GMP - Admission

Dear Readers,
As many of you may be aware that applications are being invited for admission into 1 year GMP @ XLRI. If anyone has any questions regarding the admission process, course, pedagogy, placements or anything else for that matter then I'll be more than happy to take your queries. I have also been responding to prospective applicant's queries at pagaalguy. So do let me know if you have any queries/doubts.

XLRI ahead of all private B-schools

XLRI has made it to the top slot for the best B-school in the country. In a recent survey by Clore, a market research organization and a business magazine, XLRI, Jamshedpur, was ranked 1st in the private B-schools category. SP Jain & NMIMS are at 2nd and 3rd positions, respectively. The IIMs have retained their position on the list of top government B-schools in the country.
"It is indeed a matter of pride for all at XLRI to be ranked at the top. Prior to this, XLRI was only next to the IIMs but the bifurcation between private and government sectors has surely helped us scale new heights," said E.M. Rao, former dean of XLRI.
XLRI has also made it to the number one position as far as the faculty salaries among all B-schools go - the highest being Rs 27 lakh per annum and the minimum Rs 4.2 lakh annually. IIMs are the lowest, at number 17, with the maximum salaries being only Rs 6 lakh per annum.

Competence / Incompetence

There are 4 possible levels professional aptitude/know-how which could be used to categorize anyone working in an organization. They are as follows:
Unconscious Incompetence - I know not that I know not
Conscious Incompetence - I know that I know not
Conscious Competence - I know that I know
Unconscious Competence - I know not that I know
It is not necessary that a particular individual has to go through all the above phases. However, it is desirable for a competent manager to try and attain the level of Conscious Competence. I was told that Unconscious Competence is probably the hardest to achieve. The problem is that if one is aware of one's capabilities then complacency sets in which restricts one from achieving the highest level of competence.

2nd Term starts

I reached Jamshedpur late last night. I was glad that we had only 3 classes today since I didn't get enough sleep. The POM faculty handed over 2 cases and pre-reads for tomorrow's class.
This term we have the following 7 subjects:
Financial Management (FM)
Human Resource Management (HRM)
MIS : Technical and Social Perspectives (MISTSP)
Production and Operations Management (POM)
Strategic Management
Optimization Models for Managerial Decisions (OMMD)
Legal Environment of Business (LEB)

Free Riders!

Today I will talk about a special breed of MBA grads (in the making) whom I've encountered during these 2.5 months at XLRI - the free riders!
How does one define free riders? Non contributing members of a project who are a liability on the remaining team members are affectionately called free riders. They are really a sad breed among MBAs. They fail to understand the responsibilities which they are expected to shoulder. These are people who believe in the theory of symbiotic living but only partially. They will stick on with you, contribute nothing, reap the benefit and move ahead. Their focus is solely on how not to come in limelight and how to hide their incompetency. They do not show any sense of self consciousness or shame in blatantly copying other people's work. True believers of social theory of justice. The worst part is that some of these people even go to the extent of calling themselves smart workers.
There are many competent people who free-ride. These people can be of 2 types - those who are plain lazy and do not give a damn and those who will do all their individual assignments arduously but will slack off when it comes to group work as they know that someone else will surely do the job.
So, how to stop this menace? I have a simple solution. In general, each member of the group receives the same grade on the project/assignment. However, there may be times when one or more members of a group will free ride on the work of other members. The grades of such free riders should be substantially reduced (up to 25% from the total grade) if consistent evidence of free riding is found. To discover free riding, each member of a group may submit an individual Group Peer-Evaluation Form around the time when the group’s project/assignment is submitted. If someone does not submit a Group Self-Evaluation Form, the Professor will assume that, from this student’s perspective, at least, no free riding problems existed.