Perish the thought of local wisdom

We're back to familiar territory. B School surveys for the year tumbling out, accompanied by local management wisdom. What's familiar? The nonsense. The clamour for Indian management thought to break away from 'western models', for Indian management to tap into spiritual wisdom, the list is nonsensically endless.

Pray, what is western thought? Take for example the concept of CRM which proposes consumer engagements not be treated as transactions, rather as opportunities to build relationships for a lifetime so as tap into what's termed 'life time value'. Now why would such a 'western' concept be irrelevant in India? Take another. What about the Motivational hierarchy from Abraham Maslow? Are Indians motivated any differently?

The call to 'indianising' management thought is a big bunkum. All management concepts, whether western, eastern, northern, or southern are generic and so can be applied universally. It really doesn't matter where you live, the principles in business as in life are universal. Of course, its a different take when you say Indian-centric research. Surely that is very important. For now we have no documented, studied data on the Indian business scenario. For example, understanding the Indian buying psyche so as to position a value proposition correctly requires we go out into the marketplace to study that psyche. That's research for you that's India-centric, and as I mentioned that is a space that's currently blank.

What Indian management needs isn't a dose of spirituality or India-centric thought. Instead it needs to embrace the western but universal principle of free markets unleashing the ingenuity of private citizens. And for heaven's sake, such thought is what must find its way into Indian business schools as part of teaching curriculum, rather than socialistic nonsense.

Here's hoping it will.