An industry panel discussion initiated on the topic ‘Building New Digital Ecosystem to Enhance Employee Engagement’ on the second day of the three-day 3rd ICDE & 14th ISDSI Annual Conference 2020 on Tuesday, December 29, 2020, being organised by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur. The day began with academic paper presentations across 14 parallel tracks by academicians hailing from various B-schools across the country.
The moderator of the discussion, Professor Chandan Chowdhury, ISB Hyderabad, mentioned that concepts like the 4th industrial revolution were confined to large companies, and have now sparked interest in companies of various scales.
Dr C Jayakumar, VP & Head – Corporate Human Resources, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, touched upon the concept of employee engagement. He emphasized that employees should strive to give their best, have a sense of ownership, and should have trust in the leadership and in the company.
K Vaitheeswaran, Entrepreneur & Author, discussed the effects of COVID-19 on startups by taking an example of his start-up named ‘Again Drinks’. Adding to his examples, he said that constant supervision and engagement from employers are required for employees to be able to meet individual goals and team goals.
Avinash Arora, Director Augmented Transformation, brought to the table an interesting point that driving enterprises is the only way to alleviate the pressures originating due to unforeseen challenges. He emphasized that the organizations need to modify themselves to accommodate these changes. He concluded his discussion by touching upon the trends that will transform the business over the next five years.
A special event of Directors Panel was conducted on the topic ‘Management Education in India’. The moderator of the discussion, Professor Ravi Kumar Jain, Director SIBM Hyderabad, set the tone for discussion by mentioning that crisis due to Covid has exacerbated the process of technology adoption in a few months and the world is marching towards industry 4.0. He further asked the panellists to share their thoughts on the future of management education in Indian context.
Professor Bhimaraya Metri, Director IIM Nagpur, took forward the discussion by mentioning that the future of education is extremely bright. He said that Online has become Mainline and Mainline has become offline in COVID-19 times along with highlighting the importance of capability in these testing times.
Professor Bharat Bhasker, Director IIM Raipur, shared his thoughts on restructuring the model of education and mentioned that it will be dependent on the environment shaping around us.
Professor Mahadeo Jaiswal, Director IIM Sambalpur, started off his discussion by stating that more and more digitalisation is already happening in organizations. He further discussed three major industries – Agriculture, Manufacturing and Service industry.
Professor Khedkar Eknath, Vice President DSI Asia Pacific Division, highlighted that data analytics along with negotiation and communication skills are important for future business schools.
Editors & Reviewers panel discussion was conducted on the topic ‘Senior Scholars’ Advice to Early-Stage Researchers’. Prof Ravinder Rena, North-West University South Africa, spoke about his experiences in research and touched upon the important and salient issues about research publication.
Prof M Daud Ahmed, Manukau Institute of Technology, New Zealand, mentioned the key learning he got by sharing his experience of his first thesis. He further mentioned that the career in research is policy governed and talked about the database of various research themes that have been constantly maintained for a research portfolio.
Prof Ramachandran Natrajan, Tennessee Tech University, USA, spoke about his experiences with writing and paper presentation all the way back since 1973. He shared best practices from his own experience about paper publishing and enlightened the conclave from his observations over the years.
Valedictory address was given by Prof Prashant Palvia of Bryan School of Business & Economics, UNC Greensboro, University of North Carolina, USA. He spoke about the World IT project and the six core values in the ideology, namely ASPIRE – Autonomy in Decision-Making, Structure in Environment, Precision in Communication, Innovation in Technology, Reverence for Technical Knowledge, and Enjoyment at the Workplace.
