Author:
Mr Visty Banaji
Chief Executive Officer
Banner Global Consulting Limited
Business Associations have been known for their advocacy of enlightened
business needs with the Government. Increasingly, however, their contribution
to upgrading the competitive advantage of their members is becoming more
important.
Associations of businessmen have a long history in our country. No, I am not
referring to the banding together of (mainly foreign-owned) corporates during colonial
rule, mainly for the purpose of petitioning the authorities to grant some concession or
ease some restriction on their businesses. I am going back a thousand years earlier,
to a confederation of business owners called the Ainurruvars or the Five Hundred
Swamis (Lords). "The Five Hundred, as an organization of merchants, originated in
the eighth century AD in Aihole … to institutionalize control of the existing commerce
of that region, thus providing an institutional base for organized commerce." 1 . I
speculate that they must also have petitioned successive rulers of the territories
where they operated for various forms of patronage and protection. Over a period of
time (spanning centuries) they expanded the benefits they provided and "… helped
connect producers and markets, and moved goods across vast geographical
extents. Such organizations could mobilize large amounts of capital, insulate
members against the risk of banditry, piracy or natural disaster; and hire mercenaries
to protect their depots and caravans. They could also …. use their political networks
to connect international traders and Indian merchants…. By this point, the Five
Hundred Lords of Aihole had evolved into a vast organization… and had brought
together 'all possible specialist merchant groups, itinerant and sedentary, local and
foreign'…. To defend their diverse and spread-out interests, merchant groups like
'The Five Hundred' hobnobbed not only with emperors, but with other medieval
power centres as well: local kings, administrators of minor cities, and temples." 2
The Business Associations (BAs) of today could pat themselves on the back for not
taking quite as many decades to progress beyond their initial advocacy agenda.
Then again, they need to remind themselves that their portfolio of services to
members is not quite as extensive as the Ainurruvars’. If any BAs have been hiring
mercenaries, at least I haven’t heard of it!
The Purpose of Business Associations
In thinking of the post-advocacy purposes of BAs today, I find it useful to use the
analogy of a modern city being planned from scratch. A lot of private builders would
be keen to get in on the action and design their architectural offerings for commercial
or residential purposes. It would be in their mutual interest and those of the ultimate
residents of the city, however, to agree to follow certain disciplines and carry out
some activities jointly. We can divide these mutually beneficial projects under three
heads:
Ideally this exposition should be generic to all BAs, spanning all management
functions and drawing on cutting edge expertise in each. Unfortunately, my
capabilities and experience don’t permit me to be so versatile. I shall, therefore,
confine my illustrations in the rest of this article mainly to:
One BA i.e CII, with which I have been privileged to associate for decades.
One function i.e. HR, which has been my home base for nearly half a
century.
One person’s thoughts i.e. mine, since I already have crystallized and
conveyed my thinking on many of these suggestions in the columns I have
published.
The sequence in which I expand on the three key domains of delivery for forward-
looking BAs is different from the one in the city-planning analogy. The intention now
is to move from well-traversed domains to newer ones that have become feasible /
necessary only with the current state of information technology but which are no less
important (and potentially far more profitable) for all their novelty.
Shared Learning
A well-performing BA can help catapult entire industries into international orbit while
making the ones focused on domestic markets fully capable of facing competition
from anywhere in the world. It is time BAs gave centre stage to:
Shared learning
Standards of conduct and
Support service platforms
Notes:
1 R Champaklakshmi, Trade Ideology and Urbanization: South India 300 Bs To Ad 1300, OUP India,
1999.
2 Anirudh Kanisetti, Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas,
Juggernaut, 2022.
3 Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800, Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
4 Visty Banaji, Fairness is Fundamental, NHRD Network Journal, Volume 7 Issue 4, October 2014,
5 Visty Banaji, A hippocratic oath for HR, People Matters, 31 October 2019,
(https://www.peoplematters.in/article/life-at-work/a-hippocratic-oath-for-hr-23589).
6 Visty Banaji, The (funny) business of HR awards, People Matters, 18 February 2020,
(https://www.peoplematters.in/blog/strategic-hr/the-funny-business-of-hr-awards-24718).
7 Joost Rietveld and Melissa Schilling, Platform Competition – A Systematic and Interdisciplinary
Review of the Literature, Journal of Management, Vol. 47 No. 6, July 2021.
8 Piper Thomson, The Complete History of ERP: Its Rise to a Powerful Solution, 23 January 2020,
(https://www.g2.com/articles/history-of-erp).
9 Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked,
Penguin, 2017.
10 Visty Banaji, The unforgiving minute, People Matters, 15 September 2021,
(https://www.peoplematters.in/article/life-at-work/the-unforgiving-minute-30874).
11 Visty Banaji, The GIGantic opportunity of the shrinking corporation, People Matters, 28 May 2019,
(https://www.peoplematters.in/article/life-at-work/the-gigantic-opportunity-of-the-shrinking-
corporation-21828).
12 Visty Banaji, Corporate India's mental health crisis, People Matters, 15 January 2020,
(https://www.peoplematters.in/article/wellness/corporate-indias-mental-health-crisis-24337).
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