Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

About: Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad is a education organization based out in Ahmedabad, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Emerging markets. The organization has 1828 authors who have published 4011 publications receiving 59269 citations. The organization is also known as: IIMA & IIM Ahmedabad.

The Fortune at the Bottom or the Middle of the Pyramid

Abstract: ness, propelled by C. K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Given the enormous attention the concept has attracted, it has the potential to impact the world’s billions of poor people—as well as the managerial practices of multinational corporations. This double potential makes it important to analyze how large corporations can serve low-income customers profitably. Prahalad and Stuart Hart argued in 2002 that multinational corporations (MNCs) have only targeted customers at the upper end of the economic pyramid and have ignored BOP customers, assuming that they are inaccessible and unprofitable. Prahalad and Hart argued further that MNCs should view BOP markets as an unexploited opportunity and be proactive in fulfilling the needs and wants of low-income consumers. To tap the vast markets at the BOP, MNCs must specially design and develop quality products and services, or they must select some to alter and make available at lower cost. Serving BOP customers is a profitable opportunity for corporations. It is also a social imperative, given that two-thirds of the human population (about four billion people) are at the bottom of the economic pyramid. By addressing the BOP, they say, MNCs can curtail poverty and improve the living conditions of the world’s poorest. In these arguments, however, BOP proponents do not take a holistic perspective. Several weaknesses in the BOP theory often go unacknowledged. Considering the far-reaching implications of these proposals, the underlying premises demand careful scrutiny. Several questions need to be answered: Is there really a “fortune” at the bottom of the pyramid? If so, can MNCs tap it as easily as BOP proponents suggest? And—is there also a fortune for the bottom of the pyramid? In answering these questions, I offer an alternative perspective on the BOP concept: I believe that we must help the poor to become selective consumers. That is, we must avoid both undesirable inclusion and exclusion. Undesirable inclusion means marketing products to the BOP that are not likely to enhance their wellbeing or that they are likely to abuse. Exclusion means failing to offer them products or services that are likely to enhance their well-being. I also suggest a frame-

Firm-Level Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets: A Case Study of India

Abstract: We provide an overview of Indian corporate governance practices, based primarily on responses to a 2006 survey of 370 Indian public companies. Compliance with legal norms is reasonably high in most areas, but not complete. We identify areas where Indian corporate governance is relatively strong and weak, and areas where regulation might usefully be either relaxed or strengthened. On the whole, Indian corporate governance rules appear appropriate for larger companies, but could use some strengthening in the area of related party transactions, and some relaxation for smaller companies. Executive compensation is low by U.S. standards and is not currently a problem area. We also examine whether there is a cross-sectional relationship between measures of governance and measures of firm performance and find evidence of a positive relationship for an overall governance index and for an index covering shareholder rights. We find an overall association, which is stronger for more profitable firms and firms with stronger growth opportunities. A subindex for shareholder rights is individually significant, but subindices for board structure (board independence and committee structure), disclosure, board procedure, and related party transactions are not significant. The non-results for board structure contrast to other recent studies, and suggest that India's legal requirements are sufficiently strict so that overcompliance does not produce valuation gains.

From Sink to Source: The Honey Bee Network Documents Indigenous Knowledge and Innovations in India

Abstract: and soil conditions and its geographical features, including rain forests, arid lands, and mountains. Yet many of India’s most biologically rich regions are prone to drought and floods or distant from the amenities of urban life. Many in these regions live in poverty and relative isolation: their local products are unfamiliar in most of the world, their public infrastructures are weak, and their skills are unrecognized. Subsistence in these regions is a constant challenge. Local individuals and tribal communities have long met those challenges by drawing on their local environments, inventing effective agricultural techniques, and learning the medicinal and nutritional value of nearby plants. Harsh conditions have done as much to induce individual creativity and innovation as to limit them. Such local knowledge, in India as elsewhere, is in danger of disappearing, not just in high-risk environments but also in developed regions in rural and urban areas. Traditionally strong links between grandparents and grandchildren are weakening as mobility increases. Few mechanisms exist for documenting indigenous innovation. Those that do exist may be rightly viewed with suspicion: for decades whenever outsiders have “discovered” local knowledge, they have often commercialized or published it without attribution. Yet at the same time, traditional knowledge is increasingly valued in the global marketplace, as illustrated by the dramatic worldwide growth in demand for herbal remedies over the past two decades. Increasingly, the issue is not whether, but how, traditional knowledge and innovations should be documented and recognized. How can those who seek to document local inventions ensure reciprocity between the innovators and those who may later seek to use and perhaps even commercialize documented ideas?