(and how the Indian Institutes of Management can revert the trend)

By Luca Castellanza, Exchange Programme 2016

The business discipline is like cancer: it grows, happily feeding on weaker disciplines that do not benefit from competitive corporate funding or favourable public opinion and do not promise a generalist degree granting a more-or-less secure job. It also grows in blissful ignorance of science conversations outside the narrow business domain and, much like cancer, it risks outgrowing and killing its host – in this case, the entire scientific community.

Caption: Representational image. Designed by Freepik

Do we have rogue Business Schools?

As scholars, we always fight for the building blocks of science, such as attention – in the form of citations and readers, and resources – including funding and students. Business studies have an unfair advantage here, largely driven by their popularity among prospective students and their connections to organisations. Business Schools promise flexible employment in all sorts of organizations a graduate may wish to work for and often facilitate employment through the direct involvement of corporations in on-campus projects, case studies, and recruitment fairs. This symbiotic relationship with funders enables Business Schools to benefit from a large influx of high-paying students and enjoy a strong influence over other departments within universities: they bring the money in, and their voice is heard overwhelmingly louder than those coming from other disciplines.

Caption: AI-generated through Meta AI by the author

However, as scholars, we are also supposed to fight for scientifically informed policies and organisations – and, in this regard, Business Schools have failed us. Indian people know first-hand that the world is witnessing a complete climate breakdown: cyclones in Kerala, torrential floods in Assam and Gujarat, and droughts in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are only some of the innumerable extreme weather events that plagued the country (and the planet) in 2024. As academics and business scholars, we also know (even if we pretend we don’t), that there is a central cause for these man-made disasters. Books have been written on the topic, and it is clear that capitalism, transportation (logistics), agriculture, and overconsumption are among the key causes of global warming. We tend, however, to talk about the economy in abstract terms and to forget that behind the abstract system of capitalism there are real people – entrepreneurs, managers, politicians, and business scholars – with a vested interest in profiting from the worsening climate breakdown.

Among these four, the case of business students (and scholars) is peculiar: many of them are themselves victims of the system they are born into, of the constant redwashing of unsustainable “sustainability” discourses, of limited time and attention for impactful research, and of a scientific logic that encourages working in silos and promotes ignorance of interdisciplinary big pictures. Importantly, Business Schools also play a central role in forming these same students who will, soon, become managers in the corporations that are profiting from the extinction crisis – which is all the more reason why a paradigm shift is needed and capitalism’s unsustainability should be a central element of every business curriculum.

What can IIMs do?

Two things are needed for civilisation (and, by extension, for Business Schools) to move forward. First, a shift away from capitalism and into alternative modes of organising: community-based, decentralised, and local organisations capable of ensuring distributed resilience against the exponential climate disruption we are witnessing. Second, while decentralising and putting people and the planet over profit, it is important to note that – due to the exponential disruption of global climate patterns – a correspondingly exponential organisational effort will be required to maintain a semblance of normalcy in families, communities, and organisations across the world.

The potential of IIMs to contribute to addressing the climate crisis is apparent when we look at the challenges, opportunities, and contradictions of the Indian regions affected by global warming and at the track record of the institutes in pioneering practice-engaged, community-centred, and evidence-based research addressing the country’s (and the world’s) most salient societal problems.

A first thing to note is that, unlike other Business Schools, IIMs boast students with a strong engineering and scientific background. Once they attain their postgraduate diploma, these students are supposed to know how to read exponential graphs when they bounce into one and, more importantly, to understand the dire consequences these dynamics will shortly have on our planet.

A second factor to consider is that India as a country, with its many contradictions, significant social divisions, and ingenuous solutions to grievous survival problems has, time and time again, demonstrated that innovation can come (and be scaled) from the bottom up and that individuals and communities with endangered livelihoods can be extremely creative in devising solutions to the problems afflicting them.

Thirdly, the IIMs have a proven track record of work that challenges mainstream scientific discourses – for instance, IIMA’s extensive collection of case studies with leading Indian organisations and publications questioning the dominant (Western) assumptions around poverty, ethics, and marginalisation can serve as a starting point to build nation-wide and global collaboration against the pressing issue of systemic change amidst the climate catastrophes.

We, as IIMA Alumni – corporate leaders, academics, entrepreneurs, or civil society representatives – can also make an important contribution towards these collective efforts by bringing in our perspectives, pushing the transition agenda within classrooms, communities, and corporations, and co-developing trial-and-error, scalable solutions that may serve as replicable examples within India and beyond.

After attending IIMA in the ’16 Exchange Batch, Luca Castellanza went on to earn a Summa cum Laude doctorate from Mannheim University (Germany) and a Junior Professorship at Maynooth University (Ireland), where he currently lectures in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Innovation. He researches and publishes in the areas of entrepreneurship and economic development, human rights, public policy, poverty, sustainability, civil wars, internationalisation, healthcare, and other salient issues concerning business in low-income countries. He also works as a consultant for international NGOs, speaks four languages, and enjoys mountaineering, travelling, and volunteering both in Ireland and abroad.