An initiative by Ministry of Human Resource Development in

association with Banasthali Vidyapith

Annual Refresher Program in

Teaching (ARPIT) through National
Resource Centres (NRCs)

Emerging Areas of Research

Dr.Harsh Purohit, Dr.Ankur Joshi, Dr.Neelni Giri & Dr. Richa Chauhan

Page 0
Emerging Areas of Research

Table of Contents
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:......................................................................................................................... 2
INTRODUCTION: ....................................................................................................................................... 2
EMERGING AREAS OF RESEARCH: ...................................................................................................... 2
 Policy and governance studies: ......................................................................................................... 2
 Personal Finance: .............................................................................................................................. 3
 Sprituality and Concisouness: ........................................................................................................... 4
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................................. 9
 Interdisciplinary approach to research in management can not only management teachers in their
professional excellence but also help their students in building their career ................................................ 9

Page 1
Emerging Areas of Research

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
 To become aware of some emerging areas of research that management teachers can
undertake
 To explore the research approaches for those emerging areas

INTRODUCTION:
Research is one of the important tasks for management teachers. Thereafter, it not only
contributes to the professional development but also help the institution and nation. The research
atmosphere is quite electrifying for management & commerce teachers with the launch of
STRIDE and IMPRESSES schemes by the MHRD.

A teacher with a sophisticated research attitude and aptitude is an asset for the institution. He or
she can inspire students to pursue a career in research and development and lead doctoral
scholars to create socially purposeful research for development of the nation.

Few of the emerging areas of research that interested faculty members can explore are policy and
governance studies, personal finance, and ethos and consciousness studies which are amongst
few emerging areas of research that interested faculty members can explore.

EMERGING AREAS OF RESEARCH:

 Policy and governance studies:
Public policy as a discipline has been developed to address the unmet needs of the
society that consider local culture and context of the intended beneficiary. When the
policy researchers and students undertake any study, they need to be aware of social
realities and ground scenario i.e. in short the ontology of their research phenomenon.
Many a times we find the policies are so esoteric in nature that does not add value in
the life of a common man. Some policies are made with good intentions but do not
yield results.

The policies which are implemented lead to un-intended outcomes and instead of
improving the governance, they worsen the situation. The research philosophy,
methodology and methods which are disconnected from grass roots are responsible

Page 2
Emerging Areas of Research

for not delivering the desired outcomes. To overcome this, the possible solutions
which could be considered are:

1. The researcher should be grounded in a philosophy or an ideology before he or

she begins with the research. One should be very clear about interpretive or
positivist stance that needs to be taken and why.
2. A customized approach shall be taken with respect to every population which is
under research. The researcher is thus advised to first have a sound knowledge of
the local culture, context and the realities before going for field survey, interviews
and other types of data collection.
3. After data collection and analysis, one major responsibility for the researcher,
especially in the public policy and governance is suggesting a proper
implementation framework for the prescribed policy. The reporting should be
simple, precise, and documented in unambiguous manner.
4. The readiness and effectiveness with which the feedback is sought, evaluated and
changes are incorporated, because the dynamism in the field needs this agility in
research.

Public policy is certainly an emerging area requiring good inputs from teachers of
management.

 Personal Finance:

Another significant domain is ‘Personal Finance’. While research in area of personal

finance is picking up globally in realization of the requirement of creating new
knowledge, the domain is not much researched in Indian context. Few of the research
ideas in this field are:

1. Attitude of household investors towards personal finance and its relationship with
their retirement planning capabilities.
(Retirement planning could be replaced with any other component of personal
finance, like liquidity planning, investment management, risk management, estate
planning and expenditure management)

Page 3
Emerging Areas of Research

2. Women investors/rural investors/senior citizens in different geographical areas

3. Role of personal financial advisors and attitude of stakeholders towards them
4. Indigenous approach to personal finance could also be taken up to do a path-
breaking research using Bhartiya Model of Financial Literacy (BMFL)
5. Cultural context in financial literacy for various countries of the world

Apart from personal finance, Bhartiya model of digital literacy (BMDL) and Holistic Electoral
Competency Rating (HECR) could also be considered.

Another theme for people in finance is Holistic Decision Making Model (HDMM). For HR there
is one more area that is Work Life Natural Fusion (WLNF).

 Sprituality and Concisouness:

The workplace Spirituality – Spiritual Intelligence better predictor for organizational
performance: At the beginning of the twentieth century, psychologists discovered ways
and means to measure intelligence that developed into an obsession with Intelligence
quotient. Early 1990's, Daniel Goleman coined the term emotional intelligence.
According to him, ‘Emotional intelligence is a fundamental prerequisite for the suitable
use of intelligent quotient’, where IQ contributes 20% in success EQ contributes 80% in
success. Also, there is enough collective evidence from psychology, neurology,
anthropology and cognitive science to illustrate that there is a third ‘Q', ‘SQ' or Spiritual
Intelligence. Ahmadian et al. (2013) define spiritual intelligence in that “it is the ability
in a person to buildup dream and also give a will power to accomplish that vision”.
Spiritual Intelligence is what we use to develop our longing and competence for
implication, vision and value. It allows us to dream and to strive. It underlies the things
we believe in, and the role our beliefs and values play in the actions that we take and the
way we shape our lives (Danah Zohar, I. N. Marshall , 2001).

Spiritual intelligence is certain for human who comes through knowledge of a

transcendent dimension and this flexible intelligence empowers him to be creative and

Page 4
Emerging Areas of Research

changed its own rules and roles and also enables him to carry out numerous reforms and
reshape the situation in the best way (Sadaf Estanesti, 2016).

Robert Emmons (2009) defined spiritual intelligence as "the adaptive use of spiritual
information to facilitate everyday problem solving and goal attainment" He originally
proposed 5 components of spiritual intelligence:

1. the capacity for transcendence

2. the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness;
3. the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a
sense of the sacred
4. the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and
5. the capacity to engage in virtuous behavior (to show forgiveness, to
express gratitude, to be humble, to display compassion)

Spiritual intelligence is the mind’s capacity to handle substantial and spiritual aspects of
life. According to previous studies, spiritual intelligence can be effective in the promotion
of different variables. One of them is organizational performance and sustainability.
Research shows that there is positive and significant relationship between spiritual
intelligence and organizational performance.

The Spiritual intelligence empowers people to be creative and be able to change the
situation in the best way. With the advent of spirituality to organizations, better behavior
will be available. People those have high level of spiritual intelligence are better able to
cope with stress and uncertain situations. Spiritual intelligence of employees creates
positive impact on organizational health. It plays a significant role in determining
organizational success. Spirituality at work place can increase the productivity of
employees and organization and is also required for growth of good management in the
organization.

There are 12 principles of Spiritual intelligence which are used by organizations

to improve their performance. These are:

1. Self awareness

Page 5
Emerging Areas of Research

2. Spontaneity
3. Being vision and value led
4. Holism
5. Empathy
6. Celebration of diversity
7. Autonomy
8. Humbleness
9. Curiosity
10. Ability to reframe
11. Belongingness
12. Positive use of adversity

Spiritual intelligence is an aptitude to access higher meanings, principles,

enduring purposes, and unconscious facts of the personality and to implant these
meanings, values, and purposes to help live more affluent and more creative lives.
Symbols of high Spiritual Intelligence comprise a talent of out of the box
thinking, humbleness, and an access to energies that come from something
beyond self-centeredness. Today workplace spirituality is very important and if
organizations want to sustain in dynamic environment than they had to become
spiritually intelligent. Hence, this can be an area of research which needs to be
explored more in other domains as well.

Further, one more research area related with spiritual intelligence is ‘influence of
spiritual intelligence as a predictor of academic achievement for university
students’. Besides being important for organizations, spiritual intelligence also
has influence in the academic arena where it acts as a predictor of their academic
achievements.

Thousands of students enter into higher education every year with high hopes of
having a good and stable career. Many of them meet their expectations, while
others keep on struggling even for basics. Some enters with expectations of
developing their social life and try to discover their true potentials. With the
Page 6
Emerging Areas of Research

changing scenario, students are becoming more and more impatient. They are not
able to handle failure and rejections which forces them to commit suicide,
misbehave with others, indulge in negative activities and so on. There could be
many factors responsible for all this, but one factor that plays very important role
is spiritual intelligence. The goal of higher education is to retain as many students
as possible with good academic achievements, one of the many challenges that
students are facing. Physical change and mental development are closely related
with spiritual and emotional intelligence. Higher education is the stage where
students extend their relationships beyond parents and family, and are intensely
influenced by their peers and the outside world. If the level of spiritual
intelligence is high among students, they will able to deal with the stress well.

MHRD (Oct 2011 working group report) on elementary education and literacy
12th five year plan (2012-2017) lays emphasis on adolescent education and
providing good programs, practical recommendations and proposed financial
outlay for adolescence well-being. Students with high Spiritual intelligence have
the capacity to ask and think beyond boundaries, modify the system, work
effectively in different situations, and become innovative. It encourages students
to see the bigger picture of their surrounding world. Spiritual intelligence should
be taught to the students before they experience the damaging effect of superficial
stress.

Mishra and Vashishth (2014) gave five components of SQ, which are as follows:

1. It has the capacity to go above the physical and material world

2. It has the ability to experience high level of consciousness
3. It can sanctify each day experience
4. It helps in utilizing spiritual resources for problem solving
5. It helps them in becoming more virtuous

The spiritual intelligence has different skills through which students can develop
high self-awareness in which they must have an awareness of own worldwide,
Page 7
Emerging Areas of Research

awareness of own their life mission, awareness of own values hierarchy,

complexity of inner thoughts and mainly awareness of self-ego. They should have
universal awareness towards interconnectedness of life, awareness of their
limitations, awareness of spiritual laws, and they should experience transcendent
oneness. They must have higher self mastery where they must have a commitment
to spiritual growth, keeping higher self in charge, sustaining their faith towards
something and seek guidance from the spirit. Lastly, they must have social
mastery where they need a wise and effective spiritual teacher/mentor who can
help them in making wise decisions and help in aligning with the flow of life.

Spiritual intelligence adds meaning to the life of students and allows them to use
their IQ and EQ because only Spiritual quotient is capable of thinking beyond the
limit and to connect with a brand-new idea. Hence, we can say that spiritual
intelligence refers to the skills, abilities and behaviors required to develop and
maintain a relationship to the ultimate source and helps in succeeding in the
search of meaning in life.

Page 8
Emerging Areas of Research

SUMMARY

 The dynamic nature of management domain calls for continuous adaption of emerging
ideas, thus ample opportunities for researchers to have an exciting time exploring
emerging ideas
 Interdisciplinary approach to research in management can not only management teachers
in their professional excellence but also help their students in building their career

Page 9