The start of management education in India in the early 1960s has been dominantly described from the perspective of ‘Americanisation’, characterised by isomorphism and mimicry. Existing scholarship has avoided the question of how management education and knowledge were reconciled and naturalised with India’s specific socio-economic contexts. This article addresses the issue and provides a situated account of this complex history by delving into the establishment of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, one of India’s first and most prominent management schools. Using the concept of sociotechnical imaginary developed by Jasanoff and Kim, the analysis describes how the development of management education and research was aligned with the objective of nation building. The article shows that the project to start management education did not take off before the capitalist connotations, associated with business education, were subtly removed and a narrative was created that put management education in the context of India’s wider development trajectory. Under influence of a changing political atmosphere in the late 1960s, a particular imaginary on the role of management knowledge and education unfolded in the development of the institute, giving the field in India a distinct character in the early 1970s.

1960 年代初期印度管理教育的开始主要是从“美国化”的角度来描述的，其特点是同构和模仿。现有的学术研究避免了管理教育和知识如何与印度特定的社会经济背景相协调和归化的问题。本文通过深入研究印度艾哈迈达巴德管理学院（印度最早也是最著名的管理学院之一）的建立，解决了这个问题，并提供了对这段复杂历史的情景描述。使用 Jasanoff 和 Kim 提出的社会技术想象的概念，分析描述了管理教育和研究的发展如何与国家建设的目标保持一致。文章表明，在与商业教育相关的资本主义内涵被巧妙地去除并创造出将管理教育置于印度更广泛发展轨迹背景下的叙事之前，启动管理教育的项目并没有起飞。在 1960 年代后期不断变化的政治氛围的影响下，对管理知识和教育的作用的特殊想象在学院的发展中展开，使印度的该领域在 1970 年代初具有鲜明的特征。