Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers

In this feature a caselet with rich policy implications is presented to a panel of academics and practitioners. The panelists diagnose the problem or problems, analyse their causes, and make policy-level recommendations that go beyond the immediate situation presented in the case.

Readers are requested to send interesting caselets for possible use by Vikalpa. Kindly send three copies to the Editor, Vikalpa.

“The whole in a nutshell!” That is Frontiers of management research abroad. To expose Indian readers to management research abroad we present in this feature jargon free summaries of recent research published in some of the world's leading management journals. These capsule summaries would, we hope, lead the enthusiastic readers to still wider reading. And also to contribute to this feature themselves.

Readers are requested to send condensed articles and their publication details to Professor Samir Barua.

In both the Indian urban and the rural sectors, the demand for cotton textiles has not only been relatively stagnant, but the top 10 per cent of the population in terms of purchasing power has been raising its share of total expenditure on clothing at the expense of the poorer sections. While until 1973 the demand for finer varieties of cloth grew rapidly and that for coarse and medium varieties shrank, since the mid-70s competition from blended and synthetic fabrics and from the decentralized sector have hit all varieties of mill-made cotton cloth. Estimates of price elasticities of cloth and foodgrains indicate that it may be possible to stimulate cotton textile demand by reducing the margins on mill-made cloth. This would require some restructuring of the mill cloth distribution system.

Perspectives presents abstracts of select articles by well-known practitioners and academicians. Redders are welcome to contribute their own thoughtprovoking pieces or those of others that they have come across. Please send three type-written copies of the article to Professor Ranjit Gupta.

The Illustrated Weekley of India (October 30-November 5, 1983) carried an article by Claude Alvares, “Operation flood: The white lie.”

In A black lie, V. Kurien, Chairman, National Dairy Development Board, gave a reply to the issues raised by Alvares.

India Today (January 31, 1984) carried a feature by Chander Uday Singh titled “Milk on the boil” on the same theme.

Having pieced together excerpts from these three independent sources to underscore some aspects of the debate, Perspectives presents Shades of Grey in the following pages.

Organizations have an important role to play as agents of social change and developement, particularly in developing countries in which changes in social conditions are often prerequisites for growth. This paper suggests a framework for conceptualizing the social role of organizations. Four archetypes of organizational management policy orientations—“commercial,” “entrepreneurial,” “philanthropic,” and “missionary”—are derived based on two underlying dimensions of altruism and social change orientation. The determinants of these two dimensions, the conditions favouring the emergence of each archetype and its management and design aspects are discussed. Each archetype may be relevant to a society under particular environmental conditions.

The task of development presents a tremendous challenge to management science. Apart from resource mobilization and policy making, the management of organization networks engaged in development programmes is also an area of interest to development managers. An understanding of the nature and management of coordination in these organization networks is perhaps a critical issue. The paper proposes an input⁄output model qf the functioning of development programmes and attempts to explore various influences on the mode of managing interdependent behaviour of the organizations in the concerned networks. Some hypotheses are proposed to predict the complexity of the style of managing interdependence within the network.

The purpose of these abstracts is to provide reference facilities in the management field. These abstracts have been sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research.

These abstracts cover books and articles on empirical studies, experiences of people involved in the management process, and concepts and theories based on Indian data and environment written by Indian or foreign authors and published in India or abroad.

The following areas of management are covered:

Financial Management, Management Accounting, and Control (FM)

Books and articles published after January 1974 are covered in Vikalpa. Abstracts of publications between 1970 and 1973 have been published in two volumes by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. For reprint of articles abstracted in Vikalpa please contact the original journals. For further details please write to Professor Shekhar Chaudhuri.