Teleological theory is one of the basic process theories of change, characterized by an event sequence and generative mechanism. There will be an event sequence of envision/set goals, implement goals, dissatisfaction, and search/interact. Processes have a common feature of being organized with respect to ‘some end’ or ‘intended purpose’, called telos. Organizations undergo changes to meet the demand or maintain competitive advantage. According to Peter Kuchinke (2014), teleological model assumes that organizations have discretion and power to change, rather than being influenced by outside forces or inside dynamics. Organizational change is the result of purposeful social construction made by the organizational members who focus on processes that enable purposeful activity to meet the planned goals. In the paper, “Teleological Dynamics of Organizational Performance: From Process to Practice and Perfectionism”, the author, Sidharta Chatterjee, examines the link between teleological theories with the perfectionist philosophy of performance so as to analyze the nature of customer service in convenience retail store chains in enhancing performance and service delivery. The author attempts to underline the importance of goal-oriented organizational learning behavior by linking teleological dynamics with organizational performance. An implicit inverse function equation is defined to show the interrelationship between structural parameters of organizational performance and some independent organizational factors like learning, motivation and technology. The model is used to support the theoretical understanding of the teleological dynamics of organizational operations. The author reports that service quality can be explained by customer satisfaction in self-service and by means of service tracking analysis that uses knowledge about customer service reactions to determine the overall quality of store performance.

As an important component of the economic development of developing countries, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) contributes to their growth and competitiveness. The influx of FDI is a major factor in creating jobs and increasing efficiency. FDI can benefit the host (developing) countries through technology transfer from the developed countries. The productivity and innovation capabilities of the host countries will be improved enormously to come out with rigorous new product development. All such innovations, when protected properly through Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), the host countries can maintain their competitive advantage in the market. Georgios I Zekos, in the paper, “The Role of Competition, IPRs and Labor in FDI Inflows/Outflows, GDP Growth and Industry Value-Added”, examines the influence of IPRs’ protection on FDI inflows, labor, industry value-added and GDP growth of different host countries. A diverse sample of 79 countries and their data of GDP growth, trade, inflation, labor and industry value-added were used for analysis. The author validates the impact of IPRs on FDI inflows by stating that their indices produced by different ways of quantitative expression of IPRs law are useful instruments to be utilized for economic and econometric analysis. The paper highlights the significance of competitiveness in attracting FDI inflows and outflows.

Globally, pharmaceutical industry in both developing and developed countries has been aggressively growing in terms of research and development, sales and production. It has been embracing emerging techniques, technologies and quality measures. Several research reports from time to time are being generated analyzing the trends in pharmaceutical research and development, sales and marketing, growth and various other issues. They relate to the analysis of pharmaceutical industry statistics, segmentation, competitive landscape, prediction of sales and production growth and other issues and draw several insights about the industry. In their paper, “Real-World Data Analytics in Global Pharmaceutical Marketing”, the authors Badal Rath and Surjit Kumar Kar, analyze the latest available secondary data collected from consistent multiple sources about the applications of real-world data analytics in pharmaceutical marketing. They review the applications of data analytics related to different perspectives like sales, promotion, prescriptions, clinical and patients. The paper discusses about the characteristics of the type of application, various parameters that contribute to analysis and the marketing-related applications possible and available.

In the paper, “Management of Innovation: The Case of IT and Pharmaceutical SMEs”, the author, Nomita Sharma, with an objective to examine the positive impact of innovation on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and their performance, presents the observations as case studies. She analyzes the background of companies, their management of innovation, various factors that influence innovation, and the effect of resources on implementation of innovative practices. She reports that the factors that influence innovation include opportunities, new business propositions, high cost of the existing product, aim to have more market share, intention to be market leader and provision of affordable technical solution to everybody.

-- Nasina Jigeesh
Consulting Editor