Himanshu Rai, Professor, Human Resource Management, IIM Lucknow, has been appointed by the Board of Governors as the next Director of IIM Indore.
Prof Rai will take over from Prof Rishikesha T Krishnan, current Director, IIM Indore, on December 31, 2018, when the latter’s five-year term as Director ends.
Prof Krishnan said: “Prof Himanshu Rai has been selected by the Board after a rigorous selection process. I am confident that he will take IIM Indore forward in keeping with our vision of being a contextually-relevant business school with world-class academic standards.”
Prof Himanshu Rai resumed teaching at IIM Lucknow (IIM-L) from September 2016 after a leave of two years. In this two-year period, he was Dean, MISB Bocconi (India Campus of Bocconi, Milan), and Professor, SDA Bocconi School of Management, Milan, Italy. Rai is an educationist. An alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), he has been teaching PG and doctoral students at IIM-L since 2006. His core area is Human Resource Management, where he focuses on negotiation, mediation, arbitration, strategic HRM, and leadership. He frequently conducts training programmes and workshops for executives as well as bureaucrats around the world.
His profile includes a stint of over eight years at Tata Steel, where he played a pivotal role in developing quality systems for his departments as well as a communication policy for the company. It was there that he found his passion — trekking in the Himalayas, which in turn led him to a clear vision of what he wanted to do with his life.
He wished to help people become aware of their own selves, choices and opportunities that life presents them with, and realise their potential to the fullest. He believes that this can be best achieved through quality education. His personal focus is not just academic excellence but achieving it on the basis of ethics, integrity and a need for self-actualisation.
Himanshu has trained over 20,000 professionals, both in the private sector as well as the government. Some of his training interventions include helping Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie to develop a training module on “Ethics and Anti-Corruption Strategies for all Indian Administrative Services officers across career phases”; “Training of Trainers” on Negotiation Skills for faculty and senior management of LBSNAA, Mussoorie, and subsequent training on Negotiation for Phase V IAS Officers (IAS with 27-30 years of service).
Himanshu provides strategic consultancy to the Government, and has audited programmes sponsored by the Planning Commission of India. He provides strategic consultancy to State governments in the areas of restructuring, strategic HR management, and employee development. He provides consultancy in negotiation to individuals and organisations.
Aspiring to bring in a moral compass to management education, he launched an elective course titled, “Justice, Ethics and Morality”, which has become one of the most popular courses now at the IIMs.
He has published more than 30 Papers and Chapters in peer reviewed journals and books, and his current areas of research include negotiation, ethical leadership, cross cultural issues, management and religion, spirituality, gender, and influence tactics. A connoisseur of Sanskrit literature, he has also written about and given discourses on Indian and Western philosophy, which he avidly studies. His research always has a strong underpinning of philosophy and its elements. His research exploring the measurement of spirituality through an analysis of Vedic literature won him the best in-session presentation award at a conference in Costa Rica. He is a recipient of the coveted NTSE Scholarship and Infosys Fellowship. He was also awarded the best professor in HRM by a leading publishing house last year.
Himanshu looks to yoga, as a means to balance the body, the mind and the spirit. He has also introduced his students to the basic tenets of this ancient Indian discipline through various workshops. Passionate about mountaineering and trekking, he treks up the Garhwal Himalayas annually, also having led several expeditions up to nearly 20,000 feet. He has explored most of the treks in this vast area and has scaled Everest Base Camp, Rudragaira, Kala Patthar, Nagakarsang, Khatling and Chandrashila peaks.
An avid quizzer, Himanshu has conducted over a hundred quiz shows across the country and has had a delightful stint in dramatics with many plays to his credit, both as an actor and a director. He also juggles a keen interest in reading and collecting books with a strong passion for music.