IIM-C focuses on shaping global managers

Jaidev Majumdar in Kolkata

Global Indian Managers (GIMs) had arrived on the world corporate map some years back. Indian business schools had also become fertile grounds for global corporations to poach them from. While traditionally, most of the foreign companies recruited Indian management students from traditional specialisations like finance and marketing, some of the management schools had, however, started specialised courses to equip these students to this environment. IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) is one of the latest schools to offer this and equip its students for global management.

There are other reasons why such courses are gaining popularity. With the saturation of the developed economies and fierce competition among existing players, corporates are also shifting their focus to the emerging markets. And these markets have different cultures, different business practices—but one common
need: managers from within, with a global outlook.

With a burgeoning middle class and vast pool of talented and educated knowledge workers, countries like India, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan show immense potential to be at the forefront of global business leadership. This has also given rise to an acute need for global managers adept at managing cross-border operations.

At IIM-C, the new courses on offer are Doing Business in Foreign Markets (DBFM) and Global Competition and Strategy (GCS). Keeping the emerging situation in mind, these courses are aimed at developing an understanding of conceptual and managerial issues and intricacies in foreign market entry and cross-border operations. They also help hone analytical abilities to aid decision-making regarding entry strategies of firms in foreign markets and build familiarity with the market structure, culture, management systems and practices, institutions, business opportunities, risks and nuances of doing business in some of the important markets such as North America, Euro Zone, Japan, China, Russia and some other CIS and Asia-Pacific countries.

Offered as a second-year optional course at IIM-C, it is also being taught as an One-Year International Business Programme (IBP) for working executives on a part-time basis.

To Prof Saugata Ray, programme director at IIM-C, the initiation of such courses is only the beginning. “We have launched the course this year and have 34 participants, as of now. We also have plans to offer a few Management Development Programmes of shorter duration in the near future. So far as I know, no other institute in the country offers such an integrated course as DBFM and GCS,” Prof Ray says.

There is no bar in terms of specialisation in the two courses but since it is being offered by the the Strategic Management Group, there is a cap on the number of students allowed to register for the course. Students with strategy major or minor get preference to specialise.

The DBFM course is split into three modules — a module on foundation and logic of internationalisation, a module on the nitty-gritty of entry strategy and a module on understanding and adapting to the variations in different country markets around the world.

“The students are first taught to establish their strategic motives of internationalisation — why do they want to go beyond the domestic market? Then, for example, why China? If they are interested in exploiting the Chinese market, their approach should be different than that in case they are interested in sourcing products from China,” explains Prof Ray.

“Some of the generic steps are to do a thorough country analysis of China, starting from macro level down to regional and township level to understand the regulatory framework, political and institutional dynamics leading to identification of the right location and often right partners. As influence of Guanxi is very widespread in China, selecting right partners is often very critical. This has to be backed up by detailed industry and market analysis to identify the target segments, positioning and marketing mix,” he says.

When asked if a corporate house willing to set up an offshore venture would rather recruit a person from that region than someone from India or IIM-C, the programme director says that the issue of staffing in cross-border operation is a very well researched area.

“This should not be looked at as an either or situation. In fact a mix of both local as well as expatriates is the most prevalent situation in the global market,” he says.

The moot question, he says, is what should be the right mix of expatriates and locals. A variety of factors govern this decision. The two most important ones are the availability of local managerial talent and the strategic orientation of multinationals.

Clearly, even as global managers across the world are increasingly coming under intense pressure, Indian B-schools are trying to ensure that GIMs fit the bill more than ever in these trying times.