ABSTRACT
IIM Calcutta's journal Decision was launched in 1974. This chapter considers the content of the journal in these early years as part of a history of management in India, tracking how management ideas were used by IIM academics to make sense of the political, social and economic inequalities of India in the mid-1970s. I present a Gramscian framework to study the use of these management ideas. Through three examples, I explain how management ideas played their part in a hegemonic understanding of the Indian economy of the time, one that emphasised the role of the state and a social impact between large corporations, trade unions and government ministries in reducing inequalities. However, as I argue, these ideas did not succeed in maintaining such a hegemonic understanding, which today has instead been reconfigured into a neoliberal approach more tolerant of inequality.
