'Think global to compete globally'

Implications at the global economic level in terms of the emerging new realignment of nations call for quality management education and that can be achieved by stronger leadership at the director and dean level, just like any other business, autonomy from the donors and the need to invest in faculty," said Jagdish N Sheth, Charles H Kellstadt professor of marketing, Goizueta Business School, Emory University, USA.

He was delivering the keynote address at the 17th annual convention of the Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) being hosted by the ICFAI Business School which began here today. He said to achieve global competitiveness, it was essential to have a global mindset.

The three-day convention will have deliberations on the theme 'Management 2025: New Paradigms for India's Competitiveness.'

Speaking about the emerging global economic scenario, Sheth said that India needs to reengineer with respect to its industrial policy, international trade, domestic industry and domestic infrastructure and that India's future will be dependent on geopolictical realignment of nations and the emergence of the triad markets of North and South America, European Union and Eastern Europe and the Asia Pacific Region. The triad powers desperately need economic growth to sustain employment and political stability, he said.

In his welcome address, V Panduranga Rao, president, AIMS and vice-chancellor, The ICFAI University, said that India's competitiveness needs to be taken forward and that this convention was a step in that direction.

He said that the deliberations at the AIMS convention should result in policy advocacy on how to take higher education to excellence by 2025.

J Philip, director, XIME, Bangalore, briefing about AIMS said that it was established in 1988 at IIM Bangalore as a forum to bring various business schools onto a common platform to discuss, debate and analyse management education in the country.

He said the total membership of AIMS increased from 32 schools in 1988 to 382 in 2005 while the number of business schools rose from a mere 105 in 1988 to 1,250 in 2005.

He recalled that one of the first initiatives of AIMS was to circulate model curriculum and minimal standards pertaining to infrastructure that an institute should maintain.