AIMA Summit delves on business responsibility and need to revamp management education

Apart from bringing large-scale economic crisis, the recession brought with it the worst for any business the loss of faith. All India Management Association (AIMA) kicked off its two-day 2nd Business Responsibility Summit on July 17, 2009, on this note and went on to discuss business and its responsibilities towards the society. The Summit closed on July 18, 2009, with a session on Reinventing Management Education.

MBAUniverse.com is the Official Management Portal for the Summit with central theme of Purpose of the Corporation: Socialist, Capitalist or Both. The first day of the Summit saw discussions on three major topics, Being Good While Doing Good: The Managers Challenge, Shaping Societal Values and Regulation vis--vis Voluntary Action.

Summit Director and Senior Advisor of BCG-India, Arun Maira, introduced the days speakers and said, Today the society is demanding governments intervention and is asking it to levy regulations in businesses. He added that there was an urgent need to reform the way business conducts itself. Maira, who has been associated with the Tata Group in the past, read out a few lines from yet-to-be released book The Difficulty of Being Good authored by another speaker, Gurcharan Das, present at the Summit.

Gurcharan Das, former Chairman of Procter & Gamble and bestselling author of India Unbound, spoke at length on his forthcoming book. He said, India has witnessed tremendous growth in the past 28 years. But the worst fallout of this growth is the fall of trust people had on corporate world. He gave many examples how managers can learn from Mahabharata.

Salman Khursheed, who presented the inaugural address at the Summit, took Gurcharan Dass ideas further and explained that his thoughts go beyond the corporate world. The Corporate Affairs Minister went on to speak on regulating businesses. Regulation is necessary, but not at the cost of healthy competition. Regulation should ensure there is good competition in the corporate world.
Other speakers on the first day of the AIMA 2nd Business Responsibility Summit include Anil Sachdev, Founder & CEO, School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL); R Mukundan, MD, Tata Chemicals Ltd., SK Roongta, Chairman, Steel Authority of India Ltd.; Bharat Wakhlu, Resident Director Public Affairs, Tata Group; Dileep Rajekar, CEO, Azim Premji Foundation, Swati Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha, Pooran Chandra Pandey, Director Times Foundation; Kiran Karnik, former President NASSCOM and M Damodaran, former Chairman, SEBI.

The second day of the AIMA Summit held on July 18, 2009, tried to answer the question Can ethics be taught? raised on the previous day. Directors of two of the top business schools in India, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon participated in the Summit on the second day.

Prof Pankaj Chandra from IIM Bangalore and Prof BS Sahay from MDI Gurgaon spoke at length on Reinventing Management Education. Prof Pankaj Chandra from IIM Bangalore emphasized on how business schools are reshaping their approach towards management education according to the changing times, while the director of MDI Gurgaon, delved on theexpertise of business schools in delivering perfect managers.
Other than the directors of IIM Bangalore and MDI Gurgaon, leaders from the corporate world, Aquil Busrai, ED (HR), IBM India Pvt. Ltd. and KK Sinha, Director-Group HR, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, spoke on the importance of business schools to revamp management education, too. Dr Jagdish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Chair Professor of Marketing Goizueta Business School - Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia also took part in the AIMA Summit.