Education
Surprises and shocks of 18th Lok Sabha elections will now be taught in B-schools
Summary
- Business schools such as IIM-Kozhikode, IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Bangalore are scanning the BJP's surprise setback and the INDIA bloc's spirited campaign to decode new lessons for management students
MUMBAI : Top business schools are drawing lessons from the Lok Sabha polls for their classrooms, even as the dust settles on the world's largest democratic exercise.
The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that was gunning for 400-plus seats finished below 300, enough for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form a government with support from allies, but far below market expectations and exit poll predictions. Among the takeaways for business schools: Market analysis, entering new sectors, and knowledge of changing shareholders and customers.
"One of the main lessons is that tools to study a small sample size and analyse the markets will not reflect what crores of people want. It may lead to analysing data that makes one precisely wrong than approximately right," said Debashis Chatterjee, director, Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode.
Also read: The stock market’s love for the BJP cost it dearly
Business schools teaching concepts and strategy regularly conduct case studies of large events such as a pandemic outbreak, a high-profile succession, or an election surprise.
Changing customer needs
Sourav Mukherji, who teaches organizational behaviour and human resources management at IIM-Bangalore said the political surprise can be used to explain how management students must understand changing customer needs.
"Existing formula may have worked earlier, but one needs to have ear to the ground to maintain agility, even when there is no perceptible crisis. The second lesson from the election, and the way in which different parties performed, is on entering new markets where an incumbent has a stronghold," Mukherji said.
The BJP wrested Odisha for itself, while losing heavily in its strongholds of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, slipping in Maharashtra, and failing to make a breakthrough in South where it had devoted considerable effort.
Also read: Failure has many mothers: The Indian voter gets it right again
Organizational ambidexterity
Nishant Uppal, professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management at IIM-Lucknow will focus on "organizational ambidexterity". In this concept, students learn the better aspects of a firm that need to be maintained, and spot the ones that have to be done away with.
"Investments need to be done in for the future role that the company will play. In these elections, it was clear that the parties which operated on a template model did not work as well as expected. Alliances that had conflicting working models but learnt from one another in an alliance discovered each others' strength and performed better," Uppal said. He said he use the elections to explain "competing values" where students are taught how they need to work with teams with opposing views.
Also read: Will Modi 3.0 have to favour populism over big bang reforms?
