IMSI Indore: coping with COVID-19 VUCA in higher education
Publication date: 20 March 2023
Abstract
Learning outcomes
This comprehensive case has been written for an undergraduate-level course on general management and a post-graduate-level course on organizational behavior and strategic management. After working through the case and conducting an in-depth discussion of the assignment questions, students will be able to do the following: 1. perform a comprehensive assessment of the institute’s internal context to measure its resources and preparedness to deal with COVID-19; 2. apply organizational change frameworks (to understand the trigger of the change, type of change and change process); 3. qualitatively analyze the dynamic capabilities and resources available to reopen the institute; and 4. suggest ways to institutionalize agility in the organization to improve the preparations and future responses to student management on campus based on a thorough analysis.
Case overview/synopsis
Founded in 1996, the Indian Managerial Studies Institute, Indore, has emerged as a leader in management education by appropriately weaving the pertinent roles of industry, government and PSUs into a common thread. With the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020, IMSI Indore began to respond to educational and administrative challenges by building on resilient strategies. Two decision-making situations cropped up as the situation improved and again converged to the more lethal second wave in March 2021. Dr Hemant Vishwas, Dean of IMSI Indore, needed to determine whether the institute should continue with the reduced employee and hybrid classroom model or reopen with full-fledged operations for the following academic year.
Complexity academic level
This comprehensive case has been written considering the teaching pedagogy for an undergraduate-level course on organizational behavior (organizational development and change module) and a post-graduate-level course on organizational behavior and strategic management. This case is suitable for courses on organizational development, change and strategy implementation. Organizational behavior and organizational development and change can be used to understand the core concepts of the change content and process, i.e. the scope and scale of the change. The case also touches on inducing a dynamic change in response to the pandemic in an educational setting, teaching the concepts of dynamic capabilities. It is also expected to be useful for teaching courses related to operations strategies in educational services for executive degree programs and faculty development workshops.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 6: Human Resource Management.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author(s) acknowledge the cooperation of Colonel Gururaj Gopinath Pamidi, Chief Administrative Officer, IIM Indore, for sharing the data and information regarding the initiatives undertaken at the institute to strengthen the administration during the COVID-19 crisis. The authors are also grateful for the constructive suggestions made by Prof. Jatin Pandey to improve the structure of the case study. Finally, this case study would not have been conceivable without the active participation of Prof. Himanshu across all the stages of conceptualization and writing.
Disclaimer. This case is written solely for educational purposes and is not intended to represent successful or unsuccessful managerial decision-making. The author/s may have disguised names; financial and other recognizable information to protect confidentiality.
Citation
Shroff, A., Karthik, B. and Rai, H. (2023), "IMSI Indore: coping with COVID-19 VUCA in higher education", , Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-10-2022-0356
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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