Prof Rajen Gupta
In 2022 Prof Gupta chose to enter the vanprasth phase of his life. Before this he was the Research Advisor at IIM Sirmaur during 2020-2022. Earlier than that he was a professor of Human Behaviour & Organisation Development at the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon during 1997-2016. Earlier he was a Professor at I.I.M. Lucknow for ten years. He also spent a year as a visiting professor at Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands. He is a Professional Member of the Indian Society of Applied Behavioural Science (ISABS), and a founding member of the National HRD Network and Strategic Management Forum.
He has a first degree in electrical engineering from I. I. T. Kanpur, where he was awarded the Institute’s merit scholarship on the basis of scholastic performance . Later he did his doctorate in management from I. I. M. Ahmedabad under the guidance of Late Prof. Udai Pareek, who is considered to be the father of HRD in India. Prof Gupta’s thesis was a piece of action research on the implementation of HRD in a large public sector bank. The thesis was later published as book entitled Implementing HRD: Action Research into the Process (Rawat Publications, Jaipur).
Before joining the doctoral programme in IIMA, he had worked as a probationary officer in SBI for over two years. After completing his doctorate he worked for over four years as the corporate HRD Manager in Jyoti Ltd., an engineering company in Vadodara, after which he joined on the faculty of IIM Lucknow. Prof Gupta has consulted with Indo-Gulf Fertilizers, Power Trading Corporation, and NEEPCO on organization design and development. He was also engaged in institution building with KIIT University’s School of Management.
Academically he has a special interest in the linkage between Indian culture and management, and the need for doing useful and rigorous research. A collection of his papers on this theme has already been published. He has four books and over 100 scientific publications to his credit. His co-edited book on “Qualitative Research in Management” was released by Sage in March 2015. He has been on the International Editorial Boards of a number of journals such as International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management (Sage, London), Journal of Research Practice (Online journal) and International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management (Inderscience, Switzerland).
During the 19 years at MDI he was very deeply involved in the doctoral programme at MDI. He continuously taught doctoral courses and guided students. Over a dozen of them have completed their doctorate. His current main passion is to help young scholars do exciting, creative and useful research. Since retirement he has been teaching doctoral courses, especially on Philosophy of Management Research, and Qualitative Research Methods at various institutions such as IIM Rohtak, IIM Ranchi, University of Lancaster and BIMTECH.
He was an Independent Director on the Board of Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. He was also a member of the Customer Service Committee of Bank of Baroda as well as a member of the Steering Committee on HR of the Board of Punjab National Bank. Earlier he was a member of the Advisory Group on HR Issues of Public Sector Banks set up by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
He was appointed by UGC on the Expert Committee to design the model curriculum for psychology in Higher Education. He has been a member of the Expert Group on Psychology set up by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) for a survey of research in psychology apart from being on the Advisory Committee of a large research project funded by ICSSR. He has been the Research Advisor to the KIIT School of Management, Bhubneswar. He was a member of the Academic Councils of the KIIT University, Bhubneswar and Navrachna University, Baroda. He has been a member of the faculty selection panels of IIM Indore, IIM Kozikode, IIM Rohtak, IIM Kashipur, Ambedkar University (Delhi) etc. In addition, he has also been on the academic advisory bodies of some management institutes, including IRMA and Tata Institute of Social Science.
