Updated on July 21, 2016
In December 2007, Ministry of HRD took management sector watchers by surprise when they announced Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) faculty Professor Pankaj Chandra as the Director of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Having completed his doctoral studies from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1989, Professor Chandra was the youngest Indian to be appointed as the Director of prestigious IIMs.
Prof Chandra has a distinguished track record. He started his career at McGill University in Montreal in 1988 and received his tenure in 1994. He worked at IIM-A for more than 14 years from 1994 to 2007. During his stay at IIMA, he was the Chairperson of the Doctoral Programme, and the Chairperson of the Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship. He has also been associated with University of Geneva, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, USA; International University of Japan, Japan and Renmin University in Beijing, China. His courses & teaching was consistently rated among the top 5 per cent both at IIM-A and McGill.
MBAUniverse.com travelled to the Silicon Valley of India – Bangalore, to interview Dr Chandra on a host of issues related to management sector. Here are the excerpts from a candid and thought-provoking interview with Dr Chandra.
Q- You have been associated with IIM A for a decade. Now you have spent six months as the Director of IIM-B. What is unique about IIM-B?
A- The most crucial aspect of IIM-B is that it has excellent and world class faculty with interests in contemporary issues.
Another fact which makes IIM B very special is that it is very nimble in its execution. The institute is able to conceptualize and execute its programmes and initiatives far more quickly and effectively. As a result it is able to undertake many contemporary initiatives.
The third thing is that it is located in a fantastic city- Bangalore, Silicon Valley of India where there are lots of opportunities in every area. Bangalore today is the best location for a B-school in India. The access to industry is great. Telecom, IT, Avionics, Manufacturing, SME…they are all here. It’s a fantastic environment! There is a lot of entrepreneurial energy in the city. Even the Bangalore weather is great! We can function around the year, which helps us link up globally.
Q- Before we talk about management education, we wanted your view on our education system. There has been a lot of talk on Employability issue of late. Industry is saying that they aren’t getting employable talent from our undergraduate University education, and even from majority of our B-schools. What your view on this issue?
A- I have a slightly different view on this issue. I believe that in our academic institutions, education should come first. Academic institutions are there to provide high quality education and not necessarily train students for a trade. University education should prepare students with good conceptual knowledge that will prepare them for the long run. That’s their primary job. Once the students are strong on their concepts, and are good at learning, then it needs only a bit of polishing to make them industry-ready.
Industry cannot forsake its responsibility to train people for their immediate requirements. They must invest in training and development of their talent. Look at Japan where the industry spends so much resources to develop its manpower. That’s what Indian industry must do.
Q- But are Indian universities and colleges providing the right academic inputs?
A- Perhaps not - the Indian universities and colleges are not providing the right environment. A lot needs to be done at both policy level and execution level to set our education system right.
Q- Lets focus on management education. If we survey the management education domain, we see a lot of asymmetry in quality of education offered by top tier B-schools and the rest. What is your view?
A- I would like to give some historical perspective to this issue. Management education is a recent phenomenon in India. The first management institutes came into being in early 1950s. Then two IIMs were set up in early 1960s. In last 10 years, we have seen a massive increase in number of management institutes. Today the numbers stand at over 1900 B-schools.
What is important to note is that most of these institutes are offering general management education, where students are coming with very little experience, and we provide them all functional inputs like operations, finance, marketing, HR etc. This model of general management education needs a lot of resources, especially in terms of faculty. MBA education is about 10-12 disciplines including Finance, Human Resources, Organizational Behaviour and others. B-schools need a lot of skilled faculty members to teach these areas. IIM B has a faculty of about 100 people (full & part time) to offer general management education. Not many institutes have resources for having a large number of faculty members, which are certainly required to offer quality general management education. This is the problem area for this sector.
That’s why the top 15-20 institutes who have committed resources of fifty plus faculty are turning out to be better than the rest.
Shortage of faculty is the biggest bottleneck that Indian management education is facing. This leads to the question that should all B-schools offer general management education? Or should they understand the constraints and focus on a particular sector.
Q- So are sectoral B-schools, that specialize in an area, the way forward for India…Wouldn’t it defeat the idea of holistic education?
A- Look, there is nothing written in stone that every management school should be a general management oriented. Yes, I think the way forward for a large number of B-schools, who want to excel, is to focus on a sector or a functional area. We need to change the model of management education in India. Some institutes should focus on general management education, rest need to specialize and excel in their chosen area. The by word is what is the best type of management school for my resources and that allows me to deliver quality education.
Smaller B-schools can offer MBA-Telecom or MBA-Agri Business. Even regional B-schools that focus on local industry needs, e.g. executive education for manufacturing firms. With just 20 faculty, it can emerge as a top School since this strategy allows them to focus and use their limited resources effectively.
Indian management institutes need to remodel and evolve. The next phase of growth of management sector will come from new model B-schools who are specialists and not just clone of IIMs.
Q- From an MBA aspirant point of view, a good MBA is typically seen as a shortcut to a top coporate job. How would you explain to them as to what management education is all about?
A- Management education is about learning how to build and mould innovative organizations. In order to do that, one needs to learn what are the functions of the organization; what are the ways in which people become part of the organization and how do they work. Management education is about understanding how organizations contribute towards their objectives. It is about learning the tools of analysis, about building managerial perspectives and about understanding how the economy works within a society.
Management education is not only about industry and corporates. The concepts of management are equally applicable to any kind of organization whether it is a hospital, NGO, museum or a public administration office etc.
To get some understanding of what management is all about, I would recommend that youngsters become part of an organization early – it can be a corporate, NGO, or even a student’s body. That’s where they can understand how objectives are set, how planning is done, how people come together and how organizations work to meet those goals.
Q- Coming back to IIM-B, what is your vision for institute?
A- In next ten years, I would like IIM-B to become a well known research oriented institute in the world where the focus of the institute is generating knowledge and creating a high quality learning ambience. The focus of the institute will be on the problems and opportunities of emerging markets, all around the world.
In ten years time, we would like to become leading knowledge generator in the emerging market space, globally. All our strategy, plans and initiatives are aligned to this goal.
My role is to lay the foundation for this journey.
Q- How does IIM-B compare with top global institutes today?
A- We are certainly at par in our output. Our students are sought after by same global recruiters that hire at Wharton or Harvard. Of course, we would like to increase our number of the students at our institute upto 1,000 students like Harvard and Stanford. But we need more faculty. To increase these numbers of students, we will have to also increase the faculty members to about 200. Recruiting a top faculty is our biggest challenge.
Q- What is the problem there…
A- Our compensation structure is the problem. We are currently governed by the scales of the government that are not very attractive. For institutes like ours which are no longer seeking funds from Government, we should be allowed flexibility in setting faculty compensation. If we get that flexibility, we can easily attract the best faculty in the world. India is the center of global business and research and that will help.
Once we hire 100 additional faculty members, we will undergo a complete transformation. We can have 1000 students studying, and our research output will increase dramatically. I will like IIM-B to get ready for this journey.
Q- Talking about IIM-B’s flagship two-year Post Graduate Programme, what kind of a candidate does the institute look for?
A- We want a person who is very curious and bright, and who understands why he/she wants to pursue business education. We need a student who has a passion to connect the learning from management education into a benefit for the society, in addition to benefit for himself/ herself and the corporate sector. We want a student who is an action oriented person, and is a good citizen too.
When I talk about batch profile, we would like a good mix of bright, young, energetic youth from diverse backgrounds. It bothers me that 90% of classroom is made of students from engineering background. Students would have diverse and broad learning if they have classmates from different perspectives.
In addition, we would like to attract bright young people who want to become entrepreneurs.
Q- Increasingly, we are seeing more students with work experience getting admitted to top B-schools? Will we see more candidates with work-experience getting admitted, as against fresh candidates?
A- Yes, there has been a rise of candidates with work experience getting admitted to IIMs. In my view, this is a good phenomenon. Candidates who have worked for a while are more mature and are able to understand the roles of organizations and workers better. But, at IIM-B, we will like our class to be diverse. It should be a mix of some very talented and bright students who may have no experience, and the others can be candidates with experience.
Q- In last five years, there have been several new management programmes launched. IIM-A, IIM-C have launched one-year MBA for working executives with 6-7 years of experience, while ISB Hyderabad and a few others have started offing a one-year compressed MBA for candidates with 2-3 years of work ex. And then there is the traditional two-year MBA. How will these programmes evolve from here…
A- I think there is a lot of space in management education in India, so to each one his own. But my feeling is younger people need more inputs. That's why fresh graduates or people with less amount of work experience would require a two year management programme. A shorter programme (of one-year) for those having less than say 3-years of experience is short changing the candidate in terms of learning.
One year executive programmes is better for people who have significant experience, say 7-8 years of work experience.
The key issue is that one-year MBA should not be just a compressed version of two-year programme, but should be structured differently for different objectives.
Q- What role do you see for e-learning management education models in India?
A- E-learning can be a useful way to disseminating information, and scarce faculty resources. But education is about a transformational experience. It is about engaging at a one-to-one level and moulding the mindset. That’s not something that e-learning in its present form can do. But in future anything is possible.
Q- Finally, what would be you message to deans and directors of B-schools who genuinely wish to improve their offering?
A- I think the most important role of a Director is to build a base of good faculty members. Until and unless a B-school has strong faculty, they will be constrained to offer a good educational programme. Director and management of a B-school must focus on faculty development.
As a Director of IIM-B, faculty development is my focus no 1.
