200 attend XLRI's reunion

Jamshedpur, Nov 19: Director of McKinsey and Co. Laxman Narsimhan underlined the five forces that would reshape the turbulent world, as close to 200 old students made their way from various parts of the globe to attend Homecoming — the call of their alma mater XLRI — here today.

Narsimhan, who addressed the 20th annual JRD Tata oration on business ethics, which incidentally coincided with the B-school’s reunion, said that the current corporate and economic scenario were in the middle of an era of volatility. He emphasised that business institutions had to cope with the five underlying forces.

“The first force was re-balancing the global economy. The second is massive productivity increase in the developed markets. The third and most important force is the challenge of an ever growing networked world,” he elucidated. He added that the global financial flows of the world had increased twice more than the GDP growth and the global product flows had increased by 1.5 times the GDP growth of the world.

The fourth force according to Narsimhan, who has been working for McKinsey since 1993, was resource on the planet getting pricier. To drive home his point, he explained that according to his company’s research, the world would see an increase of 30 per cent in resource consumption — including basic commodities like water, metals and food — by 2020.

The fifth force according to him was the increasing role of the state’s intervention in the market, which had been a noticeable trend in the past five years.

Tata Steel managing director H.M. Nerurkar, who is also the chairman of the XLRI board of director, in turn recalled the significance of JRD Tata’s business ethics.

XLRI director Father E. Abraham, who was also present at the occasion, in his turn, stated that the B-school had always laid emphasis on ethical code of conduct in the corporate sector. Later, Tata Steel vice-chairman B. Muthuraman feted the founder chairman and managing director Mozambique Holdings Group of companies Jose Parayanken with XLRI’s lifetime achievement award.

Vice Chairman, Tata Steel B Muthuraman was conferred lifetime achievement award, founder chairman and managing director Mozambique Holdings Group of companies, Jose Parayanken received distinguished alumnus awards (as an entrepreneur), CEO and managing director MindTree Limited, N Krishnakumar was selected for the best practicing manager and general mills chair in marketing at Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota Akshay R Rao got the award in academics.