Global Sensitivity: Thapar School of Management

HER Team
Creating Globally Sensitive Leaders

"We believe that the impact of a business school should not be measured only by the number CEOs produced or the average salary package that the graduates are receiving? I believe that it should be judged on what is the overall social good we being created," says Dr. Padmakumar Nair, Director LM Thapar School of Management. Dr. Nair whole heartedly believes that his B-school is creating CEOs and other executives with a clear social mission to improve the free capitalist market that we live in today. "That's why our MBA programme goal is to educate globally sensitive, scholarly practitioners with a social entrepreneurial mindset," he explains. Operating in accord to their mission "We stand to change the way the world conducts business and the way businesses engage the world."

The Business school instills these values in its students through its four pillars of development:

Ethics: to develop ethical managers by training them to maximize the value of efficiency enhancing mechanisms of free market and at the same time educating them the limitations of profit maximizing mechanisms.

Inclusiveness: Educating socially aware managers who understand the value of the productive capacity of the masses in India. Helping young managers to see beyond all social and economic class divisions

Sustainability: Developing future managers who are passionate about social, economic, environmental and resource sustainability challenges. Developing future ambassadors of sustainability

Entrepreneurship: Students are not trained to occupy jobs but they are developed to create jobs through Innovation that is beneficial both in the social and commercial aspects.

Thapar School of Management located in the sprawling green campus in Mohali and has crucial industry associations with leading organizations to provide students with the required exposure to the practical environment. Big names such as Oracle, Philips, Reliance ADAG, TCS and HDFC Bank recruit students from the institute with the highest package offered standing at Rs. 17.34 lakhs. To prepare the students for the working environment after their graduation, Thapar School of Management has established 7 centers of excellence. These centers were established with a view to strengthen teaching, research, consulting and community engagement. Each centre is created around a contemporary management theme with the primary goal of creating, disseminating and applying knowledge. All faculty members of the school will have at least one primary affiliation and multiple secondary affiliations to various centers.

The faculty members at the institute are PhD holders with good number of publications and corporate experience. Many of the faculty members are actively involved in conducting Faculty Development Programmes. Faculty members are encouraged to update their knowledge by participating in Faculty Development Programs across the year. This augments their understanding of industry practices and also aids in improving their teaching. With a judicious mix of academicians and industry experts lining their faculty, the institution helps students in spending a large portion of their tenure in getting ready for industry, through practice based learning and skill development. Corporate Interface Programs are the key ensuring students in experiencing the industry life, within the campus. With the knowledge about what the industries are looking for in fresh candidates, the institute sets its curriculum and prepares leaders, required to lead any given organization.

Educational institutions are expected to come forward and connect the above-mentioned ecosystem with the youth of our society. "We are now aggressively promoting in-house entrepreneurship kind of culture, we have already funded three in-house entrepreneurship projects last year and also we gave money to total outsiders, so we have new venture kind of a competition, we distributed 5 lakhs," says Dr. Nair. From day one students are engaged in a course which very few business schools have in the area of social and commercial entrepreneurship. The institute encourages its students to engage the community. The Director himself has also published a paper on'Social entrepreneurship a way of transferring into leadership mindset.' LMTSM strongly believes that social entrepreneurship and giving students an opportunity to engage in social entrepreneurial kinds of activities is essential to their growth. The institute has a entrepreneurship program where students form teams and are given an amount of Rs. 5000 each to set up a company. This allows them to take the concepts taught in class out to the field.

With preparations done, the vision seen and the mission accomplished, the college places its students in a lot of top notch firms in and around the country. Offering 100 percent placement assistance to students, the college prepares students to be Job Ready instead of providing them with Ready Jobs. In batch graduating in 2015, over 90 percent of the eligible students are placed at reputed companies all over the country and abroad and the remaining 10 percent resume their family businesses and entrepreneurial ventures. With a strong placement system which coaches, guides and organizes placement opportunities the college takes pride in helping solve critical challenges, supporting innovation, to create new-age managers through its unique pedagogy.

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