B-schools including IIMs reviewing human resource curriculum af

• Posted by Sindhuri G August 29, 2012 - Filed in Business - 2,029 views

  MUMBAI: A month after labour unrest and violence erupted at Maruti Suzuki's Manesar factory, the reverberations are now being felt at some of India's top business schools. Many of them, including at least two IIMs, are reviewing their human resource curriculum to re-include industrial relations. Companies are also pushing B-schools to rebalance human resource (HR) courses to ensure that industrial relations (IR) skills aren't ignored.
  
  Post-liberalisation, with the growth of the services sector over the past two decades, HR management issues such as employee engagement, talent acquisition, compensation and organisation development have edged out 'personnel management' in B-school curriculum. Industrial relations gave way to strategic HR. But clashes at Maruti Suzuki are forcing a rethink.
  
  IIM-Ranchi, the only IIM that has a dedicated two-year programme on HR management, will soon roll out a full-time course on industrial relations, apart from increasing the IR component in its HRM course.
  
  IIM-Ahmedabad, which scrapped a planned executive course on industrial relations a couple of years ago due to lack of corporate nominations, is holding such a programme in October, indicating renewed demand.
  
  "Everyone is concerned about the situation. Suddenly, IR is becoming important, particularly in manufacturing, though it could spread to the services sector as well," says MJ Xavier, director, IIM-Ranchi. The institute is organising a two-day conclave on September 21-22, where the Manesar turmoil will be the major theme.
  
  NEED TO LOOK INTO LABOUR RELATIONS
  
  "Business schools should refocus their curriculum. The events at Manesar were due to various specific causes but point out a need to look into labour relations and how we can unleash the potential of workers to create a competitive, fair and inclusive workplace," says Rajeev Dubey, president (group HR, corporate services and after-market), Mahindra & Mahindra.
  
  The curriculum of B-schools was one of the issues discussed when industry bodies met recently to explore the way forward to create conditions where workplaces can be free from violence. "We have B-schools curriculum on our radar. We will see how to bring it up with the institutes," says Dubey.
  
  Ninety-nine per cent of summer internships are projects on strategic HR, says A Sudhakar, HR head of Dabur India, pointing to the inadequate weightage given to personnel management. "We are talking to Symbiosis in Pune to start orienting students to IR issues. We have asked them to ensure that each student goes through at least one practical factory situation," he adds.
  
  IIM-Calcutta is also closely tracking the events at Manesar. "We need to rebalance the emphasis on IR...While some faculty is following the events at Maruti's Manesar factory, we need to study this more before taking a call on realignment of our syllabus," says Amit Dhiman, assistant professor of HR at the institute.
  
  Top management institutes such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and XLRI, Jamshedpur - which are among the handful in the country that offer a range of compulsory courses on personnel management, IR and labour law - are also tracking the incidents to incorporate the emerging trends while revising their curriculum. "Our business schools should lay emphasis on industrial relations," says Bino Paul, professor of labour economics and chairperson of the Centre for HRM and Labour Relations at TISS.
  
  ISB is exploring the need for a separate programme on IR. "This is a hot topic," says Deepak Chandra, deputy dean, ISB. "It will be discussed in our quarterly meeting on product ideas."
  
  "IR courses in top B-schools in core programmes and executive programmes had almost disappeared post-liberalisation in the absence of takers," says Biju Varkkey, professor of personnel and industrial relations at IIM-A. "Only a limited number of text books on IR have been published in the past few years, whereas the number of books on HRM has been phenomenal," he adds.
  
  Academicians such as Paul from TISS feel the conflict is not confined to the manufacturing sector and could soon explode in the services sector too. This is where the education institutions have a crucial role to play in training future managers and help create a communication channel between the white-collared and blue-collared employees, he says.
  
  "Manesar is not an isolated example," says Varkkey of IIM-A. "There has been a trend in these violent incidents over the past couple of years... the contractualisation of labour force is pushing people to periphery." He goes on to argue that both trade unions and managements have lost the people skills needed to deal with this.
  
  "Years ago, working in a manufacturing set-up was one of the most fundamental experiences of an HR manager; you did not get a ticket to rise otherwise," says Yashwant Mahadik, VP (HR), Indian subcontinent, Philips. "But for youngsters now, working in corporate offices is far more attractive. If things continue like this, we will lose our skills and competence in that area," he adds.
  
  Only a few companies such as HUL, ITC and Philips emphasise on building IR strengths in their management trainees. "It is made attractive for them (trainees), and that's what needs to be done," he says, adding companies that don't focus properly on IR are more susceptible to agitation and low productivity.
  
  Manesar has provoked Indian academia to don their thinking caps to bring back the lost focus on IR, and to try and wipe out the dichotomy between the white-collared and blue-collared workforce.