Professor Ishwar Dayal worked in the Organizational Behavior Area from 8th March 1967 to 16th January 1973.
Prof. Dayal was born in Indore in 1924. He left India at the age of 21 to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California in Berkeley in 1945. He later shifted to Psychology and completed his MSc in Clinical Psychology from the City College in New York.
He returned to India and worked for over a decade in various management positions in Kolkata at companies including Alembic, Philips and Metal Box. Prof. Dayal was sent for a month long Advanced Management Programme conducted jointly by IIM Kolkata and MIT Sloan. The course which influenced and rekindled his academic orientation proved beneficial especially since the faculty of the programme recognized his academic talent.
Prof. Dayal joined IIM Kolkata in 1963 and taught in the Organizational Behavior Area. He joined IIM Ahmedabad in 1967 on the request of his colleague and IIMA's first fulltime Director, Prof. Ravi Matthai who was greatly impressed with his work. Prof. Dayal has been credited with having played a major role in faculty governed systems. He was also the Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee appointed by Prof. Matthai.
During the 1970s when SBI needed restructuring, Prof. Dayal provided a detailed masterplan and implementation procedure that transformed SBI into becoming a national giant in the Indian banking sector.
He was a consultant to many large organizations in India including Power Finance Corporation, Life Insurance Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation, Indo Burma Petroleum, Air India, Indian Airlines, National Thermal Power Corporation, Mafatlal Industries, DCM, Voltas and Bank of Baroda among many others.
His involvement with many public sector enterprises led him to become the Director of the Indian Institute of Public Administration in 1973 where he served till 1976. Prof. Dayal has also worked in the capacity of several positions in Nigeria.
Prof. Dayal was appointed as the first fulltime Director of IIM Lucknow in 1983.
He was largely associated with many academic institutions over the course of his extensive career. Among various positions, Prof. Dayal held the post of Chief Mentor of the Birla Institute of Management Technology. In 2000 he was appointed Chairman by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of an 18 member committee to discuss Policy Perspectives for Management Education.
Prof. Dayal served on the boards of several organizations including DCM Ltd, Bharat Electronic Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation, National Textile Corporation and UP Roadways Corporation among others. He was also the recipient of several awards and accolades.
He published 35 books and monographs along with over 300 papers in journals and periodicals across the globe. Some of these include Organizational Development (2012), Sustaining Growth in Organizations: Some Consulting Experiences (2004), Designing HRD Systems (1993), Organization for Management in Developing Countries (1978) and Anatomy of a Strike (1972). He also authored a novel entitled Dayal: An Edupreneur, a Festschrift (2011). A film on the eminent academician has also exists.
Prof. Dayal is remembered for his uncompromising sense of quality and his contribution to management education and institution building.
Date of Birth: 1924
Date of Death: March 24, 2015
