Will Management Ideas Ever Rule Management

  Cognitive biases kill startups – aware, awake and free yourself   India has about 50,000 startups. 1300 new startups were born in 2019. This is quite encouraging but 90% of Indian startups fail within the first five years.  There are several reasons for failure- inappropriate products and inappropriate business models are major reasons apart from lack of finance. In other words, startups offer solutions to the problem which either the society does not have or the solution is inappropriate, and, the assumptions behind the design of the business model is not correct. Research suggests assumptions are highly affected by the cognitive biases of the decision makers. Research also suggests that the decision-making environment for the entrepreneurs is highly uncertain and complex as a result the entrepreneurs get influenced more by the biases than the general population. Another important observation from the research on entrepreneurship is the desire to start a business...

The enrolment number of PhDs in every university in India is growing by factor ever since Ph.D. has become a requirement for teaching in higher learning. It is a universal standard practice in writing a research proposal - to conduct the literature survey, find the research gap, and justify your work as a novel one as it fills the gap. Thus it adds to the body of knowledge, particularly in the management field, where I have the experience. But the point is, should we continue this practice. The hypothesis that I am proposing is:   as a result of this practice, we have numerous Ph.D. thesis which coming out with so-called theories that are not rigorously tested. The matter is so alarming that UGC has decided to assess the PhDs submitted over the last 10 years. UGC's notification that allows Ph.D. holders from foreign varsities is eligible for direct recruitment as assistant professor clearly shows the confidence level of the regulating authorities on the quality of the PhDs...

Evidence Based Practice has its origin in clinical practice and it is now being applied to the general management area. But the progress is not very encouraging. The scope of healthcare administration is very wide and depending on the expertise of the incumbent, it may be extended to some clinical aspects as well apart from HR, facility management and Finance. As of today, these functions are largely managed by Healthcare MBAs with or without a medical degree. It may be mentioned that MBAs are not always welcome by the physician community. As for example, in an article titled: “The Hospital as a Factory and the Physician as an Assembly Line Worker” by Arthur Gale in Missouri Medicine,2016, Jan-Feb issue commented: “We see the hospital as factory and our hospitalist group as an assembly line that is in the business of manufacturing perfect discharge”. He also mentioned, “MBAs tell physicians how to practice medicine. Cost rise and quality drops. Patient, Physicians suffer.”   T...

It is Not Learnings from the success of WoW Momo, it is the Question that we should ask Who has not heard about WoW Momo of Kolkata- perhaps everybody who is foody! Who does not know its growth story? We may not find anybody. Started by two Kolkata boys, Sagar Daryani and Binod Kumar Homagai, I will prefer to address them as boys instead of persons as they are too young in Indian standard, in 2008 with a capital of Rs 30,000. Without repeating their success stories, which can be read at https://yourstory.com/2017/11/starting-garage-kolkata-wow-momo-130-outlets-9-cities . And at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj1lInurghE I will just mention some figures: Sales: First day sales, Rs 2200, and by the end of the month, touched Rs 53,000 in a day. Salary of the chef: Rs 3000   per month as a part-timer, now the same person gets Rs.1.5 lakhs per month. Manpower: From three, two promoters and one cook, now they have over 700 people employed in backend productions, and ov...

Most organisations strive for improvement and want to challenge the status quo and introduce change-large or small. Often the motivation comes from peer group firms. Research suggests that only 20% of the change management projects succeed. The cause of failure of the change management projects differs from organisation to organization. But all follow some prescribed models. Several models do exist in literature as if there can not be a standard model.   At the same time most of the organizations, when trying to introduce a new product or try to enter a new market, follow the age-old process- 5 Ps of marketing. When an organization try to introduce a “Change” they are basically selling an idea to its internal stakeholders- employees of all categories. Anecdotal evidence suggests that when it comes to resistance, management talks about main resistance from Union as they are vocal but ignore soft chronic resistance from managerial staffs. In this conversation we will examine i...