iCanvas

A couple of articles written by me for iCanvas are here.

Do take a look around the site, the overall quality (of whatever your eyes see) is very good :)

“Ethics in Business” seminar

8 and 9 August 2009 saw IIM-Indore host the case study based “Ethics in Business” seminar conducted by Mr. Achal Raghavan, a Bangalore-based strategy and business excellence consultant and an alumnus of IIT-Madras and IIM-Ahmedabad.

“This interactive seminar would sensitize the attendee students and future managers to ethical issues and develop an ethical perspective”, is how a senior faculty member of the institute summed up the seminar. Indeed, several students remarked that the seminar opened up a completely different line of thinking regarding analysis of business issues and that they were handed an additional tool for all the case analyses they were going to perform in future.

The fourth session began with an overview of the relationship between supplier and consumer in the manufacturing industry and discussion of three theories – the contractual theory, the due care theory and the social cost theory. The case for the session was “The Ford/Firestone debacle”. It elucidated how the two closely related companies ended their relationship over an acrimonious debate on who was to blame for the accidents and deaths that took place when tires, supplied by Firestone for use in the Ford Explorer SUV, malfunctioned. Mr. Raghavan, thereafter, conducted a structured discussion and analysis through the application of the three theories to this case. He skillfully engaged the audience by embellishing his insights with occasional anecdotes. The exhaustive analysis ended with the general consensus that the moral responsibility for the deaths lay with both Ford and Firestone and the reasons behind the same were enumerated.

The case analyzed in the fifth session was “Playing Monopoly: Microsoft”. The three theories were applied to the business practices of Microsoft and a few interesting insights were derived out of the ensuing discussion. Application of the due care theory suggested that Microsoft seemed to have played “big daddy” and affected consumer choice on the pretext of taking the onus of responsibility for assisting the consumer in understanding a product. Audience members with IT work-experience enriched the discussion.

The attending students requested Mr. Raghavan to conduct more such seminars at IIM-Indore in future. Mr. Raghavan eagerly and gracefully gave his assent to the same.