Prof. Dr. Bala V. Balachandran

Professor Bala Balachandran is considered one of the top 10 management gurus of Indian origin in the United States. He represents the first wave of Indian scholars who moved to top U.S.-based business schools and have since contributed to the growing recognition of India as a resource for ideas and academic talent.

Bala Balachandran began his teaching career in 1960 while a graduate student at Annamalai University, India. In 1967 he moved to the University of Dayton and in 1971, to Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he taught management courses while working on his doctorate. In 1973 he joined the Kellogg Graduate School of Management faculty. From 1979-83 he chaired the Department of Accounting and Information Systems; in 1984 he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Systems and Decision Sciences. He was also director of the Accounting Research Center.

Professor Balachandran's teaching interests include managerial accounting, auditing, management information systems, and mathematical programming. He is one of three Kellogg faculty members who started the Information Resource Management Program (IRM) at Northwestern in 1974. He has authored more than 55 research articles and is currently writing a managerial accounting textbook with emphasis on cost management in an automated manufacturing environment. He is department editor in accounting for Management Science, associate editor for The Accounting Review and on the editorial boards of Contemporary Accounting Research, and the Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.

Professor Balachandran's research deals with performance evaluation, cost management, audit planning, allocation models, and forecasting. His recent work includes auditors' legal liability and game theoretic cost allocation models with transfer pricing. His work has earned numerous scholastic honors, awards, and fellowships, and he serves as a consultant to senior management in industry, as well as to the U.S. Air Force, in the areas of accounting, forecasting, and strategic decision support systems. He has provided executive education for various companies and the government and is the program director for "Managing Cost Information for Effective Strategic Decisions," a three-day program conducted at the James L. Allen Center each year during the spring and fall.

Prof. Bala has been actually involved in setting up Management Institutes in India and was involved in the MBA Programs at MDI, Gurgaon in early 90s and ISB at Hyderabad at the turn of this century and Great Lakes Institute of Management at Chennai in 2004. Great Lakes Institute of Management is Prof. Bala’s dream project of putting Chennai on the International Management Education Map. He is the founder and Honorary Dean of this International Class Institute. He was awarded the ‘Padmashri’ in 2001 by the Government of India in recognition of his contribution to the education in India.

He also has the rare honor (for an Indian in America) of having an endowed chair professorship in his name. Several colleagues from Kellogg, including Donald P. Jacobs (Kellogg Dean Emeritus), Roger Nelson, (retired Deputy Chairman for Ernst & Young), and Harry Kraemer Jr., (former chairman and CEO of Baxter), have led a campaign to raise $1 million for an endowed professorship at Kellogg School of Management in Prof. Bala V Balachandran’s name in recognition of his invaluable and tireless service to the Institute over the last three decades.

Topics

    Managerial accounting

    Auditing

    Management information systems

    Mathematical programming

    Cost management

    Performance evaluation

    Audit planning

    Allocation models

    Forecasting

    Strategic decision support systems