Dr Bala Balachandran,
Founder and Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management,Chennai, India

Bala Balachandran began his teaching career in 1960 while a graduate student at Annamalai University, India. In 1967 he moved to the University of Dayton and in 1971, to Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he taught management courses while working on his doctorate. In 1973 he joined the Kellogg Graduate School of Management faculty. From 1979-83 he chaired the Department of Accounting and Information Systems; in 1984 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Systems and Decision Sciences. He was also director of the Accounting Research Center until 2006.

Professor Balachandran's teaching interests include managerial accounting, auditing, management information systems, and mathematical programming. He is one of three Kellogg faculty members who started the Information Resource Management Program (IRM) at Northwestern in 1974. He has authored more than 55 research articles and is currently writing a managerial accounting textbook with emphasis on cost management in an automated manufacturing environment. He is department editor in accounting for Management Science, associate editor for The Accounting Review and on the editorial boards of Contemporary Accounting Research, and the Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.

Professor Balachandran's research deals with performance evaluation, cost management, audit planning, allocation models, and forecasting. His recent work includes auditors' legal liability and game theoretic cost allocation models with transfer pricing. His work has earned numerous scholastic honors, awards, and fellowships, and he serves as a consultant to senior management in industry, as well as to the U.S. Air Force, in the areas of accounting, forecasting, and strategic decision support systems. He has provided executive education for various companies and the government and is the program director for "Managing Cost Information for Effective Strategic Decisions," a three-day program conducted at the James L. Allen Center each year during the spring and fall. Realizing the ‘India’ potential, he was instrumental in creating the India Business Club and I formulating its activities at Kellogg, which typically culminates with the annual IBC conference in April. This is very well attended by the who’s who of India’s Corporate Kingdom.

Prof.Bala’s love for his motherland India stems from the days when he served in the NCC during his college days and later during his brief stint in the army in the 60’s. Prof.Bala has been actively involved in setting up Management Institutes in India and was part of the team that recruited the first set of faculty members for IIM Bangalore in the late 60’s. He has been instrumental in designing the MBA Programs at MDI, Gurgaon in early 90s and ISB at Hyderabad at the turn of this century and Great Lakes Institute of Management at Chennai in 2004. He has chaired the Dean Search and Faculty and Curriculum committees at ISB until 2002 and now serves as Founder and Dean of Great Lakes Institute of Management.

Great Lakes is Prof.Bala’s dream project of putting Chennai on the International Management Education Map. He is a full time faculty member in the area of Accounting and Finance and chairs the Academic Advisory Council at Great Lakes since his retirement from Kellogg in 2008. He teaches Managerial Accounting and Strategic Cost and Profitability management for both the PGPM and PGXPM apart from offering cohort specific workshops on Mergers & Acquisitions, Valuation Techniques and Post Merger Integration. He is the recipient of the fourth highest civilian award of the Government of India the ‘Padmashri’ in 2001, awarded in recognition of his contribution towards higher education in India.

Prof.Bala also serves several Indian ministries in the advisory capacity and is currently involved with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in setting up of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs. He is also currently working on a case study of the Satyam scandal apart from writing a book on ‘Leadership’ focusing on the Indian Corporate Maharajahs. He has been instrumental in He also serves on the International Advisory Board of the UniTAR at Kuala Lumpur and renders consulting/advisory services to the top brass of the Malaysian Government. He also serves as the Executive Professor and Strategy Advisor to the Dean, at the Bauer College, University of Houston with special responsibility in conceptualizing and delivering Executive Education degree programs in India with special focus on the energy sector.

He also has the rare honor (for an Indian in America) of having an endowed chair professorship in his name. Several colleagues from Kellogg, including Donald P. Jacobs (Kellogg Dean Emeritus), Roger Nelson, (retired Deputy Chairman for Ernst & Young), and Harry Kraemer Jr., (former chairman and CEO of Baxter), have led a campaign to raise $1 million for an endowed professorship at Kellogg School of Management in Prof. Bala V Balachandran’s name in recognition of his invaluable and tireless service to the Institute over the last three decades.

BSc (Hons.) 1959, Mathematics, Statistics, MA 1961, MSc 1963, Applied Statistics, Annamalai University; MSE 1969, Engineering, University of Dayton; MSIA 1972, Business Administration, PhD 1973, Industrial Administration, Carnegie-Mellon University; CPA 1978; CMA 1979; CIA 1984.