XL in what we do! (XLRI PGCBM)

XLRI campus trip for satellite students

2005-04-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

The college premises wore a festive look today though the students are on vacation. Students, pursuing the satellite programme, have added colour to the campus. They can be seen discussing issues over a cuppa, flipping through the books in library or getting a feel of the various addas in and around the campus.Students from over 30 cities including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Baroda, Chandigarh, Chennai and Calcutta are on a week’s visit to the campus.

...

The B-school, at present, offers two professionally designed courses — post-graduate certificate programme in business management (PGCBM) and post-graduate certificate in human resources management (PGCHRM) — for 14 months each. The two new intensive programmes are designed specially for working executives and fresh graduates.

Under the system, the education is provided via satellite from studios at XLRI’s campus and at Gurgaon. The system incorporates live broadcast video, two-way audio and data interactivity to enable the students to interact with the faculty live. Students take education in various learning centres spread across the country.

...

Read the complete article here.

XLRI: XLRI Student in a different kind of limelight ...

2005-02-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

Here's an XLRI student whoz making news of a different kind - for his involvement in development of kewl software.

EC website to 'read out' election result

Now your personal computer can read out election results in Hindi and English in a clear human voice with an Indian accent. This has been made possible through a special software — Vaachak — developed by city based software company, which employs latest speech technologies to convert the text into speech. The software is being used by the Election Commission (EC) for the first time in India during the counting process for the state elections of Bihar, Haryana and Jharkhand on February 27.

...

Vaachak was developed by Vinamra, an MBA degree holder from XLRI Jamshedpur, and his elder brother Vibhu, an IIT-Kanpur graduate in 2001 and since then they have been working to apply it in different fields and improvising its applications.

...

Read the complete article here.

Award for XLRI student

2005-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

A paper submitted by Kumar Anand, a student of XLRI Jamshedpur, has been adjudged the ‘Most thought-provoking paper’ at the 26th McMaster World Congress in Canada.

The paper on intellectual capital and innovation, is titled “Managing intellectual capital in growth organisations in the new knowledge economy”, suggests a model framework for organisations to manage intellectual capital, a release issued by XLRI said.

...

Read the complete article here.

Photos at XLRI for PGCBM03, 04 batches

2005-01-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

XLRI hosting IR meet

2005-01-20T23:27:00.000-08:00

Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI) Jamshedpur, which specialises in personnel management and industrial relations among other disciplines, is hosting the fifth National Industrial Relations Conference (NIRC 2005) beginning January 22.

Organised by Forum for Industrial Relations, the industrial relations society of XLRI, the theme of the convention is —New economy bandwagon. NIRC will highlight latest labour law developments in the BPO industry, their implications and how to leverage them to achieve harmonious relationships.

The conference is divided into sessions on issues like attrition management, union consciousness and labour laws, people relations, performance management and career management.

...

Complete story here.

Scope for improvement for XLRI PGCBM program ...

2004-12-06T05:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a list of open issues that was circulated by PGCBM03/04 batch for getting resolved.

Quite a few of them have been resolved. There are still however a few outstanding issues which need to be tackled to make the delivery and acceptance of the program more effective in the long run. These issues will be highlighted in a later post.

XLRI'S summer placement: the beat is back again in campus

2004-11-28T14:00:00.000-08:00

...
The brisk summer placement of XLRI’s batch of 2006 (189 students) for the two-month summer internship ahead (2005) also indicated that not only was the economy doing well but almost all sectors, including the IT/IT-enabled sector, banking & financial sector, the core sector, consulting firms etc, were vying for B-school candidates.
...

Read the complete story here.

De-Marketing in the Indian Automobile sector?

2004-11-24T02:07:00.000-08:00

Recent information says that Japanese car makers in India are deliberately keeping the volumes of production just that wee bit lower than the regular demand, so that customers have a waiting period of 3-6 weeks. This seems to be a strategy aimed at creating that 'want' in the customer before satisfying her desires!

See what is happening with Honda:

While Honda went into second shift production last November, squeezing out around 30,000 units at 106 units per day, its first serious expansion plans came only last week, when the company announced it would invest Rs 150 crore to take its capacity to 50,000 units per annum.

The only hitch is that the additional capacity will kick in only at the end of ’05. The result of this perennial short supply is that the demand for the City, perky to begin with, has actually jumped, making it the second best-selling model in the C-segment, despite its high price tag.
[from Economic Times]

And that's not all. Even Toyota Kirloskar Motors seems to be adopting this as their strategy.

... the Qualis sold a lot more, so TKM decided to squeeze out capacity from its existing infrastructure, upping it to 24,000 units and then 45,000 units with “incremental investment that worked out to one-fourth the original spend on capacity,” says KK Swamy, deputy MD, TKM.

The result: overheads and fixed costs got amortised, helping the company turn in a profit in four years.
[from Economic Times]

Marketers call this Demarketing: Use shorter supply either to create exclusivity or demand a premium or to extend demand for a longer period of time. This could also be followed by the Governments at times when they want to conserve natural resources.

Record summer placements at XLRI

2004-11-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

IBM has emerged as the biggest recruiter, picking up 13 candidates in the summer placements of the batch of 2006 of the premier B-school Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) here.

HLL and ICICI Bank followed closely to pick up 11 candidates each while BPCL managed to recruit nine candidates. The FMCG Sector - comprising Arvind Brands, Asian Paints, Cadbury, Castrol, Coke, Colgate Palmolive, Gillette, Godrej, HLL, ICI, ITC, Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser, Seagrams and Titan - was the top recruiter, picking up 54 students (30 per cent of the batch) while ITC and Gillette took 7 and 6 respectively. The Pharma industry was represented by Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Ranbaxy.

...

Read the complete article here.

"XLRI is not a place but an experience and an opportunity."

2004-11-22T18:37:00.000-08:00

THE need for a good work-life balance

If you ever want to see several happy people in one place, visit any leading B-school campus just after the placement season is over. What a sybaritic feeling. A business school stamp behind your name and a dream job ahead of you. The B-school grad has learnt all that is there to learn. Could it get any better?

Going back to my own first day on campus, we were told by the legendary Father McGrath, “XLRI is not a place but an experience and an opportunity.” Now we had been through the experience and were on the threshold of seeking opportunities to apply all the teachings that a business degree offers.

...

Read the complete article here.

XLRI to assist ICSE affiliated schools

2004-11-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

The Association of Schools for Indian School Certificate (ASISC) will tie up with the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) here from the next session for a total quality management (TQM) project in various ICSE-affiliated schools across India.

...

“Quality in education has become a deciding factor for the survival of any institution. A team from ASISC visited Turkey earlier this year where tie-ups with management institutions have yielded good results. ASISC has held preliminary talks with XLRI director Father Casimar Raj and will be holding detailed talks in this connection soon,” said Brother Thomas Thanical, ASISC secretary and principal of Cambridge School, Cuttack.

Initially, workshops will be conducted for different batches of academicians from ICSE-affiliated schools on a first-come-first-serve basis.

...

Read the complete article here.

Trade cannot flourish without ethical values: Premji speaks at XLRI ...

2004-11-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

Ethics in business is a step towards achieving a sustainable business and no trade can flourish without ethical values, Wipro chairman Azim Premji has said.

Speaking at a panel discussion on 'Ethics in Business is an Oxymoron', organised by Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) alumni association here last evening, Premji said neither any regulatory body nor any act can ensure ethics in business but it comes from within a company.

...

Read the complete article here.

XLRI alumni to come together to help XLRI enhance brand

2004-11-19T02:34:00.000-08:00

Former students of the premier B-school XLRI would soon gather here to discuss and evolve a plan to enhance the brand equity of their institution.

The programme starts with Homecoming 2004 slated for November 20-21 and then every year the two chapters of the XLRI Alumni Association at Jamshedpur and Bangalore would join hands in bringing the B-school’s alumni together.

...

Read the complete article @ http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=74554

XLRI Jamshedpur - Azim Premji to Inaugurate XLRI Centre For E-Business on Nov 20.

2004-11-19T02:32:00.000-08:00

Azim Premji to Inaugurate XLRI Centre For E-Business on Nov 20.

...

The Centre is designed to educate new generation managers, consultants and entrepreneurs, and to serve as a focal point of e-Business activities in India. Currently, Adrenalin, IBM, Microsoft Navison and Pramati have set up four Centres of Excellence as part of this Centre.

According to Dr Ashis Pani, Coordinator, Systems Area, XLRI, "The scope of the Centre is to foster a multidisciplinary educational and research programme, which is represented by the leading-edge thinkers and performers in the area. This is the beginning; a series of activities are being planned to increase the scope of the Centre and to make XLRI a unique hub for IT initiatives in the Country." The associate student body for this Centre is SOCRATES, the Systems Society of XLRI.

...

Read complete article @ http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=13613285.

XL Alumni Homecoming - 2004

2004-11-14T11:35:00.000-08:00

The XLRI Alumni Association - along with the XL Alumni Jamshedpur Chapter - has planned the XL Alumni Homecoming-04 on Novemebr 20-21, 2004 at XLRI Jamshepdur. The event is open to all alumni from all batches.

The broad schedule with Tea/Lunch/Dinner is:

Nov 20th:
1000-1100 - Registration
1130-1300 - Alumni Interaction to evolve agenda/action-points for theAlumni Association
1500-1700 - Interaction with current batch students. Theme: "What They Don't Teach at XLRI"
1800-2030 - Panel Discussion on "Ethics in Business is an Oxymoron"
Panelists: Mr Azim Premji, Mr Suhail Seth, Dr Dipankar Gupta (others to be confirmed)

Nov 21st:
0600 onwards Golf Tournament
1230 Prize Distribution and Lunch

This is a first attempt to create an regular Annual Event for all alumni, so join in to make it a success. For more details and acco, you can write to:

Mr Shahid Akhtar
akhtar@xlri.ac.in
Ph: 0657-2225506 x 214[O] / 619[R]
Cell: 098351 96784

Found this at XL Bangalore Blog.

National IT Seminar at XLRI ...

2004-11-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

The Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur is holding its sixth annual convention on information technology called the National IT Seminar (NITS), 2004 on November 6 and 7. The theme of the convention is “IT in industry verticals”. Through this, NITS aims to bring forward the latest developments in information technology, their implications for business and the ways in which businesses can leverage these technologies to achieve competitiveness.

...

Read the complete article here.

Reuiting India with Bharat

2004-10-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

XLRI is organising 'Conclave' where it's inviting opinion leaders of the country, cutting across industrial, economic and political spheres of activity to create 'thinking planks' for policy makers.

Here's hoping such high-profile brainstorming in a sylvan surroundings of XL will help bring out the best creative juices from these brains and help move towards a framework where the economic divide between the rich and poor is addressed through productivity measures rather than just another round of 'tax the tax payer, pay the tax taker' syndrome that nations often resort to!

Meeting minutes of 16-Oct-2004

2004-10-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

Meeting minutes from Lakshmi Narasimhan's mail.

Dear Xlers,
The chennai group of PGCBM& PGCHRM met as scheduled on 16th Oct'04.The minutes of the meeting are

1.A task force was formed with representations from each batch and this task force would coordinate with their respective batchmates. As of now the Task force would work on the Design of the brouchure.

2.It was felt that the profiles could be arranged based on functional expertise, a few of the sample brouchures were even looked into .A suggestion was given that there could be a few letters from the Industry experts, Faculty from XLRI about the programme which could be part of the brouchure.

The highlight of the meeting was the interaction with the Guest Mr.Kalidas HR Manager, Ramco Systems. and Mr.Ravi HR Consultant.

Mr.Kalidhas was sharing his view on the programme as a HR Person which gave us a few insights as to how we can go about promoting this programme, I am sure people who attended the meeting would agree with me on this.

As the session was very interactive it was felt that this could become a regular feature of our meetings in the future.I am giving below the people who are part of the Task Force

PGCBM 02 SridharSrinivasan, Lakshmi Narasimhan
PGCBM03 Srdhar Renganathan, Sudhir
PGCBM04 Sidharth, Sivaramakrishnan
PGCHRM NandaKumar

Its a coincidence that five of the seven people have their names starting with the letter S maybe thats Synergy???

I take this opportunity to request somebody from batch 01,05,06 to volunteer, there were a few people who responded from 05 & 06 I request them to come forward so that it would be easy to coordinate.

I am sure all of you would have recd my mail about the programme from IIMB. This emphasizes the conviction that the future is going to be for these programmes, lets be the torch bearers and establish it well with the corporates, rest would simply follow.We are also coordinating with people in other centres across the country on how we can work together on this common objective.

You can send in your valuable suggestion.

XLRI to host seminar on IT verticals on November 6-7

2004-10-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

XLRI, the premier B-School, is to hold the 6th annual convention on information technology on November 6-7. ...

Full story at http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=72153

IIMC, IIMB enter the satellite based management education arena with HECL Direcway

2004-10-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

IIMC (IIM Kolkotta) and IIMB have been the latest entrants in providing satellite based business management education programs via Direcway HECL.

Here are some articles on the latest IIMB program

IIM, Hughes put business school on the web
http://tinyurl.com/5wrpp (Business Standard)

IIM-B logs onto interactive mode
http://tinyurl.com/5q595 (Economic Times)

More details on the IIMB program should probably be coming out shortly.

Alumni, Students meeting

2004-10-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

GLN sent an update last evening about the meeting some of the alumni and students had on Monday evening to discuss the next steps (after the previous meeting).

The next meeting is on 16th October at Hotel Raj Palace, T.Nagar (may well turn out to be the regular haunt of PGCBMs) and we need to confirm to him latest by 12th October, so that he can make the arrangements. This post is especially for those who missed the last time around - people from batches 1, 5 and 6. Folks, these meetings are pretty useful and you get to network with a wide variety of junta here. C'mon, let's make it fun this time around.

Some of the useful stuff that have been done by now are:
1. A soft copy of a brochure containing the students' profile has been prepared and is under review.
2. Some contacts have been identified, through social networks, to work with us on the brochure and the promotional efforts are on.
3. We're also trying to tie up faculty visits to Chennai so that we could arrange some interactions with them next time onwards. Prof. Kakani will let us know about the faculty movements closer to Chennai.

Am waiting to meet up with the entire group on 16th October. For all the activities and fruits of networking, we pay just Rs. 150/- towards the costs for arranging the meeting at this nice hotel, Raj Palace, and with some generous sandwiches and veg rolls to boot!!

Sports : XLRI beats IIM-C

2004-10-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

Sports on campus

The sports meet between the Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur, and the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, was held at XLRI on September 25 and 26.

The only sporting event of its kind in the Indian B-school circuit saw XLRI beat IIM-C by a 13-8 margin. Atul Mehta of IIM-C and Vikram Dani of XLRI walked away with the best sportsperson awards.

More details here.

Wow, Google has acknowledged us !!

2004-10-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

For a search on "pgcbm" - Google now lists this blog as an entry in the first page of results (as of today), standing at item 10 !!

That's great !!

Next meeting by the Chennai group

2004-09-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

GLN and I were talking last weekend and he was mentioning that some of us are meeting on 4th October - next Monday. He's not confirmed the venue.

Some of the items to discuss in this meeting are:

Sridhar (of Boardex) will be updating us about the printing and material for brochure
Sudhir (from Nungambakkam) may want to join on behalf of Nungambakkam centre for an update
We will be discussing on ways to approach corporates to promote the utility and benefits of PGCBM program

GLN: maybe you can add some to this.

More XLRI Blogs ...

2004-09-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

XLRI Alumni : Making News

XLBang !! XLRI Alumni in Bangalore

Prof Pitabas Mohanty's Blog

The Spring Of '66

2004-09-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

The earliest IIM batchers recount what a management course meant in the 1960s.

...

Roy sat for the seven-hour entrance examination in 1963 despite his family insisting that he join the ias, a dream nurtured by most middle-class parents of the time. But he got attracted to IIM after seeing an advertisement stating its association with several US B-schools. Forty years later, he has no regrets. Says Roy: "If I hadn't been there, I would be a different person. I owe everything to IIM-C." After graduating in 1966, he joined the DCM group in Delhi. However, he couldn't adjust to the prevailing corporate culture in family-owned companies and quit in 1969. He then got into academics, joining the Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI) in Jamshedpur as assistant professor, where he stayed till 1980 before joining IIM-C. At 59, and close to retirement, Roy feels he has enough expertise to forward the cause of management education in India.

...

What do recruiters want, and what do they get? Not the team man, anyway.

2004-09-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

Source: TICKET In A Bottle

...

The syllabi of several business schools—including the IIMs of Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta, MDI, XLRI, Jamnalal Bajaj and S.P. Jain—were analysed and found wanting. A large part of the study was conducted by talking to recruiters—108 from 80 firms, Indian and mnc. Besides, 334 alumni of the top B-schools, all of whom graduated 2-5 years ago, were included in the survey.

What emerges is that there is a considerable chasm between what recruiters look for and what B-schools provide. Many recruiters complained that graduates were "individualists and often prefer working alone", did not know "how to work with people", were highly competitive but wanted "all credit for themselves". Going by alumni inputs, the critical challenges faced after joining industry are managing superiors, delivering timely results, leading a team, motivating people, managing conflicts etc. Then there are company-specific requirements. For instance, a firm going in for an m&a wants strong cross-cultural as well as change management competencies. These too were found lacking.

...

Why will a Satellite broadband-based Exec MBA succeed?

2004-09-13T01:40:00.000-07:00

I will not dwell on the various reasons but will just put down the reasons for why I think an Exec MBA should and will succeed in the medium term. You can exercise your grey cells to imagine the scenario due to these reasons :-)

1. Importance of continuing to earn money - most people can't take a break for 2 years from their work life. So, they won't want to join courses where they have to stay in the campus for 2 years.

2. Latency time between learning and application - if the working exec takes up exec MBA, the time taken between the time of learning a new concept / topic to that of applying it and seeing it in operation is a function of 1. the exec's interest in the concept, 2. the exec's knowledge of the concept, 3. the partial/full support for trying out new stuff at his/her workplace. If we talk of a resident program, there's a minimum overhead of 3M and a max of 1.5 years to this latency time before they can apply these management concepts and see things for themselves. Sure enough, for many, this may involve going back to the basics once at the workplace.

3. Growth of Technology and comfort with Virtual Communication - more and more people are very comfortable discussing important issues for prolonged hours through virtual media like 'chat', 'emails', 'forum', 'mobile phone' etc. Given this, there's absolutely no reason why people can't get comfortable with satellite-broadband based delivery mechanism. In fact, there's a different onus on the teacher - to keep the class engaged and aother on the student - the freedom to run the train of thoughts as (s)he wants. This way, it's more of a publish-subscribe medium of communication. This is favourable for working execs in the long run.

4. Disproportionate growth of talent to growth of teachers - Surely the number of people wanting / aspiring to become MBAs is growing at a far greater number than the number of teachers required (proportionally). Given this, two things can happen - the standard of teaching can come down as the benchmarks for teachers may come down to satisfy the demand, an alternative route may be found whereby the same teacher's effort may reach a larger audience, albeit being unobtrusive and strenuous on the teacher. Satellite-broadband based deliver is one such medium that can help maintain the standard of the teachers while reach a wider audience.

XL has a good set of visionaries who are able to see the marriage between technology and education in a very beneficial way. That's the reason I'm here in this fora.

Well, that's about the first set of reasons I have. Will blog about more later.

Executive education in Business management

2004-09-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

In the last two years we have seen many institutes offering the Long duration (12-18months ) programmes for the working executives who cannot afford to leave their jobs and go for a full time MBA. Few of the early entrants were IIMK,XLRI Jamshedpur, MAHE, NMIMS.Now we have one of the top 5 B-schools in the country IIMC offering a similar programme called Executive programme in Business management(EPBM).The key to this course is the opportunity to interact with the regular faculty of these premier Institutes and immediate implementation of the concept learnt by them in the class room and have a practical experience as well.

Also since this course has people who have diverse profiles there is an opportunity for the students to have exposure to the different perspectives on any given issue.Thanx to this initiative the number of managers who would have access to quality inputs is going to be on the rise.

Why West? India, China have each other

2004-09-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

It's already being hailed as a formidable Sino-Indian front in management education. Realising that management education in Asia has made rapid strides in the last few decades and does not rely entirely on Western theories and solutions, the two leading IIMs of Ahmedabad and Bangalore and the Guanghua School of Management under Peking University are coming together to provide a leadership to management education in both South Asia and Asia-Pacific region.

Read the complete story @ http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=54626

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That ain't exactly XLRI material - but what the heck, it's about the course of management studies in India, right ?!

XLRI News coverage ...

2004-09-08T07:42:00.000-07:00

Speaker from XLRI - Prof. T A S Vijayaraghavan, doctorate in Supply Chain management

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INTERNATIONAL retail gurus to speak at 'Successful Brands ...
AME Info - United Arab Emirates

Retail Technology Forum (RTF) a platform deigned for the retail industry, to promote use of latest technologies for accelerated retail growth, is organising a one day International event 'Successful Brands Successful People,' Emerging Technologies for the CEO on 27th September 2004 at Fairmont Hotel, Dubai.

The event will feature top Retail Gurus of various specialities from across the world. Some of the featured speakers include - Mr. J J. Strub, A retail guru & author from USA, a specialist in manufacturing and enterprise-wide software; Mr. Johan Pellicaan, Managing Director, ProClarity International, Netherlands, a specialist on retail intelligence; Prof. T A S Vijayaraghavan – XLRI, Jamshedpur, India, a doctorate in Supply Chain management; amongst other international &
local speakers.

Complete article @ http://www.ameinfo.com/news/Detailed/44947.html

Introduction to 'XL in what we do'!

2004-09-06T23:21:00.000-07:00

This is a public blog to share ideas and thoughts on how the PGCBM alumni in Chennai can come together for common and useful purposes. Few of us who are actively coordinating the tasks are members here and will be posting our views and the tasks we take up. Here's looking forward to an interesting chain of thought as well as useful outcome from this blog.