Abstract:
The study reported here, consists of three main parts. The
first deals with the issue of the importance on management
education in a poor country, some of the reported effects
and therefore the question of relevance is raised.
Proponents of the free market system argue that the only
role of a manager is to make a profit for the business.
However, in a country like India where the majority of the
population is outside the mainstream of modern industrial
life, there are arguments that freedom to make a profit
should be accompanied by social responsibility because this
form of behaviour helps to link modern industry with the
wider social goals of a country.
The second part of the study considers how to define and
measure the social effects of publicly funded education. The
outcome is the use of personal construct theory and
repertory grid technique, borrowed from clinical psychology.
which help to examine the social responsibility of Indian
managers. The theory states that man makes choices and
decisions based on the way he construes the world around him
and the way he anticipates future events. The implication is
that managers who construe social responsibility
in terms of
socio economic development are likely to make decisions
which are more beneficial to society than those who have a
narrower view of socially responsible behaviour.
The third part of the study reports on the findings of the
study, which has used five separate instruments with 53
Indian managers who have been trained at one of the three
established Indian Institutes of Management. These
Institutes (IIMs) train around 500 graduate managers each
year and one of their objectives, is to "inculcate" social
values in the graduates so that their future decisions as
managers will be made in this context and be relevant to
India's needs. The graduates are from among India's social
elite and the way they construe social responsibility
has
been compared to a matched group of managers who have not
been through the IIMs. Data has been collected, to classify
the managers, on the social origins, their place of work and
career orientations. The way they construe corporate and
managerial social responsibility was elicited through the
use of repertory grid technique, in order to examine the
question of social responsibility in as many different ways
as possible. Interestingly the results
indicate
insignificant differences between the two groups.
These are interesting results as they highlight the
possibility that the IIMs have not managed to instill
socially responsible constructs which are any different from
other Indian managers. Although this study is a snap-shot
view of Indian managers, it does point to an area of research which the IIMs might take up, for example the
objective of instilling social responsibility might not be
achievable given all the other aims of the Institutions, or,
if they feel that being of social consequence is important
they might review their entry requirements, operational
focus and so on. The main contribution of the results, to
this issue, is a new approach to evaluating management
education, helping to break from the conventional social
cost benefit methods.
This study has two further contributions of particular
interest. First, it has examined social responsibility in a
novel way and provided an empirically based definition.
Secondly, the method used for this research has extended the
application of personal construct theory to new areas of
study, particularly by embodying repertory grid technique.
There is little literature in construct theory which is of
relevance to management education and this study has helped
to close this gap.