XIME Bangalore conducts National Conference on Indian Management Education

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 31: Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME) conducted a two day National Conference on Indian Management Education from January 29 to 30, 2019. The Conference was inaugurated by Dr. Devi Shetty, Chairman IIM, Bangalore and Founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya. The agenda of the Conference was to discuss the imminent changes necessary in Indian Management Education in the near future.

The Inaugural Address was delivered by Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty while the Keynote Address was delivered by Prof. John Camillus, The Donald R. Beall Professor of Strategic Management at Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh.

In his inaugural address, Dr. Devi Shetty stated the role of digitisation in revolutionising the healthcare sector. He talked about the changes brought in something as fundamental as ‘diagnosis’ to the way resources in hospitals including time and expertise of doctors is optimised. He highlighted that such disruptive changes are happening in all sectors and have wider implications for the management profession across all sectors.

In his keynote address, Dr. John Camillus, Professor of Strategy, Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh; highlighted that disruption is the key characteristic of the present environment and one needs a strategy to manage the transformation. Stating instances from his latest book, Wicked Strategies, Dr. Camillus outlined the increasing prevalence of wicked problems, that is, problems that are complex and entangled and where Corporates have no precedence to fall back on.

Dr Camillus said, “Management Education needs to take note of these issues and prepare its students to handle complexity and uncertainty. Ability for visioning transformational scenarios and robust actions that work in multiple scenarios will be an important skill set in the years to come.”

Prof. J. Philip, Chairman of XIME and the Conference Co-chair, delivered the welcome address. He spoke of how the Indian MBA, typified by the IIMs, embodies the good and bad features of Indian learning - high in merit, conceptual skills, retentive knowledge, but still lagging in innovativeness and performance.

B Muthuraman, Former Vice Chairman, Tata Steel Ltd. and the Conference Co-chair gave the industry perspective on the gap that exists between industry requirements and the present MBA curriculum. He attributed this gap to four reasons: a lack of contemporary knowledge, skills that cannot be taught, disruptive changes like digitalisation and a misplaced admiration and imitation of the unmitigated capitalistic model of the US which is solely profit-oriented and ignores the social and inclusive aspect.

Dr. N. Muthukumar, Chairman, CII Karnataka briefly touched upon CII’s focus on inclusive growth and development and of how joining the discussion on creating employable management graduates is an important part of this process.

Careers360 was the media partner of the event.