THE HINDU

Corporate strategies- M.S.S. VARADAN
COMPETING WITH THE BEST — Strategic Management of Indian Companies in a Globalizing Arena: Rajnish Karki. The book presents the research findings on strategic management of Indian companies in the wake of globalisation. The author’s aim has been to evolve approaches grounded in the Indian economic and socio-cultural context though the former aspect seems to be more pronounced than the latter.

At the outset the book describes the Indian corporate scene and the research underpinnings, giving the theoretical framework for analysis. The concept of configuration for a company consists of three main elements: environment, strategy and organisational design. External fit is between environment and strategy, and internal fit is between strategy and organisational design. The types of configuration and evolution are discussed with case studies of successful Indian companies. The evolution is again divided into two phases — transformation and momentum. Basically, four types of configuration are portrayed: India focused, India diversified, global focused and global diversified.

Configurations
As for India-focused configuration, the cases of Bharati and Pantaloon have been examined in detail. The particular advantages bestowed by the Indian market are exploited to the hilt by these organisations. The India diversified configuration is illustrated through the cases of ITC and L&T. Interestingly many changes in ITC were precipitated by sharp differences among the board and top managers which led to the appointment of a new CEO and the organisation design evolved “logically and incrementally.”

Global focused configuration is brought out through the cases of Bharat Forge and the pioneering software firm, Patni. The global focus represents a very effective state of preparedness to grow and the author predicts that these could become the most prevalent among the top 200 Indian companies. Global diversified corporation types are presented through the cases of the Tata group and Jindal. Aptech has been termed as a “mixed configuration” as it operates in a number of countries. The author has rightfully stated that new explorations and conceptualisation are required in such cases.

Strategy formulation
The author is at pains to emphasise the need for a different methodology for strategy formulation from the West. He traces these methodologies from swot in the 1960s to BCG matrix in the 1970s, Michael Porter’s competitiveness in the 1980s to Prahalad’s core competence in the 1990s. However, one is left searching at the end of it all as to what new methodology will fit into the Indian context particularly in the globalised era when organisations are benchmarked worldwide. The last chapter on morphing of successful Indian companies is a generic one. Though the author states in his preface that Indian companies are currently at a point similar to the Japanese companies in the early 1970s, not much light is thrown on how the Japanese strategies were evolved successfully in the subsequent decades. As is well known, the Japanese took the world by storm through their innovative approaches to quality with strong grounding in their cultural base. It would have been interesting if he had examined whether the cultural moorings in the Indian context could offer any base for the sustainable success of the Indian companies. Cases make interesting reading. Highlighting main inferences from the analysis of the cases and the future pointers could have enhanced better understanding of the concepts. However, the tables provided are a welcome relief and helps understanding. The book is timely with India taking centre stage in the world economic scene now.