Indira Management Review

P. G. Vijairaghavan

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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The economic climate may not have changed dramatically in the last month, but the more important climate of hope and expectation has indeed made a dent in the overall gloom and depressed state in which the country had found itself of late. While there may not be much statistically, to substantiate this positivity yet, there are indications that things are set to improve. One of these is the way the world of business looks at the future. If any indicator were required to prove the optimism of India Inc.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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With this issue, Indira Management Review enters the seventh year of publication. It has been a particularly satisfying time to see the journal grow in popularity - both in terms of readership and contributions from authors whose credibility we value.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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One of the key articles of this issue is on the factors that might affect the growth of companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector - a typical one, being the fertilizer industry. Is growth decided by factors unique to a company - such as the size of the company, or is it also influenced by other factors that might be common to peer units? This is the subject of the effort by R Parvatham and Anuradha Rajendran to discern the truth behind growth, especially in the fertilizer industry.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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The latter part of the 20th century has seen a universal realization of the benefits of a world free of constraining controls on individual economies. Almost all controls have been aimed at keeping foreign goods and services at a safe distance, ostensibly to encourage domestic business in these products. However, have these controls really delivered results for the constraining economy? This is a question that is being attempted to be answered by the lead article in this issue, by Prof. Kishore Kulkarni and Geoff Tennent by taking up the case of Kuwait and examining the results of decontrols on trade in the fading years of the earlier millennium.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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As public administration tries to become more professional in delivering value in the social sector to the citizens, it is appropriate that periodic studies be undertaken to assess the efficacy of such efforts, if only to identify the areas in which the services have been able to do justice to the expectations of the common man and areas in which they have lagged behind. One such study undertaken by Drs. Gopalakrishnan and Rao, tries to analyse the quality of public spending in Karnataka State between 1999 and 2005 and to determine the state of Human Development in the State It certainly shows pointers towards what could be done to better the performance of the State in inching towards achieving public expectations.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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The last century saw the advent of the computer into our lives and the current one has already made computer aided automation an inalienable part of our life, almost an extension of our body, an example being the mobile phone which has become as much a necessity as the clothes we wear. Starting off as the ingenious little calculator which was considered a boon of sorts for those challenged by mathematical calculations, till today, where we find the computer and its various avatars virtually controlling our lives and lifestyles… and artificial intelligence expected to almost run our lives in the coming decade…it certainly has been a long and exciting journey for the computer.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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As business evolves from century to century, and from generation to generation, there is a welcome realization that business can not limit its purpose to making money for its owners. While the predominant profit motive in investing cannot be questioned this proposition is no longer considered fully valid. That the revenues earned by a business organization are part of the pie held by the society as a stakeholder in the business has come to gain acceptance. As such, the need for corporates to return to society atleast a part of what it has given them is accepted as a valid claim on the corporate's profits. But is it always the altruistic motive that sees corporate spending on CSR?

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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With the revival of the Indian economy, recession or the slowdown is not the headline making news,which was the swansong of the last couple of years. With jobs back on the wishlist of most sectors, we are back to discussing management subjects that impact individual sectors and businesses in the economy.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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With this issue IMR steps into its fourth year ; and the unmitigated encouragement from academia and industry, and specially from the innumerable professionals and educationists in the form of their contributions is truly a barometer of the acceptance it has come to enjoy in the portals of the opinion makers of industry and education. Needless to mention, we shall continue to strive to retain and stretch the standards of this publication to reach t h e best there is in knowledge dissemination.

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p. G. Vijairaghavan

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With the Indian economy aligning itself with the world, the need for qualified Managers to take the country to the next level of growth and development was bound to be felt. Over the past few years, there has been a manifold rise in the number of educational groups offering Management education which they claim is the answer to India's stated need. However, of late. Management education in India is coming under the scanner for the quality of knowledge that it has served to dispense and questions have been raised about the mass production of Management graduates in a conveyor belt as it were. And whether the proliferation of Institutes preferring quickfix solutions to India's need are doing a service or otherwise is being debated at various fora. While the Government of India under the leadership of the current Minister for Human Resource Development has initiated many measures to take India out of the morass of a stagnant and in many cases, retroactive system, the debate can only help us in understanding how well we in India are able to cater to growing and changing needs of the economy; and possibly come up with answers too. This issue features two opinions on the educational system, not necessarily related, but certainly not irrelevant in the present context.

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p. G. Vijairaghavan

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Even as we go into the New Year, the news about the world economy is not very encouraging. Worldwide, it seems, recession is taking a foothold and appears well entrenched at least for the time being. Businesses have been downsizing almost as fast as they expanded in the recent years. Forget creation of new jobs; jobs have been lost by the million sending employment figures into a tizzy.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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By all accounts 2009 has been a most eventful one so far, having achieved much for India and lost as much in terms of its economy and life in general. How else do we describe the really depressing forecast for 2008-09 in terms of GDP growth, with many fearing that we might consider ourselves fortunate if we are able to clock even 5% and blessed if we cross 5.5%. But, we may as well call ourselves twice blessed since we did manage to register what must be a whopping, and for some, unbelievable, 6.7% inspite of the circumstances in which we found ourselves during the financial year. While this was good news for a nation starved of smiles, it turns out the same is only helping in keeping our statistics healthy, for, the situation on the ground is not yet so positive. The simple test is whether the fall in inflation (based on WPI) has translated to prices of foodstuff, which really matters for the average citizen. This for various reasons, does not seem to be happening, atleast not yet. Added to this is the fear in many quarters of the negative inflation sliding into deflation, causing more worries for the managers of the economy.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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The Indian growth story which started over a decade ago, seemed like a dream, and no one really wanted to believe that the juggernaut was capable of being harnessed midway by either inflation, the market forces, war, or such like influences. Yet, the dream has been rudely disturbed by, of all things, what we swore by since the 90s - Globalization. We managed to survive the Asian economic crisis in the early part of this century, because we were not fully integrated into the world economy, but now that we are more or less totally integrated, we find it impossible to escape the ill effects of the sub-prime crisis, the world food shortage, the flaring oil prices and such other influences.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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For the past twelve years, Indira has been a household name among management training institutions, with a modest beginning in 1994 in humble sunx)undings in Pune. Having made a mark in the area of professional education, Indira now gears up to achieve bigger things in the world of education. Our foray into Management education has brought in a very clear perception of what it is that the present education system offers the student of the 21^st century in India and what should be on offer if we have to take our education standards to the next higher level. Indeed Management education as we know it is not an exact science, unlike Mathematics or Physics. Is it then an art? We believe not exactly. To our way of thinking, Management is the science of decision making and the art of executing decisions. The laws of Management are mostly writ by the thinking of the customer, the producer, the employer, the employee, the marketer etc. and each of them thinks in his own different way. Besides, it is a dynamic field of study, as it needs to adapt to the ever-changing environment and technologies. The thought processes of all these players, including the environment, when coalesced into one coherent whole gives a management concept its raison de'tre.

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P. G. Vijairaghavan

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One of the barometers of acceptance of the quality of a publication is the response of the writers to it and it is heartening to note the flood of contributions from a cross section of academicians and industry professionals. While the numbers have been encouraging, we have been constrained to filter the ones that really meet the purposes of a journal of this kind - that is to meet the longstanding need for research based inputs to the corporate and academic world at large. In this exercise our review panel has decided to recommend for inclusion in this issue, articles which have relevance over a wide spectrum of management activity - from HR to finance to ethics in business.

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