The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) in collaboration with the Institute of Certified Professional Managers (CPM) and Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka (CMA) will be conducting the Top Management Programme on the topic ‘Transforming Business Organisations to Achieve Growth’ from November 27 to 29, 2017.    

IIMA, established in 1961, had as its partner Harvard Business School (HBS), the top business school in the USA and the number one business school in India and was the first Indian business school to achieve international recognition in 2002. One of the most valuable aspects of IIMA’s association with HBS was research in practice of Indian business and more importantly the case study approach, which will be used in the conduct of this programme. 

Organisations after a period of success get set in ways that can result in divergence between the demands of the environment and the processes and structures within. Organisations need to be adaptable, honing their organisation and processes to the environment. A strategic orientation, wherein operations, boundaries, vendors and markets are understood as they change, is an integral part of adaptability. Yet, there are givens within an organisation – its values and the institutionalization of what is functional. This implies that change has to be consciously managed. Therefore, the top managers’ perspectives become important in transforming organisations. 

This programme will bring insights from case studies of successful transformations covering various dimensions of strategy including operations and how leaders can bring about the transformation of organisations for high performance.

The programme highlights include – Perspectives on the key forces of change in the current economic and social environment, idea of strategy and strategic change, organisational processes, orientation for growth and high performance, emerging economics and rapid growth, organisational leadership and change management.

This programme is meant for leaders of public quoted, group, multinational, banking, finance, insurance, industry, services, retail, export, agricultural and plantation, state corporations, government-owned and private sector companies, managing directors, directors, CEOs, COOs, general managers and senior corporate managers facing the challenge of growth and organisational transformation.

The pedagogy will be a mix of case studies and discussions. IIMA believes in interactive sessions. A typical day would involve intense classroom sessions with much prior preparation and syndicate work.
The faculty includes Prof.  Amit Karna Fellow (IIM Ahmedabad), an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at IIMA, Prof. Morris Sebastian (Faculty Chair) Fellow (IIM, Calcutta); MSc (Int.) (Phys.), IIT, Bombay Professor, Member of the Economics and Public Systems Areas and Prof. Vohra Neharika, Ph.D. (Manitoba), who is a psychologist and teaches organisational behaviour at IIMA as a full-time faculty.    

Prof. Karna’s interests lie in the areas of strategic management, technology and innovation and entrepreneurship. He has advised government and private organisations (in India and abroad) on strategy and management-related issues. 

Prof. Karna currently chairs the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) – one of the largest and most well-regarded educational institute-based business incubators in Asia. He is also involved with various disruptive start-ups in designing innovative business models.

Prior to IIMA, Prof. Karna was an Assistant Professor at EBS Business School in Germany between 2009 and 2014. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 2011 and at the University of Sydney Business School in 2015. He has been a visiting faculty at the IESEG School of Management in France between 2012 and 2014.

Prof. Karna completed his PhD in Strategic Management from IIMA. Prior to his doctorate, he worked with Aditya Birla Group between 1999 and 2003 in various managerial positions. 

Prof. Morris’ interests include international trade and investment, industrial development, macroeconomics, economic history, public sector, infrastructure, small firms, electricity reforms, regulation, PPPs, land markets and the Indian economy. 

He was the recipient of the Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in International Economics and won the EXIM Bank’s International Trade Research Award. He earlier worked as Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad and Senior Correspondent for Business India (magazine), visiting fellow at University of Pennsylvania and ICCR Chair Professor at Copenhagen Business School (Asia Research Centre). He was co-chair of the IIMA-Harvard Kennedy School Phase V programmes for senior government officials, was Founding Chair of the PGP-PMP of IIMA and the Centre for Infrastructure Policy and Regulation at IIMA. 

Prof. Vohra’s research interests are in the areas of leadership, gender, diversity and inclusion, employee behaviour and CSR. She has guided several doctoral students. She has authored several papers in international and national journals and three books. She is currently on the editorial board of four national and international journals including a new journal, ‘Evidence-based Human Resource Management. 
She has been involved extensively in competency building of leaders across organisations. She is currently on the board of IIMA, Bizdivas, Women’s Leadership Forum of Asia, Vidyashilp, Centre for Innovation and Incubation of Enterprises, Zee Entertainment Enterprise Limited and Indian Institute of Production Management and on the academic advisory board of XIM Bhubaneswar. 

The venue for the programme will be Gregory Room, Hotel Taj Samudra, Colombo. 

IIMA with CPM and CMA will issue a certificate of participation. 

Those interested in participating may contact Dilshan – mobile:  +94 714 775 125/+94 11 2 590 995, email: [email protected] or Shanthi – mobile: +94 714 705 536, email: [email protected].