On book covers, now - XLRI Faculty turn Authors

Jamshedpur, Sept. 10 (The Telegraph): XLRI faculty members are venturing beyond the confines of the classroom and reaching out to a potential global audience by penning books.

XLRI faculty Manish Singhal has penned a 148-page book titled Spirituality at work — a study of Indian non-profit organisations. The book, published by Germans publishers Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, explores how spirituality makes people better workers.

“Most professionals work for only themselves. They have a limited understanding of different aspects of spirituality such as integrity and wholeness, which makes people stick to a particular organisation. There has to be some connect and meaning to keep people interested in their work,” said Singhal, who teaches organisational behaviour at XLRI.

Singhal’s book is the outcome of a three-year study on six non-profit organisations based in Calcutta, of which three — Bharat Sevasharm Sangha, Aurobindo Ashram and Ramkrishna Mission — were spiritual organisations. The others were Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, Vikramshila, Child In Need Institute (CINI). Around 148 people participated in Singhal’s survey.

In his book, Singhal ingeniously applied his core findings from these non-profit organisations and applied them to the profit-making world of enterprise.

His peer, Debasis Pradhan, assistant professor at XLRI, also published a book on marketing management titled ‘To Push or to Pull: Dynamics of Promotional Strategies Book’.

The book, brought out by another German publisher, VDM Verlag, explains the basics of promotional strategies. The 292-page book comprehensively addresses the push and pull debate, with focus on Indian rural industries. Pradhan’s book explores the customer-based brand equity measurement approach with dimensions like retailer awareness, retailer association, retailer perceived quality, and retailer loyalty.