Gravity Magazine_Final - Great Lakes

COVER STORY
13
A Balanced Scorecard on
Management Education
in India
By many measures, Management Education in
India is enjoying stupendous success. Recent news
reports of outstanding placement at many
management schools is just one such measure. The
Great Lakes Institute of Management is no
exception to this success. Over the past two years,
the school has managed to develop a unique
curriculum to integrate students with an
international faculty, develop a fully operational
post graduate and executive programs in
management, and enjoy an excellent placement
record, all in a remarkably short span of time.
These are the results of the hard work and vision of
the entire Great Lakes community, including the
students, the faculty, the board, the recruiting
companies and the administration. Management
educators all over India should certainly take a
moment to relish the progress we have made.
Simultaneously, we must also keep a balanced
scorecard on ourselves and be mindful of the
challenges ahead.
In reflecting on the challenges for management
education, I often find myself thinking “Nothing
Fails Like Success,” the favorite phrase of the Late
Professor Lawrence (Gene) Lavengood of the
Kellogg School of Management, in Evanston,
Illinois. Professor Lavengood was a much loved,
incredibly insightful and award winning professor
of Management Policy at the Kellogg School
during my MBA years, and many years thereafter.
“Nothing Fails Like Success” was his favorite
lesson to teach.
In his Management Policy course, Prof. Lavengood
gave us numerous insightful examples of
And the challenges ahead at Great Lakes Institute of Management
By
Sudhakar Balachandran
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business
Columbia University, New York, NY
organizations (ranging form the Tennessee Valley
Authority to Nestle S.A.) whose meteoric success
was only matched by their sometimes stunning
failures. Digging into these examples, he showed
us distinct patterns of behaviors, and more
importantly attitudes, which were likely to be
central to the downfalls observed. Specifically,
Prof. Lavengood linked the failures of formerly
successful organizations to several factors
including the emergence of hubris, a focus on form
over substance, and an increasing sense of
entitlement. He pointed out that as organizations
become successful, these threats also emerge
which, if left unchecked, create a “Nothing Fails
Like Success” scenario. One needs only to pick up
recent editions of Indian business periodicals, or
speak with members of the Management Education
community to get the sense that hubris, form over
substance and entitlement are significant potential
threats to Management Education in India.
Hubris: The business world is riddled with stories
of organizations whose celebrated success led to
their failures. In the 1970's, the leader in the United
States rental car business, Hertz, proudly
advertised itself as “Number One,” only to find
itself losing share to competitor Avis, which
conceded the number one position and counter
attacked with the slogan “We Try Harder.” In the
late 1980's, business books such as Tom Peter's
Passion for Excellence celebrated the successes of
several companies, but by the late 1990's many of
those same companies faced financial difficulties.
At the end of this century, the business press