The Business Of HR In Business Schools

Book Review The Business Of HR In Business Schools

Author V.R.K.Prasad

Pages 193

Publisher Viva Books Private Ltd, New Delhi

Price Rs.695

Dr.V.R.K.Prasad has written a book that fills a void – no books on the subject existed at least in India. Educational institutions, by and large, don’t take up the HR practices seriously and BSchools are no exception. If the BSchool happens to be part of a university system,all HR related activities are handled by routine administration , handled by a Registrar.Even in private universities with BSchools attached to it or standalone BSchools, there is no real practice of HR.Very few have an HR Dept to look after the personnel. It is true that BSchools usually live up to their reputation that they don’t practice what they preach(to the students or corporates).Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove had opined that that BSchools are basically reporters of best practices.(Gravy Training: Inside The Real World Of Business Schools, 2000,Capstone,Oxford).

The book is a refreshing welcome from the point of view of filling a gap. The book is divided into two parts with three and eight chapters in the two parts. The book begins with an overview of management education in India and goes on to deal with the various issues of recruitment and selection ,training & development, research & consultancy, performance management system, compensation, enhancing morale , motivating and creating an organizational climate, retention of people and separation and ends with the leadership and governance issues of BSchools. The book gives importance to both faculty resources and non-faculty resources.

The author goes into the details of each of the areas mentioned above. For example, the recruitment process is exhaustively detailed. Right from who should form the recruitment committee to how to conduct reference checks are explained. Also , a lot of emphasis is placed on the need for training and developing the people(faculty as well as others).Author also deals with the details of how to encourage research and consultancy practices among faculties, an area that has been given lot of thrust these days as no institutions want to be calling themselves as teaching shops. Provided also are the performance appraisal of faculty and adequately compensating them for their contributions. The author stresses the importance of fairness in the appraisal process and the reward systems.

The author also suggests ways of improving morale, motivation of employees and to create an organizational climate for contribution and performance. Retention of the management faculty being a hot issue at many BSchools, author makes certain suggestions regarding this area. Author also deals with how to handle separations, due to variety of reasons.

Having had extensive experience at BSchools, the author gives extensive suggestions for improvement of each of the various HR practices in BSchools. My own experience at a number of BSchools, including some which are founded and run by top rated HR faculty, has been very bad. For example, in one of the reputed school located in the southern part of the country, I was interviewed for a faculty position with interviews spread over two days with different panels and experts(all eminent people from academics and industry).I was thoroughly impressed by the effort. But only to be disappointed soon.That was the end of any HR process in the institution. No induction, no interaction by management afterwards, no redress of grievances by faculty.

Very few institutions conduct an induction programme; the faculty is expected to know how an institution is run, how students are to be evaluated, how students evaluate the faculty etc. Faculty meetings are rituals where the Head of the institution mostly talk about the need to improve the School’s position in the BSchool rankings. While educational institutions are supposed to be offering lot of freedom of thinking to faculty, my experience tells otherwise. At some, HR practices were the worst. Innovation is not encouraged at all. Most of the schools are concentrating on expansion without any ability to retain the faculty.

While the book is a welcoming change, the author seems to have been obsessed with what his own institution(ICFAI) has been doing. Also, while he is true in the context of the subject of the book, there seems to be a bias towards management teachers when he says that management teachers are knowledge workers. All teachers are knowledge workers, irrespective of the stream. Such references only add to the hype already existing about the MBA education. Also, BScools not only not practice HR; they don’t practice many of the things they teach their students, including ethics. Also, there seems to an overemphasis on PhD requirement for management teachers. On the one hand, BSchools say that they have to be practice oriented, on the other hand there is an unfortunate overemphasis on this PhD requirement. Business education is very often compared to other professional courses like Medicine. But in the medical education field, even to become professor or director of a medical college, PhD is not a prerequisite. Then, why so much of insistence on PhD even for teachers who have extensive industry experience?