Case study' is a term that has been abused and misused in the management academia, resulting in unnecessary confusion and acceptance of works that do not necessarily advance knowledge. For decades now, case studies have been written with the objective of explaining phenomena, rather than that of enriching and contributing to them. This objective led to the requirement for teaching note, that simply elaborates the already known concepts about a specific subject.The unimaginably exponential disruptions are affecting not only businesses but also societies, economies, ecologies and, of course, individuals. It is almost impossible to predict anything using linear thinking. The changes have thrust upon us opportunities to re-examine case writing from a research point of view. Although case study research is a well-known methodology in research, we cannot discard the pros of teaching cases. South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases (SAJBMC) has taken the responsibility to bridge this gap between teaching cases and case study research by encouraging case writers to link theory with their cases. Since August 2019, we have refrained from accepting pure teaching cases and have fully discarded the need for teaching notes. Moreover, what SAJBMC looks away from are those cases written on the concepts and theories taught in MBA courses. We cannot emphasize enough how important this decision is. This step has been taken to not just increase the quality of the cases but also increase their relevance in international academia and research. This move has pushed good case writers a step forward to become great case writers, and we can see that our efforts are bearing favourable results.

Women’s empowerment of rural mothers is little understood. Through the sequential review approach of systematic literature review (SLR)–Bibliometric–SLR, the study explores and analyses the literature with regards to ‘women-empowerment’, ‘mother’ and ‘rural’. The aim is to identify the future research agendas in the said direction. The literature extracted through the initial SLR process of inclusion and exclusion criteria from the SCOPUS database has been analysed by VOSviewer software, resulting in eight clusters of the author keywords comprising 60 papers. Co-occurrence for the author’s keywords is used for bibliometric analysis. The eight clusters are further classified into three themes. In the next level of analysis, the author keywords with low link strength and co-occurrences are examined to establish future research agendas. Finally, SLR is used again to identify the journals with an impact factor of 3.0 or more, reducing the number of articles to 30. The process identifies journals for potential future publications. Unlike conventional bibliometric and SLR studies, a sequential combination of the two techniques has been used to explore the future scope of research. Most of the current literature focuses on maternal and children’s growth and health related to women empowerment in the rural geographies of the global south. However, various other phenomena in the context of sociocultural norms and socio-economic conditions of the diverse geographies are under-researched. We identify some under-researched areas for the research possibilities and the ‘good’ journals in which such articles may be published.

Incarceration is a traumatic life experience for both convicted and non-convicted individuals and life in prison is not easy to get through. However, prison administrations often establish different avenues for the prisoners to help them navigate through their incarceration. One such avenue is prison libraries. This study explores the influence of the prison library in the lives of eight incarcerated individuals, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. The study is based on the concept of the ‘whole person librarianship’ while using a phenomenological approach. The analysis resulted in the emergence of three broad themes: ‘Coming to term with incarceration’, ‘Library, a ray of hope’ and ‘Reinventing self through books’. The study expands our understanding of how the prison library can be a place that reduces stress and increases positive mental health by serving the ‘whole person’. Furthermore, it reduces stress and anxiety related to the state of liminality created by incarceration and gives inmates a purpose beyond prison. Thus, it helps them in making meaning of their situation, being mindful of themselves and their surroundings, healing them in the process, and supports their well-being. The findings suggest that books help the inmates to navigate their lives during incarceration.

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze the current scenario of private labels from consumers and retailers’ point of view and provide inputs to the retailers that will help them to increase their profitability. Profitability for retailers is a resultant of efficient inventory management in a limited space. This paper studies consumer’s purchase behavior and facilitates retailers in their decision-making of the dilemma between the appropriate mix of national brands (NBs) and private labels to increase their profitability. Retailers will be able to do cross-merchandising of the categories of the goods having strong associations and will increase the shelf space of the products, which are preferred by customers. Design/methodology/approach Market basket analysis was done for 1,223 transactions including two or more product categories in each transaction. In total, 564 products were studied and these products were further divided into 23 categories. Lift analysis was done 4 times to find an association between the products of all the categories. Findings The results find a strong association between some categories and advocate the placement of these combinations together – one being a NB and another private label. Research limitations/implications Analysis of only a limited set of brands and their product categories for a value retailer cross-merchandising. Originality/value The analysis of sales transactions will help retailers in determining the associations between product categories. This association will be helpful in placing their private labels vis-à-vis NBs to do cross-merchandising and allocating judicial space to the product assortment to increase their profitability.