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Press Release The Kolkata-born academic turned European management guru, Sumantra Ghoshal, who counseled a world bewildered by the runway growth of gigantic corporations and MNCs with the power and pelf of mediaeval empires, has died. Few days back, he was rushed to a London hospital after suffering a double aneurism or brain haemorrahage, where he had been on life-support, though appeared to be getting better. He suffered another attack on Tuesday night and after an 11-day critically ill period in the hospital, he died early on Wednesday. As news of 55-year-old Ghoshal's death spread throughout the European business and management community, reactions ranged from abiding grief to a sense of loss that he died relatively young. Ghoshal's has worked at the London Business School (LBS), where he had spent 10 years as a highly-acclaimed professor of strategic and international management. Ghoshal, who was once memorably described by The Economist as "Euroguru", is widely believed to be one of the handful of Europe-based management theorists on a high-earning, cut-throat circuit dominated by American thinkers. Ghoshal was said to have turned conventional management gurudom on its head, arguing for a kinder, more compassionate corporate culture that liberated the individual worker, re-invented the way organizations work and focused on the individual as entrepreneur, the basic building block of any company. Analysts said Ghoshal's newest book, 'A Bias for Action', co-authored with a lesser Euroguru Heiche Bruch, appears to reveal Ghoshal's growing impatience with theories and gurudom. It is believed that he now wanted to move to concrete action. Ghoshal's colleagues described him as "a heretic in the nicest possible way", seeking always to challenge conventional theory and return corporate life to its original starting point - the individual as entrepreneur. LBS, which the MIT and Harvard-educated Ghoshal had used as a base to launch imaginative critiques of millennial management issues, recalled with pride that his most recent book, 'Managing Across Border' had been described "as the most influential management book" in decades. In a short, sad statement, LBS said Ghoshal would be sorely missed for his "visionary thinking about organizations and management issues that confront such companies and the impact of such organizations on society". The professor leaves behind a wife Sushmita, two sons Anand and Siddharth. |
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