The first paper, ?Small Businesses Survival and Success: An Exploration of Socioeconomic Motivators and Restraints? by Manoj K Sharma and Poonam Sharma, investigates the socioeconomic motivators and restraining factors of these businesses. The authors use a semi-structured approach to gather qualitative and quantitative data for their study in the regions of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. The results of the study indicate significant influence of all the four factors?need for supporting family, government support, perceived alternative employment opportunities and satisfaction from self-employment contributing to work satisfaction for increasing business performance. The authors also analyze the restraining factors such as high interest rates, shortage of qualified labor and staff, tax burden, to name a few, which create avoidable impediments. In a country that is largely agrarian, rural and semi-urban areas need a set of support measures that can provide self-sustenance to small business entrepreneurs.

Employees form the backbone of any enterprise. Their contribution is even more critical in technology-intensive sectors like automobile manufacturing. Most studies attribute organizational success to superior customer management strategies, rarely looking at internal customers, i.e., employees. The second paper, ?Strategic Orientation Towards Internal Customers: The Success Mantra of Volkswagen? by Manoj Kumar Sharma and Sonali Sharma, looks at how orientation towards employees creates superior firm performance. The authors take the example of Volkswagen to explain the relationship between employee compensation and sales revenue. The results of the regression analysis reveal a positive impact of compensation strategy on sales revenue. According to the authors, this is possible due to the company?s belief in the four pillars of employee satisfaction: co-determination and employee empowerment, employee training, women participation and healthcare facilities to the workforce. The company is known to provide a good working climate to its staff, designing adequate feedback systems so as to hear their opinions, motivating employees to take initiative and be creative by using differential wage pay system as reward for individual and team efforts.

We are witnessing heightened involvement by companies in creating a sustainable environment. This is in line with balancing commercial interests with social responsibility. The third paper, ?Managing Business, the Sustainable Way? by Nitu Saxena, discusses the very important topic of business sustainability, which is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. There are several ways in which companies can contribute to creating a sustainable environment, such as limiting the use of plastic, installing effluent treatment plants, using creative methods in manufacturing, and using recyclable materials as far as possible, to cite a few examples. The author explains the initiatives taken by the Tata Group and Mahindra & Mahindra and illustrates how these companies are taking responsibility towards societal issues at large through investments in sustainable development programs.

The last paper, ?Overcoming the Challenges Faced by University Students Pursuing Business Research in Presenting Meaningful and Relevant Literature? by Polycarpe Feussi, Emmanuel Innocents Edoun and Lawrence Kok, looks at a very different but relevant area in higher education. The study presents the challenges faced by students pursuing higher education and doctoral programs in South Africa. The low success rates at the Doctoral level are attributable to difficulties in conducting a structured literature review that leads to identification of research gaps. The authors assert that it is the carryover effect of poor foundations at the Master?s level. The same set of students on joining the doctoral program are exposed to the rigorous academic and research methodology requirements at the doctoral level and face innumerable challenges. The authors conduct a quantitative longitudinal study over a trimester consisting of 103 research students in three different private institutions in South Africa. These students are subjected to three different assessments across the trimesters. The first assessment is to write an abbreviated literature review, the second experiment is to review the literature on the relevant constructs, and the third test is to explore literature on each construct and variables singularly and draw a matrix indicating independent and dependent variables. The results of the three tests prove that the average students have not been able to do well in the first test, while in the second and third tests, there was a marginal improvement. The study reveals the fundamental challenges of higher education system in South Africa. In their recommendations, the authors suggest that research supervisors should allocate more time to guiding research scholars if quality has to improve. Independent work carried out by poorly trained scholars will create further damage to the weakened foundations.