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Senior Faculty Workshop and Faculty Consortium
Senior Faculty Workshop
 As a preconference event at the SMS Special Conference India hosted by the ISB on December 12-14, 2008, a Consultative Workshop for senior faculty members on ‘Mentoring Future Scholars: Challenges and Possibilities’" was organised. S Manikutty, Professor of Strategic Management, IIM, Ahmedabad and Prashant Salwan, Professor of Strategy and International Business, IIM, Indore were the anchors for the workshop that brought together over 30 senior faculty members who have the responsibility of nurturing junior faculty and doctoral students to explore the challenges confronting business schools. With the academic environment in business schools going through a radical transformation, there are new expectations of excellence in research along with other teaching and service activities. The workshop also considered some relevant best practices from India and abroad that can be transferred across countries.
A panel of distinguished scholars, Jay Barney, Professor and Chase Chair at the Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, and M Rammohan Rao, Dean of ISB facilitated the discussion. Professor Manikutty said the workshop delved into how faculty could inculcate a research culture in their institutions. “There is considerable scope for improving research because the realisation is that from now onwards Indian institutions will not be looked at for teaching in the global situation- what they do by the way of research will be what matters,” he said. On the question of how some relevant best practices could be transferred across countries, Professor Manikutty stated that “We tried to bring in the specifics of the Indian situation, as we cannot translate one set of best practices into another set.”
The panel discussion was followed by breakout sessions on focal topics such as how business  scholarship in India can be advanced. What are the pressures that come from India’s integration into the global economy on the business schools? The groups also deliberated on the issues facing senior faculty in motivating junior faculty in producing more research and the institutional constraints that exist. Speaking about the workshop, Jay Barney, Professor and Chase Chair at the Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University said that “it was a fascinating conversation of a group of scholars who understand that they are operating in a global competitive research environment. Governments are putting significant pressure on faculty to increase their research productivity, as they understand that while disseminating knowledge is important, being a country that generates thought leaders is also very important. And what we saw today is that India also faces the exact same challenges – driven mostly by market issues, from competitive market pressures, from around the world. It also became clear to me that to get to the level where we can have world class research generated by Indian scholars in India, we need to have pretty significant institutional changes in India.”
Faculty Development Consortium
A Faculty Development Consortium was also organised for the first time as a part of the Strategic Management Conference. Over 60 junior business school faculty- Assistant professors, Lecturers and Post-Doctorate scholars, in Strategic Management and associated areas participated in the consortium. The co-chairs for the Consortium were Gerard George, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre, Imperial College and Professor Phanish Puranam, Co-Director of the Aditya V. Birla India Research Centre, London Business School.
 The morning session covered crafting a research agenda, the different methods used, and the kind of questions required to develop research. This was followed by a paper development workshop where participants discussed the key challenges in this exercise. In the afternoon, there was the Meet the Editors session where the participants were given guidelines on preparing research articles and cases so that they get published in top journals. The final session was on developing a teaching portfolio- what are the challenges in teaching, how does one maintain balance- the whole package of teaching. Gerard George, Co-chair of the Consortium observed that, “In spite of the challenge of having faculty who came from very different institutions and the variability in terms of the demands on them, we were more than excited with the response to the consortium. With the different panels we had for all the participants, it turned out good.”
The Consortium created an opportunity for scholars from different countries to meet and create collaborative research partnerships. As one of the participants, Harini Mittal, Faculty of Applied Management, CEPT University put it, “India is now a hotbed for research as a number of researchers across the world are interested in emerging economies, especially in India and China. So they are always on the lookout for people who can collaborate with them and this is a great opportunity for all of us to collaborate. The key takeaway from the consortium was that each of us should have at least 5 international tie-ups for research.”
 The Consortium also provided a forum through which scholars from other countries could learn about exciting developments and research opportunities in India. Professor Kavil Ramachandran, Associate Dean, and Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management at the ISB said, “This is the first time that strategy gurus from all over the globe have assembled here. The ISB has taken the leadership to attracting all of them here. Interestingly, while the whole world is talking about a economic melt down, we have speakers here who will be talking about expansion and growth. This shows that the economic downturn hasn’t had a significant impact here in India. Also, this shows that innovations are going to come from emerging economies, this is the cradle of innovation. We have young scholars and researchers, many of Indian origin, and so many have expressed their wish to come back and spend some time here at the ISB.”
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