According to the Global Retail Development Index (GRDI) published by A.T. Kearney (2012), India is the $5^{th}$ most attractive retail destination in the world. The retail industry in India has been largely fragmented with small businesses dominating the retail landscape, with very few large players having multiple retail outlets. However, in the last few years, the industry has witnessed a significant growth in the number of large retailers having a chain of outlets across the country. This growth in the organised retail sector has driven primarily by large Indian retail organisations and conglomerates. With the government reducing the restrictions on foreign participation in Indian retail business by increasing the FDI cap on both single and multi-brand retail outlets, the industry is likely to see an explosive growth in the organised retail sector which accounts for only 8 percent of the total industry. With more foreign retailers poised to enter into the country, one of the key issues that the industry may face is finding the right quality of manpower. Literature suggests that in an industry which is characterised by players offering similar kinds of product assortments at similar price levels, success would be governed by the quality of service, which entails employees having the right skills and attitudes for offering quality service. Therefore, the two key issues that may be of importance for retailers are levels of skills and the motivation of the employees. However, according to the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC, 2009), a significant skill gap exists in the industry, which may widen further in the years ahead, leading to greater challenges for organisations. This paper highlights some of the challenges and issues which characterise the industry in India, and suggests how companies could look at these challenges and seek ways to overcome these challenges.

This study extends the extant scope of understanding investment decision, beyond the dominant 'technical' emphasis on the application of discounted cash flow techniques. The research methodology draws the positivist and interpretive research paradigms. It uses a deductive approach, survey strategy and principal component analysis for the analysis. Three key sets of factors emerged as important in the investment decision process in the hydropower sector. They are: group consensus (framing), influences on own judgment (heuristics), and application of knowledge & experience (intuition). The use of purposive and convenient sampling might have some unintended impact on the findings. Consequently, any generalizations of the findings to a wider population of organizations and managers need to be made with care. It is hoped that this paper will encourage other researchers to go beyond the analytic techniques of investment appraisal that have dominated investment decision research and seek to balance the emphasis by focusing on human involvement and behavioral aspects of investment decision.

Ethics involves distinguishing between what is right or wrong thereby making a correct choice. An organization should treat its internal as well as external stakeholders ethically. This research gives valuable insights on the prevailing ethical climate and potential organizational challenges in institutionalizing ethics and its management in the manufacturing sector. The present study is designed to analyze four parameters of ethical climate in the manufacturing sector with reference to different managerial levels, to identify the critical factor of the ethical code of conduct and to find correlations between four parameters of ethical climate. Descriptive research has been used and data are collected from 200 employees of three Indian companies of manufacturing sector using a well designed questionnaire. Analyzing data with SPSS, It has been found that overall good number of people believe that MBE (Management of Business Ethics) process is well implemented. People are well aware and trained and involved in the ethical process. Senior management is very much committed to promote the ethical environment in the organization and thus company values are well communicated to the employees. Concern resolution mechanism is well established in the organization. MBE in the organization is more prevalent in higher-level employees. Senior management commitment and reinforcement is very critical for CoC (code of conduct). Correlation between all the 4 parameters is positive and significant. But the parameters are not highly correlated with each other. Organizations need to work upon these parameters to promote an ethical climate in the organization by awarding or felicitating exemplary ethical behavior. More emphasis should be given on senior management commitment and reinforcement of the ethical behavior across all levels.

This paper portrays the perception of buying behaviour, factors of product preferences and product switch-over among women consumers in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu. To conduct this study, 300 respondents from 20 village blocks of Vellore district were selected using stratified random sampling as the technique and descriptive sampling as the design. The study came out with interesting results and conclusions. It was found that more than half of the respondents were purchasing the product without a bill. It was also found that the respondents who repaired their product in the authorized service centre during warranty period did not continue the same after the warranty period and preferred nearby repair shops. It was further found that more than half of the respondents were checking expiry date and quality standards while purchasing a product. The study's scope was limited to women consumers at Vellore district. It could be used for further research in other aspects such as gender comparison in Vellore district and comparison with other districts of Tamil Nadu and other states of India. It was suggested that there is still a necessity to upgrade the standard of the people in many aspects like education, occupation and level of income, which shall help them to compete with the neighboring cities on living standards.

Undoubtedly, the basic sinking fund formula gives the future value of a series of equal installments. The main underlying assumption for using this formula is that installment and compounding frequency must be in equal interval. But when installment for a deposit scheme or any other savings scheme and compounding frequency do not occur in an equal interval, which is treated as the complex annuity problems in Finance Literature, the basic sinking fund formula does not give the accurate result. As a result, the obtainable amount from different deposit schemes offered by different banks and financial institutions does not match with the amount of future value calculated through the basic sinking fund formula by the investors or savers. This study focuses the concealed facts for such type of mismatches in values and at the same time it provides a solution through developing a new formula by extending the basic formula intended not only to remove those mismatches but also get the accurate future value from a sinking fund provision in case of complex annuity. Besides, since banks and financial institutions calculate the interest on the average amount of equal installments deposited within a period of time due to complex annuity, the study also formulates an arithmetic formula for calculating the average amount of installment.