It is a widely accepted fact that management cannot exist without business and business cannot exist without management. There exist a vital connection between management theory and practice. While a lot of talk is happening over the management education meeting the requirements of the industry, nothing much has been done in that direction. As a result there is a huge mismatch between what is delivered in management schools and the requirements of the industry. It is high time to bridge the gap between b-schools and business organizations.

To address the issue, leading business schools in India has decided to face lift the syllabus. But the industry says it is not enough to tide over the problem.

The main reason behind the mismatch is the low interaction between the Business-Schools and the business organizations. More over there are various gaps in the management education that is being provided to participants. Those gaps include knowledge gap, skill gap and attitude gap. There is lack of proper training and development programmes for making them employable and in addition to this there is no collaboration between institutes and industry to share information and research output, which enhance the performance of both students and business organizations.

Education Management

In India there are no much significant changes in the approach towards the management of higher education. This is applicable in the case of management education too. We still follow the traditional concepts of educational management. None of our top management schools offer any programmes that are related to management of education which will place the management education and other higher education programmes in India in line with the requirements of the industry

The management education institutions should pay proper attention in changing the curriculum with the change of pace of the industry. They should build long term relation with industry and develop learning models. Focus should be given to teaching material that encourages research.

Revamping the syllabus

The revamped syllabus will contain new subjects that are added and old ones will be dropped out. This syllabus will be ready to be adopted in 2012-13 at many of the leading business schools.

Some of the institutes that are in the process of face lifting are Indian School of Business (ISB), Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) and IIMK. They are in the effort to bridge the gap- between classroom wisdom and corporate realities.

The new syllabus has included CSR, management mantras, business ethics from the Bhagavad Gita. According to the new syllabus the participants will have to undertake compulsory internships with any of the NGOs. It should come as a boon to the corporate in India which is looking for innovative and socially responsible managers. But that is not the case here in India

Industry calls it cosmetic

The industry considers these changes in the syllabus as cosmetic and that nothing is done to tackle the root of the problem, i.e. they just produce elite social network who are ignorant about business is run in real life.

Senior executives from the industry observe that the leading business schools in India including the Indian Institutes of Management are not in line with the corporates and lack in good quality research.

How can we expect a student to understand the concepts of marketing without any first hand experience in sales, or how can we expect a student to understand the concepts of operations without spending time in a production floor in a factory.

Industry lacks long term goals

The Business Schools in India says that the Indian industry lacks vision and are short sighted in terms of goals and objectives. They are also not willing to share information for research and have a limited knowledge base. The b-schools say that they give importance to learning and not quarterly performance as with the case of corporate. This is the main reason why there is no connection between what the b-schools deliver and the corporate life.

Knowledge with industry outdated?

According to Debashis Chatterjee, Director at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, the knowledge with the corporates in India is outdated, but still listens to them. He adds that corporate and business schools have different set of requirements, and the common space is defined by learning. IIM Kozhikode is on an attempt to drop 10 per cent of its regular syllabus and include more content that will promote unstructured thinking. The business schools are trying to break the compartments that are created in b-schools. These compartments typically have specialized teacher for marketing, finance, HR and other specialized fields. The IIMK has decided to change this and integrate subjects in some way. The result will be that students after joining a company will be able to connect different functions for one goal. This is a move towards the right direction, but needs a collective effort. Most of the top executives from the corporate world are of the opinion that there is no connection between what is taught and the real business world.

Changes cannot be introduced overnight

Majority of the business schools say that it is not fair to expect a drastic change overnight as the revamping of the syllabus is still on.

Efforts are being made by b-schools to reduce the significance of normative part of the courses such as theories and discussions inside the classrooms and giving importance to subjective part which consists of dealing with people, learning how to negotiate and learning consumer behavior.

Efforts made by some of the business schools

Some of the leading business institutes have already introduced programmes that deal with learning out of the classroom. Such programmes include developing the right attitude, rural visits, dealing with multiple cultures and getting familiar with people who belong to the bottom of the pyramid.

The Indian School of Business is planning to introduce changes in the course to build leadership skills and to give importance to self analysis. They are also providing more flexibility in the course structure that will enable the participants to customize their courses. The objective is to reach the global standards by equipping the participants to handle situations of economic, institutional and cultural differences across countries.

Demand and supply

It is just a matter of demand and supply and huge packages given by the investment bankers as said by TV Mohandas Pai, former head of Human Resource at Infosys. This has set the tone for compensation,

Industry and academia have to work together

To bridge the gap the industry and academia should work together. It should be made compulsory for the Business schools to register with professional bodies which consist of expert representatives from academia, industry and the government.  Such bodies should be given the authority to recognize the institutions that meets the standards set in terms of quality of education and industry requirements. Centers of excellence should be set up to promote research activities. Steps should be taken to make sure that industry participates in major policy issues which are linked to concept to execution. Experts from the industry should be included in governing bodies of management institutions. Support should be given to academic researchers to commercialize their research findings by the way of interaction with firms to promote their products.