The Exec-Ed Zone

Three of the world's leading business schools are in search of new deans. Kellogg's Dipak Jain stepped down at the beginning of September after eight years in the position. Last week Harvard Business School's dean, Jay Light, announced he would depart at the end of the academic year, in June 2010 - after five years at the helm of HBS and 40 at Harvard altogether. Now Chicago Booth's dean, Edward Snyder, has also said he will be leaving at the end of June 2010. Snyder's term was to run until June 2011 but he is going early to allow him to get his feet under one more desk - although he claims not to have started looking yet.

So who will replace them? According to the Financial Times's Business Education editor, Della Bradshaw, several names are in the frame:

Harvard has always appointed the dean from within the Harvard faculty and the two front-runners will be two of the most outspoken professors there, Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Chicago will set up a faculty search committee in the next few weeks, according to university president Robert Zimmer. Meanwhile the dean’s search committee at Kellogg is expected to propose candidates to the president and provost early in 2010, with interim dean, Sunil Chopra, the potential frontrunner.

Rakesh Kurana is an American by birth, but the son of Indian parents. Nitin Nohria grew up in India. Sunil Chopra too is an Indian by birth.

All are eminent management professors: Kurana is the HBS Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Nohria is the HBS Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration, and Chopra is the Kellogg IBM Distinguished Professor of Operations Management and Senior Associate Dean. But there must be some reason that those professors hailing from India are the predominant candidates for these prestigious postions in these meritocratic institutions.

Dipak Jain the former Kellogg dean was considered to have been a real success; with the world looking increasingly to the east for economic growth and business schools increasingly seeing internationalisation generally and Asia in particular as one of their drivers, having an able leader who also has strong roots there can only be a bonus.