India has some of the best management professors

It’s strange but fact that India has some of the best management professors which are very much in demand all over the world management institutes. If you go deeper into the statistics you can easily find Indian professors posted as deans in dozens of top international business schools. It’s no mean achievement for Indian professors if you keep in mind that modern business management does not originate or has any Indian background but comes from the very countries where Indians have proved their worth.

The management programs have been expending during last fifty-sixty years in countries like America, Australia, England, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and many Asian countries including India, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore etc.  India probably leads as far the number of business institutes is concerned as out of approximately 13,000 business institutes all over the world India accounts for 3000 plus schools. But the fact remains despite having world famous professors and such a big number of business schools Indian institutes do not have reputation as they were expected to have with all the IIMs, BITs and other reputed private sector institutes here. I was listening to talk show on a television channel about lack of good higher education in India today itself especially in the field of business management. 

Let me accept the fact that all those professors I mentioned in the beginning have all been settled in the USA or Europe after completing their degrees from reputed institutes during 60s or 70s and the reason for their migration is as usual the lack of infrastructure in India and also the institutes like Yale, Howard, MIT, Wharton and Kellogg etc providing scholarships for higher courses to Indians easily. Here I would like to mention Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow, as I have my personal reasons associated with this university. 

Professor Ghoshal

I can provide you a whole list of famous professors in developed countries but that is not an important point here. However I would like to mention one of my most favorite Professor Sumant Ghoshal born in Kolkata in 1948, a graduate of Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management worked initially in oil sector but soon left for US for Fulbright Fellowship and Humphrey Fellowship and later received his PhD from MIT Sloan School of Management and later a doctorate in business management from Howard business school.  A true academician professor Ghoshal the great management guru along with Dr. C K Prahalad gave number of original principles of management to the world of management. Incidentally Dr. Ghoshal was founding dean of Indian Business School of Hyderabad but he left this world at an early at the age of 53 at the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, in Britain.  He worked at INSEAD Business School in France, Advanced Institute of Management Research in the U.K and as a Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School, besides as a member of The Committee of Overseers of the Harvard Business School. 

While on the subject I must add Dr. C K Prahalad for his great contribution ‘Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid’ the world famous book on management that showed its impact in the entire world popularly known as BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) especially in third world countries. Besides Dr. Ghoshal and Dr. C K Prahalad other renowned management gurus working as professors in world famous institutes and contributing with their high caliber management capabilities, published research papers and books during last two decades we can quote number of professors working in Howard, London Business School, IESE Business School, Spain, Chicago Booth, Tuck School of Business, Cornell University, Smith school of business, Maryland, Babson College, Boston etc.

Howard the Indian connection

There is no doubt Howard has long term relations with Indian business management education. Howard was associated with IIM Ahmadabad during its establishment in 1966 as many of its professors were trained in Howard and many professors came from Howard to teach the initial batches. Let me tell you a crucial point at this stage the famous ‘case method’ which is one of the most famous models of management programs started by IIM Ahmadabad was basically a gift by professors from Howard. And this would be interesting to note at this point that Howard that taught management to Indians has an Indian as dean the top post since 2010. Professor Nitin Nohria is only the second professor to reach to this top post of Howard and first ever from India in the history of Howard. Incidentally, Professor Nohria the writer of management books came into limelight when he coauthored a post ‘It’s time to make management a true profession’ with Professor Rakesh Khurana in 2008. In this write up the emphasis was on making management a true profession like medical, legal, and auditing. In other words they wanted to have a national level agency for management like other professions already have that make them responsible toward their professions safeguarding the code of ethics towards management as a profession and making every manager responsible for his decisions. These two were the pioneer for oath taking by the managers just like other professions that later came into practice all over the world.

Professor Datar

We can mention another eminent business guru of Howard at this point Professor Shrikant Datar he is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Accounting, started his academic journey from Mumbai University and IIM Ahmadabad. And if you’re interested to know his qualifications he has degrees in Chartered accountancy, Cost accountancy, two Masters Degrees and PhD from Stanford. It will be quite relevant to quote here that his parents took part in freedom fighting of India and were influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. Datar proudly quotes Gandhi and his innovative ways he used during freedom movements of India while delivering lectures to young managers of Howard. 

In fact Datar has been in Howard even before Nohria joined in 2008 and he was one of the authors of ‘Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads’ along with Professor David Garvin and Professor Patrick Cullen, a research based on six top management institutes of the world published in 2010. The book by Datar has a deep research on management studies done during nineteenth and twentieth century their weaknesses and development plans in the present time. However, let me inform you besides these two there are other fifteen professors from India working right now at Howard and almost all of these are at the highest level.   

Conclusion

My question is while our human resources development ministry has already announced programs to improve higher education or the emphasis is on skill why not bring our top class brains back to our country and take their help making these programs successful. We have already appointed University Grant Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the new education scheme is expected to come into force in near future. I feel our brilliant academicians working in different countries should be brought back and handed over the reins of education to them independently. I hope our government will take help of world famous professors to improve our education standards. This step will make our standard better and also help converting our institute bring students from different countries.