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IIMB Management Review

Document Type

Editorial

Abstract

The festive season is on; compliments and good wishes from all of us here at the Review. It is a pleasure to reach this issue of the journal to you. I am conscious of the dateline impact that consistently leaves one with the impression of delay, even though the issues themselves are coming out at approximately three month intervals. To catch up with this, we have had, once again, to combine the June and September quarters. This should, hopefully, help the combined issue, when released in October, not being seen as dated. Our endeavour, however, remains to bring out quarterly issues in the same quarter; hopefully, we should be able to achieve this objective in the December 1997 quarter itself. Again, combining two quarters will have no adverse impact on annual subscriptions; we would correspondingly extend the subscription period to cover four issues, not just four quarters. The fare provided in this latest offering is as wholesome and broad based as in the past. Given the focus on public sector undertakings and the privatisation moves, the Round Table this time had several chairmen and directors of PSUs attending, besides academics from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Abhoy Ojha asks whether the PSUs are ready to, and for change, and comes to the conclusion that they may not, after all, have much of a choice in the matter. The aspirations of the Navaratnas, the PSUs with their eyes on global success are analysed and some prescriptions offered by Murthy. In a related interview, Billimoria talks about PSUs and liberalisation, besides offering some perceptive comments on business education. Mahadevan examines whether Indian business is at all ready for concepts like Just-in-Time, in a field research based study, while Patil brings out some current realities in his article on corporate governance; of particular interest will be his observations on the state of affairs in the cooperative sector, dogged by political interference. Gaspar points to the need for balancing risk-optimisation objectives with returnmaximising goals in an international context, though the lessons drawn are perhaps as valid in a domestic situation as well, barring currency implications. In an era of aggressive individual aggrandisement in business, Sriram returns to the benefits of team-building and provides evidence of how team roles were redefined in ABB India. Corruption, by whatever name called, impacts on business development; Wong chronicles the Chinese experience, which does not seem dissimilar to that in many other countries. Evaluating Business Cases provides some guidelines on what transforms a good case into an excellent one. Youth Forum discusses the distribution modalities of two of the most prominent consumer product companies in India, Coca Cola and Cadburys. Operating in a multi-cultural environment is not easy in the best of circumstances, as Gopalakrishnan discovered while working in the Middle East; there is much to learn from his experience gained during a major assignment for Unilever in Arabia. Review of some excellent books that most managers would want to have on their shelves, wraps up this edition of Management Review. There is more in store in the forthcoming issues. For, example, among the papers and topics currently under evaluation and processing are a Round Table on small and medium enterprises, encompassing various aspects of this important sector, a symposium of what business education should be as we move into the next century, can joint venture failures be predicted, total returns shareholders have earned during the nineties, place for values in competitive management environment, attrition and staff turnover, particularly in the knowledge-worker based industries, and a lot more of practical management interest and application. Do keep in touch and tell us what you liked, and what you didn't; we need this feedback to further finetune the Management Review to meet your requirements. As you would see in this issue, some references and suggestions for further reading have been provided, mainly in response to several requests for such information. We would like to be as responsive as we can to your needs. Meantime, if your subscription is due for renewal, and for some reason you have not renewed so far, please do send in your instructions, so that the Review may be sent to you without any interruption. Thank you, for now.

Publication Date

4-1-1997

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