Bangalore, 07 January 2018: “It is encouraging to find that papers for this conference came from the non-IIM ecosystem too. As a management school, it is also important to have something meaningful to say for practitioners, apart from our contribution to academics, which again this conference will facilitate. It will also allow for deliberations on areas that affect society like public policy, another focus area of IIMB. And remember, the genetic nature of IMRDC is its focus on quality and excellence,” said Professor G. Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore.
He was addressing participants on Day 1 of the ninth IMR Doctoral Conference (IMRDC 2018), presented by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore’s flagship journal IIMB Management Review (IMR) and the Office of Fellow Programme in Management (FPM), here on 03 January 2018.
The objective of the two-day conference is to bring together doctoral students affiliated to institutions across India and overseas for paper presentations, discussions with senior academics and researchers from industry, and publication-oriented development.
The IMR Doctoral Conference is a benchmark event in India’s doctoral community, commended by participants for the thorough and constructive feedback provided through its ‘one exclusive discussant per paper’ format.
Professor Nagasimha Balakrishna Kanagal, Chief Editor, IIM Bangalore Management Review, and faculty & Chairperson, Marketing area of IIMB, gave an overview on IMR and how the doctoral conference has grown over the years, and said that this conference aims to get the best discussants to come forward. “This year there were 90 paper submissions, out of which 10 have been selected for full paper presentations and 18 for short track,” he said.
Professor Rejie George Pallathitta, Chairperson, Fellow Programme in Management and faculty from the Strategy area of IIMB, said the IMRDC had grown in strength over the years with more paper submissions and quality of papers improving further. “The conference facilitates meaningful feedback. These two days will offer you the opportunity to engage with the peer group, which will help you in years to come. So participate extensively and make the best out of this opportunity,” he urged the participants.
Keynote address: The keynote lecture was delivered by Professor Vithala R Rao, Deane W. Malott Professor of Management, Professor of Marketing, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, on ‘Toward a Structural Model on Multi-category Purchases: Evaluating e-cigarette Consumption’. Drawing from his research, he spoke about tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes on the premise that smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the US – the rising popularity of e-cigarettes, rational addiction, influence of its consumption on smoking behavior: whether it helps quit smoking or promotes it, whether and how it can be regulated with tax, price regulation, etc. He discussed a dynamic structural model of cigarette and e-cigarette purchase, consumption, stockpiling, based on data from household and retail panel.
The rest of the day saw paper presentations, fast track presentations and a workshop on ‘Research and Publishing in Scholarly Journals in Business Disciplines: Some Guideposts’, by Professor Rajan Varadarajan, University Distinguished Professor, Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Regents Professor, and Ford Chair in Marketing and E-Commerce, Texas A&M University.
Pre-conference event: IMRDC 2018 included a pre-conference event held on January 2, with an address by Professor G. Raghuram, and paper presentations of select research by IIMB faculty. About IMRDC 2018: The two-day IMRDC 2018 includes full paper presentations by doctoral students, keynote sessions, workshops and invited talks by international scholars in management research. Fast track/concurrent sessions with short presentations would also be part of the conference. Papers selected for the conference will be considered for publication in the IIMB Management Review, subject to author approval and after completion of due review processes. This year, the conference co-chairs are IIMB Professors Debarati Basu (Finance & Accounting area), Souvik Dutta (Economics & Social Sciences area), and Prithwiraj Mukherjee (Marketing area). The second day of the IMR Doctoral Conference also has a line-up of distinguished speakers. The two-day event will wrap up with the valedictory ceremony and certificate presentation.
