IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management assigns Pandemic Case Study for Organizational Leadership education
It has been almost 2 weeks since the teaching and learning at IIT Kharagpur has gone virtual. The Center for Educational Technology at the Institute has been using the online interface Webex for conducting classes across all levels of study. Shorter sessions are also being conducted through Zoom.
Several research groups are also conducting studies on people’s perception and behaviour towards COVID-19 through progression of time. In one such initiative, the Vinod Gupta School of Management, business school in India of IIT Kharagpur ranked among the top ten in India, has launched a project based on COVID-19 pandemic. The project titled “Invisible Leadership and the CoronaVirus Pandemic” is being assigned 126 students in the second year MBA class at the School as part of the Organisational Leadership course.
Speaking about the project Prof. Susmita Mukhopadhyay said, “Pandemic or any other wide spread disease such as COVID-19 demand exemplary leadership and decision-making capabilities to manage finances, human resources, supply chain and overall business operations. Managers if prepared for desperate times may even plan and improvise the desperate measures. The project aims to teach the students to see the power of invisible leadership in the fight against a pandemic.”
“Leadership is more about taking tough decisions now while keeping the greater good in mind than appeasing your countrymen with misleading information. Covid-19 has turned every one of us into soldiers fighting for the very survival of our species and the real leader here is invisible. So when we miss the leader micromanaging things, we look inward for leadership,” said Pinak Samui, student at VGSOM.
The students will be studying the facts from diverse shades of leadership and understand the ethical issues connected to such situations as COVID-19 pandemic. They will also explore whether the Pandemic itself has acted as an invisible leader in enhancing work-life balance of people, cohabitation of species and environmental sustainability.
“We have given the topic to the students to have a free flow of thought and explore the topic from various perspectives, frame the case based on archival news and keep track of day to day developments and strategies undertaken by governments and other related stakeholders. We plan to develop business case studies based on the project output,” remarked Prof Biplab Datta.
Student Feedback:
“This assignment has helped us to keep track of the COVID-19 situation and all related happenings as they are happening around the world. It also helped us to dive deep into the invisible leadership principle and apply the same, in order to add a new perspective to the current situation, just like looking through a different lens,” said a student Pritam Sharma.
Sharing about his learning, another student Aniket Sanyal said, “Leaders, who can take quick actions, who are flexible in adapting their bold decisions to suit the needs of a situation, will have more success in a crisis environment.”