Executive MBA in high demand

Nine years into corporate life, Ritu Saxena, manager (instructional design) with Zeus eLearning, decided she needed to lend some more academic weight to her existing resume.

So, when her organisation offered her a chance to enroll for an executive MBA programme with SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, alongside her regular job, she jumped at the opportunity.

Today, she says, the executive MBA programme (EMBA) has proved to be a life -changing experience. "It updated and improved my skills and also provided me with the managerial tools to cope with a challenging business environment. It not only taught me team work but leadership skills as well. Further, I created a great network."
If such executive management programmes are already a big hit abroad with everyone from Harvard to MIT Sloan to National University of Singapore offering them, in India, professionals like Saxena are ensuring their popularity grows by leaps and bounds.

As a result, a multitude of Indian B-schools, including several IIMs, XLRI, Jamshedpur, SP Jain, JBIMS, IIFT and FMS Delhi, are rising to the occasion by offering a myriad of such courses for executives who want to upgrade their qualifications without having to leave their existing jobs.

For those who can't afford to take a full-time sabbatical from their working lives, these programmes are emerging as a popular choice. Debashis Sanyal, dean school of business management, NMIMS, says:

"Executive education is aimed at a much broader and larger group than the market for fresh MBAs, which is pre-dominantly for the 20 to 24 year-olds. The former in fact, has a far greater contribution to increasing the productivity of working employees. This market will definitely explode."

While in some cases, individuals pay for their own courses, most of the time  companies sponsor them to address two key talent management issues like retention and capacity building.

"The vision of our programme is to help companies nuture their talent cost-effectively into general manager-type roles and reduce their reliance on lateral recruitment by filling their leadership pipeline with  their existing high-potential middle managers," says Sanyal.

The popularity of these programmes has also ensured that institutes keep rolling out new ones to cater to current industry demand. For instance, this year, NMIMS has launched a range of full time executive programme in Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, Information Systems, and Operations.

It has a highly flexible curriculum design offering program completion option in a fast-track 15 month or 24-month duration.

Prof Nafisa Kattarwala, coordinator of the EMBA programme, says, "It is a learner-driven credit-based E-MBA one where, participants can register for a module as per one's convenience subject to completion of pre-requisite courses.

HR circles say that while the additional qualifications may not immediately carry much weight when it comes to negotiating a pay hike or a promotion in the existing company, their value is very high when it comes to a job switch."

Rohan Nagwekar, a career counsellor with Career Launcher, further adds, "Executive MBAs mostly help when one is thinking of switching jobs. The extra qualifications add weight to the resume and pay packet. Also, in the same organisation, it may result in a raise."

Prof Kattarwala too said that the feedback from sponsored candidates at NMIMS showed that most of them got a significant promotion within two years of completing the course.

"Such programmes are more beneficial for executives who sponsor their own way. Companies need to have a specific career design in mind for the employees they sponsor, otherwise they'll have a dissatisfied employee on their hands," said Ashok Vaman, Phiroze Sethna Group India.

He adds, "What matters a lot in these courses is the amount of personal motivation a candidate has and how recognised the programme is. Someone from a tier-I institute naturally has much greater value in the job market. It all depends on how an individual plays it up but it accounts for much more when it comes to a job switch."