Greg-Ganguly row now a case study for B-schools

First a cricket-based film made it to the case-books of Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), and now a real-life cricket drama has found its way into the curriculum of some B-schools.
The much-publicised verbal spat between Indian cricket coach Greg Chappell and former skipper Saurav Ganguly may have cooled off for now – never mind the fact that it was the beginning of the end for Ganguly's cricket career – it has inspired an MBA leasson.

The S P Jain Institute of Management in Mumbai is taking the bitter fight between Chappell and Ganguly off the field and into its classroom as a case study.

Titled "The Indian Cricket Saga", the lesson for its MBA students in the organisational behaviour class takes up the crossfire between cricketing duo.

The case study - developed by Professor of Organisation Behaviour, Lata Dhir, her colleague Suresh Lalwani and students Pankaj Dontam Setty and Praveen Sareen - sheds light on how two strong-willed persons, subscribing to different schools of thought, react when pitted in a team environment.

While it found Chappell to be more aggressive and a taskmaster, Ganguly was identified as tough, intuitive and an emotional leader.

The researchers involved in the study, felt that the Australian came from a background of high achievers and hence was keen to implement his style rather hastily in an already performing team.



A radical shift in thinking was 'confusing' the players, they argued.

The case study, recently published in European Case Clearning House journal, concluded that Sourav was the most successful Indian captain but his individual performance was uninspiring. 'A leader must perform and set examples for the rest of the team but Ganguly was a failure in this respect,' the analysis highlighted.

"Through this issue, we have tried to learn about team conflicts, cultural and personality issues. Hence it's a management case study," Dhir says.

However, a majority believed that Chappell was a "situational leader" trying to prepare the team for the 2007 World Cup and didn't have much time.

With the Aamir Khan-starrer cricket-based film Lagaan making it to the classrooms of IIM-Ahmedabad some time back, the Greg-Ganguly drama has proved that cricket is scoring high among the B-schools across India.

"Cricket is a passion among Indians and when cricket is used to teach us management principles it becomes easier to understand them," a student, Aruna Daryanani, says.

The college surely seems to be on the ball and is now planning to take up Team India as a case study in their run-up to the world cup next year.

Of course, no one is complaining.

(With inputs from Payal Goel and Agencies)
http://www.ibnlive.com/article.php?id=7454&section_id=5&single=true
 

kartik

Kartik Raichura
Staff member
Fu*kantastic ... Management Institutes are growing very ambitious by taking such case studies.. Hats off to S P Jain .
 

milind20

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Awesome work, really S. P. Jain proves that it is one of the top B-Schools in India. The Greg-Ganguly spat was perfectly related to the management lessons....
 
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