The two most venerated schools of management in India, IIM-A and IIMC, will soon have new helmsmen. Pradip Khandwala, director IIM-A, is due to retire in August 1996. IIM-C has already advertised inviting applications for the post of director, to replace Subir Chowdhury who is scheduled to move on in early 1997. What kind of leadership does an institution like an IIM need? Opinions would vary depending on who you talk to.

The director IIM-A has himself done seminal research on leadership and written scholarly volumes on the management of excellence. Tradition says that educational institutes must be headed by educationists or academicians. Tradition says that educational institutions must be funded primarily by the government. Tradition says that education is not a ‘saleable’ commodity. But tradition is not what it used to be!

At the risk of raising many hackles, I would suggest that a management school is a factory that produces a product (a potential business manager/ leader) for an identified market (the corporate world). It competes in the market place with other management schools to attract the best raw material (students), to draw in the best technicians and managers (faculty) and, to market the finished product. A B-school is manned by highly skilled professionals who mould, enrich, polish and add value to the raw material such that the final product commands a premium in the market.

A B-school, apart from being a place of higher learning, is a business enterprise that markets a service. Like any business enterprise, it has imperatives of resource mobilisation, resource allocation, management of people, marketing, etc. Like any enterprise, a B-school runs the risk of becoming production oriented (focused on education for the sake of education) rather than being market-driven, that is, producing a product that is needed and desired by the customer. Hence, this thesis: the CEO of a B-school has to be a pragmatic, market-driven, business- minded leader who understands the necessity of matching the needs and aspirations of gifted researchers, teachers, academicians and students with the needs of the market place. What then are going to be the key tasks of the B-school CEO of the future?

The first task is going to be resource mobilisation. With the government having declared its policy of cutting back funding and subsidies, the IIMs will have to become financially self-sufficient. Hence, the CEO will have to position the institution and direct its marketing to get a larger share of revenues from students fees, consultancy and management development programmes. Which means that it will be essential for the director to have a finger on the pulse of the market that purchases consultancy, training and educational services. As a corollary of this, the director will have to allocate resources to those areas that are likely to generate the maximum return in the long run without diluting the basic purpose of the institution.

Second, the director would have to position the institution to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This will flow from unique positioning, and the ability to attract and retain the best teaching and research talent. In addition, the quality and contemporariness of the infrastructure at the institute will have a direct bearing on both the quality of the staff as well as the quality of the ‘customers’.

Third, the director will have to mastermind the marketing strategy. By definition, marketing strategy will be based on knowledge of the customer, the market place and the ability to keep track of the changes in felt and expressed needs of the market. This is an area which has, by and large, been neglected because the IIMs did not really need to raise funds from the market. Also, amongst the academic community, there is something infradig about marketing themselves.

Finally the director will have to be a good leader of people. Leadership at the IIMs has at best been suspect and at worst been acknowledged as being absent in the past. Teachers, researchers, etc, tend to be highly intelligent and individualistic. They, particularly at the IIMs, also tend to be politically inclined. Infighting, bickering, revolts in the ranks are not unknown. To knit a diverse community of intellectuals into a goal-oriented team will be one thing that the director will have to do. Not just include it as a subject to be taught as part of the curriculum!

The question, therefore, is obvious. Is a scholar or an academician best, suited to lead an IIM? Or should it be a business leader who understands management of services, and has an academic bent of mind with scholarly leaning? Will the IIMs be able to do for themselves what they presume to teach others, that is, run an efficient, market-driven organisation? Or would that be triumph of hope over experience?

Nripjit Singh (Noni) Chawla

This article originally appeared in Business India - 17 June 1996