Book Review: Subhash Sharma,New Ideas in Strategic Thinking & Management

Indian civilization is a complex way where you just cannot comprehend the entire thing in some simple metaphors. In the present era of globalization, words and symbols are taking new dimensions and meaning. The present work is towards integrating the two, to explore current management philosophies using resurgent old Indian civilization reasoning in the light of new scientific truth. The book is basically an integration of the author’s own personal experiences of his long academic journey, his discussions with academicians and practitioners and his research in the field of management arena. He has used several metaphors of traditional Indian philosophy and Indian way of life to bring new thinking and new perspective in present-day strategic and organizational management concepts. Overall, book contains 16 chapters which have been categorized into five parts on the basis of different themes.

The first part focuses on the new ways the academicians and practitioners can adopt to generate new knowledge. The author has proposed that researchers should be like Management Rishis and they should use Creative Meditative approach to research new phenomena. This will be a move towards Wisdom paradigm where individual’s creativity and rationality are combined to bring about new insights. Also a lot of techniques have been discussed to develop the imaginative thinking using creative meditative approach.

The second part focuses on strategic thinking from macro perspective. The author has rightly pointed out that a holistic view of process of development is needed all over the world. New thinking, using metaphors will help to bring this interconnectedness among different forces, namely, self, people, state and market. He has explained these using metaphors for some important events of world’s history like Gandhi’s charkha for India’s freedom struggle, chapatti making as metaphor of harmonic globalization. So, to develop a holistic strategic thinking, one needs to combine strategic management, policy making and grassroots development thinking.

Explaining the need for new thinking at organizational and national levels, in third part, the author has provided some new models and mantras for organizational development and enterprise performance management. BEST analysis, METRIC analysis, CINE matrix, STEPS analysis, SWAN and SPOT are some models which will be helpful for managers to analyze the organizations with a different and new perspective. This new perspective using these new techniques may prove a valuable source for managers in providing strategic directions to the growth and development of their organizations.

The theme of the fourth part is Ethical Foundations wherein the author has stressed the need for Character Competence to Corporations to develop ethical leadership and management in organizations. He has proposed the idea of Holistic Corporate Management in which CSR, Profits, Good Governance and Environmental concerns act as basic fundamentals to give a holistic view of the organization. There is a need where companies should shift from the existing Balance Scorecard model to towards Holistic performance Scorecard with focus on spiritual self as the main factor.

The last part ‘New Visioning and Envisioning’ focuses on the required shift from rational thinking to creative thinking and then finally to imaginative thinking. The author has proposed Moon Ocean strategy for organizations which requires a new type of imagination coupled with innovation and creativity. So, there is need to move beyond Red ocean and Blue ocean strategy to towards Moon ocean strategy which is radical and revolutionary in nature. The author has explained this new strategy using metaphors of Indian non-violence freedom movement, success of Baba Ramdev and Art of Living etc.

This book will be an asset for management students, academicians and practitioners as it helps to see management concepts, especially strategic and organizational management concepts through new lenses and to understand and apply these concepts using metaphors of traditional and present-day life. Readers will be able to connect easily with these metaphors. The author has provided some new ideas, approaches and models, such as Creative meditative research approach, BEST analysis, SPOT analysis, Holistic Corporate Management etc., which give a food for thought to readers to develop new thinking and new perspective of strategic management which also seems as the aim of this book.