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COVER STORY Business and the B-School The only B these institutes like is the one before their names. But even the most generous examiner would tremble to hand out straight As to the country's B-for-Business Schools. From an esoteric discipline in the engineering-studies-driven 1970s, through a grudging admission to the pedagogical mainstream in the 1980s, to its current status of the hottest post-graduation course in the post-liberalisation 1990s, management education in India has always had two distinct constituents of customers: the young job-seeker eager to strengthen her skill-set as well as her curriculum vitae. And corporate recruiters hungry for fresh managerial talent, pre-programmed with the knowledge and abilities that managers need. For both, the only shopping mall are India's B-schools. That makes the task of today's management institute uncannily similar to that of business. Like any corporation, the B-school must take raw material -- the fresh student -- use its processes to add value to that input, and produce an output -- the Master of Business Administration, or MBA -- which is designed to meet the needs of its customer, the recruiter. It must compete for the attention of that customer with myriad other institutes engaged in the same business. And for that, it must develop a sustainable competitive advantage, built around unique core competencies, to delight the customer. Pardon the jargon, but the truth is that managing a business school is, shorn of the trappings, a question of managing a business. The customer, therefore, needs a helping hand. The corporate, to shortlist the B-schools most likely to offer the managerial talent it needs. And the prospective MBA, to home in on the institute that can provide him with the nature and quality of the learning he wants. It was to create a handbook for the customer of the B-school to refer to that BT teamed up with the Hyderabad-based organisation design and strategic management consultancy, Consortium Of Strategic Management & Organisation Development (COSMODE), to create, and present, the definitive ranking of the country's B-schools. And to back the ratings with the information that both students and recruiters need, BT prepared factual directories covering the country's business management courses -- as well as B-schools in the US and Europe, since the Indian student now shops globally for his management courses. Heading the first edition of The BT Best B-Schools, resplendent in its august academic glory, is the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, a.k.a. IIM-A, leading the field in 10 of the 15 parameters used to rate the management institutes. Just how strong is its grip on the leadership position? Its reputation can conceal neither its shortcomings, nor the fact that its rivals, led by the other IIMs, are fast catching up with it, even as new B-schools pose a potent threat. As the landscape of management education changes, The BT Best B-Schools, to be conducted once every two years, will continue to track the transition at the top, and down-the-line, for the benefit of the customers of the B-school.
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