'Guru Gyaan' - An IIM Indore UAE Initiative featuring Professor S.K. Mishra

The role of quality teaching and interacting with the best B-School Professors in the country plays a major role in an individual’s MBA journey. MBA aspirants generally tend to undermine and overlook this aspect. Thus, the Media and Corporate Communications Committee of IIM Indore UAE Campus launched the ‘Guru Gyaan’ series to spread awareness about the importance of focusing on the ‘Gyaan’ aspect in  the MBA journey. This initiative will feature interviews with professors who have set very high course delivery and teaching standards in the GCC region.

  Professor Sushanta Kumar Mishra (popularly known as S.K. Mishra) offered the 2^nd part of the Organizational Behavior Course to PGP 1 students at the IIM Indore UAE Campus. S.K. Mishra completed the Fellow Programme in Management from IIM Ahmedabad and was the recipient of the Emerging Diversity Scholar Award from National Centre for Institutional Diversity, University of Michigan.  Role Plays, Team activities and innovative assignments were a prominent feature of the course in which Professor S.K Mishra kept the ‘surprise’ quotient at the peak.

In his interaction with the Media and Corporate communications committee of IIM Indore UAE Campus, Professor S.K. Mishra stressed on the importance of Organizational behaviour for budding managers. He stated, “Organization Behavior as a subject encompasses not only the individual level behaviours but also the group and the organization level behaviours. It is the foundation for other aspects of management be it marketing, strategy to name a few. No wonder organizational behaviour area is otherwise known (in most of the institutions) as management department.”  He appreciated the diversity of the IIM Indore UAE PGP1 batch and said, “To me as far as the course is concerned, experience is a critical aspect. People having experience usually relate the classroom discussions to their work life. Hence there is always diversity in my classes in terms of years of experience, quality of experience etc.”

Giving further insight into what he expected from a PGP student, Professor S.K. Mishra noted, “I believe a candidate should have an open mind and willingness to learn. I expect my participants to enact the role of the CEO (protagonist) who is passing through a situation (depending on the situation in the respective cases) and s/he has to take a decision. Unless the participant puts her/himself in the shoes of the protagonist, I believe the learning is not complete. Further learning happens through multiple channels. Apart from understanding a concept, process or a phenomenon, the ability to argue and reflect is expected from potential participants,” he further added.

 Professor S.K. Mishra stated that PGP at UAE Campus would prove to be an invaluable experience to prospective managers in the long run. He said, “As the physical boundaries are shrinking, I strongly believe that there is a need for a manager to build competencies such as cultural competencies. Culture is argued to be one of the most important factors that facilitates/ hinders strategy implementation. I believe international exposure sensitizes our participants about these (cultural) competencies.”

He ended the interaction by offering an invaluable piece of advice to the students as well as future aspirants, revealing, “Keep your eyes, ears and mind open to experience and learn from external environment. Learning happens through multiple channels; incidentally IIM Indore logo symbolizes that. Good Luck!”

The Media and Corporate Communications Committee thanks Professor S.K. Mishra for the interview and also for delivering the most engaging  course at the UAE Campus.

Follow IIM Indore UAE at iimindore-uae.insideiim.com