Top honours for IIM Bangalore, Tiruchi Faculty at 2016 EFMD Case Writing Competition

A two-part Tata Group case, co-authored by J. Ramachandran, Professor of Strategy, IIM Bangalore, K S Manikandan, Associate Professor of Strategy, IIM Tiruchirappalli and K Rajyalakshmi, formerly Research Associate at IIM Bangalore, has won the 2016 EMFD Case Writing Competition.

This year was a record for the number of entries received and the quality was exceptionally high. The Tata Group case won the award in the category ‘Indian Management Issues and Opportunities’. The awards ceremony will take place on June 7 at Berlin, IIMB said in a press release.

The first part, titled ‘Ratan Tata Case’, authored by all three faculty members, focuses on his leadership of the Group from 1991 to 2012. It narrates the Tata Group history and traces the early years of the Group, its management philosophy, the leadership years of its legendary chairman JRD Tata, the dramatic transformation under Ratan Tata’s leadership and passing the Baton to Cyrus Mistry as Chairman of the Group in late 2012.

EFMD has been organising its yearly case writing competition for the last 30 years. With a wide selection of categories that focus on specific issues, as well as specific regions of the world.

The second part titled the ‘Cyrus Mistry Years Case’, co-authored by Manikandan and Ramachandran, describes Cyrus Mistry’s leadership of the Group until it ended abruptly with his sudden removal as Chairman of Tata Sons on October 24, 2016, and the reinstatement of Ratan Tata as Interim Chairman.

“We are delighted with this recognition. Diversified business groups, which are widely prevalent in emerging economies, are an important organisational form as they defy received view that unrelated diversification is value destructive. This two-part case study based on an exemplar business group based in India, an emerging economy, is apt for MBA and Executive MBA courses on Corporate Strategy and Strategy in Emerging Markets,” said Prof. J Ramachandran. He is also IIMB Chair of Excellence and Bain Fellow at IIMB.

The award was in the category, ‘Indian Management Issues and Opportunities’, sponsored by Curtin Business School, Bentley, Western Australia. According to EFMD, this category aims to energise the development of materials related to Indian management issues and opportunities.

Under the terms and conditions, cases should address the unique characteristics of Indian businesses, to promote substantive discussion about Indian management practices and challenges. Cases in this category should describe a management issue occurring within an Indian company in India or any other country or within the Indian operations of a foreign company

EFMD has been organising its yearly case writing competition for the last 30 years. With a wide selection of categories that focus on specific issues, as well as specific regions of the world, the aim of the EFMD case competition is to encourage and support the writing and creation of new and innovative case material.