Propagating and Practising ‘horizontal Control’: Vikram Sarabhai, Management and American Social Science

Vikram Sarabhai has long been recognized as a pioneer of ‘management education’ in India. Thus far, however, there has been little attempt to examine more deeply the nature of Sarabhai’s thought in this area. In this article, I argue that Sarabhai’s thinking on management converged around one particular set of ideas about the types of organization (and leadership) required for effective development, at the centre of which sat the concept of ‘horizontal control’. The article goes on to explore parallels between Sarabhai’s thinking on horizontal control and the forms of management education forwarded by post-war American social science.