We live in an increasingly interdependent world. There is greater diversity at workplace. Business managers are facing new challenges everyday. They have to grapple with uncertain issues and find ways to revamp their organizations in such conditions. In these kinds of scenarios, we need to have decision making talents, capable of flourishing in uncertain environment. Therefore, the role of management education has become very important. Management education in general is concerned with imparting knowledge that is relevant for managerial career and also concerned with developing capabilities to use this knowledge in problem identification, analysis, diagnosis and in decisions making. Thus, teaching learning process should enable future managers to learn global best practices as quickly as possible.

Teaching, learning and research process at B-Schools means more than facilitating learning environment, where faculty members and students are working together. Teaching and learning are interwoven towards the needs of students and the demands of the knowledge based economy.

Feeding research knowledge into teaching can be viewed as a knowledge transfer process. The relationship between Research and Teaching has been widely studied in the last two decades. The value of creating such a link from three perspectives i.e. experientially, conceptually and operationally help establishing strong teaching-research relationship. The primary aim of such research is to enable the teacher to understand and interrogate their practice, rather than add to the global stock of knowledge Pedagogic research plays a key role in B-schools plans for future development, building on existing expertise in areas such as experiential learning and education for sustainable development. Thus, pedagogical research can pave the right path for the development of B-schools. Applied research is designed to solve practical problems of the modern world rather than to acquire knowledge's sake. It is basically to answer appropriately to the needs of businesses by dissemination and valuing knowledge and know-how. Business school can compete effectively if they focus on research that is both basic, influencing further knowledge development and applied problem driven.

Through a learning centric mode as against being learner centric or teacher centric, B-schools should impart knowledge that is contemporary, practical and useful to managers, organizations and society. They generate knowledge through research that informs teaching and is informed by teaching. There is a widely held axiom in B-schools that “research informs and enriches teaching”. Teaching in discipline and subject areas should reflect research knowledge, as it informs the discipline or subject area. Research can directly supplement teaching through examples and practice by mirroring the thought process. The aim of teaching is knowledge transmission and many a times there could be possibilities where teaching can be key to research or we can say teaching-led research.

Thus, there is a synergy between teaching and research. Research informs teaching and teaching informs research. It should be very significant that management education ensures ways to strengthen this synergy. Many research studies suggest that Indian B-schools lack research culture. In light of this, to strengthen the teaching research relationship, it is important that business schools first recognize its importance and find ways to create a research culture.

This issue of the journal Siddhant: A Journal of Decision Making presents twelve research papers, focused on functional areas of management education such as HR, Marketing, and Finance. The readers will find the inputs valuable and enriching. The editorial board of the journal looks forward to the valuable suggestions from the readers for improving the quality of the articles. The board sincerely acknowledges the contributions made by the learned authors and thanks the readers for their interest.

Prof. (Dr.) Sujata Mangaraj