Former director of IIM-B (Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore) and founder-director of the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME), Bangalore, Joe Philip completed 50 years in the service of management education on July 3. This golden jubilee was celebrated with a gala felicitation ceremony staged by Bangalore’s business and academic communities at the state-of-the-art 1,000 seat St. John’s auditorium. Among the notables who showered encomiums on the business education sage, savant and entrepr-eneur were Dr. Abid Husain, former member Planning Commission; Cong-ress MP Oscar Fernandes and former IIM-Bangalore director Prakash G. Apte.
“Looking back at my long and yet unfinished career in business manage-ment education, I’ve not only taught thousands of MBA students but also had the benefit of acquiring valuable insights into institutional management. Among them: dedicated work has its own rewards; as you teach you also learn, and good values and culture are as important for building great institutions as are bricks and mortar. Also, great leaders first have to be good followers,” says Philip who in his 50-year action-packed career has also authored/edited four books — Management Education in India (1989), Institution Building in India — Some Experiences (2007), Business Education in India ¯ A Ringside View (2009) and Global Management Education — Country Studies (2009).
A law graduate of Kerala University with postgraduate qualifications from XLRI Jamshedpur, Philip began his academic career teaching at XLRI where he played a major role in shaping the institute’s prestigious postgrad diploma programme in management.
After an 11-year stint with XLRI, in 1971 he took charge of the floundering Management Training Institute (MTI) of the public sector Hindustan Steel (later renamed SAIL), India’s largest steel manufacturing company. His brief was to transform MTI — plagued with “bureaucracy, poor morale, poor image and non-performance” — into a model training institute for steel industry managers and executives within 24 months. It took him eight years (1971-1979).
In 1980 he made a switch from the austere environment of SAIL to the uber luxury ambience of the private sector Oberoi Group of hotels where he was given the portfolio of vice-president (human resou-rces). In five eventful years with this emerging hospitality group, he revamped its HR practices including the compensation system to build a firm foundation for its transformation into a globe-girdling chain of high-end hotels. In 1985 he was invited to set right the then strife-torn IIM-Bangalore. After completion of his five year term (1985-90) as director of IIM-B and putting its house in order, Philip founded XIME in Bangalore with a modest capital of Rs.60,000.
Philip’s progression from an academic to education entrepreneur was prompted by a tragic accident. In 1986, his 22-year-old daughter Maria was killed by a shunting engine while crossing a railway line in Madras. Three months before her death, Maria had extracted a promise from her father, who was then director of IIM-Bangalore, to harness his knowledge, leadership and expertise to promote a model B-school in the private sector.
True to his promise, in August 1995 XIME admitted its first batch of students. Since then it has matured into a fully-fledged B-school with excellent infrastructure facilities on its land-scaped 4.3 acre campus in Electronics City, and is commonly ranked among the country’s top 25 B-schools.
Now with XIME’s reputation firmly established, this never-say-die academic-cum-educationist is devoting his energies and expertise to strength-ening the activities of The Association of BRICS Business Schools (ABBS) — a group of B-schools of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries he helped co-found in 2009. “The objective of ABBS is to promote cooperation and exchanges among BRICS business schools. ABBS will attain these objectives through student and faculty exchanges, joint academic programmes, seminars, workshops and conferences. Out of the estimated 10,000 B-schools worldwide, 3,000 are in the BRICS region, and by 2020, these countries will be the largest suppliers of global managers,” says Philip.
Not yet ready to hang up his spurs, Philip plans to continue to mentor his labour of love — XIME — and has also made ambitious plans to establish XIME campuses in Chennai and other cities of peninsular India.
E. Varoodhini (Bangalore)