Harvard University professor gets Second Global Management Guru award

New Delhi:  Robert S. Kaplan, one of the most influential management thinkers and a Harvard professor, has received the second Global Management Guru Award (GMGA) here.

Kaplan received the award late Friday night from Planning Commission member Arun Maira and Public Enterprises Selection Board Chairman Atul Chaturvedi. The GMGA has been instituted by Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH).

Kaplan, a professor at Harvard Business School, who has been credited with innovative management and business practices, said: “The integration from diverse disciplines – engineering, science, and economics – has been motivated by my desire to create solutions to the problems I saw managers struggling with in practice.”

“The Global Management Guru award spurs me to take my recent work on Risk Management to a level where we seek to create a risk mitigation framework that could avoid a repeat of 2008’s failure of multiple financial firms in the US,” Kaplan told CEOs, academics, managers and bureaucrats, according to a BIMTECH statement.

Kaplan’s work on Risk Management has been triggered by a major global issue of why so many companies become vulnerable to a modest decline in the price of a single asset class: US residential homes?

Taking inspiration from Kaplan, Maira advocated a Theory of Change in Governance where diverse stakeholders buy into a shared value idea that best fits India’s needs. This method has the potential to deliver high levels of inclusive economic growth, better governance and full accountability.

Chaturvedi advocated the idea of nurturing leaders who can innovate, lead their teams and their enterprises to meet self-charted goals to serve stakeholder needs.