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Indian
Business Management Students' Perceptions About and Preferences
for the Business Communication Course Curriculum --
Shailja
Agarwal
This
study assessed the orientation and perceived utility of
business communication syllabus amongst Indian students
of business administration. Four reasons motivated the study:
i) Very little work on the perception of Indian students
regarding business communication curriculum has been undertaken;
ii) In the fast globalizing Indian corporate sector with
increasing presence of MNCs, effective communication skills
have assumed a never before importance in any successful
manager's skill set; iii) For a non-native English speaking
country like India, English is still a foreign and acquired
language and hence communication skills in English do not
come naturally to Indian students; and iv) Despite all B-school
students being intensely aware that communication skills
are crucial to their getting and sustaining a job and also
of their lack of proficiency in it, most business communication
teachers realize the difficulty of getting students to take
business communication course seriously (McPherson, 1998).
©2008
The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Celebrating
Change: The New Paradigm of Organizational Development --
Rachna
Sharma
Change
is correlated with pain. As any Organizational Development
(OD) consultant will agree, change in organizations is met
with general apathy at best and stiff resistance at worst.
As the old adage goes, No pain, no gain. How can we then
celebrate change? How can we make change a desired future
for our people and organizations? Appreciative Inquiry (AI)
is the change paradigm that makes this a possibility. Appreciative
Inquiry is a process to bring about painless change. It
is both a change management method as well as a philosophy
of change. It is the most widely accepted and fastest growing
change management paradigm for organizations, communities
and even nations. This article compares AI with conventional
models of change and proposes how through a dialogue involving
all concerned, a desired future can be achieved. It explains
the AI principles and the 4-D model for positive change.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Holy
Anger: A Soft Touch to the Hard World --
Samta
Jain, Namrata Mehta and Jyotika Saxena
Anger
is among the strongest of all emotions but viewed negatively
most of the time by most of the people. Like all other emotions,
exhibiting anger is very important for people. To understand
anger, approach to it, mode of expression and degree of
anger are to be worked effectively as individuals and as
part of groups and teams. Sometimes there are situations
where anger is required and the managers these days are
faking anger and anger management techniques to balance
anger. Anger is also an important component of emotional
intelligence. In the work place, proper handling of emotions
and converting the negative emotions into positive emotions
are required, and very essential to make people work to
their potential. If anger is not channelized positively,
it can trigger disasters for the system.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
An
Empirical Study on Students' Soft Skills Inventory Test:
Reliability and Non-Parametric Analysis --
S
A Vasantha Kumara and C Sahasranam
IT
and other corporates and some recruitment agencies recruit
students of engineering for various positions at the end
of their pre-final year. Along with the academic grades,
these skills assessment companies and campus recruitment
agencies measure candidates' creativity, innovation and
soft skills during their multiple hurdle selection process.
The measurement and recording of students' creative and
innovative talents along with soft skills, is the responsibilty
of the institute. This paper is an empirical study on students'
soft skills such as creativity, research orientation, ability
to work with numbers and text, ability to manage people,
organizing and marketing capabilities.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
The
Future of Business Communication --
Suparna
Dutta and Soma Sircar
Communication
has always assumed paramount importance in our lives. However,
in recent times, we have become more conscious and aware
of the intricacies of personal and professional communication.
This is more so in business, as the main objective of a
professional is to bring the deliverables on table. The
best way to do this is to communicate well in business.
Business communication is thus, assuming hitherto unknown
proportions and dimensions and this trend is expected to
continue. As the world keeps on shrinking into a global
village, the impact of culture, media and technology on
business communication needs to be given its due significance
and researched further.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Common
Artifacts Contributing to Organizational Culture: An Indian
Perspective --
R
Jagajeevan and Priya Shanmugam
A
good organizational culture not only provides direction
to the organization but also to the individual members of
the organization. But many people do not have an idea about
it. Though they cannot define it, many recognize it. In
this paper, we tried to bring out an understanding of organizational
culture, as the way things happen in and around organizations.
Organizational culture also helps in bringing change. This
paper focuses on common artifacts in different sectors that
form organizational culture.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Personality
Profiling of Introverts and Extroverts --
N
Vijaya Lakshmi
The
present study was conducted on a sample size of 325 students
who were pursuing MBA Program in a premier B-School in India.
Cattell's 16 personality factor (16PF) questionnaire was
used to study the differences in the personality factors
of introverts and extroverts with respect to three global
factor measures, viz., anxiety, tough poise and independence.The
hypotheses formulated were that, introverts were more on
high anxiety, show tender-minded emotionality and were more
subdued as compared to extroverts. Logistic regression was
carried out and the results supported the hypotheses. The
implications of these findings are discussed for the benefit
of career counselors and soft skills trainers.
©
2008 The Icfai University Press. All Rights Reserved.
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