The September 2026 issue of IIMB Management Review (IMR) is now available as a special issue on the Indian Knowledge System (IKS). Titled ‘Indian Knowledge System: Applications in management, public administration, and business’, the issue was conceptualised and anchored by Guest Editor Prof. B. Mahadevan, retd. Faculty of Production & Operations Management area and saw an unprecedented response to its Call for Papers, with about 200 submissions. Prof. Ramya T Venkateswaran of IIM Calcutta and Prof. Kumar Alok of XLRI Jamshedpur supported the review process as Guest Co-editors.

The issue comprises the Guest Editorial, an invited article, ‘Ṣāḍguṇya: Foreign policy in ancient Bhārata’, by IIM Bangalore alumnus Nityānanda Miśra, and nine peer-reviewed research articles selected from among those accepted for publication.

Read the special issue here: https://www.iimb.ac.in/imr/current-issue.php

The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at IIMB will organize a half-day workshop titled ‘Economic Transformation Through AI: Policy and Practice’ on 17^th November 2026, from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

The case examines how growth ambition, governance and control collided in the failed $10 billion merger between Zee Entertainment Enterprises (Zee) and Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI). Announced in 2021, the merger promised to create India’s largest broadcaster, combining more than 75 television channels, two streaming platforms (ZEE5 and Sony LIV) and extensive content libraries. For Sony, the deal offered a path to scale in India’s rapidly consolidating media market; for Zee, it promised strategic and financial stability amid promoter debt, governance concerns and investor scrutiny. Over the next two years, however, the transaction became entangled in regulatory scrutiny, shareholder activism, creditor challenges, and growing concerns about governance and control. As the deal moved toward completion, tensions between Zee and Sony intensified, including disagreement over the leadership of the merged entity. In January 2024, Sony terminated the merger. The case invites students to assess whether the merger made strategic sense for both firms and to examine the governance as well as control issues that shaped its trajectory. Why did Zee’s promoters and its largest institutional shareholder clash despite their shared interest in increasing firm value? What changed in Sony’s assessment of the merger over time? What could Punit Goenka have done differently to improve the chances of the merger succeeding? Through these questions, the case explores the challenges created by competing shareholder interests, the separation of ownership and control, and evolving perceptions of governance risk. The retrospective analysis also serves a prospective purpose: understanding why the merger failed provides a basis for assessing the strategic and governance challenges Zee must address as it seeks to restore credibility, pursue growth and chart its future direction.

HeatWatch is a small India-based nonprofit founded in 2023 by Apekshita Varshney, a journalist who came to see extreme heat as an urgent labor, public health and occupational-safety crisis. Positioning itself as a ‘technical heat partner’ rather than a service-delivery organization, HeatWatch works through unions and worker organizations: it translates medical and climate knowledge into field vernacular, runs heat-health training alongside emergency physicians, generates evidence from the ground, and equips partners to press employers, government departments and the media. Between 2023 and 2026, it worked with construction workers in Pune, gig and platform workers in Telangana, ASHA workers in Haryana, waste workers in Bengaluru and garment workers in Tamil Nadu, and, built a volunteer-verified repository of media-reported heatstroke deaths that recorded 733 deaths across 17 states against an official figure of 360. By March 2026, HeatWatch had three full-time staff, an annual budget of INR 20-25 lakh, a fully committed summer calendar and more inbound requests than it could accept. Its stated mission, however, is preventing avoidable heatstroke deaths among workers, an outcome shaped by employers, contractors, platforms, labor and health departments, municipal and disaster-management agencies, hospitals, and clinicians, none of which HeatWatch controls. Varshney must decide what kind of organization HeatWatch should become: go deeper in fewer sectors and geographies, building repeat training cycles, first-response protocols, employer engagement, and policy follow-through; or remain a frontier catalyst that surfaces neglected worker constituencies, produces first-generation evidence, and hands each issue to larger actors. Underlying the choice is a measurement problem: how should a small organization define success when annual death counts are too noisy to serve as a scorecard, and activity counts are too shallow for the mission it claims?

Palar Tea is a mission-driven specialty tea enterprise in Kerala’s Idukki district. Founder Sunny Joseph spent three decades cultivating chemical-free tea before building, between 2016 and 2019, one of Kerala’s few fully integrated mini tea factories – growing, processing and marketing single-origin teas from a single 20-acre estate. From 2019, his daughter Annu Sunny led the enterprise as CEO, introducing formal systems, refining products and anchoring a brand built on transparency and care. By 2024, Palar had reached roughly 800 customers almost entirely through estate visits, WhatsApp conversations, media storytelling and word-of-mouth referrals. Revenue had grown from Rs 6.5 lakh to Rs 25 lakh and losses were narrowing (Rs 13.6 lakh in FY 2024-25), but the enterprise was not yet profitable. Making Palar self-sustaining implied roughly doubling production to 6,000 kg and lifting domestic tea sales to Rs 40-50 lakh. At the same time, the relationship-driven marketing model that had created Palar’s identity was proving hard to scale: the team was thinning, Annu’s attention was split across three ventures, and two family co-owners of the tea garden wished to exit, requiring capital the firm could not generate from operations. Registered as a partnership with unclear land titles, Palar could not readily attract external equity, and doing so risked eroding its personal, mission-driven culture. The case places students in Annu’s position as she weighs professionalizing operations, pursuing certification and export markets, or deepening the direct-to-consumer model, and asks how Palar can scale its market without breaking the personal, transparent, value-driven model that earned its customers’ trust.

The case deals with two scenarios of service failures in the context of the airline industry. Both service failures appear similar, with the protagonists missing a connecting flight to their destination. However, each airline adopted a different service recovery strategy, resulting in markedly different post-failure service experiences. Did the recovery measures of each airline represent an appropriate response to the respective situations? When is it sensible to design a more (or less) generous service recovery strategy? Which service gaps in the customers’ experiences should be prioritized post service failure? With an increasing importance on managing customer experiences better, the case helps to bring out the considerations that managers must make to deal with the complexities of managing service failures and implementing effective recovery strategies.

IIM Bangalore will host the culmination of the imaginATe Fellowship for Entrepreneurs with Disabilities on 12 and 13 November 2026 at its campus. The fellowship is an initiative of AssisTech Foundation (ATF) in partnership with Bajaj Finserv CSR. The culmination will bring together the fellows, mentors, ATF, Bajaj Finserv CSR and ecosystem stakeholders to reflect on the journeys so far, celebrate the progress made and explore the way forward for the entrepreneurs.

The Centre for Software and IT Management (CSITM) at IIM Bangalore, in partnership with AIS India, will host ‘AI for Everyday Productivity’, a one-day workshop on 19 November 2026 at the IIM Bangalore campus. The session is the first offering from CSITM’s modular ‘Working With AI’ programme.

Register now using the link: Registration Link

Can businesses balance shareholder returns with a lasting commitment to employees, customers and society?

In a book review titled ‘The double-edged sword of a dual bottom line’ for Business Standard, Dr. M. S. Sriram, Public Policy area, examines Eric Ries’s ‘Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great’, questioning whether purpose-driven companies can outperform conventional competitors without embedding that purpose in their organizational design.

October 2026 marked two significant milestones for IIMBx, with the successful conclusion of the inaugural FinTech Certificate Programme and a four-day Faculty Development Programme conducted in Manipal University Jaipur.

The valedictory ceremony for FinTech Batch-1 was held on 1^st October 2026, celebrating the successful completion of the programme’s first cohort. The inaugural batch had enrolled 518 learners, out of which 380 graduated, resulting in a programme completion rate of 73%. Among the graduates, 363 learners received the Advanced Certificate, while 17 learners earned the Foundation Certificate. The cohort brought together a diverse learner profile, with students accounting for 52.6%, working professionals 29.7% and learners from other backgrounds 17.7%.

Following the FinTech valedictory, IIMBx conducted a four-day Faculty Development Programme at Manipal University Jaipur for 80 faculty members. Designed around the theme ‘3D’s: Design, Develop, Deliver’, the programme offered a hands-on journey from course design and scripting to AI-enabled content production, studio recording, assessment design and course launch.

Faculty participants worked on developing learner profiles, course outlines, scripts, learning activities and assessments, while also gaining practical exposure to generative AI and studio-based content production. The programme included panel discussions on the changing landscape of online learning and AI in education, hands-on recording sessions, peer review and guidance on building courses for SWAYAM.

The programme concluded with group presentations of course blueprints, expert feedback, certificate distribution and a valedictory session.

Together, these initiatives reflect IIMBx’s continued focus on expanding high-quality digital learning while strengthening the capabilities of both learners and educators.