NEWS & INSIGHT
ARE POSSESSIVE MANAGERS UNDERMINING CROSS- DEPARTMENT COLLABORATION? COUNTRY: Germany SCHOOL: ESMT Berlin While seeking advice from those outside your immediate team or department has been shown to have a positive effect in fostering innovation, managers can often undermine employees’ efforts in this regard because they fear losing control over their ‘group’, according to research from ESMT Berlin’s Eric Quintane. Quintane, an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at ESMT Berlin, said: ‘Often managers have feelings of possessiveness over their teams and their team’s actions. They have a strong sense of psychological ownership over these teams. ‘This tends to be for three reasons; first because their own performance is typically linked with the performance of their team, but also because over time, managers develop deep knowledge of employees’ skill, activities, goals, and needs, and finally, because managers are expected to help employees reach their goals through their effective control and management. These reasons combined can explain why supervisors develop a strong sense of control over their teams.’ Conducted with researchers at Rotterdam School of Management, Australia National University and the Carnegie Consulting Group, the study surveyed 300 participants to gauge how many people seek advice from outside their departments and whether they encountered any resistance from their supervisors in doing so. Separately, 400 employees with managerial experience were asked for their reactions to a series of scenarios. They concluded that, by resisting their teams’ attempts to look to colleagues outside their group for advice – also known as ‘boundary spanning’ – instead of actively encouraging it, managers may be damaging organisational policies that seek to promote this practice. To offset the risks of this happening, managers must be kept in the loop – the researchers found that this makes them much less likely to react negatively to boundary spanning. As well as ensuring clear lines of communication to direct superiors, a further recommendation is to for organisations to educate employees on the potential risks that boundary spanning could have for them. / TBD
HEALTHCARE HIRING ON RISE AT IIM AHMEDABAD COUNTRY: India SCHOOL: IIM Ahmedabad A surge in post-MBA career opportunities in healthcare and pharmaceuticals has been revealed in a placement report for graduates of the Post Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) at IIM Ahmedabad, indicating the impact of Covid-19. Among a cohort of 119 students who gained employment through the Business School, 13% accepted offers from healthcare and pharmaceutical firms – a 67% increase on the previous year’s cohort, according to a Times of India article. ‘[The] healthcare sector saw an uptick along with data science and analytics sector. Apart from the consulting and business development roles, many companies hired for specialised and new age roles in the analytics, research and AI space this year,’ said Ankur Sinha, Chair of the School’s placement committee, in the article. IT was the most popular sector, accounting for 37% of the cohort. Healthcare/pharmaceuticals was the next most popular area among graduates, closely followed by finance (12%) and consulting (10%), according to the audited report. The PGPX is a full-time, one-year programme. The two-year Postgraduate Programme (PGP) does not yet show the same trend towards healthcare. Only 3% of students in the 2020-22 PGP class received offers from healthcare/pharmaceutical firms for this year’s summer internship. Consulting, finance, and fast-moving consumer goods were the three biggest industry areas, according to the School’s placement report. The proportion accepting offers from healthcare/ pharmaceutical firms among the graduating cohort of 2020 was lower still, at 2%, according to the final PGP placement report for the graduating cohort of 2020. In September, however, IIM Ahmedabad faculty member Saral Mukherjee, spoke of changes in the industry at an event focused on healthcare innovation in India that was co-convened by the Business School’s alumni-led Healthcare Special Interest Group. ‘Indian pharma is at the cusp of a once-in-a- lifetime disruption with drastic change in supply chain infrastructure, decline of small traders, increased differentiation, emergence of D2C brands, centrality of supply chain analytics and shifts in power balance,’ said Mukherjee, as reported by India Education Diary . / TBD
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