Management education needs to move beyond teaching conventional techniques and prepare students for a world shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), geopolitical rivalry, and supply-chain disruptions, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran said on Friday.
Addressing the 16th Indian Management Conclave in Noida, Nageswaran called for business schools to put judgement, resilience, deep thinking, and character at the centre of their curricula rather than simply adding AI-focused courses. He said the traditional management focus on efficiency — such as lean operations, just-in-time systems, and single-source supply chains — was increasingly vulnerable to global shocks.
The growing use of AI threatens traditional apprenticeship through which young professionals developed managerial judgement. Routine and analytical work at the junior level, he said, was often where employees learnt how to make decisions, understand the limitations of models, and develop professional judgement.
“The analyst who builds the model learns how the model lies. The associate who drafts the note learns how a firm really makes up its mind. The trouble is AI now precisely does this junior-level work. The bottom rungs of the ladder are being sawn off,” he said.
At a broader level, great-power rivalry and the weaponisation of supply chains meant managers needed to understand redundancy, maintain options, and build resilience into organisations, even if this increased costs, he said.
“The world of frictionless efficiency, (driven) above all (by) single-source global supply chains, is over. It will not return for a generation at least,” Nageswaran said.
“The manager trained only to optimise, to save the last rupee of cost, to learn to lean on one cheap supplier, no matter how far away he or she is, is a manager trained for a world that no longer exists,” he added.
This comes as recent geopolitical disruptions have affected Indian businesses through shipping and supply chains, with tensions around the Strait of Hormuz leading to vessel diversions, longer routes, congestion, and higher freight and insurance costs. The latest disruptions have also forced Indian businesses to rethink sourcing, inventory, and supply-chain strategies. In this context, the CEA said Indian business schools need to build models that address their own economy instead of borrowing models from the West.
“Ours is not that economy. We are young, we are still building, and much of our economy still remains informal. Our firms must do more with less. Our managers must operate at enormous scale under real constraints for a population that is still climbing out of poverty and aspirational in nature. So, the Indian business school should not simply be a copy of an American one, only later and a little cheaper. It should ask its own questions,” he added.
The CEA also raised concerns about social media fragmenting the attention spans of youngsters, impacting their mental and physical health before they come to study management. “It is a warning about the raw material of management. The manager’s core tool is the clear and patient mind. That tool is under attack before the students even reach the campuses,” he added.
Nageswaran also called for management students to learn to “read the world, and not just the firm”, with greater exposure to geopolitics, energy, technology, and political economy. “A decision taken in a boardroom in Noida can be undone by a decision taken in a Capital thousands of miles away. Political economy must, therefore, return to the business school,” he noted.
The CEA said that India remains young, has a large informal economy, and requires firms to operate at scale under resource constraints. “How do you manage frugally, at scale, in a young, unequal country? How do you build organisations that earn trust in a system where trust is scarce?” Education that answers these questions well is necessary, he added.
Citing an August report by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) committee on AI and education, he said some researchers were considering using AI agents in place of undergraduate research assistants, raising questions about what students would lose from the experience. He suggested using cases, arguments, and decision-making exercises to teach students how to exercise and defend judgement.
This comes at a time when business schools are increasingly integrating AI into teaching and curricula, even as concerns grow over the impact of AI on entry-level employment. With companies increasingly using AI for routine and analytical tasks, a reduction in entry-level hiring could narrow that traditional pathway into managerial roles.
Nageswaran said the challenge was particularly important because AI could increasingly provide the conventional skills that business schools have historically taught. “If a business school still sells technique, structured analysis, and the standard tools, then AI will sell the same thing faster and cheaper,” he said.