IIMA kickstarts the inaugural edition of the India Management Research Conference

Ahmedabad, Dec 07, IIMA kickstarts the inaugural edition of the India Management Research Conference (IMRC 2024) to encourage India-centric management research.
According to a press release issued by IIMA here today, With an aim to shape the future of management research, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) kickstarted the inaugural edition of the India Management Research Conference (IMRC 2024) at the campus today. The three-day mega event, scheduled from December 7-9, 2024, is jointly being organised by the 10 Research Centres of the Institute on the theme of “Confluence of Growth, Sustainability, and Resilience”.
Professor Bharat Bhasker, IIMA Director; Professor Satish Deodhar, Dean (Faculty); Professor Diptesh Ghosh, Dean (Programmes); Professor Abhiman Das, Professor-incharge (Administration), along with conference organising committee members welcomed the participants and put the event for PhD scholars open today morning.
Elaborating on the need and objective behind initiating IMRC, Professor Bharat Bhasker, IIMA Director, said, “India is at a cusp of transition with remarkable economic growth. But economic growth cannot be sustained without intellectual output or intellectual strength in terms of human resources. Although the number of higher education institutions, faculty members, PhD students, and no. of research papers from India has grown significantly in the last 10-15 years, we need to address the challenges like the availability of good teachers and the quality of research papers from the country. The gap is even wider in the management field because out of millions of research papers published in the global arena, the India-centric research papers are only in the hundreds. As we are aiming to become the third largest economy in the world, India also needs to focus on research in order to have its strength felt across the world. We require a lot more people who are doing India-centric management research to find and solve problems that are unique to our country. And that’s why we took this initiative to organise IMRC, where we intend to celebrate India-centric management research.”
The conference is being held with 11 parallel tracks for the dynamic exchange of ideas that promises to shape the future of management research in the country. Each track is hosting various events under the umbrella of IMRC 2024, including keynote sessions, panel discussions, workshops, oral presentations, and poster presentations at multiple locations on the campus over a period of three days, which are aimed at addressing the challenges of tomorrow’s management landscape. Among the 11 different Research Tracks – Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) is hosting Track 01 on ‘Entrepreneurship: Facilitators & Hurdles Related to Scaling Up of Startups’
Centre for Management of Health Services (CMHS) is hosting Track 02 on ‘Management in Health Services’
India Gold Policy Centre (IGPC) is hosting Track 03 on ‘Gold & Precious Metals: Business and Economic Policies’
Misra Centre for Financial Markets and Economy (MCFME) is hosting Track 04A on ‘Finance, Accounting, and Economics’ as well as Track 04B on ‘Real Estate’
NSE Centre for Behavioural Science in Finance, Economics and Marketing (NSE-CBS) is hosting Track 05 on ‘Behavioural Science in Management’
Centre for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) is hosting Track 06 on ‘Transportation and Logistics’
Centre for Digital Transformation (CDT) is hosting Track 07 on ‘Digital Transformation’
Centre for Sustainability and Corporate Governance Research is hosting Track 08 on ‘Corporate Governance, Corporate Sustainability, & Responsible Capital’
Ashank Desai Centre for Leadership and Organisational Development (ADCLOD) is hosting Track 09 on ‘Leadership Research & Practice in the Context of Changes in the World of Work’
Brij Disa Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDSA) is hosting Track 10 on ‘Data Science & Artificial Intelligence’
In addition, there is a Track 11 on ‘Network Science in Management’
The first day of the conference witnessed a thought-provoking panel discussion, wherein a distinguished panel of faculty members from IIMA, Professors Ankur Sarin, Jayanth Varma, Ernesto Noronha, Premilla D’Cruz, Neharika Vohra, and moderator Professor Ellapulli Vasudevan deliberated on different aspects “India-centric Management Research”. The panel members discussed that India is long past the time when the world was not interested in what was happening in the Indian market. Today our economy is leapfrogging, but when it comes to research, particularly management research on India, we are still lagging behind countries like China or the USA. We must become more focused and inclusive of our country’s distinctive problems and work towards finding solutions for them, while also making our respondents co-participants in the research process. They also emphasised that we need to relook at the research methodologies we follow which are based on western concepts and must come up with journals of our own that are well-regarded globally.
More than 800 research scholars, academicians, and industry practitioners from leading institutions and organisations from India and abroad are attending IMRC 2024 with an opportunity to network, explore, and discuss diverse research themes and enter into meaningful collaborations. IMRC 2024 received 592 research abstracts submitted by PhD students from across the country and about 250 doctoral students are attending the conference.
Another highlight of the first day of the conference was a vibrant Networking Forum specifically curated for PhD Scholars, where 10 business schools participated to meet with PhD students and discuss the school’s growth aspirations and faculty recruitment opportunities. PhD Scholars could engage in research discussions with the faculty and peers from other management schools, explore exciting academic opportunities, and showcase their expertise in their respective fields.
In some of the track-specific events today, the studies in the ‘Entrepreneurship: Facilitators & Hurdles Related to Scaling Up of Startups’ track revolved mainly around the challenges for startups, entrepreneurs, and incubators for funding at the early stages and proposed solutions around these. Participants of the workshop on ‘Incubators as Research Sites’ engaged in discussions that unravelled the nuances of startup ecosystems and the operational intricacies of incubation. The track on ‘Gold & Precious Metals: Business and Economic Policies’ hosted a keynote on “Gold – mindset change to unlock wealth” by by Mr. Somasundaram PR, which was followed by thematic talks and Oral Presentations on diverse domains related to Gold. The ‘Behavioral Science in Management’ track conducted a workshop on “EEG Essentials: Bridging Neuroscience and Behavioral Management”, followed by a demonstration of EEG data collection using a 32-electrode setup.
Participants of the ‘Corporate Governance, Corporate Sustainability, & Responsible Capital’ track got to attend the second edition of the India Responsible Capital Conference (IRCC 2024), which was co-located with IMRC 2024. It featured two insightful workshops, titled “Mine Your Text: Applications for Management Research” and “Critical Sustainability Challenges and the Role of AI and ML in Addressing Them”. The track on ‘Transportation and Logistics’ conducted a Research Workshop on ‘Solving Contemporary Problems in Transportation and Logistics’ which highlighted the current problems in public transport, logistics, and supply chain. They also held an interactive session with the Editors from the Journal of Business Logistics to discuss topical research practices. The ‘Leadership Research & Practice in the Context of Changes in the World of Work’ track began with a workshop on “Critical Leadership Research Issues”, which was attended by more than 50 participants from 40 plus institutions across the country.
The next two days of IMRC 2024 are going to be even more stimulating with the formal inaugural session and keynote addresses by Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor of the Government of India, and by Professor Noshir Contractor, Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioural Sciences, Northwestern University, Illinois; as well as a Director’s Panel Discussion by Directors of nine management institutes of the country.