Business education has certainly been at crossroads and the academia across the world is scrutinizing the MBA program and finding ways to bridge the gap between management education and industrial needs. Prof. Srikant Datar (Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Accounting, Harvard Business School) and co-author of Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads, has been working towards identifying these gaps. Prof. Datar has driven many national and international conferences aimed at structuring the MBA curriculum which includes the Conference at Tampa, Florida in March 2011 and MBA: the road ahead, which was jointly hosted by IIM A & IIM C in July, 2011.

On 30th September, 2011, Prof. Datar led a daylong conference on ‘Focused MBA Curriculum Redesign: Leadership Development’ which was organized at the S.P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai in association with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC). The discussions in this management conclave were focused on aligning the conceptual ‘knowing’ of management academics to the practical ‘doing’ and were conducted by deans and directors of top B-Schools across the country, policy makers and industry stalwarts.

The conference began with the address of Dr. M.L Shrikant, Hon. Dean, SPJIMR. He spoke of the ‘Knowing-Doing-Being’ (KDB) triad which forms the basis of business management education. He also remarked that the ‘Being’ dimension concerns the attitudinal dimension of personality and has attracted our attention at SPJIMR over the years. He spoke of various character building initiatives which are centered on self-management, self-development and self knowledge. He mentioned how the Indian ethos rooted in the Vedas and Upanishads and the Gita have built the framework for evolving the spiritual and non-self centered human being. He also enlisted the pedagogic initiatives at SPJIMR like Abhyudaya, DOCC and ADMAP which enforce the institute’s philosophy of learning by doing.

The conference was conducted in 5 sessions in which several facets of leadership were discussed by eminent panels. Prof. Anand Ram of IIM B, Prof Jomon of XLRI, Prof. Ashish Pandey of IITB, Prof. S. Balasubramanian of GRG School of Management chaired the sessions based on the themes of Leadership and Human Values, Leadership and social sensitivity, Leadership through experiential learning and Building institutions around leadership respectively. A discussion followed these sessions wherein the faculty members in separate groups deliberated on the ways to change the dimension of leadership education and creating a holistic curriculum which would address the need of making business education relevant for industrial needs.

The conference was concluded by Prof. Datar who discussed the challenges that leading B-Schools of the world faced in developing potential leaders. A consensus was reached wherein everyone present felt the need for sharing the management curriculum by leading B-Schools and making a collaborative effort to create a learning community. Prof Datar also mentioned that working on slum projects helped sensitize an individual to the societal needs, a practice already adopted and enforced by SPJIMR. Different pedagogic initiatives in various institutes were also discussed and the role of ‘aspirational’ models was brought at the forefront.