People at Work & Play

For the first time, a business school in India features in the list of Top 20 business schools in the world. The list released by the Financial Times has the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad at Rank 20 amongst business schools in the world.

The top 10 in the listing:-

1. University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
2. London Business School
3. Columbia Business School
4. Stanford University GSB
5. Harvard Business School
6. INSEAD
7. MIT Sloan
8. IE Business School
9. Universty of Chicago GSB
10. University of Cambridge, Judge

The FT ranking is calculated on the basis of 20 criteria covering specifics like career progress of graduates, diversity of the MBA experience, international mobility of alumni, ideas generation and research, etc.

Dean Rammohan Rao of ISB said, “This is a landmark event for the ISB. It sums up our single-minded goal to be recognised as a global centre of excellence in business education. This ranking is an important milestone in our journey to be an internationally top-ranked research-driven, and independent management institution that grooms leaders for the world.”

Drawn by the facility offered by the web and the diversity of products available on it, Indian netizens have emerged as the third biggest credit card users globally for online purchasing, says an article in the Times of India.

According to a global online survey conducted by leading research firm Nielsen, more than 85 per cent of internet users in the world are purchasing goods or services online, while credit card has emerged as the most famous payment method for such purchases.

As many as 84 per cent of online shoppers from India said they have used credit cards for such transactions, next only to 91 per cent in Turkey and 86 per cent in Ireland.

India shared the third position with the UAE, which also has 84 per cent of online buyers using a credit card.

“Shopping on the Internet with the ease of a credit card is especially appealing to consumers in emerging markets who simply cannot find or buy items they want in their retail trade. The Internet has opened up a whole new world of shopping for these consumers,” Nielsen’s US Customized Research Vice-President Bruce Paul said.

The survey found that credit cards are by far the most common method of payment for online purchases with 60 per cent of global online consumers having used their credit card for a recent online purchase. Among the various credit cards, more than half or about 53 per cent used a Visa card.

Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month.

Most popular purchased items over internet are books (41 per cent purchased in the past three months), followed by articles like clothing/accessories/shoes (36 per cent), videos / DVDs / games and airline tickets constituted about 24 per cent.

” It’s amazing” said Krishna, a manager I was coaching. ” This guy Rahul in my team has changed so much! I am surprised I didn’t notice many strengths in him before”. We were having a coaching review. Based on my suggestion, Krishna had consciously used more praise (when warranted of course) with Rahul.

The doses of praise resulted in strong improvements in Rahul’s performance. He showed much greater initiative than before, he was much quicker in his actions, and consciously making attempts to learn a new skill he had hitherto stayed far away from.

As I told Krishna when we were chatting later, a central theme we use is that behaviour is a function of its consequences. The consequences of what we do go a long way in promoting or maintaining a behaviour. If the consequences are positive, more often then not, we strain to repeat the behaviour. If the consequences are negative, more often than not, we do our best to avoid that behaviour. I am sure in your own work, you would have come across many examples.

Positive reinforcement takes place when a desired behaviour is rewarded with a pleasant and satisfying experience. Krishna praised Rahul’s efforts to improve and improve he did. Negative reinforcement, by the way, does not mean a punishment. It just means removing a negative consequence of a behaviour. For example, when Rahul showed more initiative in learning a new skill, Krishna stopped pestering him to learn it.

Knowing these fundamentals about behaviour and using this knowledge in managing their teams helps managers like Krishna become more effective.

You can subscribe to the A-Step-A-Day series using RSS at http://bprao.wordpress.com/category/a-step-a-day/feed