Amity Business School (ABS), Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, organized its Annual Research Conference, 7th Global Leadership Research Conference (GLRC-2022) on the theme, “Leading in the New Reality: Insights into Actions’, on virtual platform.
Addressing the gathering during the Inaugural Session, Chief Guest, Dr. Sasmit Patra, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), averred, “The theme for the Conference is very interesting and important and the fact that Amity places a tremendous responsibility and focus on leadership is really admirable and of great significance. Usually, we imagine politicians as leaders but leaders are present in all aspects of life, whether it’s a homemaker or the Prime Minister of India, everyone is a leader.”
Speaking about the new reality, he further elaborated, “The first aspect is of the new reality of uncertainty, where disruptive technologies become a part and parcel of our lives requiring greater transparency of industries with scarcer talent, steeper timelines, with real time transformation in the businesses and real time change in policies and procedures of the government. We need to look at the opportunities which the pandemic has provided us, the aspect of a “Gig Economy”, where an individual becomes independent and becomes an entrepreneur himself. In the new reality, businesses are moving to a hybrid mode and are looking at ways of reducing real estate costs, increasing productivity through work at home or remote working which has become a norm in India, we can see new ways of engagement with people at workplace. The new normal will be where there will be an aspirational workforce, where more and more independent people are going to tag in through a “Hub and Spoke” model, where the “Hub” is a small place inside an organization but the “Spoke” is where most of the employees are integrating together. As we adapt to the new reality, a lot of reforms need to happen in future, labour reforms, disinvestment, taxation and reforms related to deregulation of many certain sectors and there will be emphasis on greater private equity and foreign direct investment. As students of business schools, we have to look at the human qualities and traits of being a true leader as our traits will reflect in our way of leadership.”, averred Dr. Patra.
A Special Address was delivered by Dr. Karl Moore, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Canada & Associate, Green Templeton College, Oxford University, UK, in which he stated, “New ways, new systems, new ideas and new environments have to be introduced and implemented to adapt to the new reality, post pandemic. Organizations need to see how they can inspire and encourage remotely working teams and move forward with emerging strategies which can look forward into the future. Institutions should invite the Corporate Heads and CEOs and gather data from disparate resources and bring them together to introduce new teaching modules using practical insights. The world needs indigenous and inspiring leaders in the current scenario and novelty in every aspect is required to address the need of the hour.”
Expressing his extreme pleasure on this occasion, Dr. Ashok K. Chauhan, Founder President, Amity Education Group, said, “We, at Amity, are constantly thinking of developing and evolving new leadership systems and qualities and we are amazed to see how our Alumni have grown in their careers and have achieved such great heights. Amity has always believed in nurturing leaders of tomorrow by providing a high standard of education, a great infrastructure and highly esteemed and qualified faculty members. After the second world war, we are witnessing these tough times of the pandemic, but with our great philosophy, values and sanskaars, we have successfully managed to go through these tough times and created new opportunities in all fields. We are proud to have such distinguished and esteemed speakers with us today and if we practice and learn from them, we can not only become great leaders but can become successful in all endeavours.”, remarked Dr. Chauhan.
Explaining how the “Barbell Strategy” was used to deal with the Indian economy during the pandemic, the Guest of Honor, Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, stated, “The idea behind the “Barbell Strategy” is to combine two very different strategies in order to deal with an uncertain situation. Therefore, during the Covid crisis, the “Barbell Strategy” was adopted which involved hedging for the very worst outcome on one hand and making your way forward through “Bayesian Updating” of information. The first lockdown was implemented in this context as we did not have any new insight into how the covid would impact us. Implementing a complete lockdown gave us the time to prepare quarantine facilities, testing facilities and also to develop our health infrastructure. Overtime, we gathered more information and became more aware of the disease so we did a “Bayesian Updating” of the information and made our way forward. We were criticized for opening up the lockdown during September when the cases were spiking up but the reason for doing the same was, that we knew while this was a dangerous disease, this wasn’t the worst case. Also, every few months, India introduced a series of packages where we iteratively responded to an evolving situation, which is a fundamentally different way of dealing with a problem rather than have a grand plan in the beginning. Now, even though there are risks in different sectors, we as a nation are economically well placed and our banking system is well capitalized. Therefore, planning is not always helpful as no one can predict the future and the ability to deal with extreme shocks is far more important than your ability to forecast the future.”
Sharing his views on this occasion, Dr. Atul Chauhan, Chancellor, Amity University, stated, “Amity has grown immensely under the unparalleled leadership of our Founder President and faculty members who are great leaders and have always shown the right path to our students, not only academically but guiding them in all spheres of their lives. Speaking about leadership skills, he said, “A true leader is the one who adapts to different situations and finds new ways of leadership in an unexpected and unprecedented scenario. The most important thing for organizations is to be prepared for the worst-case scenario and remain agile as this is what defines their success in the long term. We are certain that a lot of good insights will come through this conference and it will be highly beneficial for all of us.”
Addressing the gathering, Prof. (Dr.) Balvinder Shukla, Vice-Chancellor, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, said, “No businesses were prepared for this unprecedented global crisis and they are still making efforts to revive. At the same time, we have also seen growth of certain business sectors during the pandemic which provided new opportunities in new forms. In order to adapt to the new reality, educational institutions must develop new talent and new skill sets amongst their students to realize the vision of our Prime Minister to make India, “Aatm Nirbhar Bharat”. At Amity, we are preparing our students for the new realities by reinforcing research and innovation and making huge efforts by providing counselling sessions and all kinds of academic, health and moral support to our students. Amity University has collaborated with many corporates for introducing and developing new programmes and modules which are in sync with the new realities.”
Welcoming the guests, Prof. (Dr.) Sanjeev Bansal, Dean FMS, Director, Amity Business School, said, “We all have been witnessing the unprecedented pandemic for more than 25 months now and it has sent shock waves through the global economy, governments are stretching their spending capacity, the stability of financial system is highly threatened globally. In the Socratic Dialogue Republic, Plato famously wrote, “Our need will be the real creator”. The world economy is restoring, organizations are bouncing back working environments are reviving but when the pandemic is behind us, organizations cannot back to the same old things, changes are definitely required. The new reality focusses on three critical areas- climate and sustainability, digital transformation and resilience. To win in the new reality, businesses will have to reflect on what they learnt during the pandemic and integrate those lessons into the operating models and ways of working. Leading in the new reality requires digital capabilities and a comprehensive transformation which can support the new ways of working.”
On this occasion, Amity Excellence Awards were presented to Dr. Karl Moore, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Canada & Associate, Green Templeton College, Oxford University, UK, Mr. Nishant Govil, Managing Director (Head of India – Tech. & Ops), BlackRock and Ms. Arundhati Mukoo, President HR, Coffee Day Beverages.
During the three-day Conference, Research Papers were also presented on various topics such as “Proposing a Multiple Linear Regression Based Model for Estimating Passenger Vehicles Demand for the Indian Market”, “Dynamics of Social Media On Education During Covid-19 Pandemic”, and “Overview and Future research agenda on B2C marketing approach: A Bibliometric Analysis” amongst others.