Editorial, special issue: Indian management and the global business

Citation

Purani, K., Gopinath, S. and Sensarma, R. (2015), "Editorial, special issue: Indian management and the global business", Journal of Indian Business Research, Vol. 7 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIBR-03-2015-0035

Editorial, special issue: Indian management and the global business

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Indian Business Research, Volume 7, Issue 2

Triggered by economic reforms in early 1990s, Indian businesses have been transformed in their management approaches that are globally competitive, yet distinctly characterized as seemingly hands-on but deeply rooted in India’s traditional philosophy and values. India’s increased significance in the global economy in the past few years, particularly post-2008 financial crisis, had catalytic effects on enhancing India’s influence in global business. Two books that have caught attention of many executives and management thinkers in recent times are McKinsey’s collection of essays Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower and Harvard Business Press’s The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management. Such acknowledgments of Indian management thinking, along with the growing presence of Indian businesses outside India, have broadened the discourse on Indian thought in global business. Some scholars have already shown interest in decoding Indian wisdom from spiritual texts or formulating the tacit knowledge available at the grass-root level in India for global business leaders. This special issue of Journal of Indian Business Research (JIBR) attempts to bring together some insightful articles around the theme “Indian Management and the Global Business” as an outcome of the second Pan-IIM World Management Conference organized by the Indian Institutes of Management in November 2014 at IIM Kozhikode around the main theme of “Globalizing the Indian Thought”.

Five articles, in this special issue, provide rich design-domain diversity in their enquiries on the theme. From viewpoint to meta-analysis and case study to empirical research, the articles follow varied methodologies to arrive at their respective conclusions. The coverage of different domain areas such as supply chain, international policy and conflict management across contexts like software services, banking and process manufacturing, may generate wider interest in this special issue among those who are keen on decoding India and Indian management.

Saji Gopinath and Milind Padalkar in the first article, Do Indian Management Practices Drive Global Research Agenda? An Exploratory Analysis of Contemporary Management Literature, explore how far indigenous business practices have influenced development of management theory and literature around the globe. Through systematic and rigorous meta-analysis of contemporary management literature related to India, in four management domains, published in international journals, the article identifies trends, themes and motivations in global interest in research on India and Indian management. It presents an interesting framework to examine research on Indian management using parameters such as the extent of literature focus on phenomena or context and the sphere of its influence as endogenous or exogenous. The study finds that management research on India and Indian themes is at an early stage, and offers significant opportunities for elicitation of new variables/factors, propositions and relationships – particularly for researchers in Organization Behavior and Marketing domains.

Indian software industry is one of the key drivers in bringing Indian businesses on the global radar in recent times. More importantly, its rapid growth and success, international character and complexities involved provide a rich context for analysts and management scholars across the world to gain new insights and/or test established theories. The second article Process Conflict Management Among Indian Software Employees: Application of Theory of Planned Behaviour by Swati Alok, Jayasree Raveendran and Anil Kumar Jha is an empirical investigation that draws from Theory of Planned Behavior and tests the relationships that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have with conflict handling intentions and behavior in the context of the Indian software industry. The findings indicate that employees with positive attitude toward conflict, high conflict efficacy and high structural assurance intend to integrate during process conflicts and employees with low conflict efficacy and those who are influenced by the actions of their role model intend to dominate during process conflicts.

The third article from G. Anand and Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy, titled A Case Study on Downstream Supply Chain of an Indian Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturer – Some Insights for the Global Business attempts to provide insights on relationships between distilleries and their distribution channels in India, especially with respect to the regulatory role played by the government. As a regulated economy for over 50 years, governmental regulations still have an important role in shaping the Indian business practices. By focusing attention on the highly regulated industry of alcoholic beverage manufacture, the authors bring out this important factor through an in-depth case study in the downstream distribution chain. They also analyze how distribution channels influence decisions such as product development, product quality, pricing, promotional programs and sales training, among others, which have practical implications. The authors believe that the findings based on their detailed case analysis of an Indian company can provide useful insights to global business on doing business in India.

Andy Mullinuex’s viewpoint presented in Global Banking After the GFC: Lessons for India brings outside-in perspective for Indian financial services sector based on lessons from the Global Financial Crisis. A key argument the author makes is around the appropriate extent of state ownership of banks and the process for reducing it. The article concludes by emphasizing that recapitalizing banks, along with the development of capital markets, should be an integral part of India’s wider structural reform program. This viewpoint article along with Anand et al.’s research article provides deeper insights on a major institution – the government – that influences the nature of business – at least in certain sectors – in India. The findings and opinions of the authors are quite insightful to explore how Indian business would shape up in a global business scenario when such controls are reduced.

The last paper titled Developing ASEAN India Partnership for Fostering Technology Development by Sunil Sahadev and Pongsak Hoontrakul has important implications for policy makers in international business cooperation. This conceptual paper drawn on literature and secondary data to discuss issues relevant to fostering cooperation between India and countries in the ASEAN region in the area of technological innovation. The paper provides guidelines for fostering technological innovation and could therefore help policy development in this area. Such policies, in turn, may influence Indian management thinking in the ASEAN region.

As key members of the organizing committee of the second Pan-IIM World Management Conference 2014, it gives us immense sense of satisfaction in putting together this special issue. We thank Professor G. Shainesh, Editor-in-Chief of JIBR, for the opportunity, and we hope that interested scholars would take this agenda forward.

Keyoor Purani, Saji Gopinath, Rudra Sensarma