MBA is a practical course. The business managers are hired by organizations to solve problems.  Pointing problem is easier, but what after you find a problem? You are expected to find solution to the problem. You are expected to find a course of action. There’s no right answer, but you must deal with the complexities of the choice you make. At Havard Business School the classrooms are filled with people from diverse industries, functions, countries, and backgrounds. The main pedagogy is solving case studies. Harvard prepares you for the business world with case study analysis almost every day.

The case method prepares you to become a leader. It makes you ready to face leadership positions in which you will face time-sensitive decisions with limited information. Reflecting on each class discussion will prepare you to face these situations in your future roles.

Harvard focuses on the drivers of enterprises in China and India by building cases on over a decade of work with companies, investors, and non-profit organizations. This Business School produces some 400 new teaching material each year. One of the advantages of the case method, as opposed to a textbook is that the material can be kept constantly up to date, reflecting what’s going on and what’s changing in the world of business. This is particularly important in a rapidly growing economy like India’s. The cases are based on real companies, real people, real developments, and actual situations.

Harvard Business School (HBS) is expanding its presence in India through adoption of more India-based case studies by offerings new cases in Executive Education. The base of Indian case studies has risen to some more than 500 during past few years. There are a lot newer India-focussed cases coming up in the next few years. Professors and students are still concentrating on building this up, gathering and creating more teaching material. It will take some time as it is a long process, and a lot of work goes into it.

Why India?  Indian stock market is poised for healthy growth in the medium to long term because of a strong economic growth, expectations of political stability after the General Elections 2024 and the stronger influx of domestic retail investors. Besides this, numerous industrial zones, workforce and labour availability, lower labour costs, and a relatively open environment for foreign direct investments. India’s large labour and consumer base, low operating costs, and linkages to important international markets makes Indian markets attractive.

India remains one of the world’s fastest growing major economies although it faces challenges common to many other countries such as inflationary pressures, commodity price volatility, and supply chain interruptions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. The United States-India relationship remains resilient, with total trade in goods and services topping $191 billion in 2022, almost double the amount recorded in 2014. India’s economy grew at 7.2 percent over the April 1, 2022-March 31, 2023.

India, with its young population and rising disposable income has become favourite destination for consumer brands. When Tim Cook arrived in India last year to open Apple’s first physical store in the country, he was welcomed like a hero. Cook’s visit exemplified the rising tide of interest that corporations and governments are showing in doing business with India. Just days after his landmark trip, ‘Pret A Manger’, a trendy British sandwich chain, set up its first outlet in the commercial capital of Mumbai, as it bet on the country’s growing middle class.

India is the United States’ ninth-largest trading partner, with U.S. goods and services worth $73.1 billion sold to India in 2022. The United States maintained its position as India’s largest trading partner, with $118.8 billion of imported goods and services. The United States was expected to continue its trade deficit with India in 2023. India partnered with the United States and eleven other countries to launch the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity in May 2022, a high-standard agreement that aims to produce benefits that fuel economic activity and investment, promote sustainable and inclusive economic growth, and benefit workers and consumers.

So, at Harvard, professors choose Indian cases to fill a specific need in their course syllabus. They then contact a particular organisation, which agrees to host them and be as transparent as possible about the issue or problem, success, or failure under consideration. The overwhelming majority of HBS cases are field-based, not library-based, which means that the professor and his/her research associate will travel to the company and study it on-sight. This includes a series of interviews and revisits. The findings, conclusions and observations need to be done in a selected timeline because Indian markets are changing swiftly.  

The Indian Research Centre (IRC) was established in 2006, based in Mumbai, around 20 cases related to India have been published each year. Prior to that, there were fewer cases being written in India. This is reflective of a broader trend in business education around the world. Before the year 2000, business schools and Executive Education curricula did not have significant global content. Today, given the global macroeconomic scenario and the importance of understanding how to do business in emerging economies, there is greater need to create global content.

The India Research Centre produces a portfolio of cases that focus on a variety of topics, including business, government, regulation, law & order, social, ecological, etc. Cases also go beyond traditional business topics. A famous case for example by Harvard Professor Rohit Deshpande, dealt with leadership and teamwork among employees of Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai during the terrorist attack in the year 2008.  Another example is a case by Professor Stefan Thomke on the Dabbawala meal-delivery system in Mumbai. The service is offered in the last 130 years.

Havard cases are also taught in business schools around the world, as well as in other Executive Education programmes and company training programmes around the world. Indeed, India is most unique and heterogeneous market in world.

Have you ever wondered why suddenly some employees start progressing in their jobs? It is the power of who sits next to them in their workplace. It is the power dynamics between where one sits and the group in which the person sits. From our childhood we conform to the fact that we behave the way our siblings, our peers in school, our playmates behave.

If you are sitting next to a pessimist who keeps cribbing about every second thing, someone who just does not see any good, you are ought to feel dispirited. When we are surrounded with naggers, gossipers, sadists how the hell can we perform well? Such employees only sap our energy. On the contrast when your neighbor is high on productivity, when your neighbor is a positive thinker, you automatically feel good and feel like putting in more efforts in your job. I am sure, we all have experienced this in our jobs. Pessimists are more interiorly focused and have more depression, anxiety and other mental health problems in general, http://www.papsociety.org/xanax-alprazolam-1-mg/. They are called toxic workers in organizations and positive people have a greater capacity for love, joy and warmth that brings happiness into their lives, and also into the lives of people around them. This increased capacity for love means that they are loved more in return because they are more outwardly focused, they see positive side in everything.

When employers ignore this reality that sitting arrangements can enhance productivity, they lose out on productivity parameter. Toxic workers ruin the work cultures. But, in recent years, many progressive companies have moved toward open floor plans and these companies rotate the seating arrangements, this culture is found to work positively. It is found that some fresh small startups and technology businesses are taking the trend a step further, micromanaging who sits next to whom in an attempt to get more from their employees. And, it seems to be working. Job rotation is considered as an effective tool for successful execution of HR strategy. It is about the right fit for each employee, settling employees at the right place where they can deliver the maximum results.

In today’s highly competitive world, where finding the right candidates for jobs is become very difficult, this practice is proved as the best strategy to find the immediate replacement of a high-worth employee from within the organization. Finding the most suitable people and shifting them to take on the responsibilities of a higher level is a tough task. Job rotation helps HR managers determine who can be replaced by whom and create a suitable and beneficial fit. Shifting employees from desk to desk every few months, scattering those who do the same types of jobs and rethinking which departments to place side by side, companies say they can increase productivity and collaboration, as who sits next to whom also allows to see inherent pluses and minuses in the employees.

Organizations which have experimented with seating arrangements have experienced profits and healthy work environment. A new research from Cornerstone on Demand and Harvard Business School suggests that rearranging desks or sitting next to someone with a complementary work style can be a cost-effective way to inject energy and efficiency into the workday. The Japanese car manufacturer Mazda Motor Corporation is one great example which practices job rotation and the seating arrangement brilliantly.

A research from Deloitte suggests that this arrangement helps in employee engagement and retention. The report also suggest that disengaged workers come with hefty price tags. As they only know to talk big and do very little. According to a scientific research conducted in America, which is tagged as “spatial management,” (spatial means relating to space) the researchers analyzed data from the more than 2,000 workers at a large technology company with several locations across the U.S. and Europe over two years. They discovered that seating the right types of workers together leads to increased productivity and profits. The right proximity and nearness generates upsurge in organizational performance. For an organization of 2,000 workers, strategic seating planning added an estimated $1 million per annum to profit. Their analysis measured performance as well as spillover of employee performance: the term the researchers used to measure the combined performance of everyone seated around a given employee. The study looked at three types of employees: “Productive,” “Generalists,” and “Quality” workers. The researchers defined productive workers as very productive but lacking in quality. Quality workers produce superior quality but aren’t as productive. And generalists are average in both areas. Spillover was measured as both positive and negative, depending on the distance between two people. Each worker has different strengths, and weaknesses. The spillover is negligible for a worker when it occurs in an area of strength, but in the areas of weakness the spillover is greater.

Whereas, Michael Housman, a workforce scientist has mentioned that positive performance seems to have a much stronger spillover than negative performance. When you make a strong and a weak performer sit next to each other, the weaker employee performs much better, and the stronger employee’s performance doesn’t decline. He advises lower performers to be seated next to stronger performers. Housman also notes that when stronger and weaker employees are seated next to each other the performance of both employees can increase.

Toxic behavior in the workplace is very infectious. The work atmosphere pollutes badly if toxic employees are not checked occasionally. If they are unwatched, they spoil the atmosphere in no time. Bad work atmosphere reduces good worker’s drive as the culture fails to reward honest workers. Selfish and mean-minded employees drive away good workers within no time. Who sits next to whom in workplace therefore matters; when a productive and strong worker is surrounded by weaker employees, the weaker people try to copy the strong worker. This happens because people have a competitive nature and want to perform at the level of those around them, says Housman. Organizations must rotate the seating arrangements of employees, that’s all needs to be done. The KRAs (Key Result Areas) need to simultaneously checked, end results must be spelled in performance appraisals. Employees sitting next to a productive lot are positively influenced, while those sitting next to lethargic employees are dejected. So, make sure who sits next to you in your workplace, if you can, chose the right ones.