“They have to be taught the real thing now” is how a senior functionary of Talent Management Team of a leading ICT Company responded when asked about the some new management recruits. It implies that, what the young managers have brought as new learning from Institutes/Universities is at variance with ‘realities’ of Business & Industry. You would be surprised by the opinion among many senior managers who attend our ‘Executive Discussion Forum’ that ‘the value proposition’ concept is missing in what majority of the academia offer to Industry. Is the Technical & Management Education Fraternity aware of this?

Ministry of Human Resources Development had set up an expert committee to look into the challenges of Management Education in India and where we stand now. The report submitted by Prof. Ishwar Dayal, former Director, IIM-Lucknow, in April 2001, unequivocally states that the unbridled proliferation of Management Institutes in India after 1990, many without adequate support services such as Library, Computer Centre, Research Programs, Teaching Material and Placement Assistance, has done a great disservice to the cause of quality in management education. The report goes on to say that, many were even running programs without adequate faculty members, instead with only Guest Faculty for many streams of management disciplines.

Interestingly, ‘pre-liberalization Indian Industry’ was in no great hurry to put the Management Educator’s feet to the fire! Infact, the report mentions of little or no interaction between Institutes and Industry, with the former getting subsistence-level funding from UGC and the latter finding the ‘training level’ adequate to meet the quality demands of a protected market. All this has changed now. ‘Value Proposition’ has arrived at the portals of learning. Make no mistake, if Institutes of Technical & Management learning or the Bodies meant to supervise the system viz. AICTE, UGC fail to feel the pulse of the Industry, one would see a situation wherein the Business & Industry considers it imperative to start management education to meet its own specialized needs. This ‘specialized training’ could deprive its students of management learning which ought to have rich diversity, heterogeneity and preponderance to human behavior.

Bridging the perception divide between Industry & Institute can be achieved with focused actions that bring members of Institute & Industry on a common platform of concern, vision & action. The following could be examined for its use in the current context of transparency, IPR and KM-enabled environments –

1. Management Institutes identify core competencies in offering research and analysis to industries, based on faculty member’s experience-expertise profiles. AIMS (All India Management Schools) & Industry Associations (CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, etc.) in turn come up with a mechanism to fund and disseminate information related to actual unresolved problems of Business & Industry. The issue of ‘value proposition’ by Institutes could be addressed here and now. The success could be an additional criterion for rating the management institutes.

2. Start an ‘Executive Discussion Forum’ (EDF) where industry executives are free to walk in every fortnight to the Institute to listen, share, narrate or cogitate on issues of concern to Business & Industry with no registration, delegation or nomination formalities, rather only with an interest to share experience and insights. TAPMI has started one at Essae-TAPMI Academy, Koramangala, Bangalore.

3. Institutes and Industries could evolve a mechanism to identify ‘Learning Partnerships’ extending to one or more years. This could offer the industry access to cutting-edge knowledge at subsidized costs and to the faculty-students team, greater access to process knowledge in the industry. Sponsoring of ‘Chair’ for Learning Eminence by industry is another way of building a symbiotic relationship and also help shape a new management education agenda.

N S Sreekumar looks after the industry-interaction for T A Pai Management Institute, Manipal and Essae-TAPMI Academy, Bangalore

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