The Hindu Business Line : ‘Development goals need impetus from inclusive corporate strategy’

While the rate of the growth of the economy and foreign direct investments are positive indicators, the lack of focus as well as clear goals and objectives are the major challenges.

Our Bureau

Kochi, Feb. 15 Breaking from the past, a new class of entrepreneurs are emerging in India who are equally committed to the future of the country through wealth creation as also through activities that would ensure a healthy future for the youth, Mr Kewal Handa, President of the All India Management Association and Managing Director of Pfizer Ltd, said.

Inaugurating the annual management convention of the Kerala Management Association (KMA) here, he said that while the good news remained the same, the challenges were multiplying and changing rapidly.

While the rate of the growth of the economy and foreign direct investments are positive indicators, the lack of focus as well as clear goals and objectives are the major challenges.

The global business environment has been changing, particularly the competitive environment. Even for local firms, making global excellence has become the key determinant of success. The prime mover of excellence of an organisation is leadership and leadership for global excellence is the quintessence of success.

The most important component of leadership for global excellence is leadership of the organisation that lends itself to the required transformation to lead it through the turbulently dynamic and uncertain terrain towards excellence, and it prompts the organisation to excel, a statement from KMA said.

The theme of the convention is ‘Leadership for Global Excellence’.

Global competitiveness

With the ubiquitous liberalisation, globalisation has come to stay and consequently, as Peter Drucker observes in Management Challenges for the 21st Century, “All institutions have to make global competitiveness a strategic goal. No institution, whether a business, a university or a hospital, can hope to survive, let alone to succeed, unless it measures up to the standards set by the leaders in its field at any place in the world.”

While Corporate Social Responsibility, social audit, corporate governance are all ideas which help mould the social orientation and commitment of an organisation, they are not sufficient to meet the critical societal challenges, particularly of nations like India with very large population at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP).

The vision/mission of the corporates to lend a helping hand to the BOP and put in place appropriate strategies to enable this brooks no delay, the KMA said. The convention held a technical session on inclusive growth.

The goal set for the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) is towards faster and more inclusive growth. At this juncture, when corporate India is proving its mettle, both domestically and globally, the national development strategy of inclusive growth can be and needs to be reinforced by supplementing it with inclusive corporate strategies.

The renowned management guru, Mr C.K. Prahalad, points out that the BOP, as a market, provides a new growth opportunity for the private sector and a forum for innovations.

He purports that in the BPO markets, creating the capacity to consume is based on simple principles best described as the three A – viz., affordability, access and availability. How should corporate India gear-up to address this great national challenge, KMA asked.

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