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Executive Interviews: Interview with Kashi R Balachandran on Management Guru
November 2010
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Kashi R Balachandran Kashi R Balachandran
Professor of
Accounting and Operations
Management New York University
Stern School of Business 
It is often noticed that several such
lists (Wall Street Journal's world's
most influential business thinkers,
Fortune's world's best gurus in
strategy, etc.) are dominated by North
Americans, with abysmal
representations either from Europe or
Asia? What explains this
polarization?
Academic research has always been
North American centric. It has
basically ignored the differing
environments of developing and
even European countries. There is
nothing negative in this statement.
After all, America has dominated
and continues to play a significant
role in global business, not to speak
of its military might and
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involvement
in the world. Naturally, when we
talk of trend-setters, we tend to look
West and sometimes, regrettably
ignore the rest.
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Who according to you has been
the best Indian management guru and
why?
Late CK Prahalad has certainly made
a significant mark. He has grabbed
the attention of the entire academic
and practicing management
community with his eloquent, lucid
and powerful writings on
management. I do not have to repeat
his contributions as they are well
known.
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In all fairness, although CK
Prahlad has been voted as World's
No.1 management guru (in 2007 by
'Thinkers 50'), many critics point out
that when it came to managing the
ventures that he himself started, the
results were just disappointing.
Therefore, where do you draw a line
between a true global management
guru and an ardent advocate of a
business (successful, yet times!)
practice?
It is like asking why a finance
professor in a top university is not
better than Warren Buffett in stock
trading. Theory building is based on
premises that the theorist observes. It
is not possible to include all the
variables of relevance in an analysis.
Data on some are not available for
observation, some are not clearly
definable and future is not so
predictable. There may also be a luck
factor, though it remains that people
like Buffett, Gates and Welch call the
shots better than most. I do not hold
personal failures against a guru in any
field, be it management or finance or
economics.
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Who according to you are the
most promising global and Indian
management gurus?
Ram Charan, Vijay Govindarajan and
Rakesh Khurana. Do I have an
academic bias? Probably. As I said, a
guru has to be able to generalize his or
her management theories to a larger
environment and not necessarily be
focused on one industry. This, in no
way, diminishes my absolute
admiration for the achievements of
people like Ratan Tata,
Gopalakrishnan or Narayanamurthy
among many other stalwarts of the
Indian industry.
1.
Management Guru Case Study
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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