Competing with the best: strategic management of Indian companies in a globalizing arena

When after forty years of licence-permit-raj India opened up its markets and took its first tentative steps in the global economy, no one could have imagined that in less than two decades Indian companies would be in a position to shape the global marketplace. With a sea change in their capabilities, beliefs and aspirations, Indian companies today come across as confident, aggressive and world class as they self-assuredly take over multinational giants like Corus. The closest analogy would be to Japanese companies of the early 1970s, and their potential impact on the world of business in coming decades could be as much, if not more. For this, Indian companies need to evolve original approaches, rather than depend on borrowed ideas, to engender inimitable and sustainable advantages in the global marketplace. The author, with over ten years' experience in research and advisory work on the strategic management of Indian organizations, has evolved strategic management approaches for Indian companies, which are original and are grounded in the Indian economic and socio-cultural context. He shows how breakthrough strategic management results from seeing the big picture and aspiring high, conceiving well-aligned business and organizational components, and moving on with clarity, commitment and conviction. The book bridges the theory and the practice of strategic management, focusing on under-explored yet globally significant aspects of Indian companies. Using the narrow-angle of eight case studies and the wide-angle of patterns and trends at aggregate level, it identifies four viable and effective configurations for Indian companies and describes the process of transformational and incremental changes.