Kolkata: The IIM-Calcutta on Tuesday said it is developing a management case study on the BJP's organisational strategy that powered its victory in the West Bengal elections, examining the campaign through established strategic management frameworks for classroom teaching and academic research.
The case study, being prepared by IIM-Calcutta Director Alok Kumar Rai, professor Ramya T Venkateswaran of the Strategy Group and former Operations Group professor Bodhibroto Nag, will be used to teach management students concepts relating to strategy, organisational capability and leadership, a statement said.
Once completed, the study will be made available globally through the IIM-Calcutta Case Research Centre in collaboration with Ivy Publishing, enabling business schools and management institutions worldwide to adopt it for teaching.
Rai said the study seeks to academically examine the integrated organisational and strategic efforts behind what was widely regarded as a challenging electoral campaign and analyse the strategic management principles that shaped the BJP's organisational approach.
As part of the research, the team has held extensive interactions with BJP leaders associated with the campaign, including the party's West Bengal election in-charge Sunil Bansal, state president Samik Bhattacharya and former state president Sukanta Majumdar.
The researchers are also seeking to interact with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari to obtain additional perspectives, the statement said.
According to the institute, the case study will document and analyse the development of grassroots organisational capabilities and examine the role of booth-level structures, cadre motivation, local cultural and social outreach, constituency segmentation, candidate selection and communication architecture in building electoral competitiveness.
It will apply the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the VRIO framework to analyse organisational resources and capabilities in a non-business context, while also using the McKinsey 7-S Framework to study organisational alignment across strategy, structure, systems, staffing, skills, style and shared values within a large decentralised political organisation.
The study will also explore whether organisational capabilities developed in one political and cultural setting can be transferred to another with different social, political and cultural characteristics by applying Dynamic Capabilities Theory to understand how organisations sense opportunities, seize them and transform their structures and routines in response to changing circumstances.
Another objective is to examine the transition from electoral politics to governance by analysing whether campaign capabilities can be translated into governance capabilities.
The project also includes the preparation of a comprehensive teaching note to assist faculty members in classroom discussions.
The statement said the study is being designed to encourage debate on whether the BJP's performance in the West Bengal assembly elections can be understood as a sustainable competitive advantage, a resource-based advantage or the outcome of context-specific campaign execution.
This report was published from a syndicated wire feed. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.
