FOLLOW ET: Log In / Join

Education & Skills

Modi-led government focuses
on upgrading youth skills
The Narendra Modi govt's intent to
upgrade skills of the youth through a slew
of measures has been welcomed, but much
more needs to be done.
Setting up new IITs and IIMs important,
Modi: The Person & His Grand Plans
5Ps of Modi: How new PM is
different from predecessors
PM Narendra Modi is markedly different
from his predecessors in his choices and
communication. ET examines what makes
him stand out.
PM Modi's Jan Dhan Yojana: How to
PM Modi's Governance Vision
PM Modi aims at smart
governance, cuts red tapism
PM Narendra Modi is aiming at smart
governance where the top layers of
government will be downsized and the
grass-roots level will expand.
PM Modi's new committee to phase out
Infrastructure Development
Modi's smart cities plan set to
take off, states to identify cities
Among PM Modi's pet plans, few would be
more significant to India than building 100
smart cities, as the country is in the middle
of a massive wave of urbanisation.
Modi govt creating infra to facilitate air
SPOTLIGHT
Comments & Analysis
You are here: ET Home Opinion Comments & Analysis
SENSEX
26,638.11 77.96
NIFTY
7,954.35 18.30
GOLD (MCX) (Rs/10g.)
28,088.00 308.00
USD/INR
60.5 0.05
Login to Track your
Investment
27 Aug, 2014, 03.46PM IST 1 comments | Post a Comment
Why Indian business schools need to
give emphasis on globalization in their
curriculum
READ MORE ON XLRI | Steven Altman | SPJain | MBAUniverse | IIM | IESE Business School | Friedman
to qualitative survey questions. Thus, 65% of
the identifiably Indian subsample agreed that
the world was flat, compared to 58% of the
whole sample. Also the Indian subsample
showed more support for the corollaries of
globalization unlocking virtually limitless
growth opportunities at the business level
(72% versus 63%) and leading to cultural
homogenization at the social level (72%
Search f or News, Stock Quotes & NAV's
04:04 PM | 28 Aug
MARKET STATS
EOD
Home Opinion Poke Me Comments & Analysis Spiritual Atheist ET Debate Editorial Opinion Poll Guest Writer Interviews QnA
Indiatimes The Times of India The Economic Times More
Final placements at IIM Calcuttas PGPEX-
VLM batch sees average salary go up by
11% to Rs 14.75 lakh
Read more
but focus on maintaining quality
Modi government to facilitate school
dropouts' return to education
flatten the piggy bank
Modi government's Rs 10,000-crore fund
a boon for startups
obsolete laws
Modi govt puts up 'idea boxes' seeking
out-of-box suggestions
travel in smaller cities
Speedy highway project approvals yet to
see the light of day
Most
Read
Most
Shared
Most
Commented
News in Pics
3/20
LG bets on pricey OLED
technology as future of TVs
PM Narendra Modi's 100 days: Traits which make
new PM different from predecessors
Narendra Modi expected to revive Saarcs largest
economy after decade of economic, political
muddle
PM Narendra Modi's 100 days: Even one small
step a day can bring growth into play
India may see a strong hiring pace, says Jonas
Prising, CEO, Manpower-Group
Bihar has shown way to halt BJP: Sharad Yadav
More
Despite some improvements in recent
years, India's globalization levels are well below even the
generally low average levels laid out above.
ET SPECIAL: Save precious time tracking your
investments
versus 66%). Dealing with globaloney seems
even more important in the Indian context
than it does elsewhere.
For a third reason, also particularly relevant
to the Indian context, for paying more
attention to actual levels of globalization and
their implications for cultural concerns in particular, consider the results of a survey
conducted a few years ago by Pew asking people in different countries whether they would
agree with (a) their culture being superior to others and (b) their culture needing protection.
Note the strong positive mistrust cSurely Indian business schools.especially given their reach
(on which more below) have an important role to play in helping at least their students open
up more to the world beyond India. correlation between the two in the graphic on the left
below! Also note where India falls on it.with a very strong sense of both cultural superiority
and insecurity! The strong negative correlation in the second graphic below, on the right, is
the hopeful news: it suggests that cross-border information flows (actually, a range of
international interactions) may alleviate cross-cultural prejudices,concerns, mistrust...Surely
Indian business schoolsespecially given their reach (on which more below) have an
important role to play in helping at least their students open up more to the world beyond
India.
Most Watched Videos
MORE FROM VIDEOS
Watch: Xiaomi Mi 4
Watch: Xiaomi Mi
4
Watch: INS
Kolkata in action
Markets
tomorrow:
Stocks to watch
A fourth reason Indian business schools must do more deliberately to globalize their students
has to do with their comparative disadvantage at some of the levers that the exemplars of
management education.the leading business schools in the US and a few leading
contenders in Europe.do manage to pull on towards that end.
One such lever is student national diversity. At the leading US business schools, 30% or
more of the students are now non-natives and the figure at leading European business
schools is even higher: thus at IESE Barcelona, 80% of the MBA students are non-
Spaniards. The diversity of even the leading Indian business schools is much lower. Thus,
according to data compiled for me by MBAUniverse on the top MBA (equivalent) programs,
IIM A, B, C did not admit any foreign students during the period studied, XLRI and SPJain
came in at the 1-2% level and ISB managed 5%.(Based on one small subgroup, the
Slide Shows
20 toughest job interview
questions asked this year
This year's weirdest questions come
courtesy of Apple, Twitter, Goldman
Sachs, Google, Amazon,...
Ten best smartphones for
less than Rs 20,000
With smartphone offerings growing
by the minute, settling for the right
device can be a tiring...
Upcoming Cars of 2014
between Rs 5-8 lakh
With more and more people being
able to afford an automobile every
year, this is one of the mo...
More Slideshows
numbers do look better once one expands international experience to including residing or,
especially, having worked or studied abroad.) Obviously, attracting foreign students seems
even less plausible a prospect if one looks further down!
The second lever that US/European business schools can and frequently do pull on has to do
with exchange programs that involve overseas travel. While some such activity can
sometimes be undertaken by Indian business schools, there are some obvious economic
constraints on trips to advanced, much more expensive economies, that impinge on even the
leading Indian business schools.
So the curriculum seems like a place where Indian business schools have to pay even more
attention to if they are to globalize their students. But at Indian business schools, as
elsewhere, there is a profound curricular gap. My troll of the websites of some of the leading
Indian business schools turned up no required courses of globalization in their flagship
programs that went beyond international macroeconomics.
As I wrote in my chapter for the AACSB 's Task Force on the Globalization of Management
Education, the domestic equivalent would be to just teach MBA students macroeconomics
as well and let them figure out the implications for operations, marketing, finance etc on their
own. And globalization electives, while better than no globalization-related offerings at all,
aren 't quite sufficient.
The experience at leading US business schools suggest that when you put globalization into
the elective curriculum, it slips off into a kind of globalization ghetto, disproportionately
populated by the international students.disproportionate in the sense of the too-high
percentage of natives who manage to slip through with no real exposure to globalization,
despite being in many cases the ones who need it most.
More from The Economic Times
PM Narendra Modi said nothing wrong
about 'proxy war' by Pakistan: Shashi 13
Aug 2014
Karnataka's Governor Vajubhai Vala hails
RSS,says posts don't matter 26 Aug 2014
Congress asks Asaram defender Salman
Khurshid to condemn Finance Minister
23 Aug 2014
Page 2 of 2 Prev Next
What should be in the curriculum is a matter that I could go into at great length. In a CD
cobranded and with the imprimatur of the AACSB, we released my globalization materials
as the basis for a course customizable to different countries' situations and recommended
by the AACSB to all its accredited institutions.
But my review of the Indian business school context has actually caused me to spend much
more time thinking not about the "what " of the curriculum, but the "how": who is going to
deliver it, and through which channel. Between 2010 and 2014, India expanded its share of
the institutions granting university-level degrees in business from 12% to 25%: a level that,
unlike just about any other "good " category, significantly exceeds its share of world
population and raises questions about how "good " this proliferation is. Since the share
increase occurred against a backdrop of general increase in numbers of such institutions
around the world, it understates the steepness of the increase in numerical terms: from 1608
to 3902.
3 people recommend this. Be the f irst of your
f riends.
Recommend