As is being discussed and anticipated, if the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) are indeed abolished to mark the beginning of serious educational reforms, it will be a landmark in the history of management education in India. Whether the probable creation of the national commission for higher education & research (NCHER) will be old wine in new bottle, only time will tell. Such and other reforms are expected to aim at raising the integrity and efficiency of governance in the Indian education sector. They also aim at raising the standard of our universities to international levels.
While better universities the world over seek integration of various streams and encouraging interdisciplinary research to enrich management science, some Indian universities are running backwards by prohibiting gems of intellectuals from ?other? streams from doing PhD in management for reasons best known to themselves. The function of applied sciences like management is to draw upon theories of philosophy and pure and basic sciences such as economics, sociology, psychology, etc and transform them into a ready-to-use form for the management practitioner. In fact, applied sciences form the necessary link between theory and practice. A virtuous cycle can emerge when theory is upgraded by observing and analysing the reality better; this reality is progressive if applied sciences develop further; and applied sciences can develop only on the basis of sound and strong theory which comes from pure and basic sciences. This task of enriching the applied sciences is done by researchers who must be given a wide canvass on their creativity and innovativeness. This indeed is the essence of any research. For example, some such recent PhD titles in foreign universities are: Pennsylvania State University (?Accruals and managerial operating decisions over the firm life cycle?); Yale University (?Essays on index premia and demand curves for stocks?); Northeastern University (?Information integration using contextual knowledge and ontology merging?); London School of Economics (?Why the garden club couldn?t save youngstown: Social embeddedness and the transformation of the rust belt?); and University of California, San Diego (?Individual decision making: Pain, rules, and effort?).
Generally, postgraduates from social sciences prefer to do research in their own domain. In case they do show interest in researching in management faculty, they are promptly turned down on the ground that they don?t have a management degree, although the masters degree they hold is mostly a richer mother science. This way, we block a rich source of researchers from entering management, turning the possible virtuous cycle into a vicious circle of mediocrity. Some Indian universities even disallow a postgrad in marketing to undertake PhD research in HR or finance.
In foreign universities, however, interdisciplinary research is commonplace, as is evident from following PhD titles: University of Texas, Austin (?Essays on the relation between managers? incentives and financial accounting information?); INSEAD-Singapore (?What do firm boundaries do? Employment relationships and transaction governance in internal and outsourced IT projects?); Columbia University (?New approaches to idea generation and consumer input in the product development process?); and Simon Fraser University, Canada (?The human capitalists: ownership and authority in the advertising and airline industries?).
Disallowing postgraduates from other streams for PhD in management reflects the regressive attitude of some Indian universities. The envisaged reforms like replacement of UGC and AICTE by NCHER and allowing FDI in higher education are welcome and necessary, but they must be accompanied by an open and progressive attitude on part of individual universities so as to yield the desired result of elevating the quality of higher education to international standards. For, a psychologist will give a better perspective to research in HRM. A sociologist or an MSW will give new dimension to research in the field of CSR management. An economist or a CA will give depth and meaning to research in finance and marketing management. An engineer or a science postgrad will enrich research in production management.
The only legitimate apprehension a university can have for such absurd restrictions is the possible lack of knowledge of basics of management in postgrads of other streams. This problem can be resolved by introducing the connecting link in the form of MPhil (management). Some universities do have it. Others can make it a prerequisite, especially for ?other? students wanting to do PhD. MPhil should be a one-year course giving inputs on all management functions and research methodology.
Rather than obsessively adding to the ?prohibited? list, we must find ways and means of integrating and enriching PhD research by encouraging and even inviting and attracting talent from other streams. But unless we remove the blinders and widen our horizons, we will be giving the incoming foreign universities, the best of our students on the platter.
The author is professor of economics at Sinhgad Business School, Pune. These are her personal views. Email: shubhadasabade@hotmail.com