Professor Khandwalla taught at McGill University, Canada, for several years before returning to India in 1975. Thereafter he was a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad until his retirement in 2002. He held the L&T Chair in Organizational Behaviour at IIMA from 1985 to 1991. He was the Director of IIMA from 1991 to 1996.

Professor Khandwalla has authored over a dozen professional books and 110 papers and articles in Indian and foreign journals. His book, The Design of Organizations, was an international textbook used in nearly 100 management schools round the world. Another book, Fourth Eye: Excellence through Creativity, stimulated the creativity movement in India. His books on the public sector include Excellent Management in the Public Sector, which got the Escorts Award for the best management book of 1990.

In Social Development: A New Role for the Organizational Sciences, Professor Khandwalla argued that organizational and management scientists should concentrate their efforts on improving the functioning of a developing country’s strategically important organizations. Organizational Designs for Excellence discussed six different kinds of organizational excellence, and Innovative Corporate Turnarounds presented data on 65 turnarounds from sickness in support of the superiority of non-surgical, transformational, creative turnarounds. Management Styles was a study of ten archetypal management styles and their defective versions, and analyzed data from 90 Indian corporate organizations bearing on their relative excellence.

Revitalizing the State: A Menu of Options reviewed global innovations in national governance, and presented a number of options for renewing the Indian state.

Turnaround Excellence: Insights from 120 Cases won the best management book of the year award for 2001 given by Delhi Management Association. Corporate Creativity: The Winning Edge outlines the processes, techniques, tools, strategies, and organizational designs that can enable any corporate organization to be successfully innovative on a sustained basis. This book has been recently translated into Mandarin Chinese.

Lifelong Creativity: An Unending Quest breaks new ground in our understanding of the phenomenon of creativity, and in the ways of harnessing it for personal growth. It won the best book of the year award given by Indian Society of Training and Development and INDAL for 2004. In Professor Khandwalla’s latest book, Management of Corporate Greatness: Blending Goodness with Greed, he has identified several paths of exalted striving beyond profit maximization, and ways of blending them with the pursuit of business goals. It got the best book of the year given by Delhi Management Association and NTPC for 2008. He has also authored a monograph on potential innovations in the governance of India’s Union Government and another one on Bihar’s governance for a task force set up by India’s prime minister. He has recently completed the first draft of a book on New Public Management for improving India’s government.

Professor Khandwalla has authored three books of poems (Wild Words, Out, and Incarnations), and is working on a fourth collection. He has authored a guide on one-act plays, an award-winning book of translations of 12th century Kannada poems into Gujarati, and a book of the translation of Anjali Khandwalla’s short stories from Gujarati into English (Black Rose and Other Stories). His translation into Gujarati of the German poet Rilke’s celebrated Duino Elegies was published in 2008. His translation of over 200 offbeat Gujarati poems into English, titled Beyond the Beaten Track, was published in early 2009.

Professor Khandwalla has served on the editorial/advisory boards of several of the world’s leading journals of management and organizational research, including Administrative Science Quarterly (U.S.), Journal of Management (U.S.), Organizational Science (U.S.), and Organization Studies (U.K.). He was Editor of Vikalpa, India, and served as Guest Editor of special issues of International Studies of Management and Organization, U.S. He is currently on the editorial/advisory boards of professional management journals published from India, Singapore, Thailand, and the U.S.

Professor Khandwalla has served as a member of the board of directors of over a dozen corporations including NTPC and Bharat Petroleum Corporation, two giant ‘navaratna’ (nine jewels) companies owned by the Government of India, and also the board of Bank of Baroda, one of the six largest Indian public sector banks. He is currently on the board of Cadila Pharma, Gujarat Gas, and Micro Inks. He is also on the governing councils of Academy of Human Resource Development, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India), MICA, and other institutions. He has served as a member of the National Renewal Fund, Government of India, and as a trustee, India Brand Equity Fund of Government of India. He was twice a member, Appointments Board of the Government of India for short-listing heads of public sector banks and financial institutions. Earlier, he was a member of the Planning Commission of Gujarat State, and a member of the Science Advisory Committee of the Cabinet, Government of India.

Professor Khandwalla has won many awards, including Ford Foundation Doctoral Fellowship (U.S.), Seagram Research Award (Canada), four best book of the year awards, and Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of HRD given by World HRD Congress, an international body active in over 30 countries. Several Indian and international Who’s Who carry his biographical entry.