Janat Shah is a mechanical engineer from IIT Bombay and an FPM from IIM Ahmedabad who taught operations management for several years in the sylvan confines of IIM Bangalore. Now as Director of IIM Udaipur, Prof Shah wants to put the focus of the fledgling IIM relentlessly on research. Even at the cost of eschewing lucrative executive education programmes. Excerpts from an interview:
I believe IIM-U’s course programme is designed differently from the other IIMs. How is it different?
We have designed our institution in a very different way. We want to build an institution which is research focussed. We can build such a focussed institution and also do a great MBA programme. We don’t see a conflict between the two and that’s what we are trying to do.
Are you also focussing on executive education like some of the other IIMs?
In many institutions, the faculty is tied up in education, both at the PGP level and in executive education and are unable to do research. Today it is possible to be operationally self-sufficient just with a PGP programme. Second, I believe that it’s better to do executive education which is based on your research, then you are likely to give a better quality. You can then also charge higher fees.
For several reasons, we are saying that executive education for at least six-seven years will not make sense for us and we will not touch it at all. We will stay focussed and at the end of ten years we should be able to say that we have produced some high-quality research, research as defined by global peers. There is no second guessing on that part. There are some high-quality journals, as agreed by global researchers, and we are saying we will only focus on those.
So, will that make a difference in your approach?
Individuals can decide where they want to work. But there are the top-quality journals from which we need recognition. If I am in the marketing area, for example, I would have to focus on business-to-business marketing, retail marketing and so on. That’s fine. But you must make sure that the globally-best researchers recognise your work. We are saying research is in an individual’s domain, we don’t impose anything. Let him/her choose. Only thing we say is that you should make sure that your work is recognised by global peers which is that you must publish in those high-quality journals.
But, I expect it will be long haul then?
It’s going to be very long. We are saying we need to focus with a ten-year horizon, invest heavily in our faculty and say ‘don’t worry about the short-term’. We provide significant funds to the faculty, we try and get them a mentor who is going to help in this globally, and we say that through this support that we will try and achieve this.
Can you give examples of the kinds of research faculty is working on?
Research is a very narrow field. We have a faculty member who is trying to understand the nature of group companies in India. Traditionally in research, one simply assumes that if you put together affiliate companies it becomes a group company. By and large all of them move in a similar direction. One of the reasons why groups seem to survive in this part of world is because they also give a fair amount of freedom to individual companies. And that’s a new thought. He is trying to publish that.
Similarly there is a colleague who has been working on the whole issue of how various organisations change their identity. He is trying to do that using very different very interesting details. He is looking at UK political parties’ data and trying to look at their manifesto and through that he is trying to draw certain lessons for organisations.
Then there is another colleague who is trying to work on the issue of identity. When somebody joins an organisation, say a Wipro or an Infosys, he becomes an integral part of it, but at the same he may want to retain his identity as software engineer or a Java programmer. What he did was he looked at one particular IT company and then looked at individuals in it for one year. What happened to their identity, he’s trying to establish that.
So, we are telling faculty, you decide your area of research. But finally we are saying you must publish in a high-quality journal. We will worry about relevance slightly at a later stage. Lots of times we have got lost in this debate, rigour versus relevance. I feel you don’t have a choice. You first have to have rigour, because in the academic world if you do not have rigour people don’t respect you. So rather than saying you do both, we are saying it will be nice if you have relevance, but in the first 6-7 years of your career, just focus on rigour. Whatever work you want to do, whether relevant or not don’t worry. First you establish your credibility and then you make sure you work on relevant problems.
What about the funding for the research?
We are putting 20 per cent of our income on R&D. Roughly it will mean about ₹10 lakh per faculty per year. Out of that we are saying we are giving ₹3 lakh to individuals, saying ‘this is your discretionary fund, you do whatever you want … here is money, your choice’. That’s one part. Then we have an additional component that everybody is entitled to, a grant of about ₹3 lakh. This is one to get your work started. So what we are saying is ₹3 lakh is the individual fund, another ₹3 lakh seed money, and another ₹4 lakh will be kept in a pool. If somebody wants to go and spend a semester at a university we will support it from that fund. Similarly, if we want to invite somebody, we can use these funds.
Over a period of time we want to have a research relationship with at least five universities so that individuals can decide where they will find appropriate partners.
Is the funding you give comparable to what other B schools are spending on research?
Anything the faculty wants for research, we are saying, we will find money for it. This is unusually high (the funds earmarked). For example, what we are giving by way of discretionary funds is comparable to what ISB gives. We won’t give salaries which are comparable, but research support you will get which is comparable with the best in the world. It’s a lot more investment orientation. We are saying, ‘we will make it happen’.
Second, we have said no faculty will get into any administration work. That needs lots of energy. I have done a lot of administration in my life, especially at a younger age. If you load administrative duties, then a lot of energy goes into it and all that comes at the cost of research.
We say, ‘don’t do executive education, don’t do administration, stay focussed on research, in teaching you do a lower number of courses. Initially, in the first two years, teach only two courses, then go on to three courses’
But, the only thing is it a long path. Honestly, we will see results only about 7-10 years from now.