Category Archives: Society

Stop Talking About Her, Talk About Her Work

Posted on by

What are the issues that women professionals face in their organizations? What are the benefits they bring to the organization? How can organizations bring out the best from their women professionals? Here is my take.

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

*

Now that the Women’s Day hoopla is done, it’s time for sensible views on women in business. This article is a collection of lists: the real issues faced daily by women in business; the real value that women add, over and beyond what regular employees aka men add; and the real action that everyone in business can take to realize the potential of women for their business success, and for justice in its most modern form. The article does not provide any advice to women, as most women are already taking several steps on their own, and non-contextual advice is often less than helpful.

Here are some real issues faced by women in business, daily and cumulatively, presented as quotes modified from my observations:

Continue reading →

Fighting Covid-19 with Corporate Nudges: Time for Businesses and Governments to Join Hands?

Posted on by

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Recently, Krispy Kreme came into the limelight for offering a free glazed donut to anyone in the US who could show a covid vaccination record card. Other companies have also started offering freebies for vaccinations. What’s going on? Why should a donut company care whether people get themselves vaccinated? After all, conventional wisdom tells us that it’s the duty of the government and not private companies to ensure public health.

Indeed, Krispy Kreme has faced criticism for its initiative, because it is offering an unhealthy snack in the interest of driving a public health measure. But what else can a donut company do, especially when it is simply offering a reward for good behavior? As every parent would vouch, rewards are an essential nudge towards desirable actions. In any case, offering something tangible in support of the vaccination effort does seem to be better than capitalizing on the covid situation through messaging in the form of unproductive lip service as this Horlicks ad purports to do. Just as this Dabur ad once did by (insensitively?) showcasing loss of hair caused by cancer.

Continue reading →

Why Virtual Should Continue Even After it’s Not Needed. At Least in Academic Conferences

Posted on by

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Recently I participated in the Association for Consumer Research (ACR) annual conference 2020 as a presenter. The ACR conference is a large and prestigious academic conference on research related to consumer behavior. The conference was held virtually in Paris. Participating virtually meant that one could not get the “feel” of a typical conference (which I will call a “venue” conference going forward). But it struck me that once I let go of my expectations of a venue conference, the virtual format was probably – no, definitely – more effective, at least for me. The virtual conference starkly revealed how costly venue conferences had been, when I counted the nonobvious costs of venue compared to virtual.

In this write-up, I have attempted to explain why, and hence make a case for all conferences considering going partially virtual even after the pandemic lifts. Towards the end I have given a set of options that conference organizers can consider when the pandemic has been managed and virtual conferences are no longer essential.

Note: this post is long, but is structured with numbered and titled lists for easier reading.

Continue reading →

They are quick but are they nimble?

Posted on by

To start with, a quick note to my readers on the two very similar posts (now hidden) that preceded this post. Those were the side effects of being a researcher in marketing. I wanted to check consumer reactions to reading an article on a mobile screen. In any case, here goes the next post, on the “mobile generation”, an entire generation of youngsters who have grown up on mobile phones.

This generation is fast with the fingers: swiping on a touchscreen is the skill to aspire to, rather than typing on a keyboard, just as typing on a keyboard was once the skill to aspire to instead of typing on a typewriter. Indeed, this post is being written (written?!) on a smartphone where the screen tells me that I have reached 127 words and “where” was swiped as “welfare” by mistake. Deliberately or not, my paragraphs are shorter as I swipe because I feel the need to divide the content on the screen for ease of reading, forgetting that the reading might happen on any kind of screen.

Continue reading →

Why India Needs Swiggy More Than Ola

Posted on by

© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

Before I begin this post, let me confess that I use Ola once in a while. In fact, I was sitting in an Ola cab at a traffic jam when the scene I am about to narrate happened. The vehicle in front of me was a medium-sized truck, and from the exterior it was clear that this truck carried garbage. In that case, why did I give it a second glance? Because there was a man inside! In the garbage part of the van (not the driver side which I anyway couldn’t see), beside the pile of black garbage bags with their mouths tied, this lanky guy stood bent over, his jeans pushed up to his knees, his hands working furiously. He picked out mineral water bottles – the smaller kind that we usually see at parties and throw away so casually – and dropped them into a big grayish bag. Each time he saw water in a bottle, he would pour it on his feet and wipe it down (to cool the heat of standing the entire time in that airless shaking truck?). What he didn’t pick from the black bag were largely paper plates and paper cups, most having some leftovers, so the waste was probably from a party. This activity went on even as the signal changed to green.

Despite all the cynicism that India’s cities (Gurgaon, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Noida) have taught me, and despite being told that “this is how the lower classes live, what is your problem, isn’t the AC in your cab running?”, I was shocked. Right in front of me stood a guy who made a living sorting out plastic bottles from garbage, standing inside a moving truck. It made me wonder: is there anything that any of us, seeing and then quickly unseeing the reality in front of us, can do? It might help to segregate waste so that workers like him do not have to repeatedly dip their hands into garbage to retrieve bottles. But segregation would relieve him of his job! Imagine we all decided to segregate our plastic and paper and wet waste. What would happen to our waste workers?

Continue reading →

A Searing Portrayal of Hope amidst Angst – A Review of Arundhati Roy’s ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’

Posted on by

Two pages into the book, or perhaps just a paragraph into the book, you know you are hooked – not in the way an addict is pleasurably hooked to the drug, but in the way a helpless fish is hooked by the cruel inescapable claw that hung innocuously with bait. And you know you will read it cover to cover in a day, despite all other work. Hoping that this irresponsibility of yours, this travesty of your usual route is a one-time affair and will be forgiven.

And now to the book. One of those days when mother was around, and wanted something to read. We Malayalis like to think that Arundhati Roy is from Kerala, and we all liked her-God-of-Small-Things. Let’s see if the new book was available and what it had to say. It was supposed to be good. Anyway the first one had won the Booker. “She writes well,” we told each other. Now what was the title of the new book?

Yes, the library had a copy and yes, it was available for loan. Wonder of wonders, a new book by a famous author was still not “on hold” by anyone. Great. But the library spelt trouble because the book could not be found. Why did I search for it in the shelves then? And why did it get found? Still trouble. Because the book was in fact on hold. By two others. But they agreed to let me read first if I read quickly. Like my friends let me read ‘The da Vinci Code.’ Reading fast is a useful skill.

And when the reading began, there was no ending till the author said so. Because you lived with the characters and what was more, they lived with you, in you. Starting with Anjum-who-was-Aftab, and Saddam Hussein-who-was-a-Hindu, a nameless girl who became Zainab, through Tilottama, Naga, Musa and Garson Hobart, and culminating in Udaya who became Miss Jebeen the Second. The book is an haunting story of hope and despair and the entire spectrum between the two. Delhi is where it all begins, in a warm comfortable home that can no longer contain the discordant notes in Aftab’s mind and voice. But the story is about Kashmir and the “Indo-Pak” (does this two-bit expression ever need explanation?) that’s within all of us. And about what happens to women and children in a war, even an underground war.

Roy’s narrative style is as unforgettable as her story is unforgiving. When a car has to raise its bonnet and boot for a routine bomb-check at a hotel, it seems to be a girl raising her skirts (Shamelessly? Helplessly? Could the two be the same?) When Miss Jebeen the First dies of a bullet wound it is a little rose above her left ear.

There are political references that are clearly left unclear. But who in India will not recognize the Poet-Prime Minister or the Sikh economist Prime Minister? But how does it matter? To whom does it matter? And as Roy asks, do those to whom it matters matter?

This is a book that stays with you. I have already decided to read it again a year later. Not because of its searing insights into politics and psychology but because it speaks in a voice that’s truthful but sensitive. Most importantly, it is intense but does not enjoy the narration of angst. And there is Miss Jebeen.

Time for Preparation

Posted on by

“When do we start preparing?” asked one the students attending my guest lecture. And my answer was, “you should have started preparing already.” That is always my answer to anyone who asks about any sort of preparation. There is no right time to start preparing, except the moment when the idea occurs to you, be it the idea of writing a competitive examination (such as the Common Admission Test, as this girl had asked), or writing an article to be sent to the newspaper. There just is no point in delaying preparation. What one can do is start softly (such as reading a good English newspaper in the case of the girl who wanted to write the CAT).

 

A Gripping Tale: Review of Hilary Mantel’s ‘Bring Up the Bodies’

Posted on by

For once, a non-business post after ages. Hope this makes for a good read…

Hilary Mantel’s second book on Thomas Cromwell is a stark portrayal of intrigue and politics, of people plotting against one another in their ambitions. Bring Up the Bodies, the Man Booker Prize winning sequel to Wolf Hall, itself a Man Booker Prize winner, is a gripping saga for those who appreciate Thomas Cromwell’s ways.

When the novel begins, circumstances in England are such that queen Anne Boleyn has not yet given birth to a baby boy, and the Tudor line of King Henry VIII is not secured. He wants another wife, his third after Katherine and Anne. Thomas Cromwell, as Master Secretary to the king, is assigned the task of clearing the way for the new queen. He arranges machinations in such a manner that a few young men at the court are alleged to have relationships with Anne. This is seen to be ground enough for the death knell to be sounded for the queen and the young men she favored. This, despite the fact that, over the last few years, Anne and Cromwell helped each other rise in the king’s eyes.

Readers of historical fiction will find the book interesting for the sheer amount of detail. The lay reader is sure to appreciate the perspective that the narration comes from: usually it is Cromwell whose perspective is narrated, so that the reader gets a good sense of what happens at the king’s court and what takes place in Cromwell’s mind. There are times when Cromwell misses Wolsey, a bishop of earlier times whom Anne plotted out of favor. There are also other poignant times when Cromwell thinks of his dead wife and daughters. But he has a way of making his facial expression “implacable” so that the other party does not get a clue to his feelings.

Mantel has her own particular way of playing with words, sometimes laden with meaning, sometimes implying something else. She uses metaphors and comparisons to drive the meaning in. For instance, the men at court who face the death penalty are phantoms, for they used to flit in and out of Anne’s privy chambers, and Cromwell is “master of phantoms.” And they are not even dead, when they become “bodies” for all practical purposes.

Overall, a good book, well worth the time spent. And quite a lot is spent, given the 400-odd pages loaded with words and meaning.

*

P.S.: I had been hoping to read this book from the time it was released, since I had already read Wolf Hall. Hence imagine my happiness on finding this book at the first shelf in the first row at the library!

Growing with Integrity

Posted on by

“You have to be in Germany to understand what Bosch means,” a friend told me recently. “They are like the Tatas in India,” he continued, “big, well-respected, old.” He was referring to the engineering and consumer goods company Robert Bosch GmbH. And comparing it to a large Indian conglomerate.

Both of them are standing testimony to what it means to grow without sacrificing values. As they grew, they would have made tradeoffs, they would have learnt the meaning of tough choices. Not all companies can do that. Many companies, at some point or another, give in to the pressure of shareholder results or top management self-aggrandisement. That is why we feel a strange sense of respect for companies that have maintained their values through thick and thin.

Related articles

The Benefits of Switching Off

Posted on by

As incredible as it sounds, there are benefits of switching off connectivity to your mobile phone. There are at least two instances of doing this in a typical working life. The first is to go completely switched off on weekends. This is ideally done with a couple of like-minded, and preferably sports-loving, people (to keep boredom at bay) and/ or with a good book. By Sunday, you feel refreshed. Of course, this works only if you have aligned in advance with your manager and other critical stakeholders.

The second is to pay complete attention during conversations and meetings. That means keeping your phone in silent (ideally with the vibrator off) while talking to anyone, and during any meeting that you care to attend. Nobody I know does that. Nobody except myself! I find it very distracting to glance fleetingly at my phone while someone is telling me something important, and I value the present. In meetings, this practice of keeping my phone in silent mode lets me listen clearly. In conversations, this lets me value the other party. And then I call back the interrupter.

It is not that I ignore what my phone says. I just like my time and attention as interruption-free as possible.