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Management Education in India pp 55–77Cite as

Management Education in India: Avoiding the Simulacra Effect

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Abstract

About 10 years ago, I reflected on the challenges of management education in India and argued that there was a need to protect it from the damaging effects of rankings by media (Ojha in Decision 32(2):19–33, 2005). A request to revisit and update the paper provided me a chance to examine the developments in the last decade to assess how things had evolved, and also an opportunity to anticipate some of the problems that the field might have to face in the future. I have chosen to examine the impact of accreditations of prominent management institutes in India, including the Indian Institutes of Management, by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) on management education in India. Continuing the spirit of my earlier reflections, I caution the leadership teams in management institutes to guard against losing control over the agenda and relevance of management education for India as they pursue global aspirations. Drawing on Baudrillard (Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1994), I argue that unless management educators are alert to the long-term implications of externally driven accreditations there is a real danger that management education in India may be reduced to “Simulacra” that has no relevance to the issues and problems of our society, even as attempts to mimic management education in the USA may lead to an elusive mirage. Finally, as I did a decade ago, I appeal to the prominent management institutes, including the IIMs, to work together to develop and protect management education that is relevant to India.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mahatama Gandhi in Young India, June 1, 1921, p. 170.

  2. 2.

    Mahatama Gandhi in Harijan, Oct 2, 1947, p. 392.

  3. 3.

    Indian Institute of Management Calcutta; Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; and T.A. Pai Management Institute have AACSB accreditation.

  4. 4.

    Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore have EQUIS accreditation.

  5. 5.

    Baudrillard argued that human experience in modern society can be understood through the symbols and signs that constitute the ‘hyper-reality’ with which a human being exists. Contemporary culture and media have created an artificial world that may not have anything to do with the ‘reality’ that a common person thinks he/she is experiencing. He describes the movement from ‘reality’ to ‘hyper-reality’ as a four-stage process. In the first stage, the ‘image’ created by the symbols and signs is a faithful replica of the reality it attempts to represent, even if there are some flaws. In the second stage, the ‘image’ portrayed becomes an unfaithful copy of the reality, in which deliberate distortions that obscure reality are introduced. In the third stage, the ‘image’ is quite unrelated to reality, with conscious efforts to mask reality even as there is a pretence to represent it in the images. Finally, in the fourth stage, the ‘image’ is based on pure simulation such that the ‘Simulacrum’ has no relation to reality and also there are no attempts to even pretend that there is a requirement for such a relationship.

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  1. Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, Bangalore, India

    Abhoy K. Ojha

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  1. Abhoy K. Ojha
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Correspondence to Abhoy K. Ojha .

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  1. Public Policy and Management Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta , Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Manish Thakur

  2. Public Policy and Management Group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta , Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    R. Rajesh Babu

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Ojha, A.K. (2017). Management Education in India: Avoiding the Simulacra Effect. In: Thakur, M., Babu, R. (eds) Management Education in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1696-7_4

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