The pivotal persona who plays a vital role in shaping the character and brand of a B-school is the Dean of the institute, designated Director in India’s Central government-promoted 13 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The essential qualifications of Dean/Director in all B-schools worldwide are excellent higher education, experience as faculty with administrative responsibilities in nationally and/or internationally respected business management education institutes, and demonstrated ability and life skills to manage learned academics with big reputations and egos to match. The great majority of Directors of India’s 13 IIMs — especially of the three globally ranked ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) IIMs — fulfil these demanding criteria. But despite the IIMs having succeeded in attracting highly eminent academics, including several from top-ranked B-schools in the US and Europe, it’s patently clear they neither enjoy the fabulous pay and perquisites, nor the official and social respect of their counterparts abroad. Because IIMs are promoted and funded by the Union government, their Directors have always had to genuflect, if not quite kowtow, before relatively ignorant joint secretary-level bureaucrats of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. Now under the new IIM Bill 2015, the already modest powers conferred upon the Boards of Governors (BoGs) and Directors by the several IIM Acts (enacted separately for each institute) are proposed to be circumscribed further. In sharp contrast, the powers exercised by the Deans of the world’s most prestigious B-schools are extensive. Although invariably privately promoted and managed institutions, their trustees and BoGs have the good sense to choose their Deans/Directors carefully and invest them with full powers subject to liberal superintendence by BoGs. “Historically, Harvard University has adopted an approach it calls ‘every tub has its own bottom’ giving the several schools and departments within the university significant autonomy in many types of decision-making. Our current president Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust has sought to honour the philosophy but at the same time, encourage the synergy and leverage that can happen only when we act in a more co-ordinated fashion and remember that we are all part of a great university — what she calls One Harvard… However we have complete freedom around what I call the faculty’s intellectual and work output — the curriculum and research. There is no involvement, much less oversight, from the university as we enhance or modify the curriculum,” says Nitin Nohria, an alum of IIT Bombay and MIT Sloan School of Management, and incumbent dean of the top-ranked Harvard Business School (estb. 1908). “The freedom to choose research areas, curriculum and the ability to hire, promote and compensate faculty, subject to oversight of the Board of Trustees, is the essence of institutional autonomy. By statute, at the University of Chicago, the syllabus of the Booth School is formulated by the faculty and the curriculum is developed by the faculty and implemented in conjunction with the Dean’s office. Admission decisions are left to the Dean’s office and the Board of Trustees of the parent University of Chicago approves tuition fees and fundraising for…
