My initial comments at the brainstorming session on emerging areas for research in Management at the Centre for Educational and Social Studies (CESS) Nagarbhavi Bangalore on 1st of Dec 2018
Good afternoon Friends,
I am delighted to be here and am grateful to Dr Sridhar and Professor Gowrisha who have permitted me to share my thoughts. In the day before yesterday’s ‘Deccan Herald’ there is an article with a very arresting title ‘MBA, in its current form, is dead’. Of the two quotes in this article, one is from Google founder Larry Page who felt the way MBA’s approach business is ‘stupid’. Pay Pal Owner Peter Thiel has said he found MBA’s ‘highly extroverted people with low conviction’ and with ‘extremely herd-like thinking and behaviour’ While the need for better research is universal, I think it is critical for the long-term survival of management education in India. MBA can survive only when we have more meaningful research. It is strange and not a nice thing to say, however, the fact is I have met faculty members and researchers pursuing PhD programs who are not clear about the fact that theory is nothing but practice or practical applications that have been researched.
Today industry does not have any respect for management researchers, sadly, neither does society in general, or Government. I think there is a great potential to earn the respect of all these groups if only research was focused on solving real-world problems. We need to make the research relevant and rigorous at the same time. I think we must not restrict our research to ‘Business management’ and use the broader expression of ‘Management’ which will include many other sectors including government where research can provide some high impact answers.
This DH article I mentioned uses the term ‘physics envy’ to describe one of the problems with Management research. Physics envy for those who might not have heard the expression is the over-concentration on statistical tools, mathematical models or rigour of research in general. Initially Business education was designed to be only practical, however, around 1959 two reports called the Ford and Carnegie reports found that business education was not grounded in scientific methods. Thanks to these reports all management research has been focusing on the rigour of research that everything else is forgotten. This is a western problem which we have embraced in India also. We must understand that most reputed journals are of western origin and they have those templates. In India also all the top ranking B schools employ professors who have been educated in the western world with those methods. While we must respect western education for many wonderful things, we must recognize that it may not be most useful for us now. What we need is research that fits with our ethos, culture, social system, history and present economic situation. The difficulty for many great researchers is that while they want to be locally relevant, they also want publication in reputed International journals which evaluate articles with western frameworks. The gap between India’s economic reality and Management research is really wide in my opinion.
Theory of Indian Management and Indian theory of Management are both urgently needed. I borrowed this expression from a Chinese article which discusses management research in China as they have been at these crossroads a decade ago. What I mean by theory of Indian Management is to use universal models or western frameworks to research Indian organizations and come up with findings useful to Indian organizations. Indian theory of management will be the result of research using Indian frameworks and paradigms. The sources for such constructs will be 1. Scriptures/History, for example, Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana etc. Gurucharan das has explored the concept of Dharma in his book ‘the difficulty of being good’ to some extent. I think exploring the concept of Dharma in Business decision making, for example, is an opportunity. 2. Indian Practices – Partha system, Bargaining, the hierarchy in Indian business families are some examples. The 3. Source of such themes could be what is happening around us like demonetization, technology adoption leapfrogging etc. It should not be some nostalgic research, it should be aimed at solving current problems even if we are using ancient wisdom.
The challenge for such type of research is that publication may become difficultly unless we have very good and respected journals who have strict quality parameters and yet encourage a different way of thinking. When we are thinking about the Indian theory of management, we need to start with Qualitative studies and only later move to Quantitative or other approaches.
Management research can learn a lot from ‘Ayurveda’. Ayurveda was not respected in India for a long time, however, the effectiveness of this type of medicine has been proven using western methods or frameworks and this has helped Ayurveda to become a respected therapy even in the western world.
In my understanding, the first thing we need to do is to expose our researchers to management books written by Indian practitioners, for example, Bangalore based Dr.Subhash Sharma, marketing researcher Rama Bijapurkar, Gopalakrishnan of Tata sons and even Abhijit Bhaduri’s Digital Tsunami. I have a colleague who is working on converting some old books, Subroto Bagchi’s– Professional and Gopalakrishnan’s ‘‘As the penny drops’ into a workshop because these are very useful and essential for every Indian business student, which sadly do not figure in any syllabus.
The thought I want to leave behind is that we need to move to research whether abstract, empirical or practical which is rooted in the Indian context. I am sure there are many many possibilities, however, just as an example I would like to share some topics/areas
1. International trade analytics to explore global market opportunities for specific Indian products
2. Is Partha system really effective to manage a multi-locational business?
3. Understanding personality and ‘Vishnu Padam’ – the traditional game
4. Is there a western way and Indian way to manage senior citizens and which is more effective?
5. How technology brings transparency or not in public distribution or procurement
6. Local, regional, national and International brands- the long-term / or is industry consolidation always possible?
7. Are Indian women more suited for the gig economy and why has it not arrived etc. etc.
In my opinion CESS should consider the broader expression of 'management' and have government, public institutions as clients for research. The need to orient faculty and build their capacity to do India oriented research is a felt need that CESS can address.
