CEO - Chess Master Or Gardener

Anil K. Khandelwal’s book CEO – Chess Master or Gardener is an outstanding piece of scholarly work that integrates theory and practice in the field of IR/HR, and offers a detailed account of their strategies and drive toward development of the business

- Dr. Arvind N. Agrawal

Anil K. Khandelwal’s book CEO – Chess Master or Gardener is an outstanding piece of scholarly work that blends theory and practice of industrial relations and human resource development in a business. In the marketplace, one finds several books authored by eminent business leaders giving detailed account of their strategies and drive toward development of the business. However, one hardly comes across books that integrate theory and practice in the field of IR/HR, authored by the CEO himself. Management strategies in IR are often shrouded in the veils of secrecy. This book explodes many myths about industrial relations and how it is impacted by the business leaders and not by unions alone who often remain in the limelight by the media. In this book, the author gives unique and exhaustive account of how in Bank of Baroda, industrial relations evolved over the years based on changes in business climate, CEOs’ belief system, their personal aspirations, management politics, and the role of personnel and industrial relation specialists in the organization. The author has also integrated these developments with theories in IR field. I have not come across such unique longitudinal piece of work which is both scholarly as well as complete with very detailed narratives of what actually happened in Bank of Baroda during the period from 1956 to 1988. The research is unique in as much as there is hardly any research in the domain of CEO strategies where the researcher himself becomes CEO and undertakes game changing transformation. Using insights received during his tenure with th