Sumantra Ghoshal
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Sumantra Ghoshal (September 26th, 1948 Kolkata (India) - March 3rd, 2004 Hampstead, United Kingdom) was the founding Dean of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, which is jointly sponsored by the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and the London Business School. Ghoshal also co-authored Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, with Christopher Bartlett, which has been listed in the Financial Times as one of the 50 most influential management books and has been translated into nine languages.
Ghoshal graduated from Delhi University with Physics major and at the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management [1] and worked for Indian Oil Corporation, rising through the management ranks before moving to the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1981. There, he produced two Ph.D. dissertations at once, initially at the MIT Sloan School of Management, then also at Harvard Business School. In 1985, he joined INSEAD Business School in France and wrote a stream of influential articles and books. In 1994, he joined the London Business School. Ghoshal was a Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) in the U.K and a Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School. He served as a member of The Committee of Overseers of the Harvard Business School and was the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
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[edit] Ghoshal's legacy
Ghoshal's early work focused on the matrix structure in multinational organisations, and the "conflict and confusion" that reporting along both geographical and functional lines created. His later work is more ambitious, and hence perhaps more important - the idea that it is necessary to halt economics from taking over management. This, he theorised, is important since firms do not play on the periphery of human life today, but have taken a central role.
His treatment of management issues at the level of the individual led him to conclude that management theory that focuses on the economic aspects of man to the exclusion of all others is incorrect at best. According to him, "A theory that assumes that managers cannot be relied upon by shareholders can make managers less reliable."
Such theory, he warned, would become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a particularly stinging critique of the output of a majority of his colleagues in Business Schools that made him controversial. To his death, his fight was against the "narrow idea" that led to today's management theory being "undersocialised and one-dimensional, a parody of the human condition more appropriate to a prison or a madhouse than an institution which should be a force for good."
[edit] Forms of the International Enterprise
In co-operation with Christopher Bartlett Ghoshal researched successful enterprises on international markets. They found three types of internationalization, differing in structural approach and strategic capabilities. The types were dubbed Multinational, Global and International.
| Multinational Enterprise | Global Enterprise | International Enterprise | |
| Strategic competency | responsiveness | efficiency | transfer of learning |
| Structures | lose federations of enterprises; national subsidiaries solve all operative tasks and some strategical. | tightly centralized enterprise; national subsidiaries primarily seen as distribution centres; all strategic and many operative decisions centralized | Somewhere inbetween multinational and global enterprises; some strategic areas centralized, some decentralized |
| Samples | Unilever, ITT | Exxon, Toyota | IBM, Ericsson |
Due to an ever faster changing environment, Bartlett and Ghoshal see a further need for adaptation with a drive toward a company, that masters not one, but all three of the strategic capabilities of the named types. The ideal-type thus created, they dubbed the transnational enterprise.
[edit] Books
Ghoshal published 10 books, over 70 articles and several award-winning case studies.
- The Differential Network: Organizing the Multinational Corporation for Value Creation, a book he co-authored with Nitin Nohria, won the George Terry Book Award in 1997.
- 1999 The Individualized Corporation:A Fundamentally New Approach to Management , co-authored with Christopher Bartlett, won the Igor Ansoff Award in 1997, and has been translated into seven languages.
- Managing Radical Change, won the Management Book of the Year award in India. He was described by The Economist as 'Euroguru'.
- Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, a book he co-authored with Christopher Bartlett, has been listed in the Financial Times as one of the 50 most influential management books and has been translated into nine languages.
- Sep 2002 The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases : Global by Henry Mintzberg, Joseph Lampel, James Brian Quinn, and Sumantra Ghoshal
The Differentiated Network : Organizing Multinational Corporations for Value Creation (The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series) by Nitin Nohria and Sumantra Ghoshal (Hardcover - Feb 19, 1997)
Sumantra Ghoshal on Management : A Force for Good by Julian Birkinshaw and Gita Piramal (Hardcover - Feb 1, 2006)
[edit] Articles
Beyond Self-Interest Revisited by Hector Rocha and Sumantra Ghoshal, Journal of Management Studies, 2006 Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 585-619
Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices by Sumantra Ghoshal, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2005 Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp.75-91
Unleashing Organisational Energy by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2003 Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 45–51
What is a Global Manager by Christoper A. Barlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 2003 Aug;81(8):101-108, 141
Managing Personal Human Capital by Lynda Gratton and Sumantra Ghoshal, European Management Journal, 2003 vo. 21, No. 1, pp. 1-10
Beware the Busy Manager by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 2002, vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 62-69
Strategy as a Guided Evolution by Bjorn Lovas and Sumantra Ghoshal, Strategic Management Journal, 2000, vol. 21, No. 9, pp. 875-896
Management Competence, Firm Growth and Economic Progress by Sumantra Ghoshal, M Hahn and Peter Moran, Contributions to Political Economy, Vol. 18, pp. 121-150, 1999
Markets, Firms, and the Process of Economic Development by Peter Moran and Sumantra Ghoshal, The Academy of Management Review, 1999, Vol. 24, No. 3, 390-412
Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks by Wenpin Tsai and Sumantra Ghoshal, The Academy of Management Journal, 1998 Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 464-476
Social capital, intellectual capital and the organizational advantage by Janine Nahapiet and Sumantra Ghoshal, Academy of Management Review, 1998 23(2): 242-266
Theories of Economic Organisation: The Case for Realism and Balance by Peter Moran and Sumantra Ghoshal, The Academy of Management Review, 1996, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 58-72
Bad For Practice: A Critique of the Transaction Cost Theory by Sumantra Ghoshal and Peter Moran, The Academy of Management Review, 1996 Vol. 21, No. 1, pp.13-47
Building the Entrepreneurial Corporation: New Organisational Processes, New Managerial Tasks by Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher A. Barlett, European Management Journal, 1995 Vol. 13 No.2, pp.139-55
Differentiated Fit and Shared Values: Alternatives for Managing Headquarters-Subsidiary Relations by Nitin Nohria and Sumantra Ghoshal, Strategic Management Journal, 1994, Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 491-502
Interunit Communication in Multinational Corporations by Sumantra Ghoshal, Harry Korine and Gabriel Szulanski, Management Science, Vol. 40, No. 1, January 1994, pp. 96-110
Beyond the M-form: Toward a Managerial Theory of the Firm by Christopher A. Barlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, Strategic Management Journal, 1993 No. 14, Winter, pp. 23-46
Matrix Management: Not a Structure, a Frame of Mind by Christopher A. Barlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 1990 Jul-Aug; 68(4): 138-145
Environmental Scanning in Korean Firms: Organisational Isomorphism in Action by Sumantra Ghoshal, Journal of International Business Studies, 1988 Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 69-86
Creation, Adoption, and Diffusion of Innovations by Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations by Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher A. Barlett, Journal of International Business Studies, 1988 Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 365-388
[edit] Case studies
Professor Ghoshal died of a brain haemorrhage on March, 2004 at Hampstead, United Kingdom.
[edit] Awards
His last book, Managing Radical Change, won the Management Book of the Year award in India. He was described by The Economist as 'Euroguru'.
