Getting together, living together, thinking together: Management development at Tata Sons 1940–1960

Abstract

This contribution analyses internal management development activities at Tata Sons during the 1940s and 1950s in India. The existing literature has concentrated on the establishment of management education programmes at universities, and our understanding of in-company managerial training and development activities remains very limited. The contribution challenges the commonly held assumption that the American influence on Indian higher education in the post-war period was decisive in shaping management education in general. After 1947, Tata Sons continued to look to Great Britain for management development models to build the internal capacities and management culture that would make governing a diversified business group practical.

Keywords:

• Tata
• management education
• Henley staff college
• governmentality

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two archivists at Tata, Swarup Sengupta and Rajendraprasad Narla, for their guidance, encouragement and patience while conducting this research.

Notes

1. Charles Myers visited India between 1954 and 1955 to study problems facing labour, management and government in the industrial development of the Indian economy. The project was part of a Ford Foundation funded project on Inter-University study of labour problems in economic development.

2. While other Tata executives had visited Henley in early 1950s, John Matthai and Rustom Choksi were responsible for organising the Tata Staff College. Dr .John Matthai received education in law and economics. He joined Tata Sons in 1940 and assumed directorship in 1944. He was on the board of several companies managed by Tata Sons. In addition, he held various government posts including finance member of the Viceroy’s executive council in 1946 and India’s finance minister from 1949 to 1950. In 1950s he held brief stints as Vice Chancellor of University of Bombay and a member of the first governing board of Administrative Staff College of India. Professor Rustom Choksi was a director of Tata Sons and Tata Industries. Between 1950s and 1980s he was a key decision-maker at the Sir Dhorabji Tata Trust.