Hello B-Schools! This is your Wake Up Call !!

The World Development Report 2019, of which a draft has now been placed in the public domain, is focussing on ‘The Changing Nature of Work’ and contains some uncomfortable truths.

It is true that in some advanced economies and middle-income countries manufacturing jobs are being lost to automation. Workers involved in routine tasks that can be “coded to machine language” are most vulnerable to replacement. However, technology provides opportunities to create new jobs, increase productivity, and deliver effective public services. Through innovation, technology generates new sectors or tasks. The forces of automation and innovation will shape employment in the future.

Innovations are changing the basis of competition in many markets. This is also changing the business-critical roles — jobs which enable businesses to be differentiated for their competitors and deliver success while executing the business strategy. Businesses will be forced to rethink the talent they will need to play these business-critical roles in the future.

Investing in human capital is the priority to make the most of this evolving economic opportunity. Three types of skills are increasingly important in labour markets: advanced cognitive skills (such as complex problem-solving), socio-behavioural skills (like team work), and skill-combinations that are predictive of adaptability (e.g., reasoning, self-efficacy). Building these skills requires strong human capital foundations and lifelong learning.

For business schools, the implications are huge. If these changes are to take place in less than a decade, the challenge for business schools is to develop courses, programmes and initiatives that will align with business needs. Following decades of enthusiastic support, business schools now find themselves under attack for being irrelevant, inconsequential or of little real value in developing business leaders who can make a difference.

India’s complex economic environment, rising social expectations and fluctuating ideological shifts in the political space coupled with changes in student demands, technological advances and a cumbersome regulatory environment, and it’s clear that business schools are hard-pressed to structure a coherent formula to address all of this. Understanding the role of artificial intelligence in the future of work and creating flexible options for students with careers is not easy and makes the task of developing courses that adapt for these rapidly changing demands is daunting.

By positioning themselves as a partner for inclusive development, business schools could enhance their social licence among citizens and societal stakeholders. The business community views some of the business schools, unfortunately only a few of them, as beacons of excellence. A concentrated, coherent and thoughtful engagement with society and the business community could yield favourable results. Other challenge includes dealing with the “commoditisation” of management education through “Micro-specialised-Masters” supposedly designed to address “specific” needs. Unless business schools manage costs in a leaner way, adopt more efficient delivery models, examine educational-tourism as a potentially lucrative revenue stream and form strategic collaborations, they will find it harder to fashion a winning strategy to address the long-term needs of business.

Expect the ‘pecking-order’ and the face of business schools to look very different indeed by 2028.

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Nu-Liberalism?

Through social media, I am getting an opportunity to understand new liberalism from some old friends.

They want me to be secular on their terms, so put my religion and Gods in the pit. They want me to accept the open market system but simultaneously support the political game of reservation in the name of social justice. They want me to consider regulation and globalization as toxic and to refrain from becoming a "bhakt", though it is quite alright if I am corrupt. Their leaders from nobility are equal to gods, and the Gods commit no wrong ever. They want me to accept their most revered "gods" as my Gods.

I think the definition of liberalism is that neither should a rule be set for others nor should they be otherwise pressured to follow any specific-rule. If I define rules for you, if I define good conduct and acceptable behaviour, then I am not a liberal.

Maybe my friends are more virtuous, more righteous than me, and even more sacred, but if they were to decide how I think and behave, for sure, they are not liberals.

I may please be forgiven for such naive understanding.

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Stop Sex-Based Segregation, If You Wish to Curb Gender Discrimination

That sex-based segregation persists in nearly all walks of life; careers and sports being no exception; is a fact and reality of life. Whether it stands up to legal scrutiny is another matter. Covert sex classification, though ostensibly beneficial to women, will turn out to be a pretext for sex-based discrimination. Public policy should not be involved in dividing people on the basis of some sort of classification—like race or religion or, when it comes to sports, either sex or gender.

To begin with – any All-female or All-Male grouping is perverse; meaning thereby; that any only-girls or only-boys school is the sowing field for the crop of discrimination. Same applies to queues at the school assemblies, ticket-windows or ‘Darshan’ in temples. Same is equally applicable to seating of the audience at the ‘Pravachan’ or the ‘Prarthana Sabha’ held in the memory of a departed soul.   

One option that actually would survive legal scrutiny would be having a girl’s queue/team, a boy’s queue/team, and a mixed queue/team. It would be interesting to see what happens because let us not completely invalidate the value of girls’ spaces and boys’ spaces.

Sports are a relatively small set of situations in which we not only allow but assume that it’s okay for the society to be involved in segregating on the basis of sex; it’s one of the few areas where sex segregation is tolerated, no matter what the sport. When we think of football, it is the guys on the field. When we think of basketball, it is the guys on the court.

The rationale has always been, “Men are bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic than women, and so of course we can’t have men and women playing sports together.” One of the issues with sex segregation, especially when it’s not justified by any social interest is that it enables a different version of the sport for men and women. Look at how different men’s gymnastics is from women’s.

There are some issues that are best described as logistical. Some of these concerns are totally reasonable, but most of them can be worked around—things like, “Well what are we going to do about changing rooms or in wrestling?” or “Oh my god, isn’t there going to be a lot of sexual harassment if boys are wrestling girls at the high-school level?” or “Girls don’t want to participate in sports with boys.” But how much of that is actually not about not wanting to play with boys, but not wanting to play with people who don’t treat them as an equal and part of their team?

On one hand, girls’ playing along with boys is not alright because “it would diminish the level of play,” while on the other, there is this desire to protect women because maybe their bodies aren’t meant to compete at this level. It is true that most women are not going to be competitive for the NBA because of the height of the people involved and the height of the basket. But there may be ways of creating situations where most of the people in some division are men and most of the people in other divisions are women, but sex or gender is not the basis for the division. There’s still a way of separating people into groups where they can compete against people who are physiologically similar to them in relevant ways, right? Maybe the more relevant characters could be height, weight, or some combination of those two things. So for example, in wrestling, perhaps weight classes could do all the work.

Unless there is a real demonstration that sex segregation in sports serves an important social interest, there is no reason to continue with it. We may not be able to change this segregation at all levels at which the sport is being played but there might be no valid reasons for such groupings and exclusions, for example, in schools.

AGGREGATE around commonalities; don’t segregate on basis of gender; for segregation prepares the field for sowing the seeds of DISCRIMINATION!

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