IIM-IN-SIGHTS
BRIDGING THE RESEARCHER-PRACTITIONER GAP
A MAGAZINE OF THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT INDORE
Volume 2 (November 2018 – May 2019)
An initiative of Industry Interface Office, IIM Indore
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
IIM Indore is a leading business school that generates quality research papers every year through its faculty and doctoral students. However, the reputed journals in which such articles are printed are not accessible by everyone, especially practitioners. Most of these researches have strong relevance to industry and hence, it’s critical that a summary of such articles is communicated to the practitioner fraternity before they decide to examine the actual article. This magazine serves precisely that purpose to ensure that findings of leading articles published by faculty at IIM Indore are communicated to its industry partners. Further, given the deep relationship that IIM Indore shares with local industry, through the Industry Interface Office, this magazine also provides a platform to leading industry champions of Indore and around to share their vast wealth of experience. The proof of this concept lies in three articles contributed to this issue by three eminent industrialists of Indore region.
Here are the highlights of what is to follow:
- With the current government providing multiple inceptives for start-ups to germinate and grow, innovation seems to be the key driver that will forge the economy ahead and catch up to the rest of the developed world. But are Indian firms really doing cutting-edge innovation? A recent paper co-authored by Dr. Rishikesh T. Krishnan, Director of IIM Indore and belonging to the Strategic Management Area explores this phenomenon by proposing science-based and formal paradigms of innovation. (pp. 5-7)
- In recent weeks, we have seen the stock markets in India showing tremendous volatility, with the Sensex gaining and losing points heavily in the recent days, quite likely as an outcome of macroeconomic environmental variables. But those are not the only variables affecting stocks, investor sentiments also play a larger role to that consequence. This paper by Prof Saumya Ranjan Dash from the Finance & Accountin Area investigates the complete rationality assumption of investor behaviour and its effects on stock prices (pp. 8-9)
- India’s labour force forms the backbone of the Indian Economy and we have comprehensive regulations to ensure the contribution is maximized. However, recently, there are disagreements in the policy as well as academic circles on the compliance to such labour regulations in India, specially, whether non-compliance to labour regulations hamper economic growth. In their work, Dr. Karthikeya Naraparaju and Dr. Ajay Sharma from Economics Area investigate the compliance of EPF and found large scale evasions on ground (pp. 10-14).
- China is a long-term formidable political and economic rival of India. So far known to the world as global factory, where manufacturing industry was key with little or no innovation, there have been recent changes which are interesting. The paper by Dr. G. Venkatraman of the Humanities and Social Sciences Area examines how property protection regime has significant effects on the entrepreneurship culture in China, as well its outcome on the investment towards human and financial capital (pp. 15-18).
- Library of an institute is an integral component to education; however most institutional libraries remain underutilized for various reasons. In their paper, Dr. Madhukar Dayal of Information Systems Area and Dr. Sanjeev Tripathi of Marketing Area develop a library-based recommender system platformed on Microsoft Excel to enhance usability of the library resources. Based on a user’s borrowing history, their system is expected to recommend readings for the user based on similarity of reading preferences of other such groups (pp. 19-21)
- In the HR domain of any organization, career planning of employees is critical to not only ensure best allocation to talent to right opportunities, but the same time maintain motivation for the employee. In this first practitioner article by Mr. P.K. Nilosey, ex-V.P. (HR) at Larsen and Toubro, discusses the importance of career planning and how that is a challenge in India compared to succession planning. He also discusses a case study where he himself designed one for L&T (pp. 22-26).
- Women are growing from strength to strength in India in various fields and business world is no different. But women still face multiple challenges, not only to due to multiple roles of being an employee and a home-maker, but also at the organization due to tabooed beliefs held by the other gender. Through various interviews and her own experience, Dr. Paramjeet Juneja, Director at Capco India, indicates ways in which organizations can make women more inclusive and welcome to their family (pp. 27-29).
- Storytelling is a powerful tool and in his article on this issue, Mr. G.S. Juneja, Managing Director at Capco India, emphasises on how this great tool can be leveraged to achieve business success both in a B2C as well as a B2B context, where his firm operates. Presenting interesting stories to a customer is the only way to create believability your unique offerings, is what he implies (pp. 30-31)
I encourage the readers to reach out to the authors for more details regarding their article. As must be noted by the readers, for the academic articles, there are no references added in the end to make this reader friendly. However, readers can request the authors for specific references if they so desire. Some of the studies here have co-authors who are outside IIM Indore. On behalf of the authors, we thank them for their collaboration and support, specially the three practitioners, Mr. P.K. Nilosey, Dr. P. Juneja and Mr. G.S. Juneja, and we look forward to more such practitioner contributions for future editions.
Dr. Abhishek Mishra
Editor and Chair, Industry Interface Office
IIM Indore