Dr. Sabyasachi Dasgupta teaches Marketing at Globsyn Business School – one of the best business management colleges in Kolkata. Dr. Dasgupta has commanded prominent positions in several corporate and academic giants for more than 14 years. He has taught at the Florida State University, USA, and has also been a visiting researcher at the University. Dr. Dasgupta, apart from presenting research papers in national and international conferences, also has a number of publications, including Scopus/ABDC/UGC Care, edited books, a number of cases, book chapters, and a book under his name. He has also received the distinguished Research Excellence Award 2020. Dr. Dasgupta heads the Research and Publications vertical of Globsyn Research Cell. He is also a scientific committee member of TIIKM – Colombo, a member of the American Marketing Association and Calcutta Management Association, and a reviewer in the Journal of Brand Management, the Journal of Creative Communication, and journals published by the American Marketing Association.
Few days back, there was an event, where a student was asked by a corporate: How much of “theoretical” learning in your B-school could you apply in your corporate internship? The student said, “Some we could.” However, the corporate panelist did not seem happy with the answer. She said, “Really, you could?” The student’s words fainted, probably trying to align with the perception of the corporate but to my understanding, this is an interesting insight into how the corporate world thinks of management institutions. The perception is straight-forward: it is the ‘We’ (Corporate) versus ‘They’ (Academic) and they don’t know about us and we may not want to know about them.
So, when I take the Marketing students of Globsyn to industry visits, they are asked, whether they have mugged up the Kotler marketing book and if by chance, a student nods the head for a yes, the student would be told, that in the corporate world, none of the bookish knowledge works and you need to relearn the corporate way of working which will be different from the academic way of studying. While the corporate needs MBA, they question the applicability of the knowledge with the pride tone of, “You know what, you don’t know us.” But deep down, there are other enquiry points: when the corporate says, “theoretical” knowledge, the next level question should be, where has the theory come from? When the question is “Could you apply?” the answer should be an obvious “Yes, of course” because the theory is usually derived from long term research generalized in multiple domain in practice and any deviation should be an exception from the adopted practices.
Academic world has no such complains. If an experienced student working for years in corporate wants to do MBA, they are not told, “You know what, you know nothing about us.” Rather they are told, whatever you have practiced in corporate, analyse how you can situate that in a model learnt in class. The critical point here is a non-discriminatory inclusive approach, not to unlearn, but to add on, not to relearn but to improvise and make work more effective than before. I feel the goal is to make work more effective and smartly executed rather than the ‘We versus They’ world. But the question still remains: why has the play of perception from corporate has been framed as irrelevant about the academic world?
My understanding suggests that perception of corporates have been primitive in terms of considering only the origin of management institutions rather than the trending flux of the transitory management teaching delivery approaches of today’s B-Schools. Most management schools if not all, are trying to immerse in the sea of corporatization and therefore their structural teaching methods have been obliterated with corporates coming and teaching, case studies and recent topics of debate and development of critical Socratic Method of thinking and deliberation. With corporate B-Schools like Globsyn, learning in class and applying it through activities on the campus becomes a live project for every event that students do at campus. Application of the knowledge of Marketing, Finance, HR, AI, Operations in different events help students to groom themselves for the world they will be living for many years.
Integration of corporate in academic curriculum and inputs of academic through consulting into the practical world of the corporate will make corporate ready individuals and not provide academicians into the corporate world. The play of perception needs a revision and awareness from the academic world to the corporate that corporatization has been an integral part of the MBA way of learning. Learning beyond the four walls of the classroom with pioneering institutions like Globsyn is the need of the hour. Like scientific enquiries into the laboratory setup, management education needs to revamp itself into practically oriented delivery and assessment patterns thereby making students possess corporate oriented mindsets to deliver the best in the industry. Corporatization of courses for functional subject areas like marketing, finance, HR, operations and analytics will bridge the gap of the corporate with the world of the academia and thereby will eliminate the ‘We versus They’ world into an ‘Us’ world of inclusivity of the corporate and the academia.
The direction of the management institutions should majorly concentrate on how at every junction of the curriculum, there is an inclusion of the corporate as well as academic frameworks so that there can be a robust learning system transforming management students to corporate professionals. The play of perceptions will align once the corporatization of management education takes place transforming mindsets from academic to corporate orientation. This transformation of students’ mindset from academia to corporate setup will build future resource pool and talent base, ready to take on corporate pressure with ease and dexterity.
Dr. Sabyasachi Dasgupta
Faculty – Marketing
Globsyn Business School