XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Professor of Human Resource Management Area Dr Santanu Sarkar has been recognised as the 2024 Class of Influential Leaders by AACSB International (AACSB) – the world’s largest business education alliance.
Dr Santanu Sarkar is currently the Professor in Human Resource Management Area at XLRI Jamshedpur. He has published in numerous HR-related journals and is considered an authority in the field. Specifically, his work on cross-cultural issues in labour relations among emerging economy sectors, along with his work on the independent labour movement, trade and labour policies, and unions in the Global South, has become part of course readings for students and scholars in the West as well as policy tools for trade unions in India and abroad.
“Dr Santanu Sarkar’s work demonstrates the potential of business school research to address some of today’s most critical challenges,” said Lily Bi, AACSB President and CEO. “The knowledge Dr Sarkar is producing will help inform and create real change in the world”, he added.
Sarkar's research has focused primarily on conditions of labour in the Global South. He has studied employees in call centers in India, worker cooperatives in mining, the judicial interpretation of employment protection laws, trade policies and labour standards, and the local articulation of global campaigns in developing countries.
Sarkar has also been studying a broad array of issues related to collectivization, labour disputes, work precarity, reforms, and employment conditions of vulnerable sections of the working class. Additionally, his research on unions in the Global South has been referred to by scholars in the field of labour transnationalism and by global union federations in engaging multinational corporations across their global supply chain. Sarkar's views on the success of the independent labour movement in Southeast and South Asia have been endorsed by policy research groups involved in changing the political landscape of the trade union movement.
In addition, Sarkar has consulted for the World Bank, studying the effect of the bank's projects on local communities in different parts of India. Through this work, he helped create a toolkit on compliance and due diligence for regional bank contractors, with an aim to minimize the effect of labour influx in project areas and to develop mitigation measures. The bank has used the kit and its measures in projects since 2019.
Sarkar also worked for the Hans Beckler Foundation in a study on implementing global framework agreements in Indian subsidiaries of German multinationals. The study resulted in multinationals signing the framework agreements with global unions and union federations. The study report has been used by global unions and European Works Councils of multinational corporations in revising their codes of conduct. The result has been improved employment conditions of workers who form part of the global supply chain of corporations in the Indian sub-continent.
