Industry and Academia Interface:
What is missing?
Valedictory address by T V Rao of the NHRDN Jaipur and Fortis on 8th
March, 2014
I thank
Prof. Bapna, NHRDN Jaipur chapter and
Fortis Health care for inviting me to this conference. I have five points to
make for your consideration. However t before I make them for your
consideration I would like to say that the National HRD Network itself and its
formation is an outcome of Academic-Industry Interface. The NHRDN was started
by academics from IIMA and XLRI with support from industry. The very objective
is to promote the HRD movement in the country which was conceptualised at IIMA
and Larsen and Toubro found that it makes business sense and provided a
platform to implement. The XLRI Centre for HRD, L&T and IIMA were
instrumental in its foundation and the body was registered at IIMA with support
from Industry leaders. In the initial years it was managed by academics
from IIMA, XLRI and IIHMR etc. and subsequently HR leaders from industry. The
NHRDN is itself an example of collaboration and interface. Academics are
associated in getting papers and publishing them. The papers themselves are largely
written by practitioners. In the last three conferences special attention has
been paid to involve student community through special session and faculty by
sponsored research. Academic Institutes collaborate in a big way in all these
conferences. NHRDN has also started an academic wing called the Academy of HRD which
is largely managed by Academics. The Academy used to conduct a distance
education program for practitioners in HR to fill the gaps and subsequently started
a Fellow program in collaboration with XLRI. The program has graduated around
25 Doctoral level fellows and they are all serving various institutions as well
as industry as academics and practitioners.
There is
always scope to do more. I like to make
five points for your consideration for enhancing the Industry academic
interface taking HR profession as an example. These points are based on the assumption
that there is always scope to do a lot more and are intended to help the same.
1. In professional courses the curricula
should be prepared jointly by academia and practitioners. It is true for all
profession like Engineering and technology, management, social work, education,
law. Medicine and all fields.
2. All Institutions of higher education
should undertake self renewal exercises preferably facilitated by practitioners
with self renewal skills
3. Practitioners should encourage
internships summer, winter and project work etc. and fund them to the extent possible
to ensure preparation of quality
4. Universities and colleges should
encourage and facilitate extension work or consultancy and research work
collaboratively with the organizations.
5. Practitioners should update
themselves periodically by visiting Institutions of higher learning and
learning the recent developments in theory and try to implement the same and
share their implementation experiences.
Point 1:
Need for Practitioners’ involvement in curricula: Today standards of education
are pathetic. My own experience of using fresh students indicates that they are
nowhere near what we used to get prepared forty years ago. Unfortunately very
one is working independently. The NHRDN, CII and XLRI are a case in point.
Several years ago NHRDN held a number of seminars and conferences that
generated competency list for HR. It is published in NHRDN books. The AHRD
developed model curricula and passed it on to AIMA, XLRI, SCMHRD and a few
other institutions. AHRD itself organised a few programs. Ten years alter the
memory is lost as there have been changes in office bearers. They developed a
competency model for HR professionals. It is good model but perhaps somewhat ignored its own previous work and focussed more
on HR competencies for IT professionals. However they consulted global knowledge
forums. It is yet to find its way to academic institutions including XLRI
itself and other institutions that collaborated with it from CII or NHRDN. Today when I look for competent graduates in
HRM the scene is disappointing. If I require 100 basic concepts sand 50 skills
for handling HR function I hardly find 10% to 20 % of it in the best of the
institutions. See appendix for the competencies of HR people and the academic
preparation required. So it is high time that academic institutions involve
practitioners in preparing academic curricula. This is true not only for HR but
for all professions. The HR Compass of NHRDN or other models like the one
evolved by us at TVRLS should find their way to academics institution. I use
for example the model of HR competencies (see appendix) in the courses of
Talent Management or Intellectual capital and HRD Score card at Institutions
like IIMA.
Point 2:
Here I like to draw my experiences from project IMPACT sponsored by the
Department of Electronics, Govt. Of India, World Bank and the Swiss Agency for
Development Cooperation. Five years after they have given liberal grants for
upgrading electronics and computer education in Colleges of Engineering and
technology and polytechnics with the help of IISc, IIT Delhi and Mumbai they
found not all institutions are similarly disposed to using of the innovations. TVRLS
conducted a study which indicated that adoption of innovations in higher
education depended on a number of factors and significant among them is the
“Institutional Environment” including its leadership, vision, and faculty
processes etc. A tool was developed to bench mark the practices. It is now
available for all (see the working paper series of IIMA, 2014 by T. V. Rao and Siddhartha
Saxena on Institutional Environment). These tools can be used by Institutions in the
same city or same management and bench mark and improve themselves. Bodies like
NHRDN could facilitate such renewal exercises. For example I recommend all
Institutions from and around Jaipur to form a
consortium and have small group that can modify this tool, administer this tool on themselves, benchmark
with each other and keep improving themselves. One of the parts of the tool
deals with use of practitioners in academics. This effort can also be
facilitated by Jaipur HRD Network. It will make a good beginning.
Point 3:
BPCL changed its Performance appraisal system a few years. While they paid
large sums of money to train about 30 change agents with expertise from the
west, for bringing change in their appraisal system it was initiated with a
summer trainee from one of the local Management schools. Many institutions have
productively used management schools and summer trainees for getting their work
done and also to provide learning ground for students and faculty. In XLRI
around the time NHRD was conceived, we trained tens summer trainees and sent
them out across the country to document the HR practices. It later became a
bench marking study and most of the students are HR leaders to day. These
experiences indicate a productive way the summer training and industry projects
could be sued. Rather than spending enormous amounts of money and getting big
and expensive consultants to do work a lot of it could be done n by local
management schools.
Point 4: To
do these we need competent faculty. It is here that Universities and institutions
should have specific grants for faculty development and encourage faculty to
offer consultancy and research services to practitioner organizations. They
also should encourage outside faculty and practitioners to teach in the
schools. The teaching by practitioners makes the education more relevant and
also less expensive. Most practitioners are normally happy to teach and are
content with small honoraria.
National
Professors Scheme of NHRDN:
In order to
strengthen the academic inputs and make them more relevant to industry needs
and also make available Prominent Professors and HR leaders to teach and share
their experiences the NHRDN has started a National Professors scheme. In this
scheme the NHRDN identified prominent professors and thought leaders both from
academia and industry. Professors like Keith D’Souza and G. P. Rao, Dr. PVR
Murthy, Dr. Aquil Busrai, Dwarkanath are accomplished professionals and thought
leaders and have both industry and academic experience. They have all around 15
of them have agreed to teach in management schools that are interested in
strengthening their student preparation. All that they need is an invitation.
The academic institution should prepare half credit courses of 15 sessions
across three days or so and allocate their won faculty to teach a part of the
course. NHRDN could even think of certification of the students in the course. Jaipur
Network can make a consortium of Schools and organises such course for a large
number of students so as to maximise the use of the time of such thought
leaders. The next point therefore I like
to make is :
Point 5: The
National Professors’ Scheme stated by NHRDN serves many of the above purposes
if the Institution takes the same seriously and works out a collaborative
relationship with NHRDN and the visiting practitioner faculty. Many
practitioners take pride in being called a professor or Doctor. The doors of Universities
should be opened up for practitioners to register for Ph Ds. NHRDN and ISTD
offer some good examples of the same. Several of their members are not Ph. D.s
and some are teaching in B schools after they retire. On the other hand Academic Institutions
should become more open and liberal in encouraging those who like to do their
Ph. D.s/ a large number of professionals today from industry re interested in doing
their Doctorates. We have excellent examples in NHRDN itself. Three of the
former Presidents got their Ph. D.s at a later part of their work life. The AHRD stated a Doctoral level fellow
program of AHRD continues. When I was on the Planning Board of Indira Gandhi
Open University in mid eighties I proposed to Dr. Ramie Reddy the need for
starting a Doctoral Program for practitioners using a list of about 100
Management Professors across the country as guides. I gave the x example of the doctoral
candidates from IIMA who get access to data from industry with contacts of
professors like Udai Pareek, S K Bhattacharya etc. I mentioned that Indian
Managers are sitting on mountains of data and if they are given a research
orientation and guidance they will be able to convert them into thesis and
produce far greater contributions than their western counterparts. Dr. Reddy
agreed but by the time the proposal reached the University bodies he left IGNOU
and the subsequent Vice Chancellors had other priorities. The proposal got
shelved but we picked it up in AHRD and demonstrated with the help of XLRI it
is possible to have a nationwide doctoral program with guides all across. AHRD
still continues this crusade though its sponsor XLRI withdrew to promote their
own program. I recommend Universities to become more open to such programs. It
is ironical that some Universities stop recognising P the same Professor as a
Ph. D. Guide once he retires at the age of 60. It should be the other way. At
60 you have a lot of wisdom, time and experience. You probably can guide and
mentor students better. Universities should open themselves to recognise any
established professor after sixties a Professor of Eminence and use his or her
talent.
Jaipur
Network has distinction of having a lot of Economists HRD Network members. The
relationship between Economic development and HRD are inseparable. I hope
Jaipur Network s wills how the way to others.
My Best wishes.
Appendix
Notes:
Preparing
HRD managers professionally.
The Academy of Human Resources
Development in 1992 itself has prescribed the following minimum standards to
qualify as a sound HRD professional: The candidate should have studied and
passed a minimum of the following ten courses:
1. Introductory Course on Organisations:
Structure and Dynamics
2. Human Behaviour in Organisations
3. Integrated HRD Systems: Introductory course
in HRD
4. Performance Planning, Analysis, Review,
Appraisal and Development
5. Career Planning, Dynamics and Development
6. Potential Appraisal and Development
7. Training and Development
8. Organisation Development and OD Interventions
9. HRD Strategies and Interventions for Workmen
10. Personal Growth Laboratory
In MBA programmes the first two
courses are normally offered as compulsory courses and hence the additional
eight courses are needed to be completed to get qualified as a trained HRD
professional.
In order to be a qualified Human
Resource (HR) professional the candidate needs to complete the following
additional courses:
For industrial relations competencies
♦ Labour Laws
♦ Employee Welfare
♦ Collective Bargaining
♦ Trade Unions
♦ Work Redesign and other HR Interventions for
Organisational Effectiveness
For personnel management
♦ Recruitment
♦ Manpower Planning
♦ Human Resources Information System
♦ Wage and Salary Administration and Reward
Management
Separate standards are prescribed
from time to time through diploma programme run by the National Institute of Personnel
Management along these lines.
The two-year programmes offered
by institutions like the XLRI Jamshedpur, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai, Symbiosis Institute, Pune, etc., offer comprehensive programmes on HR
including HRD, IR and HRM. The specialisation in human resources management may
or may not include a full HRD component depending on the institution offered.
Competencies of
HRD Managers
Recently
TVRLS has listed the following ten competencies required by HR Managers
1. Business Knowledge: Knowledge of business (products,
services, customers, technology, competitors, developments, R&D) and all
functions (Sales and marketing, Production and operations, Finance, systems,
MIS, logistics, services etc.), Knowledge of Business capital (intellectual+++)
and its constituents and methods of building Business capital
2. Functional Excellence: (i)
HR Knowledge, (ii) HR Delivery including culture sensitivity, empathy,
coaching and facilitation
3. Leadership and
Change Management: (i) Communication, (ii) Initiative,
and (iii) creativity and (iv) Change management
4. Strategic
Thinking: Analytical ability, cost and
quality sensitivity, Ability to spot opportunities, anticipate and find
alternate ways of solving problems
5. Personal
Credibility
6. Technology Savvy: including
HR technology and Research Methods
7. Personnel Management and Administrative skill
8. Vision of the function and Entrepreneurship
9. Learning Attitude and Self Management: (i) self awareness and desire to learn (ii) Time management, (iii)
Networking, (iv) Research and analytical skills
10. Execution Skills: (i)
Planning and Monitoring skills, (ii) cultural sensitivity, (iii) persuasive
skills, (iv) Behaviour modification techniques and group dynamics, (v) ability to craft interventions for implementation, (vi)
cost and quality sensitivity
Source: Rao, T. V.
HRD Score Card 2500, New Delhi, Sage India, Response Books, 2008.
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