All posts by: Dr. Vikas Rai Bhatnagar

Entrepreneurship Development in Developing Countries-Equifinality and Ideographic Approach

Developing countries face the challenge of developing entrepreneurs despite having a shortage of funds to build capital-intensive incubation centers. A paradigm shift from leveraging material resources to psycho-socio-economic resources, by employing the law of equifinality in re-designing the entrepreneurship course holds the promise for developing countries to effectively nurture entrepreneurship. The re-designed course described here, in addition to the transmission of knowledge, assessed the entrepreneurial mindset, fixed and growth mindset, organizational culture, motivations, preparedness, commitment, and inspiration for pursuing entrepreneurship. A customized report to each student engaged and excited them, and enlivened the course by enabling them to relate their psycho-socio-economic disposition with the modules of the course. Additionally, students prepared their entrepreneurial plans, signaling cognitive preparation that awaited manifestation when personal circumstances and external environment were conducive to launching the entrepreneurial venture.

Blending Greek Philosophy and Oriental Law of Action: Towards a Consciousness-Propelled Leadership Framework

This paper uses action research methodology for systemically developing leadership in an automotive component manufacturing organisation. Identifying gaps in leadership development that emerged from practice, and subsequently also realizing that grey areas existed in literature related to leadership and philosophy, the paper proposes a consciousness-propelled leadership framework that is derived from developing a model titled Integrated, Unified and Systemic Model of Consciousness, which is proposed to be fundamental to cosmology. The model reconceptualizes the paradigm of cosmos by incorporating the Pythagorean concept of kosmos, which includes the material, biological, cognitive and spiritual domains; and proposes a multi-dimensional fused field titled S2P2 field instead of a four-dimensional physical spacetime field. The S2P2 field holds the promise of broadening the scope of science and propelling global development that is socially enriching, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually emancipative. The proposed consciousness-propelled leadership framework blends Greek philosophy, oriental law of action and new physics. It attempts to understand leadership from a causative perspective, as compared with the current focus of leadership theories to analyse a myriad of leadership effects.

Viewing Organizations as Enablers of Happiness

Appreciate the application of positive psychology in conceptualising organisations.

Understand the application of critical theory, a theory that attempts to achieve human emancipation in circumstances of domination and apprehension, in creating happiness in organisations.

Sublimational Model of Leadership – V R Bhatnagar, 2004

The theory and practice of leadership is evolving and newer dimensions are being realized of this complex topic that has the potential to make a difference to any enterprise. So far each theory has been able to successfully highlight some dimension of leadership, but there were gaps un-addressed. Sublimational Model of leadership is yet another attempt to understand the intricacies that go with this complex subject of leadership and the attempt is to simplify the understanding by focusing on the needs of the led, the ‘abnormality’ of trait in the Leader and the satisfaction that is derived by the led while the needs are fulfilled. The model developed is unique for its universal applicability, irrespective of situations. It focuses on the three dimensions, namely the leaders traits, the needs of the led and the satisfaction derived by the led due to need fulfilment This model has utilized a lot of tenets from psychology, practical experience of exercising leadership by the researcher, observation of leadership by military and industrial leaders and by carrying out structured interviews with them. The model needs to be validated for which carrying out further research becomes imperative.

Systemic Development of Leadership: Action Research in an Indian Manufacturing Organisation

This insider action research study differentiates between developing leaders and leadership, evolves a systemic leadership model, and intervenes on the human, social and processes dimensions for developing leadership. This is a real-time study and responds to the organizational reality of fast pace of change and its systemic nature. Consequently, the research too is fast to guide actions and influence positive changes in the organization.

Systemic coaching for higher effectiveness

Practitioners’ literature on coaching has swelled as compared to the theoretical grounding and academic research on coaching, thereby questioning if coaching is a profession. Furthermore, the increasing investments in coaching seek a higher return on investments. These trends call for a deeper theoretical grounding of coaching and evolving innovative approaches that increase the effectiveness of coaching. Against this backdrop, this study aims to describe a process a coach can adopt for objectively and systemically understanding the context of the coachee at multiple levels (organisational, teams/dyadic and interpersonal) to develop and execute an effective coaching intervention.

Human strengths: a systematic conceptual review, conceptualising employee strengths at work and a framework for management development

Utilising employee strengths contributes to humanising organisations. However, the current concept of strengths has evolved from the domain of social work, advanced by personality and positive psychologists and adopted in management. The trait-like conceptualisation of strengths conceptualised by psychologists is of lesser relevance to organisations as it discounts the significance of contextual factors for manifesting employee strengths. This study traces the evolution of strengths conceptualisation, identifies gaps in its relevance to organisations, employs the concept relation method for developing a conceptualization of employee strengths at work and proposes a framework for management development that predicts improved employee engagement and performance.

Beyond the competency frameworks – conceptualising and deploying employee strengths at work

With growing stress at work, the need for scholars to focus on humanising organisations is pressing. Scholars agree five factors lead to humanising organisations. This study dwells upon one factor – employee strengths at work (ESAW) – problematizes, identifies the gap in its conceptualisation, deploys critical social systems theory and reconceptualizes the construct of ESAW by taking key contextual factors into consideration. Thereafter, this study aims to develop a conceptual model and makes propositions related to the mediating effects of ESAW on the association of leadership style and employee performance.

Conceptualizing employee strengths at work and scale development

There is a compelling need for developing constructs in management science for higher relevance rather than adapting constructs developed in other domains and applying them in organisations. An inquiry in the relevance of the construct of strength developed in personality psychology and applied to organisations is compelling, as deploying strengths leads to humanising organisations. With growing disengagement of employees at work, this study makes a significant contribution by conceptualizing strengths in the context of organisations and carrying out two studies on independent samples for developing a psychometrically validated 14-item scale for measuring it.

Employing Local Systemic Intervention for Evolving a Transformational Organisation Strategy-Action Research in an Indian Business School

A recent survey discloses 93% of graduating management students from Indian business schools are unemployable. Several business schools have closed due to their chronic non-viability. This action research study in an Indian business school employs local systemic intervention, and the viable systems model to diagnose the school’s chronic pathology. Theories of neurotic organizations, psychic prisons, and escalation of commitment guide the critical review mode and help in acquiring a deeper understanding of the school’s dysfunctionality. The liberating systems theory and the challenge of getting national accreditation influence the problem-solving mode that includes initiating actions for operationalizing a ritualistic vision statement, re-designing academic processes aligned to the vision, making a shift from an ineffective commoditized approach to a personalized strengths-based approach to placement, and professionalizing the admissions process by making it competency-based. In the critical reflection mode, I share phenomenological insights on nuances of successful entrepreneurship, the disloyalty of loyalists, the syndrome of “operation successful, but the patient died”, the coupling of time with the principle of equifinality to influence decision choices, leadership’s confusion with populism and finally drawing a few key messages from the Indian sacred text of the Bhagavadgita. The significance of the study lies in providing a proof of concept for transforming a business school from non-visible to a viable system and in the transportability of the approach to other non-viable business schools and organizations across industries and geographies. The study provides a solution to the huge social costs associated with the unemployability of graduating management students.