Paper for the

National Conference on

OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES IN MANAGING THE MILLENIAL GENERATION –

INDIVIDUAL, ORGANIZATIONAL & SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

At

VISHWAKARMA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

Paper Title:

“A New Paradigm for Management Education”

Authors:

Wg Cdr (Retd) Ramesh Jog (Corporate consultant, Mentor and Research student at UoP)

Mr. Anand Joshi (Managing Director, NobleTek PLM Solutions Pvt. Ltd)

Mr. Rajendra Sidhaye (CEO, Effectiveness Plus Plus)

Mr. Sameer Prabhu (VP & Head R&D, G & D)

Abstract

Current Management Education covers and imparts skills regarding specific domains such as

Finance, Marketing, HR etc. however woefully lacks the aspects which will make the students,

including the Gen-Y, not only ready for facing the real situation in business world in which lot of

human dynamics is involved, but also for ensuring an inclusive development with a holistic

view. With collective rich experience of several decades, authors have experienced this

personally as well as got it confirmed through a structured dialog with several business leaders.

This paper proposes a new paradigm for management education to ensure an inclusive

development and growth of individuals, teams, organizations and thus environment. This new

education will achieve:

1. Holistic learning of individuals to address 21st century needs of human and

business skills

2. Gen-Y ready with values, perception, and skills for sustained employability

using their aptitude to effectively use technological advances meaningfully

3. Readying Gen-X to be able to lead and mentor Gen-Y for realizing their full

potential.

While keeping significant bandwidth for the domain specific specialization skills related to

business cycle that of course need to be imparted, the new education paradigm focuses on two

additional aspects:

1. Human nature: Emotions, Six human and behavior skills necessary to connect

with self, team and stake-holders effectively

2. Organizational and external Environment: Awareness on right values for

inclusive development and practices in conducting business operations for

sustainable future

Technology has made significant changes to the way we do business and the changes will be

more rapid for Gen-Y. The new paradigm therefore has larger scope. The challenge is not only to

prepare Gen-Y for management roles or entrepreneurship, but also to prepare them for the new

ways of doing business. Hence, naturally, the paper covers several tracks that have been planned

for the conference.

Paper Title:

“A new paradigm for management education”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- 1.0 Introduction

Overall business dynamics have been changing quite rapidly over the last two decades due to

several factors. This includes rapid changes in market dynamics, globalization etc. Entry of Gen-

Y into the organizations is one such important factor. All these changes are putting significant

new challenges for today‟s business managers.

Management education is supposed to prepare the candidate for managing or leading a

significant activity in the organizations. However, through their several years of experience in

the industry, the Authors perceived that the management education is falling short of this

objective. Management education also needs to take in the fact that the Gen-X managers of today

will need to harness the Gen-Y entering the organizations and also needs to prepare new Gen-Y

management graduates for handling all aspects of business, other than having the business

domain knowledge.

The authors critically examined this gap and identified the lacunae in the current management

education system. This was also validated by taking feedback from several experienced senior

management people in the industry.

Based on these, Authors want to propose a paradigm shift in the current MBA education. The

objective is to get millenials and a well as Gen-X ready and be able to contribute to business

performance and sustainability in a very dynamic and global business environment.

2.0 New challenges due to changing dynamics in the enterprises

Business dynamics have been changing rapidly for the enterprise organizations in the last two

decades. This is fuelled by the globalization, rapid growth in internet and its multi-faceted effect

on business as well as factors internal to the organizations. These rapidly changing dynamics

have been posing new challenges for the organizations. We briefly discuss those factors

contributing to rapid changes and those we consider important while suggesting the new

paradigm for management education.

2.1 Due to Gen-Y entering the organizations

Generation Y or Gen-Y is generally comprised of people born in the last 20-25 years of

the 20th

century. Since they have seen the turn of the century in their young age, it is also

known as the “Millennial” generation. Gen-Y is born with technology gadgets in their

hands and uses them very naturally. You will usually see them with their i-Pods,

Blackberries or high-end mobile phones and laptops.

This Generation Y is now coming of age and entering the job market for the first time.

Growing up with technology makes these new workers both more valuable and more

difficult to manage and hire.

Following characteristics of the Gen-Y pose significant additional challenges as well as

benefits for Gen-X managers having Gen-Y team members as well as while planning for

Gen-Y eventually taking management positions:

2.1.1 Work-Life Balance: Gen-Y is more family and socially oriented. They

just do not believe in slogging and putting in long working hours. They

expect more pay for less work and certainly believe that there is life

beyond work.

2.1.2 Socially connected: Entering the workplace with computer skills or being

Tech-savvy is beneficial to any industry, however those same abilities can

lead to challenges keeping employees on task and motivated, especially

with a blackberry (or some such gadget) lying around. Their “need” to be

ultra-connected with the rest of the world proves counter-productive at

times.

2.1.3 Confidence: Gen-Y is confident, ambitious and achievement oriented. We

have seen that people belonging to Gen-Y have clear ideas about their

self-worth. They are confident about their abilities as well as open for

doing various kinds of jobs, roles and tasks.

2.1.4 Commitment: Gen-Yers do not pay too much importance to values such as

loyalty or commitment to the employer. While they expect easier

atmosphere at the work place, with a lot of facilities, plush offices etc,

they also expect a much open culture and policies such as flexible working

hours. They want to be treated more like customers than employees. With

a slight positive turn in the economy, if these expectations are not fully

met, leads to high attrition – the phenomenon, we have seen to be rampant

especially in the developing countries like India.

2.1.5 Openness: Gen-Yers do not hesitate to provide an open feedback when

asked for. Gen-Y does not believe in annual appraisals, but craves for a

more frequent (timely) and open feedback from peers and superiors.

2.1.6 Creative: Gen-Y is more informal and creative. Because of their openness

to new ideas and their ability to think differently, they constantly

challenge the age-old practices and traditional ways of doing business.

Gen-Y brings in a totally fresh perspective to the business. Many perceive

Gen-Y to be rude, perhaps because they question and don‟t always comply

as easily as previous generations have.

2.1.7 Education-minded: Today, we have an umpteen number of sources of

getting information. Also, influenced by their Gen-X parents, most Gen-

Yers recognize that the key to their success lies in advanced learning. This

generation views life-long education as part of life. However, passive

learning is „out‟ and interactive learning is „in‟ for this Generation. Gen-

Yers have a huge appetite for information.

While leading teams or working with Generation Y, it‟s wise to adapt and cultivate a

team-oriented environment. Immediate feedback and recognition will help motivate and

reassure this young generation. Frequent communication and reassurance will help keep

members of Gen-Y eager and involved. Avoiding micromanagement is a better style of

management for Gen-Y.

2.2 Challenge for Gen-X to manage Gen-Y

Due to the peculiar characteristics of Gen-Y, as described in earlier section, managing

and keeping them motivated is a challenging task due to the sheer generation gap

involved, The Gen-Y is extremely impatient and want to see results and faster returns.

This can be good and can be harnessed for the benefit to the organization, if managed

well. On the other hand, it can quickly lead to a problematic situation for critical projects

if the team is not managed well.

Apart from results and returns, the task needs be challenging and interesting for keeping

Gen-Y motivated. Hence, e.g. if it is a long haul project, which also involves usage of

old, traditional technology, a Gen-X manager will need to find and keep inventing

additional ways of keeping Gen-Y team members motivated.

The way of communication with Gen-Y is also important, Gen-X manager needs to be

little informal and friendly to be able to really 'connect' with the Gen-Y team member/s.

2.3 Gen-Y themselves taking managerial roles

Next level challenge for organizations is to mentor the Gen-Y employee becoming an

effective manager. The person can be very intelligent and may have required knowledge

regarding the business function / domain. But critical question for the organization is

whether s/he is able to effectively manage a team of people to achieve desired goals in

intended timeframe and, equally importantly, while following organization's set of

processes and code of values and ethics.

Gen-Y is however the fastest growing segment of the workforce today and hence it is

time we re-evaluate the challenges posed by above parameters. We need to begin with the

management education for such a work force.

2.4 Due to changing business environment

Business environment has been changing radically. This is due to various factors such as

rapidly changing technology and tools, changing market scenario due to the entry of new

players and new alternatives all the time, the need for adherence to new standards for

quality, safety etc.

2.5 Due to globalization

Globalization is a process by which the economies, societies, and cultures have become

integrated through a global network and through communication, transportation, and

trade. It has become possible due to speedier transport, rapid growth in communication

technology and phenomenon called the Internet. Globalization is usually recognized as

being driven by a combination of economic, technological, socio-cultural, political, and

biological factors.

The term is most closely associated with the term economic globalization: the integration

of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct

investment, capital flows etc. This creates direct impact on businesses. e.g. it creates new

market opportunities as well as new competitors due to world-wide players. It forces one

to cut costs by options such as outsourcing work to an entity in other country as well as

creates opportunity for providing various types of services to global players.

However, this forces the requirement of communicating, collaborating and closely

working together with people from other languages, time-zones and cultures. Managers

today need to interact and work with managers/principals in western countries who have

different sociological backgrounds and expectations.

All these aspects create new challenges for the organizations and its managers in terms of

visualizing and planning for all these new aspects, additional travel, communication and

implementation using global teams. One example of this is to provide 24 x 7 support to

customers using support multiple help desk teams spread around the globe, using latest

communication technology so that the physical location is transparent to the customer.

2.6 Emerging trends

Business management models are getting reinvented. Concept of „management of

business operations‟ is changing to „leading business operations‟ and further the

technology and tools available are getting evolved adding to this change.

Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to

information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get

involved

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may

become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey

messages up and down the organization.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are invoked by leaders as the one sure way out of

economic distress

For human beings taking positions as leader in business operations or as an entrepreneur

the competencies required have drastically changed in relations what was adequate a

decade ago. Attitudes, skills and knowledge appropriate to face the challenges of this

new business world of next two or three decades is the development need for millenials.

It worth noting what the thinkers, world over, are propagating regarding changes in

education. Sir Ken Robinson is one individual who is explaining need to change

education more vividly.

3.0 About current MBA education

3.1 General

Current MBA education is mainly focused on the business knowledge only. Study of the

syllabi of some of the MBA courses reveals the following:

Full MBA course is typically spread over four semesters. Out of these, the first two

semesters primarily cover the wide variety of topics covering entire spectrum of business

functions e.g. Management Accounting, Managerial Economics, Statistical &

Quantitative Methods, Legal Aspects of Business, Basics of Marketing and Marketing

Management, Information Technology, Financial Management, Human Resource

Management, Manufacturing & Operations Management, Materials & Logistics

Management, Management Information Systems etc. Thus the idea here seems to be to

first make the student aware of all the business functions! In the 3rd and 4th semesters the

course allows students to take electives of their choice and specialize in specific areas

such as Finance or Marketing or Human Resources etc.

A project is also required to be done which the student would do in the area of

specialization and make a detailed report. The objective appears to be to assess the level

of understanding of the subject

The course also typically has some topics of importance such as Entrepreneurship

Development & Project Management, International Business Management, Current

Trends in Management, Business Policy & Strategic Management, Management Control

Systems which are spread over the entire duration of the course.

For covering the environment aspects there is a course such as Economic Environment of

Business. For covering the behavioral aspects there is an introductory course such as

Organizational Behavior & Principles & Practices of Management.

3.2 Inadequacy of the current MBA education

Thus it is quite clear that the current MBA education touches upon some subjects related

to the important aspects, other than business functional knowledge, which are crucial for

making a person ready as a competent manager. However, the coverage is quite cursory

in nature and moreover the experience indicates that these subjects are not given enough

importance also.

The method of delivery for the human dynamics part is using the conventional and

standard classroom teaching approach and not like a workshop approach using role play

and other approaches which will make it interesting as well as like a practical learning.

Aggregate result of all this is that the MBA graduate has the broad knowledge about the

business functional areas in general and more depth about the specialization opted for,

however does not have the right skills for dealing with the human dynamics, attitude to

provide leadership for the team skills and the wherewithal for taking into account the

environmental aspects internal and external to the organization. Thus the MBA graduate

is far from a person having desired managerial skills on day 1. Natural objective of MBA

education is supposed to be to produce an effective manager. However, it remains

inadequate in fulfilling this objective.

3.3 Corporate feedback

To validate the observations and analysis that has been presented so far indicating

inadequacy of the MBA education, authors obtained feedback from senior leaders of

several organizations, who have firsthand experience during the last decade of dealing

with MBA graduates inducted in their organizations.

The observations, by senior leaders of organizations, obtained have been summarized as

below:

MBA graduates are not ready to start contributing meaningfully to an

organization when they finish their education. The students from good

management institutions have a good grasp of functional knowledge but tend to

be overly enamored of intellectual tools and not sensitive enough to the human

aspects of management or to larger issues like values, principles and ethics.

The appreciation of the purpose of business in the larger context of Society and of

values, principles and ethics of business is absent in most of these fresh MBA

graduates.

The fresh MBAs are far from being adequately equipped because of lack of

awareness on basic human skills or attitude or personality traits as well as

awareness on environmental aspects and organization‟s role in society.

Fresher MBAs are unable to link human aspects and environmental constraints to

business process or component like sales or operations or measuring performance.

MBAs lack awareness on managing feelings or emotions of self and team

members.

Organizational culture and environment is very critical and important. It has been

observed that organization performance and success is driven by its culture and

environment. Awareness of fresh MBAs is lacking on this area.

If the MBA education integrates the following, the young entrants in business will

be able to contribute effectively early in their career :

o Exposure to overall business aspects, Processes and Industry Practices

o Mandatory Industry Internship/Incubation

o Understanding Social and Environmental aspects to create sustainable

business proposition and hence the eco-system

We went a step further and interviewed some fresh MBA millenials and some Gen-X

undergoing executive MBA program.

The common observation was that the topics covered in first two semesters are mostly

academic in nature and methods like case study and presentation fail to make students

understand the implication of the application of these assignments to live situations.

4.0 Proposed paradigm shift in MBA education

4.1 Overview

The existing paradigm, on which the MBA education is based at present, is: „Managing

the business primarily needs business domain knowledge‟. Hence the overwhelming

focus of current MBA education on the same. The new paradigm that we propose is: „

„business consists of the people, managed by people for the people in an environment.

Therefore the people and environment factors need to be integrated with business

knowledge part in a holistic way while designing and delivering contents.

More important is the fact that in next decades a concept of a single leader like MD or

CEO leading the business is invalid. The businesses of future will require leaders at all

levels and it is case of collaborative leadership or community leadership.

With the objective of removing the inadequacy, which has been brought out in the earlier

section, we propose a paradigm shift in MBA education which will also enhance the

employability of the millenials significantly. The paradigm shift involves revamping the

education right from redefining the objective of the MBA. The goal of MBA must not be

to just arm the students with the business knowledge, but to ensure that the student will

be competent to take a lead in operations of an organization from day ONE with ability to

apply business domain knowledge integrating human and environmental aspects. It

should also take into account the fact that it could be the case of Gen-Y student of MBA

taking on the manager role or it could be the case of Gen-X manager who will need to

handle a Gen-Y team.

We visualize outcome of proposed education as depicted in a schematic for

Transformation as depicted in Fig 1:

Fig 1: A schematic for Transformation

Attributes of students

opting for management education

Transform Attributes of students to be adequate

for employability

Delivery of contents

Employability for sustaining

(Entrepreneur or placement)

Awareness

Knowledge

Skills

Contents

Notes:

Awareness: It is enabling students to process information on relevant concepts and aspects for

putting these into action for their benefit.

Skills: Set of abilities or competence resulting from practices or repeated actions resulting from

Awareness.

Knowledge: Enabling students to appreciate the use awareness for acquiring information for

application.

We address the two areas namely contents and delivery in following sections.

4.2 Proposed Contents of new MBA education

The proposed new MBA education program is a concept of integrating the three areas of

knowledge to prepare millenials for employability with leadership aptitude .The

suggested program will involve a right mix of attitudes, skills and knowledge on

business processes,

Hence the three focus areas are:

a) Human nature

b) Environment

c) Business cycle

4.2.1 Human nature

The (new proposed) paradigm is based on the fact that business consists of the

people, managed by people and for the people in an environment. Hence, the

skills pertaining to understanding humans and leading them, are critical. An

awareness on human nature is essential for students to appreciate the way human

beings interact. The interaction in business is amongst the three areas that namely

“of the people”, “by the people” and “for the people”. Hence the contents for the

related to human and environment aspects must be significant of the total MBA

education time.

Following skills are recommended to be covered as a foundation:

a. Six skills : Six basic human skill identified are

1. Seeing or sensing: The way one needs to develop this ability to see

whole or macro level as well as at micro level to get insight into a

scenario or an issue. The way one is able to visualize the images for

future. Sensing with all natural resources available with human body.

This skill helps in deciding vision, strategies, immediate and near

objectives and planning and taking risk.

2. Thinking: Thinking using both left and right brain. Thinking for

creating thoughts that guide appropriate behaviors and have value for

bringing change. Thinking intensive people as work force is the need

in coming decades.

3. Feeling: Developing sensitivity, passion, sense of commitment, pride

and esteem. Commitment and passion to a commitment enhances

alignment with vision and purpose in life.

4. Learning: Learning for performance and building the future. Using the

earlier three skills to engage, ask and review the sensed entities and

nurture or cultivate competences required. Lifelong learning leverages

levels of potential for performance.

5. Acting: Ability to act responsibly, proactively and being alert using the

earlier four skills. Actions result into behaviors and demonstrate all the

earlier four skills. Behaviors create a culture.

6. Building relationships: creating and establishing relationship with self,

individuals in teams, across organization or communities and to

environment around. This ability links the tree domains of people

namely “of” , “for” and “by” to make the individual connected .

b. Emotion management: Emotions are at the core of success as leader at any

level and time or space. Awareness on managing own emotions and those of

people in interactions is essential to build relationships, networking,

motivating and being assertive and adaptive as required. Developing an ability

to be able to thrive on emotional intelligence is a slow process and requires all

the six skills mentioned above.

c. Personality: Six skills and emotion management enhances levels of

personality. Awareness on four components of personality and how to develop

and use these prepares an individual to cope with variety of business

situations. The components that need be addressed are :

Physical: Endurance and image, contributing to body language.

Emotional: An extension of emotional management.

Professional: Learning from experience and learning for future career

so as to be able to collaborate in organizational performance.

Spiritual: This is not related to religion or divine aspects. Here it

means the ability to understand and develop specific skills which help

human beings to maintain high level of energy for actions in

performing and to manage stress in difficult situations.

4.2.2 Environment

Business operates and can thrive when the people in organization are aware and

conversant with the boundaries of environment -internal and external. Business

operations are enabled by internal organizational environment and constrained by

environment external to organization. Learning both components is a continual or

incremental process. An exposure, in right depth, to these aspects during

educational phase can arm students to learn quickly when placed or as

entrepreneurs. Content (as suggested below) needs to be significant and spread

over the course to be effective for the transformation of attitude and developing

skills and knowledge (Refer schematic at Fig 1):

a. Organizational environment

Values and Culture: Values drive the behaviors, behaviors are

contagious and such behaviors develop culture in organization.

Understanding values is a learning process and adapting to values is a

skill. A consistency in behavior at all levels reinforces culture and

impacts organizational performance.

Economics: Organization economics seeks to understand and improve

the ways in which organizations overcome agency costs, information

costs, and other obstacles to efficiency. A knowledge of these basics

prepares students to sense opportunities and risks in this area so vital

for profitability and image of organization.

Change: Change is inevitable. Adapting to new or emerging

technologies and concepts is ability grasped by an attitude founded

during learning process and management education should address this

squarely. Leading or contributing to change efforts in an organization

enhances possibility of keeping ahead of competition or even creating

a desired future.

b. External

Political: Politics is opportunism and has marginal values or culture.

Impact of such external happenings is immediate as well as affects

near future of an organization. Being aware of nature of politics at

national and international level provides insight into political behavior

in a business environment. Exposure to variety of political influences

should be part of content so students learn what and how of politics

and are ready to face such impact.

Global: We have already covered the challenges faced by organization

due to globalization. Hence the students need to be prepared for these.

Ecological: Impact of ecology and environment on every aspect of

human and business existence is well known now. Businesses can

contribute –vely to the ecology if this is not understood and translated

into business strategy. On the other hand businesses can minimize the

–ve contribution to ecology and in fact can contribute +vely if business

strategy considers this as a factor. Needless to say, the students need to

understand this external factor adequately.

4.2.3 Business cycle

Currently large part of the management education attends to topics in

business functions and loads the students with theories that were more

relevant during the last century. Feedback ,own experience and literature

by practitioners and academicians suggests that the contents based on

management models and fads of the last century must be replaced by the

five components of business cycle we are briefly discussing. Authors view

that a practical approach to delivering knowledge on business functions

can prepare students better to contribute more effectively. The business

cycle will still have most significant bandwidth of the course content but

will need to be connected or integrated with the first two areas, during

delivery. The fact that major part of business functions is driven by

technology also needs to be considered while defining the course content.

Limits on recommended coverage are further supported in following

paragraphs.

a. Purpose: Clarity on purpose enables people of the “business by the

people” category to align to stakeholders. Purpose helps in aligning

attitude, skills and knowledge.

b. Systems: Technology has helped business functions to be operated in a

consistent manner once the purpose is clear. Need for human intervention

is built into systems again by technology.

c. Business Processes: These are sequence of actions which are needed to

fulfill a particular business purpose. These can be facilitated using

technology partly or fully.

d. Performance Measurement. Any business performance must be measured

and awareness on ways of measuring and using measurements to identify

improvement opportunities prepares students to develop attitude and skills

to apply this knowledge.

e. Improvement to sustain into future: Improvement in all above is at core of

sustaining business into future. Students perceiving need for improvement

and change should not consider it only for self help, but must keep

organizational development as the primary objective. It is an attitude and

skill to be deployed at work place using knowledge.

4.3 Delivery

Contents recommended above are a resource for transforming the students. Refer

Fig 1 above. However, the delivery is what will decide the outcome of

transformation. Delivery is as important in effecting the desired result as the

content.

Therefore innovative ways of delivery need to be identified and validated. The

methods cannot be standardized but adapted based on student attributes. As the

behavior patterns and values of millenials evolve, methods also need to be

adapted. This is a change and educational institutions must be armed to adapt

newer and innovative methods.

Delivery thus is a learning and continual improvement activity. It will be time and

space specific driven by student attributes. Institutions must be proactively

engaged in getting ready for these changes.

5.0 Recommendations

In view of the above discussions we recommend following:

1. The management education must go thru a rapid change to adapt to new paradigm.

2. A committee or board of members having right skills and depth should design both

contents and delivery process for the contents.

3. The members of the committee should have significant number of Line managers

drawn from commercial & nonprofit, product & service organizations who have

professional experience and Academicians both having foresight for future.

4. The contents and delivery must be validated by a committee which also has

CEOs/MDs having depth of experience and then adapted to be replicated at

institutions.

6.0 Conclusions

Current management education is inadequate considering the massive challenges faced by the

organizations, particularly the Gen-Y with distinctive traits increasingly expecting to take

leadership or entrepreneurial roles.

The new paradigm that we have proposed will revamp management education and will

pragmatically prepare millenials for leading the organizations of tomorrow.

It is a bold step but certainly a measure that will enable millenials in more effective way to use

their potential and contribute in leveraging performance of organizations.