Is Indian Industry Doing Enough to Combat Climate Change?

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”, were the immortal words of the Mahatma.
The unsustainable consumption patterns across the globe since industrialization are responsible for the predicament that we face today. Although India is one of the fastest growing nations and considering that a sixth of the world’s population lives here, an Indian citizen emits only 10% as compared to his counterpart in the United States. The policies India has undertaken so far can help contain the threat of climate change, but the truth of the matter is that Indian Industry has to take far greater steps if we have to combat the dangers of climate change.

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Business Makeover

Mr. Sundarmoorthy was a traditional industrialist involved in the manufacture of coconut oil. He had a very successful business practice in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, a harbour town with many huge industrial establishments, a host of leading C&F and logistics companies and a well developed SIPCOT complex.  This had given rise to a large mobile population of technocrats comprising engineers, top management people, technicians, workers, etc. There was also a sizeable population dependent on the sea for their livelihood. Mr. Sundaramoorthy had only one son, Ramesh, who was employed in Chennai. Whenever his son’s family came to their native town, he felt restricted by the lack of choice in toys that he would like to buy for his grandchildren. He had also heard similar complaints from many of his friends. It was, thus, that he decided to start a new business alongside his extremely profitable oil venture and opened a toy shop – the first of its kind in the town – naming it after his grandson: Mukund Toy Paradise. It was a well-stocked shop with traditional domestic and imported toys for children.

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Hazards Of New Markets

Usha Iyengar

The Problem
Thompson's entered India in 1994, soon after liberalisation assuming that with the opening up of the Indian economy, there would be many an Indian who would love to start the day with their breakfast cereal. It set up a wholly owned subsidiary and invested in a greenfield manufacturing plant for cereals. (When ownership is not shared, then it is a subsidiary which is wholly owned. A greenfield project is when the factory is built from scratch.)

It entered the market with corn flakes supplemented with iron and the fruity rice crispies called fruity hoops. They carried out some  initial trials in Mumbai by offering heavy inducements to the customer to purchase their first pack. No independent market research to corroborate its asumptions was conducted. It decided to  attack the market through a broad base with no clear strategy of market segmentation.

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Can Management be taught?

Argument:

The question of whether management education should be limited to candidates with prior experience in a work place cannot be answered without first answering the more fundamental question, what is the objective (or in MBA-speak, deliverable) of management education? At first glance, it seems irrational to restrict any particular field of education on the basis of something as unconnected from academic merit as age. The proponents of having students without work-ex in management schools argue on a number of planks, the prime one being the freshness of high quality talent just out of premier undergraduate schools, a claim which rests on the premise that being scholastically inclined inherently makes one a good manager.

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Coursework OR Network?

Argument for…
When I was first asked to write on this topic, I was a bit sceptical. Taking a stance on such a topic can sometimes be difficult. But what I see and perceive at XLRI and the Corporate World, is that you cannot climb the corporate ladder with mere knowledge as a weapon. If one cannot forge relationships and maintain them, then it is most likely that the person will be left out of the rat race to the top.

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Father to Son

by Sumeet Verghese

The case
A family-owned company has the father as the Director and the son as the Managing Director. The father is in his 70s and has managed the company for more than three decades, developing long-term relations with his clients. The company is not very prosperous but has done some good work in its field. Now the son has taken over and wants to revive the company and make it more profitable. In doing so, he will have to take some hard decisions that will offend the company’s old clients and friends and also his father. So he dithers and lets the managers take these decisions. The managers, in the meantime, have to report to the father too and he gives them a different set of instructions.

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Seamless Integrations

by Anand Madhavan

Issue
An FMCG company, X, acquires another smaller FMCG company, Y. Post-acquisition, some employees of the middle and senior management levels of Y are retained. The MD of X takes pains to emphasise that the acquisition was right for both companies. Four months later, the erstwhile employees of Y find that their roles have not yet been defined. Approaching their senior managers does little to allay their apprehensions. There is a lot of uncertainty in the air and the Y people start looking out for jobs. Meanwhile, employees of the Company X feel that for four months the ‘new recruits’ have done nothing while they have been overburdened with work pertaining to both companies. They speak with their seniors about how unhappy they are.

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