An interview with Muhammad Azfar Nisar, Assistant Professor Public Policy & Management, Suleman Dawood School of Business (SDSB), LUMS
Muhammad Azfar Nisar is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy & Administration at the Suleman Dawood School of Business. Dr. Nisar obtained his PhD in Public Administration and Policy from Arizona State University, USA in 2016. His doctoral dissertation was awarded the Best Dissertation Award by the Public and Non-Profit Division of the Academy of Management. His prior education includes, a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in International Area Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in Economics from the University of the Punjab, and an MBBS degree from King Edward Medical College, Lahore. Prior to joining LUMS, Dr. Nisar was an officer in the civil service of Pakistan where, as a member of the Pakistan Administrative Service, he served in multiple administrative positions in different parts of the country.
His research focuses on issues related to policy implementation, public administration, health policy, gender identity, and governance and has been published in top-ranked journals of the world. Dr. Nisar has provided policy advice to multiple local and international organizations and is currently working on developing a book on public policy analysis in Pakistan. His current research interests include citizen activism, accountability in the non-profit sector and evidence based health policy formulation.
BR Research sat down last week with Dr. Nisar. Selected excerpts of the conversation are produced below:
BR Research: Could you walk us through the LUMS PhD Management Programme, and the key focus areas for research in this field?
Muhammad Azfar Nisar (MAN): The LUMS PhD Management Programme, in many ways, is unique for Pakistan. One, because of its emphasis on providing students the ability to conduct rigorous research with world-class faculty on policy and industry relevant issues. Second, what makes us unique is our emphasis on case-based teaching. Most PhD Programmes are reasonable at training students in research, but hardly any of them focus on improving the teaching abilities of the student. LUMS, because of its traditional focus on case-based teaching, provides its PhD students the ability to teach from the get-go. They are able to teach executives and students through case-based pedagogy, which comes from the Harvard University model of management education and training. Also, LUMS PhD Programme has an emphasis on producing indigenous research that is relevant to our industry and increasingly, the government as well.
The LUMS PhD Management is a 4-year fully funded programme with a monthly stipend of PKR 50,000. We have had a total of 9 graduates so far - all employed. Three of them are at IBA Karachi; one is working at Karachi School of Business and Leadership; two of them are at the Suleman Dawood School of Business (SDSB) at LUMS and are at par with our foreign qualified faculty in terms of their research quality.
BRR: What other career options do these graduates have apart from getting into academia?
MAN: Since this programme is about PhD in Management, the primary career path for students is to go into academia; and that’s the same across the world. When it comes to consultancy, it’s not an either-or choice generally; almost all PhDs in management will do consulting in their academic jobs at some point. Almost all faculty members at SDSB that you will find here at LUMS, are engaged with and providing advice to industry or the government in one form or the other. However, there is a career path available to some researchers who want to go into consulting or research based private firms exclusively. One of our most recent graduates is working as a research officer at International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Lahore.
BRR: Universities in the developed countries have established very strong research cultures, and their research output greatly contributes towards the development of their countries. Could you shed some light on the kind of research coming out of Pakistan’s universities in general?
MAN: Pakistan is a different case in many ways, typical of a developing country. The tertiary educational institutes here consider themselves primarily teaching institutes. This move towards research is a very recent one. In case of LUMS, which has been a regional leader in this regard, it’s been going on for some time but for many other institutes it is a very recent move. But the good part is that you see that move happening now across Pakistan. If you want to be compared to the world, or maybe the region like south east Asia and rise in the international rankings, one of the strongest determinates of institutional quality is the kind of research that you produce, which is gauged by various benchmarks like the quantity and quality of the academic journals where your research is getting published etc. Today, institutions are increasingly realising that the quality of research is an important aspect of institutional performance as they mature.
Globally, one issue that research has faced is the disconnect between academic research and industry and policymaking. Consequently, many government policies, because of a disconnect with academia, have been based on copy-pasting western models of management and development. This generally fails especially in the policy and development domain as our context is an important factor that is often ignored in such policies.
Today, there is a realisation on both sides that this disconnect needs to go away. This is true for Pakistan as well. Also, there is a realisation that we need to make indigenous models of management and development or modify foreign models according to our local needs. On the supply side, academic research increasingly has an applied focus and on the demand side, the industry and the government is becoming receptive to introducing evidence-based policies. I am hopeful that things will change for the better as academia, industry and government collaborate to solve our longstanding problems.
I must note here that if you look at the history of science, some of the pioneering research had no applicability back when it was done; it came from people who were just trying to figure out things, I call them genuine researchers. I believe that we are at a point where we need to encourage all forms of research – from abstract to applied research so that researchers, who have left the country to pursue research, come back to Pakistan. Academic freedom as well as quality research can create a flourishing academic ecosystem which translates to social change.
BRR: Barring a few top institutes, what are some of the reasons for the sloppy state of research activities in our universities? What can be done to fix these issues or maybe inculcate a research culture in our institutes?
MAN: An important factor to keep in mind in this regard concerns academic tenure standards. The Tenure-Track system, which is primarily based on quantity and not quality or impact of research remains a critical challenge. This system was first introduced in the USA to ensure academic freedom and high quality, independent research. In the system, you are basically given 6-8 years initially to produce a critical mass of research to show that you can carry out quality independent research. And after internal and external reviews of your performance, you are given a contract that lasts a lifetime with no institutional pressures related to the security of your job. While we are now moving towards this system in Pakistan, our tenure standards focus primarily on quantity of research. It is a little different at LUMS where our internal standards try to balance quantity and quality and independent external reviews to get tenure.
If we want to improve the research being done in our local universities, the first step should be to focus more on quality than quantity of research. In my opinion, this Tenure-Track system should be modified on the US model, where the numbers don’t matter as much as the quality since the tenure decision. More importantly, tenure should be based on independent review by reputable external reviewers to make sure no one can game the system and that the research being done at our universities is of international standard. As I mentioned, LUMS is already trying to go in that direction.
Second, our universities need to cherish researchers. Traditionally, institutions have looked at their PhD faculty as teachers and not researchers. Most individuals pursuing a PhD are interested in carrying out research. This is why; universities in Pakistan find it difficult to retain good researchers who often end up going abroad where institutional incentive structure is primarily based on research. Naturally, it does not mean that we should not focus on teaching. Teaching is an important task of faculty but in my experience faculty who is not research active often does not remain updated on latest developments in their discipline, which also limits the understanding of their students.
Globally, funding is becoming another major issue, which is putting pressure on researchers to produce particular types of research that are more likely to earn revenue for their institutions. Researchers in multiple disciplines are very uneasy with this idea of conditioned or controlled research. Fortunately, this is not an issue in Pakistan yet because the culture of research is just picking up. But we should be cautious not to go down that route. We must facilitate quality, cutting-edge research in all disciplines through academic funding. In that aspect, LUMS is far ahead of other institutions; we have a faculty initiative fund where PKR 1 Million is granted twice every year to research proposals selected through a competitive double blind peer review process. Also, any LUMS faculty that joins a Tenure-Track position gets a generous startup research grant.
BRR: How have the job market prospects for PhDs changed in the last 10-15 years?
MAN: Institutions increasingly want people who are good at research. And with the influx of these international non-profit research organisations, researchers have a huge array of new opportunities. On the demand side, researchers are being valued more than they were previously. Naturally, LUMS graduates are also cherished by other universities because of their expertise in case writing, teaching and training.
BRR: How do you distinguish the PhD research from those conducted by some of the well-known think tanks in the country?
MAN: I think it is healthy that we are beginning to have good think tanks in the country. I do feel that these think tanks do a better job in engaging and selling their research to the policymakers. Also, they don’t have the pressure to publish in academic journals. Plus, their research is available in easily accessible form versus the subscription model for journals for academic research. This dissemination of information is something that educational institutes and the academic researchers need to do better.
BRR: Coming to your experience in public policy and especially public health, what in your view are some of the most crucial areas in health that need immediate attention?
MAN: One of the most important things to improve is the quality of managers in our hospitals, meaning the medical superintendents (MS). It’s an often-ignored area, but the kind of challenges that the hospitals face in terms of financial management, procurement and supply chain management, HRM, and waste management requires formal training in management. A traditional MS in the tertiary hospitals in Pakistan is usually an MBBS with a MPH degree and adopts a fire-fighting approach to run the administration. We need to improve the quality of these medical superintendents in charge of the hospital administration with a more strategic and proactive approach. Collaboration between business schools and the government could be very helpful in this regard.
Second, the distribution of doctors in the periphery is very important. This distribution has improved in recent years but it needs to improve further especially that of female doctors. Female doctors now form majority of the medical workforce in Punjab and Sindh, but this increase has not yet translated from urban areas to rural areas. More facilitation and incentives are needed to move female doctors to these areas.
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