This issue deals with the topics, such as management of human resources in an agricultural research farm, fund management and profitability, e-recruitment and customer satisfaction, impact of R&D versus marketing on sales growth and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Farm operations constitute one of the important activities in any agricultural research institute, and consequently, labor management has become an important component of human resource management in agricultural research institutions. P Manikandan and R Kalpana Sastry, in the paper, "Management of Human Resources in an Agricultural Research Farm: A Case Study", provides an opportunity for decision makers and managers concerned with the management of agricultural research farms and farm workers to think on the lines of commitment of the leader of the institution to the hard core realities and problems of labor force—need for effectively dealing with the Labor Court issues, mismatch that exists between the number of scientists and the labor force available in agricultural research institutions, utilization of labor force for research work, poor accountability of farm workers, monotony in the nature of farm workers, and other issues concerning farm worker management. The paper is a useful teaching tool in management training programs to orient the learners to the issues of human resource management in research institutions, in general and agricultural labor management, in particular.

Efficient fund management is an integral part of the overall corporate strategy to create shareholder value. Fund management implies the effective and efficient acquisition, allocation and utilization of funds. Although during the last four decades, in the US, UK and some other developed countries a considerable number of studies have been carried out on the evaluation of the interrelationship between management of fund and profitability, this debatable issue has not been addressed with due importance in India. Debasish Sur and Kaushik Chakraborty, in the paper, "Fund Management and Profitability: A Study on their Relationship with Reference to Selected Pharmaceutical Companies in India", makes an attempt to examine empirically the relationship between fund management and profitability of 25 selected pharmaceutical companies belonging to the Indian private sector during the period 1993-94 to 2004-05.

Now-a-days, there is an increasing dependence on the Internet as it gives us unique opportunities to improve our efficiency. It is indeed interesting that all business and organizations that operate on the Internet are essentially those that provide services. This may be in the form of providing information, or facilitating transaction or attending to the basic customer service function. Starting from sourcing of input material to selling it to target customer, along with post purchase service, total supply chain management is being done with the help of computer system via the Internet. Ashutosh Kar and Siddhartha Bhattacharya, in the paper, "E-Recruitment and Customer Satisfaction: An Empirical Study in and Around Kolkata", focus on identifying the key variables, responsible for satisfaction of customers, factors contributing to make job portals effective, and competitive advantage of service providers.

In any industry, the top management of the companies decides on budgets of spending on R&D and marketing because this decision will affect future sales, besides future success. Shirshendu Ganguli, in the research paper, "Impact of R&D Versus Marketing on Sales Growth in Indian Industrial Sectors", points out that analysis of sales growth in industries of any country is a very complex procedure. In general, high R&D oriented industrial sectors are not that much of marketing savvy. But there are sectors in which marketing also affects sales growth. In this study, the author has considered 10 industrial sectors which show substantial amounts of R&D spendings over a period of 11 years (1995-96 to 2005-06) and then analyzed the effects of R&D and marketing intensities on the sales growth. The techniques used for the analysis are basically correlation and regression analysis.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) held out a lot of promise in the mid-1990s, but a considerable number of failures caused concern about its usefulness. Though various researchers have analyzed CRM critically, a comprehensive framework for enabling a better approach to CRM is lacking. Kaushik Mukerjee and Kundan Singh, in the paper, "CRM: A Strategic Approach", present the findings of various researchers and also provide the information about how this paper contributes to the purpose of CRM. The paper delves into the various critical aspects of CRM beginning with the `CRM Vision' and then going into the `CRM Goals' and the `CRM Implementation' process. The authors further analyze the findings of other researchers and support the arguments using examples of successful CRM implementations and present a framework that can be used for a more strategic approach to CRM.

- K Rajanath
Consulting Editor