The book is a compelling inquiry into a topic which impacts all companies but stays shrouded in mystery of what ails boards and how they can add value. The Role of Boards explores the issues and challenges that afflict Indian boards, unravels the array of key strategic weapons for winning the corporate war and proposes action steps for architecting a sustainable competitive edge. Packed with signposts, strategic checklist and principles to guide management and organizations towards sustainable corporate excellence and national development, the book is the new boardroom bible in the emerging post-pandemic and technologically disruptive world. It starts with an examination of the ground realities of Indian organizations and the way in which selfishness, scams and scandals are destroying value, hurting stock markets, increasing the gap between the rich and poor and reducing trust. It then conceptually studies the role of various pillars which can be leveraged for building sustainable competitive edge in organizations: continuous innovation, customer centricity, cost and quality leadership, speed to the market, agility, organizational ambidexterity, people power, ethical governance and strategic leadership. To enhance boardroom governance, the book advocates path breaking recommendations especially in terms of its composition, competence, agenda, decision-making and attention to strategic matters apart from the traditional focus on conformance and compliance. The book is unique in its study of Indian boards from the behavioural point of view. It is the first-of-kind to have used the actor approach to examine the nuances and facets of boardroom realities in India and makes recommendations from that vantage point. The book is contextual, rooted in Indian realities, futuristic and recommendatory for enabling corporate India to contribute to the ambitious national endeavour of Atmanirbharta - self-reliant and self-sufficient India.
Pritam Singh is currently the CEO of LEAD Centre in Gurgaon. Dr Singh is a thought leader with extraordinary insight. Dr Singh is the author of seven critically acclaimed books, three of which are award winning. He has also published over 60 research papers in various national and international journals. He is a globally sought-after speaker and has addressed various Indian and global audiences, including Chambers of Commerce in various countries, notably, Holland, France, Germany, Greece, Russia, UK, USA, Thailand, Mauritius, Egypt, etc.
As an academic administrator, Dr Singh has an unparalleled record. With his entrepreneurial vision and path-breaking innovative methods, Dr Singh turned around the fortunes of both MDI-Gurgaon (where he was the director from 1994 to 1998 and from 2003 to 2006) and IIM Lucknow (1998–2003). He steered International Management Institute (IMI) for a period of three years until October 2014, and during this period IMI improved tremendously in reputation and ranking. Quite fittingly, therefore, he earned the repute of Midas Touch Director.
As the Chairman and member of several policy-making committees and bodies of the Government of India, he has stamped his perspective on policy issues that surround both management education and corporate management in India. He is currently on the Board of 10 reputed private- and public-sector organizations, helping them initiate the change process and charter a winning corporate strategy.
He has been conferred the prestigious ‘Padma Shri’―a first in the field of management education. He has also been the recipient of several other prestigious awards, the most notable among them being the ‘Global Thought Leader’ 2006–2007 by MIRBIS (the Russian School of Business in Moscow), where he was the first Asian to be thus awarded. Thinkers50 India ranked him 27 out of 50 Indian Thinkers (both in India and globally) in 2014.
Asha Bhandarker is well known in the field of HR and Leadership Studies in India as a scholar, consultant and researcher. Prior to her current assignment as a Distinguished Professor OB at IMI-Delhi, she was the Raman Munjal Chair Professor of Leadership Studies as well as Dean Research and Consulting at MDI-Gurgaon.
She has published 7 books and 40 research papers and cases in peer-reviewed, national and international journals. She was awarded the highly coveted Senior Fulbright Fellowship for research in the United States, where she studied the best business schools and their practices and pedagogies. In addition, she has, over the years, received the Best Paper award, Best Case award and the Best Teacher award.
Over the last 28 years, she has worked closely with the corporate sector in the areas of training, organization development and capability building. She is one of a handful of professors working with board levels and top management teams of many organizations. She is a recognized HR expert and has been invited on many boardlevel HR committees. Dr Bhandarker is actively associated with professional bodies and has addressed participants of national and international conferences. She has widely travelled across the USA, Europe and Asia and has rich experience of teaching and consulting in India and abroad.
Subir Verma is Fellow (PhD) from IIM, Ahmedabad and M.A. (Gold Medalist) and M.Phil in Political Science from Delhi University. He has more than 16 years of teaching experience and has been a visiting faculty at ESCP-Europe, Paris. He was earlier the Chairman of the flagship MBA program, Chairman of the Corporate Relations and Placements Committee, and Chairman of the EQUIS Accreditation at MDI.
Professor Verma has consulted with top MNCs in India on their Organization Design, Change Management, and Leadership Development. He has also designed and delivered numerous workshops, both in class and outbound-based experiential learning, on leadership, teamwork, managerial effectiveness, and negotiation skills for the middle and senior level of management of several reputed public and private sector organizations.
Professor Verma has edited two books, viz. Organizing and Managing in the Era of Globalization (along with Pritam Singh, 2009) and Creating Boundaryless HR (2009), and published several articles in reputed national and international journals. His forthcoming book on M.K. Gandhi: An Epitome of Leadership is slated for publication next year. At present, he is engaged in carrying out the AICTE funded research on “Identification and Benchmarking of Best Practices in Organizing and Managing in Corporate India.” Professor Verma has presented his research papers in several prestigious international conferences such as of the Academy of Management, World Congress of Sociology, Asia Pacific Researchers in Organization Studies, International Human Resource Management, and the European Group of Organization Studies.
Professor Verma is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, some of which are the Dr Karan Singh Gold Medal, Professor C.J. Chacko Prize, UGC Fellowship, Club Internationale (Paris) Fellowship, and the AICTE Research Grant. He is on the editorial board of the International Strategic Management Journal. He is a Board Member of the Asia Pacific Researchers on Organization Studies and Member of the American Academy of Management, International Sociological Association, and the National HRD Network.
