Management: New Issues and Paradigms -
 What it means to be a good business school
Dr A K Sen Gupta

The issues relating how to define and conceptualize an ideal business school particularly in the Indian context have assumed great controversy in recent times. This has primarily been on account of proliferation of business schools in the country since 90s and existence of more than a thousand B-schools offering various post-graduate programs. Post GATS scenario and possibility of the Indian government giving substantial commitment to WTO under market access to the foreign Universities is the other concern. There is no denying that management education is primarily meant for creating managers with requisite knowledge, skills and attitude who can man and create value for organizations both for profit and non-profit. The wider contour could be development of leadership traits besides managerial acumen among the participants. The development of leadership traits through management education has always been a matter of debate. Various experiential learning tools like case study discussions, simulated games and outbound activities have been extensively used for this purpose. Likewise newer pedagogic interventions like yoga, meditation, working with NGOs, etc. are being tried to develop softer skills. The generic trend has been to develop the combination of IQ, EQ, & SQ through various interventions so that longitudinally there is significant impact over a period of two years. The question still remains: if all are doing the same, what makes the difference between a better managed B-school and also a B-school?

The answer to the above question has to be appreciated in the context of process approach to decision making. Conceptually the entire gamut of activities of a B-school can broadly be classified in three broad processes: student acquisition, academic management and corporate integration all of them being inter-dependent. Better acquisition leads to having better quality students in terms of their academics and managerial potential. This coupled with improved academic administration invariably leads to better quality-checked outputs easily acceptable in the market. The corporate integration takes place at various levels: acceptance of students i.e. the placement, participation in the academic process of the institute through mechanism of visiting / guest faculty and finally through management development programs, research and consulting activities by the faculty of the B-schools output of which is useful to all stakeholders. And the cycle goes on as better placement results in improved perception in minds of the students and therefore the quality of intake goes up and so on. The strategic architecture of a B-school, therefore, is to endeavour constant improvement in all the above three processes.

Given the above context, the issue, therefore, is to find out the most important criteria for deciding an ideal or a good business school? First, the software in terms of intellectual capital needs to be in place and constantly being upgraded. This principally implies better academic processes through improved quality of faculty, better pedagogic methodologies, and state-of-art course curriculum & content. In the fast changing world where the focus is increasingly on creating managers with a global perspective, the role of faculty is ever more becoming difficult and domain specific. There is a perceptible shift from deliverer to facilitator, from dictator to democrat, from critical to enabler and finally from assessor to being a change agent. This changing role can never be realised if the faculty is not integrated with the real world. This brings us to the second issue of a good B-school having faculty with intellectual bent of mind to undertake cutting-age fundamental or applied or action research projects. This apart from bridging the gap between the academic world and corporate will also improve quality of teaching.  One of the reasons for the USA being considered as the front runner in the management education in the world is on account of close interaction between the academicians and the corporate. This collaboration has also resulted into development of several conceptual tools. These include the classical concept of valuation on discounted cash-flow basis by Irving Fisher (1896), security valuation by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd (1934), theory of capital asset pricing model by William Sharpe & John Linter (1960), pricing of options by Fischer Black & Myron Scholes (1973) and so on. History shows all these individuals were either academicians or affiliated to academics. For instance, Irving Fischer was with Yale, Graham & Dodd were with Columbia, Sharpe was with both University of Washington and Stanford, Linter was with Harvard, and both Black & Sholes were with University of Chicago. Third, the quality of governance will play an increasingly important role. The support from the sponsoring trust / society, composition of Board of Governors, the transparency of systems and processes, relative strength of influence – group of alumni in decision making processes at the institute as well as at the corporate, existence of performance related incentive schemes, availability of camaraderie climate for open work culture, among others will create the necessary ambience for an ideal business school. Fourth, the quality of leadership of the Head of the institute (Dean or Director) and of the top management team will definitely make all the difference. The strategic vision of the top management will be to constantly create and reinvent the differentiation strategy to survive in an increasingly competitive environment. Fifth, increased integration of information technology with the academic processes will provide a cutting edge to a better – managed business school. The opening of the select courses by MIT on the Web is only a beginning in this direction. The traditional mode of teaching is slowly but definitely going to give way to virtual mode in a growing manner. And therefore, a good business school needs to focus on IT and its enhanced application in academic administration processes. This might imply many of the basic concepts being taught through the medium of IT and the classroom discussions focus only on the complex issues or decision – making situations. Or the IT could become the prime mode of delivery say, for solving a logistics problem or brand valuation case with classroom discussions only supplementing the technology.  Sixth and possibly the most important issue that a good business school needs to address is an answer to the souls searching question as to “what is its USP”? or “why a student or a corporate should get associated with it”? This issue is vital in a scenario where competition is the name of the game. Inventing often times may not be possible. But the journey should always take a different route compared to others. The glory of yesterday does not mean anything in a world that is changing and changing fast. Similarly creation of only hype is not going to be sustaining one. The future of a good business school lies in predicting the future and not to find solace in the past and forget to run. Turning an unpredictable future into a certainty of victory is going to be the hallmark of a good business school.

Dr A K Sen Gupta, 
Director,
SIES College of Management studies (SIESCOMS).
The views expressed are his personal.
He can be contacted at sengupta@siescoms.edu.