Overview of the Convention and Tracks

Rebuilding Organizations: Strategic Conversations for a Post Pandemic World

As nations, organizations, and citizens recover from the significant, even game-changing, disruptions and lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, greater attention and focus is being paid to institutions and processes that would rebuild economies and livelihoods. Strategic conversations and dialogues on better managing the interface between Samaj (communities), Bazaar (market), and Sarkar (government) are key to a better future. The SMF Convention, to be hosted by the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) from December 21–23, 2022, at the IRMA campus in Anand, would further dialogue around themes focused on responsible businesses with greater attention to combining profit with purpose and the planet; the importance of enterprise forms – social, rural, and collective or member-owned in reducing inequality, and the need for relooking at innovations in better managing public systems.

Some of the questions this convention seeks to deliberate are listed below, not in any particular order. How can inclusion and equity in governance be hardwired into the design of the enterprise? How can complex global systemic problems be solved through local system solutions through cooperation and with stakeholders? Can open and responsible research and innovation lead to the revival of nations and economies? How do firms and businesses reconfigure themselves to innovate and lead the new transformation of local, national and world economies? How do we rethink the rural? – as a market for goods and services, a temporary sink for recovery, a space for renewal, or an opportunity to transform relations and rebuild a better India (as we enter our 75^th year of Independence) and the world? What are the possible synergies among management institutions in bringing rural transformations? How do we better manage our producer collectives (cooperatives and producer companies)? What does it mean to manage dual-purpose organizations? What might be the processes for managing sustainable transitions beyond strategic niche management? What might be the new metrics of performance, potential ‘non-corporate’ methods of management to reflect dual purposes and embed purpose and the planet before profit?

Convention Tracks

1. Strategies for New-age Businesses: Strategic alliances and partnerships, Managing Innovation, International business and Global Strategy, Developing market strategies, Non-market strategies, Digital business strategies, Role of big-data and artificial intelligence in business strategy formulation and execution.
2. Management Case Studies: Teaching cases having a clear focus on any of the management issues can be submitted for presentation at this convention. The cases must be accompanied with a teaching note.
3. Non-business Aspects of Strategic Management: Newer approaches in public systems, Not-for-Profit Organizations (NPOs), public management, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Responsible business, Sustainable transitions.
4. Understanding Organisations in a post-pandemic world: Reimagining business in a post-pandemic world, Supply-chain resilience, Future ready organizations, Business sustainability, New directions in business history, Business ethics, Organizational adaptability, Transformational business strategy, Big-data and AI enabled strategic response.
5. Rethinking Enterprises: Rethinking innovation, Rethinking entrepreneurship, Application of Big-data and artificial intelligence, Rethinking finance the SDGs, Newer directions in business enterprises, start-ups, grassroots and social entrepreneurship, hybrid and dual-purpose organisations, family businesses, micro and medium enterprises.
6. Reimaging Producer Collectives: Governance, management, growth and sustainability of cooperatives, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and New Generation Cooperatives (NGCs).
7. Rural Management: Paradigm shift, contextual innovations, and strategic directions.
8. General Management: The track welcomes topics related to any strategic issues in marketing, distribution, finance, accounts, production, operations, supply chain, OB/HR, information technology, change management, etc.