Although corporations have been around for well over half a millennium, corporate governance as a distinctive field of study and specialization is of relatively recent origin. With corporate footprints escalating across industry and service sectors over different geographies around the world, governing the corporation has become an increasingly complex exercise. Professor Balasubramanian explains the three pillars of governance — the shareholders, the board and the executive management — including the dynamics of managing board effectiveness, through real-life case studies and interactive examples.
The author aims to encourage dialogue about leading corporations in an ethical and sustainable manner. In the wake of corporations like Satyam, Sahara, Sardha, SKS Microfinance and National Spot Exchange making headlines for all the wrong reasons, this is essential reading.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Super Power?
In his career as a journalist and one of India’s top entrepreneurs, Raghav Bahl has often faced a barrage of questions from visiting businesspeople bewildered by India: Why are Indian regulations so weak and confusing? Why is your foreign investment policy so restrictive? How is it that you speak such good English? Inevitably, the questions are followed by the observation: But, you know, that’s not the way it is in China.
Indeed, even as the two economies are together projected to dominate the world, there is a palpable difference in the way China and India work on the ground. China is spectacularly effective in building infrastructure and is currently investing almost half its GDP. Meanwhile, India is a ‘promising’ economy: more than half its GDP is consumed by its billionplus population; half its population is younger than twenty-five, giving it a unique demographic advantage; 350 million Indians understand English, making it the largest English-using country in the world
In the race to superpower status, who is likely to breast the tape-China’s hare or India’s tortoise? For anyone looking to understand China and India and the ways in which these two nations are about to change the history of the world, this is the book to read.
Barons of Banking
Barons of Banking highlights the contributions of six distinguished personalities from the world of banking: Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, Sir Chintaman D. Deshmukh, A.D. Shroff, H.T. Parekh, and R.K. Talwar. They not only played a pioneering role in the growth of the institutions they founded or were actively associated with, but also left an indelible mark on the banking industry as a whole. Through the narration of the history of five key institutions: the Central Bank of India; the Reserve Bank of India; the State Bank of India; the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Ltd; and the Housing Development and Finance Corporation Ltd, the author gives us a keen insight into the contributions of these luminaries to banking in India. Also included is a narration of the recommendations of important committees and commissions which influenced the course of Indian banking.
Three Merchants Of Bombay
Three Merchants of Bombay is the story of three intrepid merchants-Trawadi Arjunji Nathji, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Premchand Roychand-who traded out of Bombay in the nineteenth century, founding pioneering business empires.Trailblazing in their enterprise, these adventurers possessed the unique ability to find and then exploit the big opportunities that came their way. It was a time of transition, and they prospered because they thought big and took risks. Set against the backdrop of global and local economies undergoing rapid and unforeseen change, the story of these three unique men stands as a proud milestone in the history of indigenous capitalism in India.In this lucid and very readable account, Lakshmi Subramanian traces that history and locates it in the greater narrative of the history of economic development in South Asia.
Swinging the Mandate
Swinging the Mandate is a first-of-its-kind book on political campaign management in India. Prof. Dheeraj Sharma, chair of marketing at IIM Ahmedabad, and Narayan Singh Rao discuss how sophisticated campaign management strategies have been utilized in recent elections in India. The book offers excellent case studies from the historic general elections of 2014 and the landslide victory of AAP in the 2015 Delhi elections. It also gives examples of some hard-fought elections in Europe and North America to demonstrate increasing use of principles of marketing and management in campaign management. Armed with comprehensive research and interesting case studies, this accessible book reveals how star campaigners are built, what the marketing mix for a political party looks like, and how elections are won in India
Management From The Masters
The only valid purpose of a business is to create a customer.
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Never invest in something you don’t understand.
Every successful manager knows that there are immutable laws that impact almost every aspect of management. This slim volume collects the twenty essential rules that every manager must be aware of. From Kautilya, Confucius and Darwin to Parkinson, Deming, Buffett, Grove and Drucker, these are timeless pronouncements on the art of management from thought leaders across the ages. Along the way, the author also provides a number of interesting points to ponder: Why do we continue to use the QWERTY keyboard even though we know it’s not the most user-friendly? How does the Tata Group follow Confucius’s Golden Rule? The optimal number of direct reportees for an efficient manager is only four; how many do you have?
This book is essential reading if you want to be at the top of your game as a manager.
Caravans
Caravans tells the fascinating story of tens of thousands of intrepid Multani and Shikarpuri merchants who risked everything to travel great distances and spend years of their lives pursuing their fortunes in foreign lands. From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, these merchants lived as ‘guests’ in cities and villages across Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran and Russia. Setting aside beliefs that caravan traders were simple peddlers, Scott Levi examines the sophisticated techniques these merchants used to convert a modest amount of merchandise into vast portfolios of trade and moneylending ventures.
Caravans also challenges the notion that the rising tide of European trade in the Indian Ocean usurped the overland ‘Silk Road’ trade and pushed Central Asia into economic isolation. In fact, as Levi shows, it was at precisely the same historical moment that thousands of Multanis began making their way to Central Asia, linking the early modern Indian and Central Asian economies closer together than ever before.
The Magic of Friendships
Do you have numerous friends on social media, but hardly any in real life?
Do you find that your relationships don’t last?
These and similar questions have now become the part and parcel of our lives. Today, more than ever, friendship has become more important than any other relationship. The warmth and companionship that a good friend can provide is unmatched and each one of us craves for that special friend to whom we can unburden our heart or seek help from in troubled times. But not all of us are that lucky!
In his book, Shubha Vilas discusses, in a simple and straight-forward manner, what is missing in our friendships today and the various scenarios that prevent people from making and maintaining good friends.
Orbit Shifting Innovation
Orbit-shifting innovation happens when an area that needs transformation meets an innovator with the will and the desire to create, and not follow history. At the heart of the orbit-shifting innovation is the breakthrough that creates a new orbit and achieves a transformative impact.
Businesses, social enterprises and even governments need orbit-shifting ideas to create a transformative impact. But how does that groundbreaking idea come about, and what translates it into actuality? Charting the vast landscape of orbit-shifting innovation and innovators across countries, cultures and industries, the book brings to the fore the moving force that drives orbit-shifters to take on a transformative challenge and to navigate the pitfalls and obstacles in making it happen.
The Raisina Model
Meghnad Desai reflects on Indian democracy as it completes seventy years of colourful, eventful and energetic parliamentary existence. Pulling no punches, Desai looks at the history and evolution of Indian democratic institutions, pinpointing their achievements, but also their repeated failure to live up to the standards envisaged by the nation’s founders. Drawing on his own career as a Labour peer in Britain’s House of Lords, Desai has the rare understanding and familiarity with the process of politics, and is able therefore to identify its universal features and zoom in on its uniquely Indian aspects. This is a candid, reflective and unsparing view of the precepts and practice of Indian politics. It traces at the evolution and growth of identity politics, coalition governments and single-party rule and the differing political narratives of the north and the south. The Raisina Model is a critical and frequently uncomfortable meditation on India’s contemporary political culture.