide quality and efficient service in the most cost-effective way possible by, inter alia, using customer service representatives (CSRs) to attend to clients’ each and every need. Call centres, however, pose distinct work demands and stress and burnout have been widely acknowledged. However, there is a lack of empirical investigation in this area which prompted us to examine job burnout in the context of call centres in India. A quantitative study was conducted taking eight call centres located in two major cities of India with a total sample size of 303 CSRs. Basically, the effect of role stressors and work overload on job burnout was studied using two multivariate techniques. The results show that role conflict and work overload are significantly and positively related to burnout while role ambiguity has a significant but inverse relationship. Implications of the proposed research are discussed along with scope for future research.

This paper examines the effect of job burnout on psychological outcomes (job satisfaction, organisational commitment, turnover intention) and a behavioural outcome (job performance) among customer service representatives (CSRs) in call centres in India. A survey was conducted on 303 CSRs in call centres in India. The findings show that there exists a significant relationship between job burnout and the given job outcomes. Particularly, job burnout has a substantial effect on reduced organisational commitment and high turnover intention. Interventions aimed at reducing likelihood of employee burnout can bring positive job outcomes including lower turnover rates in call centres. This paper helps in understanding the role of burnout towards negative job outcomes including high employee turnover among CSRs in call centres and has implications for both academicians and practitioners in the field.