Pic by Elvert Barne
Lot’s of festivities last week. Starting with Idd on August 31, spilling over to Ganesh Chaturthi on September 1 and extending to the Pagalguy.com anniversary on September 2. Pagalguy completed nine years and the day was marked with general cheer and frolic at its headquarters in Mumbai.
Other than that, there was little other news locally, which would be of relevance to b-schoolers. Xavier’s Admission Test (XAT), remained the talking point with its promise of ‘lowering the difficulty quotient’ in the paper this year. Also, the news that along with the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institute of Science has also gone in for the Common Admission Test (CAT) also stirred up things a bit. It’s obvious that there is a design involved and the regular threats by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to conduct one common entrance exam for all, seems to be sinister logic behind it.
Internationally, quite a few things were worth a read. B-schools globally, are getting creative when it comes to admissions tweeting being the latest. Columbia Business School is asking applicants to state in 200 characters or less – What is your post-MBA professional goal?” This, according to the b-school, will get students out of their comfort zones and ‘traditional questions.’ Besides, Columbia, others schools are also asking their students to tweet on specific subjects as a matter of selection. For more, read http://thegrindstone.com/strategy/now-you-can-tweet-your-way-into-business-school-919/
The US job market has hit rock bottom, so says a study, conducted by a joint effort by a team from the Harvard Business School, the London School of Economics, Stanford, and McKinsey & Co. The study says that the “final shard in the broken dream of a prosperous America is the jobs market: for the first time since February 1945 the economy did not create a single net new job in August. Preliminary job creation figures for the past two months were revised down by 58,000. This study however, also concluded that when it came to overall management, American firms still outperform others. That doesn’t mean that other countries dont have well-managed firms: they do. But overall our tough levels of competition, use of human capital and flexible labour markets rank US number one. More details on the study in http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/americas-demographics-and-dynamism_592119.html
Still on studies, one by Steve W. Martin, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business made interesting revelations on the “natural instincts of sales people.” Prof Martin says that while for some people, it not only takes a long time to get it right, they might also have to ‘do diverse jobs.’ For others, it is natural and faster, as they are born with certain instincts. Among the skills essential to hit it big are mental alertness, tenacity, dependability, intellect and the ability to improvise.http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/08/are_top_salespeople_born_or_ma.html
Yet another study got mention in the Washington Post during the week. Linda A. Hill is professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and chair of the universitys Leadership Initiative is out with another book, titled Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader. In the book, she has listed a series of characteristics of successful leaders, and how they maintain focus on continuous learning despite time constraints and competing priorities? Prof Hill states that experienced managers take two minutes to do a little bit of reflecting to make sure that they have consolidated the lessons of the experience. She also warns against those who believe that learning happens over here and work happens over there. They actually happen at the same time because people are very practical learners. Its critical to understand that learning and work aren’t separate. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ask-the-fedcoach/post/how-to-be-a-great-boss/2011/03/04/gIQA9EQSuJ_blog.html
Working women will not like to hear this but The Economist featured a survey by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in UK which concluded that it would probably be a century before female managers in Britain earn the same as men? The survey indicates that male executives earn, on average, over 10,500 more than their female counterparts for doing the same job42,441 compared with 31,895. Womens salaries may be rising faster than mens (2.4% in 2010 compared with 0.3%) but even so, says CMI, at those rates it will take 98 years for women to catch upthus giving the headline-writer an irresistible angle.
“>http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/08/executive-pay-women?fsrc=nlw|newe|08-31-11|new_on_the_economist
And a bit of news on our neighbours – China is all set to surpass or catch up with the US when it comes to brands, people and also b-schools. The news is that Chinese admissions in American business schools is racing ahead with The Wall Street Journal reporting that graduate schools are “seeing a 23% increase in admissions offers for Chinese students this fall with a 21% increase in Chinese applicants the last year. BBC aired a programme which showed that China holds an edge over other Asian countries because of its increased number of executives who study enrol in MBA programmes abroad.
The New York Times reported that in China, some parents are spending a whopping $15,000 to get their wards ready for US college applications and entrance exams. The paper also reported that during the 2009-10 academic year, there were 39,947 Chinese undergraduates studying in the United States, marking “a 52 percent increase from the year before and about five times as many as five years earlier. And true to the American style, when branding expert John Quelch became dean at China Europe International Business School, he vowed to make the 17-year-old Shanghai-based university a research-focused institution, on level with Harvard’s Business School. The way to do it, he said, is to make faculty retention a priority his aim is to get Western faculty to come and stay in China, not just make trips there as ‘visiting faculty.’ http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed/2011/09/01/five-signs-the-next-apple