Download COPY FOR “THE TELEGRAPH” OF April 24 2006

COPY FOR “THE TELEGRAPH” OF April 24 2006
“Golden Jubilee of Management in India” by S L RAO
The change in attitudes today to family and non-family managers is striking.
In 1971 M K Raju challenged Lala Charat Ram of the Sri Ram family business
to become President of the All India Management Association. Raju won and
became President of AIMA for the second time. Since then top-notch managers
have emerged from family businesses as they have from among employees but
few have gone on to become Presidents of AIMA. Local management associations
have had a higher proportion of family managers as Presidents. The
management movement led by AIMA has promoted the professionalization of
management irrespective of whether the manager is an owner or not.
Management education began in the early 1960’s in Caclutta, Delhi and
Bombay Universities and then in the IIM’s (followed by over a thousand
government recognized management institutions today mostly of indifferent
quality). There is some misconception that only a MBA (or equivalent) makes a
professional manager.
Is management a profession at all? It does not have a closed and controlled
entry, with a guild to regulate admissions and publish rules that must be complied
with. Anyone can become or be called a manager. There are no minimum
educational or other qualifications and no entry tests to be passed. There is no body
that can disbar a manager, as there are professional associations and guilds to
disbar a chartered accountant, company secretary, lawyer, architect or doctor.
While there is a body of knowledge, there are no rules as such that regulate the
manager. There are no fundamental truths that can be said to apply to management
forever. Any enterprise, indeed any group of people who are in an organization, has
to be managed if it is to be effective in achieving its objectives. It has to do it
efficiently if it is to make its resources deliver more. AIMA has succeeded in
defining professional management as consisting of an ethical approach to achieve
maximum efficiency for effective achievement of goals.
After Enron, India like many others has formulated rules for corporate
governance, or the conduct of top management. Some companies have such rules for
all employees. Most have charters for Boards of Directors. Others have conventions,
like non-ostentation in work (for example, everyone traveling by air does so only by
economy class), and in personal lives, not paying bribes, etc. There are core rules
whose violation means losing the job. Many companies have now written out
whistleblower policies that protect an employee who points out violations by others
in the company. But there are no perennial truths in the practice of management. Its
freedom of entry and this lack of core truths are what make it difficult to label
management as a profession. But there can be management professionals.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s government suggested creating AIMA. It was to promote
professional management and training and education in it and to pioneer new ideas.
It was one among the many different institutions being created to enable India to
govern itself and its activities wisely and in conformity with the public interest.
Local management associations in Madras, Bombay and Bangalore had preceded
AIMA. AIMA has since adopted as its motto the promotion of excellence in
management. At a function in Delhi to mark the beginning of its golden jubilee year,
the President of India declared February 21 as Management Day, thus recognizing
the centrality of good management to the country.
AIMA has been at the fore in widening the scope of management. An important
activity of AIMA illustrates this, the conferring of Lifetime and JRD Tata corporate
leadership awards. The first Lifetime Awardee was Prakash Tandon, the first
Indian CEO of Hindustan Lever and the doyen among professional managers in
India. Others included V Krishnamurthy, the most outstanding among public sector
managers. The early JRD Tata awardees include Narayana Murthy (in a sunrise
industry), and Deepak Parekh (in financial services when they were still not
recognized as a booming sector). Dr R A Mashelkar, then as now Director-General
of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research was another. AIMA was
recognizing that scientific research and its good management made a major
difference to business and the community.
By instituting awards for outstanding management in the civil services, AIMA
extended the concept of professional management to non-business activities.
Awardees have included S R Rao for his work in cleaning plague ridden Surat, Dr
Samarjit Jana, a pioneer in AIDs management among prostitutes in Sonagachi in
Kolkata, an outstanding project manager of the Delhi Metro, Mr Sridharan, and
others. AIMA through these awards has widened the applicability of management
concepts.
AIMA (and local management associations) has made special efforts to reach
theory, research and management experiences through education programmes,
training, competitions and testing to practitioners, teachers and students. Almost
thirty years ago AIMA saw that management education in the IIM’s and later in
universities and private institutes, was not accessible and affordable to many. Many
could not stop working for two years. Others did not have the money to pay the fees.
AIMA started the first distance-learning programme in management in India and is
now pioneering the use of information and telecommunications technologies to make
‘virtual’ classrooms a reality. It aims to have a few good teachers available to very
many students and teachers around the country.
Over the years other institutions have followed its lead in training initiatives for
managers and in management, which have kept pace with changes in the economy.
AIMA has also pioneered in designing and conducting standardized tests for
students, accrediting teachers and managers, for recruitment, etc. The national
games that it conducts have exposed students to competition in simulated situations
of reality.
AIMA also initiated over forty years ago the annual advanced management
programmes for managers. It was the first to induct into these programmes
computer education for senior and older managers. These programmes have kept
pace with the times and they are very different today than when management was a
new concept. “Indian Management”, the monthly management journal from AIMA,
published by “Business Standard” has become a model that many other Asian
countries are seeking to emulate. Its annual management conventions are attended
by over 1000 managers from all over India and neighbouring countries. They
provide a forum for managers to meet informally and to be exposed to the latest
thinking and experiences.
Thus AIMA has propagated and expanded the reach of professional
management. Management education and jobs are now attracting the best and
brightest talent in India. Management books and journals as well as seminars and
conventions attract many subscribers. AIMA has ably achieved its mandate of
propagating professional management and pioneering new ideas. It must now seek
to push even more for excellence so that India can be competitive in a globalizing
world.
Competition defines the challenges of the 21st century. It is now endemic in the
economy. The best skills have a worldwide market. Companies have to benchmark
performance against the best in the world, anticipate changing world scenarios,
whether it is the price of oil, American interest rates, new technologies, new
processes and techniques and democracy in information availability. An apparently
unrelated event can have a serious impact on business. Education, health,
infrastructure, public governance at all levels, have to become increasingly efficient
so that they can be most effective in achieving objectives.
AIMA must seek to apply management concepts in a planned way to
government, small and tiny industries. For this it must add Indian languages to the
purely English language focus of all its work. It must actively engage itself in issues
of good corporate and public governance. It must uphold high ethical conduct and
ostracize venal managers since it cannot disbar them. It must focus on improving
opportunities for women and the socially backward groups. It must be actively
involved in improving the quality of management education so that students who
pay high fees actually get value from the education. Given its effectiveness in the last
half-century, AIMA is well placed to achieve them.
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