From Henley to Harvard at Hyderabad? (Post and Neo-) Colonialism in Management Education in India

Founded in 1956, the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) was established with the objective of professionalizing management in post-colonial India through training, research, and consultancy. It was modeled on the Administrative Staff College at Henley-on-Thames (Henley), in the United Kingdom. Like Henley, ASCI used syndicates for its management training programs. Between 1958 and 1973, ASCI received more than $1.26 million from the Ford Foundation, part of which was used to finance the development and use of the case method in ASCI’s training programs, and later more widely in its research and consultancy. This article traces the ways by which the Ford Foundation––as a dominating institution––stigmatized Henley and ASCI, their institutional practices, and the wider Indian society; and legitimized the case method pioneered at the Harvard Business School. Imbricated in the Cold War’s geo-politics, Ford Foundation’s interventions in Hyderabad should be understood as part of the emergence of the United States as the dominant neo-colonial power, which required the displacement of Britain, its institutions, and their practices as the template for India’s post-colonial management institutions.