Industry Integrated MBA:

Dr Raaju Ganiesh Sunder Director Green Heaven Institute of Management and Research, (M)8600143480 Email:director@ocihe.org

A New Approach

Abstract:
As we entered into the world of globalization we require more & more labor force to sustain in the competitive era but there is a mismatch between demand & supply of skilled workers. This is because of the fact that we have many flaws in our education system moreover the role of government is not up to the mark in providing the skilled labor force for the industries & organizations. This paper focuses on the approach taken up by a Self financed university & the steps taken by the government & the steps taken up by the corporate world to overcome the situation of dearth of talent. The measures make a way out to overcome the Crunch.

Introduction:
For a country of 100 million, generating employment is a big challenge. India is confronted with significant unemployment rate despite high rate of economic growth since 1990s with globalization and opening of the economy. Under-employment is also a concern especially with the MBA graduates. Employment growth lags behind actual growth in case of skilled manpower. Employment in agriculture has fallen significantly. Consequently, rural-urban migration everywhere continues unabatedly. As the global workforce struggles to keep pace with hiring needs, demands for talented employees exceeds the supply, leaving many organizations wondering ,what strategies to adopt to retain and even expand their workforces to maintain competitive edge. HR Experts rank in the list of "niche talent, who are observing a shortage of talent. Some other notable numbers are:

There were 16 million new jobs created in the year (2011). Services will lead the way with Health care 248, 500,Hospitality 218,200, IT and ITES sectors adding 183,000 new people, followed by Education, Training and Consultancy 107,500 Retailing with 38,600 jobs, Financial Services with 80,700 jobs, Energy with 249,900 jobs, Manufacturing ( Machinery) 68,400 jobs, Manufacturing ( Non Machinery) 223,400 jobs, Media and Entertainment 126,100 jobs, Real-estate 144,700 jobs, Transport and Storage 93,300 jobs, and pharma with 49,100 jobs . All the above areas are niche areas where an MBA fits in well.

Jobs in India
300000

250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

Diagram No:1

There are 40 million registered unemployed in the country. 27 million are employed in the organized sector. 333 million are either underemployed or belongs to the unorganized sector.

Diagram No:2 Indias skilled manpower is growing at the rate of 2.5 per cent annually, but employment is growing at the rate of 2.3 per cent annually.

Globalization and opening of the economy have not been of much help. The total direct employment generated by multi-nationals in India is mere 18.8 million. Indias skilled work force is growing at the rate of 2.5 per cent annually, but employment is growing at the rate of 2.3 per cent annually.

Diagram No:3

Mismatch between demand and supply

The demand and supply factors that create the market are the market for skills. In classical economic analysis, the demand and supply for labor and skills should reach equilibrium, where demand will be equal to the supply. Every year around 2500 business schools in India produces 1,90,000 graduates with MBA degree .Over 400,000 engineers & 1500 PhDs ,India produces innumerous knowledge workers every year .With a shortfall in skilled labor which is likely to be there in the next four to five years in most of the developed economies ,then at that time the demand for expertise from developing countries is expected to rise .This would give Indian professional better opportunities in terms of works & wage terms .But in todays scenario this does not happen, when there is persistent youth unemployment, particularly for educated youth, this is a condition of skills mismatch due to supply-side institutions and policies that are not responsive to labor demand.

Diagram No:4

Causes of Mismatch...
The main causes of mismatch between demand and supply are as follows. Education: The Indian case is extremely well-documented in term of skills mismatch and shortages, particularly at the higher levels of education. Enterprise based surveys conducted by both donors (e.g. World Bank) and the private sector (McKinsey Global Institute) have estimated a large demand for technical and higher education. The demands of the knowledge economy of India have made for a new perspective within the massive and complex education system, one oriented to the needs of a private sector. The scale-up of secondary and tertiary education facilities and programming is clearly impressive. Moreover, there is a new curriculum focus, one that stresses the key skills demanded by the private sector. (World Bank, 2005). General functional skills, such as critical thinking, problemsolving, teamwork, and interpersonal communication, are absent from the traditional formal education curriculum. Often referred to as soft skills, these general functional skills have been identified repeatedly by firms as the basic skills needed for the workplace.

Diagram No:5 Curriculum: The current curriculum of various MBA programs is too generic and is not aligned to the needs of the industry leading to students passing out with low job readiness, thereby impacting placements. A lot can be done in terms of the pedagogy to impart relevant skills to students so that there is high readiness to job. The current focus of most B-Schools is largely around knowledge dissemination and not skill development. While the recruiters would like day 1 productive employees, most B-Schools are producing graduates who are not readily employable. There is a requirement to re-look at the course curriculum being taught at B-Schools. Courses and electives should focus on vocational skills which are relevant to the industry. For example, the largest demand is for front-end selling skills. Unfortunately, no program in the country addresses this need. In the Banking sector itself, there is a huge demand for sales, relationship, customer service skills. However, the supply of resources with these skills sets is absent. Even the 6-8 week internships mandated by B-Schools seem more of a formality; 8 weeks is insufficient. It takes this time to comprehend the working of any organization, leave alone

delivering results, making valuable recommendations on a live corporate project. The course should instead, be modeled on a healthy mix of internship and classroom training i.e. the students should spend at least two semesters working on live corporate projects that would enable them to apply knowledge and not just remember frameworks. Besides the issue of curriculum and design of the MBA programs, one other key area that needs systemic intervention is that of faculty development. Faculty Development: Most of the faculty members across business schools are academicians with limited or no industry exposure. This makes it difficult to build a bridge between industry and academia. Medical education is an example of getting practicing professionals to impart skills to students. Why cant we have a similar structure in management education? There is an immediate need to relook at qualifications required to become professors at management schools. Why cant we have a system wherein years of industry experience be made equivalent to a Ph.D. and encourage professionals to take up faculty roles? We should make the movement between academic institutions and industry seamless. The other key area that needs a detailed review is the remuneration of the faculty. There is a steep difference in the salary levels between that of a distinguished professor to what is offered in the industry. It is important to align the pay structures in line with the industry if we want this seamless movement to take place. The directors and promoters should lobby with the relevant bodies to ensure that we bring about these structural changes at the earliest.

WELL-EDUCATED YET ILL-PREPARED: Although there are more logistics and supply chain management curricula in colleges, universities, community colleges, and even high schools than ever before, the output is not filling all of the industry's needs. We are turning out graduates with incredible analytic skills and tools, and unprecedented exposure to advanced supply chain and logistics concepts. Yet industry is not completely happy with these resources.

Perhaps the solution lies in more and better collaboration between business and academia. Certainly, there are roles for both in developing supply chain talent for now and for the future. But where do today's graduates fail to meet either needs or expectations? For starters, they don't grasp the big picture, in two significant dimensions. One is that endto-end supply chain concept. They can say the words, but they too often look at the supply chain as a collection of functions, rather than as an integrated whole. Then there's the woeful under-appreciation of how, where, and to what extent supply chain management contributes to corporate performanceand ultimately, success or failure. This partly reflects innocence of how and why management needs to link into the corporate mission and with the strategies that support it. It also reveals an abysmal lack of familiarity and comfort with the language of finance and enterprise performance. Things like ROA, ROI, ROE, EBITD, and free cash flow. This severely limits the practitioner's comprehension of the full value of his or her efforts and the ability to communicate effectively with senior management. Reflecting a failing of the incumbent generation, the highly educated newcomers don't get the difference between management and leadership, and they have not learned the roles and value of each. They, sadly, gravitate more toward a management perspective. In a possibly related development, the elements of sustainable change management are not among their skill sets, and change is more often seen as a matter of announcement than a problem with cultural, behavioral, and attitudinal dimensions. While the newbies may be reasonably good at working in teams, they have very little in the way of skills or appreciation in relationship building and maintenance. This is deadly enough internally, but is doubly destructive in external relationships with customers, suppliers, and service providers. In general, young people are coming out of school prepared to rely extensively on brainpower and analytic skills to succeed, to the near-exclusion of the so-called "soft" skills that are becoming essential to individual and organizational success in the 21st century.

Finally, and not surprisingly, the new kids are short on experience. Maybe more corporate projects as part of curricula could help, and perhaps more internships could take the edge off its perception. But many young people don't take the time to gain employment experience between picking up a B.S. and an M.B.A

ADDRESSING THE CONTENT SHORTFALL:

As for how to solve the content shortfall problem, the answers are not completely obvious. We might make a case for addressing more of the gaps outlined above in academic curricula. But at what cost? With time provided by the elimination or de-emphasis of what? Certainly, individual companies could build many of the needed skills in individualized development programs. But on what schedule, given the immediacy of the need? And at what investment level, given imperatives for performance and productivity? External education and training to cover many of the issues is also a possibility but raises many of the same questions.

The New Approach

All this goes a long way toward explaining why we are, in the collective, experiencing a nearly unprecedented boom in corporate efforts to capture, develop, and retain top-level performers in management. The forward-looking organizations are investing significantly in educating, training, recruiting, and rewarding human resources at all levels and in all functions. Many, regrettably, are not. They will be the ones hearing Ross Perot's giant sucking sound as their key employees run like the wind into the arms of progressive companies as economic recovery continues. Every organization wants their fresh hires to be productive from Day-one. Take the case of ICICI Bank, who have been working towards achieving first day, first hour productivity through a series of Industry-Academia initiatives. They have had success with industry specific postgraduate programs in partnerships with NIIT and Manipal University.

They have also introduced the ICICI Business Leadership Program for catering to niche requirements in Wholesale Banking, Credit, Banking Technology and Treasury. The Bank has also recently launched the ICICI Sales Academy in collaboration with ITM University to ensure a supply of trained entry-level front-end sales staff.

With an objective to provide an impetus to meet the manpower need of the industry and create a winwin situation for the academia, students and industry, Himachal Pradesh-based Baddi University of Emerging Science and Technology (BUEST) is going to offer a program from this academic session called Academic Adoption, a first in the country, which shall provide academic exposure as well as practical exposure to the students in industry while studying. Under the program, the industry will adopt the students from Day One of the course. The university has developed a special module for implementation of the program. The uniqueness of this program is that students will be given academic exposure on weekends in the university and they will be working in adopting industry on weekdays, for which the students will also be paid a stipend ranging from Rs 6,000 to Rs 20,000, depending on the work done and pay scale of the adopting company. The companies that have already agreed to absorb the students are Virtuous Solutions, Trade India , India Mart , AurthorGen Technologies Ltd , Clicklabs, North Star Fasteners and Him Teknoforge, Isolloyd, Yodeva, Alpla etc According to the industrialist, this will not only help in bridging the skill gap requirement, but also ease the shortage of workforce problem in the area.

What will this lead to?

Stop spoon feeding every time. At least give some opportunities to students to work independently. Since the student is working independently he/ she gets a feel of the subject and when the student utilizes the practical and theory the knowledge gain is immense and for lifetime. Justify the need for learning a particular subject and its learning outcome in advance.

Update the syllabus of the course regularly.

Conclusion:
It indeed is evident from the skill gap studies that in India, skill-based occupations do not enjoy appropriate status. This mindset needs to be changed by celebrating skills, which we hope to by imparting skills training to the candidates from time to time during the course to make them employment worthy.

An Industry integrated MBA is the need of the hour, keeping in view the present state of affairs wherein admissions to the MBA course is dropping and the students who take the MBA course are disillusioned with the sort of placements which is an important parameter for getting in the course. The knowledge gain through such an program would deliver to the society a holistic personality which is what the Industry needs.

References:
http://www.mbauniverse.com/article.php?id=6049 http://www.blog.kaplangmat.com/tag/mba-careers-2 http://www.-become.org/demand-supply-mismatches-in-the-job-market/Share http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20120814-mind-the-gap-mate-a-critical-supply-demandmismatch/ http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&type=member&gid=1860174&item=188563789&c ommentID=111020083&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-pmrcn&ut=1XCL6geqrO5BA1#commentID_111020083 http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/academic-adoption-programme-launched-bybaddi-university/478670/