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Friday, November 20, 2015

OUTBOUND-TRAINING-(OBT)-FOR-STUDENTS-AND-FACULTY

GITAM Institute of Management organized OBT (Outbound Training) Program – GURUKOOL for all the new students of its various postgraduate and undergraduate programmes from 15^th July to 11^th August, 2015. Subsequently, a highly successful session was conducted for the faculty members as well. Each batch accompanied by a faculty member, under the guidance of experienced trainers from Maven Training Consultants, underwent a three and a half day training program at Sri Santhi Village Resorts at Bhogapuram around 30 kms from Vizag, provided with basic amenities and a secure environment. The program was formally inaugurated in the presence of Prof. K. Siva Rama Krishna, Dean and Principal, GITAM Institute Of Management.

GITAM Institute of Management is a pioneer in introducing Outbound Training for the students of Management and has been successfully conducting OBT for the last seven years. Outbound Training is an established corporate training tool in Western countries and has gained popularity in India as well. Based on the philosophy of Dr. Kunt Hahn, OBT is all about providing opportunities for self-discovery, personality development and social skills through outdoor exposure. In today's corporate world, the need of the hour is for smart thinking, swift action and effective people skills - qualities that are more effectively developed in an experiential setting than through classroom training. Outbound programs have been found to be particularly effective in areas that involve interpersonal relationships, trust and bonding, communication of shared vision and goals, motivation, behavior modification in response to change, and personal effectiveness.

The innovative experiential learning program is based on the ancient Indian Gurukul system where princes would be trained to become kings through real life learning. This training equips students with basic skills to become successful management professionals. It inculcates true leadership skills with a human touch and enables the students to rejuvenate in a stress-free atmosphere away from the mundane world. They learn not only to face new challenges in difficult circumstances but also to effectively work with people. It leads to synchronization of mind, body and soul and enables them to develop fitness, self-reliance, interpersonal skills and bonding though the new challenges in a new adventure-setting with a new group. A “once-in-a-lifetime” experience, OBT is aimed at helping students discover their own inner selves and their goals in life.

This outbound training left behind lot of amazing memories for the students. Many physical activities were conducted where students enjoyed a lot and every activity had a management oriented learning. The toughest were the military oriented activities which involved march past, tyre hookers, climb up, crawl down the body, beware of landmine, which demonstrated how to manage the body by mental concentration and will-power.

The most enjoyable activities were fire walk and glass walk where students participated very enthusiastically and learnt how to face and overcome fear. Other activities like treasure hunt taught teamwork and planning, water ball taught patience, stick four trained in planning and coordination, DISC character taught students how to judge a personality in an organization, blind man tested accuracy of teamwork, coordination and planning, tribal activity helped students learn how to manage resources in a fun manner. In this way every activity was related to some or the other management function and imparted practical knowledge to students.

Outbound training is particularly relevant to today's society as it demonstrates to people that they in fact do possess the necessary internal resources required of them; that in spite of differences in backgrounds they can live and work together; and that it is intrinsic to human nature to be helpful. It has been repeatedly proven that the participants in a well-designed outbound programme always find the experience memorable, and the benefits significant and long-lasting.

- Compiled by Ms. Y. Sruthi, MBA First Year.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

SMART-CITY:THE-ROLE-OF-TECHNOLOGY-AND-PEOPLE

Dr. D. Vijaya Geeta

Associate Professor

Department of Operations

GITAM Institute of Management

GITAM University

Smart City – This is the term we are often hearing nowadays. People are excited about it and looking forward to this initiative taken by Government of India that promises economic growth and improved quality of life. So what is a Smart City? A quick search in the internet shows different definitions which are as follows:

“A city equipped with basic infrastructure to give a decent quality of life, a clean and sustainable environment through application of some smart solutions.” – Times of India

“A smart city uses digital technologies or information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance quality and performance of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens.” – Wikipedia

“A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas can be done so through strong human capital, social capital, and/or ICT infrastructure.” – Business dictionary

From all these definitions, one can see that the main elements of the smart city concept are sustainability provided through institutional and physical infrastructure and quality of life consisting of social and economic infrastructure. But what is the need of such smart city? Is it all hype that is created unnecessarily? Why now? To answer these questions, one must understand the present situation in the country. At present India has 31 percent of its population living in cities. This population provides 63% of the country’s economic activity. It is estimated that by 2030, half of the country’s population will live in cities (smartcitieschallenge.in). With increasing population and urbanization, one requires to develop better infrastructure to serve the needs of the citizens who form the focal point of smart cities endeavor.

Smart city is all about providing better services to its citizens across socio – economic circle. It reflects on provision of better and timely services in terms of livability, workability and sustainability (Krishnamoorthy, 2015). Livability emphasizes on empowered citizens, improved reliability and resilience, hygienic conditions and lower cost of living. Workability emphasizes on creation of new jobs, investment opportunities and safe workplace. Sustainability emphasizes on optimum utilization of energy, less reliance on non-renewable energy and less cost of energy. The promise of such smart city can be fulfilled by making intelligent use of technology.

Intelligent solutions like smart lightening that operates based on the fading visibility will help in conserving the energy in both homes and in the streets. City wide surveillance through connectivity and video analytics will help in ensuring public safety. Solutions like smart financing may help in mobile and online payment (Krishnamoorthy, 2015). Data analysis through smart apps, prompt delivery of services through e-Governance and maintenance of air and water quality through monitoring are some of the smart solutions, a city can adopt (Avinash, 2015).

Across the globe, one can find different cities that have adopted technology to provide smart solutions to support the needs of their citizens. Examples of such cities (Puzhakara, 2015) are given below:

· Birmingham has digital platform for defining GP service online so that well being and health of the citizens can be taken in online.

· London boasts of using spatial data analysis and visualization to enable evidence based decision making.

· The city of Bristol uses smart energy policy to tackle growing energy needs and reducing carbon emissions.

· The Glasgow city uses future city demonstrator programme.

· Cities like Chicago and Singapore uses dynamic passenger system, dynamic parking system and automatic bollard system (Chekuri, 2015)

Closer to home we have the initiative adopted in Mumbai for city surveillance in terms of putting up CCTV and Number plate cameras, network connectivity, establishment of data centers, vehicle tracking system and collaboration monitoring (Kohale, 2015). In Visakhapatnam, Pheonix IT solutions started a pilot project in Kirlampudi Layout, Visakhapatnam, named as “Let’s get Smart – Kirlampudi”. In this project, they have started programmes such as Green Vizag which takes care of tree plantation, reusable energy and rain harvesting, Safe Vizag in which sensors are placed in different areas which are directly connected to the nearest phone booth, Clean Vizag which takes are educating people on need of keeping the surrounding clean and segregating the waste in different bins for recycling, Digital Vizag takes care of smart street lighting, CCTV cameras and Wi-Fi connectivity, and Healthy Vizag programme creates the awareness among the citizens on the benefits of Yoga, walking and cycling. A community portal named www.onevizag.org is also been set up for the benefits of the people residing in that place. All these examples show that technology plays a big role in providing smart solutions. The core elements being Networking, Cloud services, Artificial Intelligence, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytics (Gowda, 2015).

Although technology plays a major role in providing smart solutions and helps in building smart cities, behavioral change in the people is also necessary to make smart city a possibility. Each and every city has its own culture nurtured by its citizens and these citizens need to do their bit in building the smart city. Technology may help in building hi-fi infrastructure but issues like hygiene, environment, health and smart living requires manual interventions from the people themselves. We have different cities in the world where people adopted measures to build a sustainable smart city. Some of them are presented below (Kohale, 2015):

· Copenhagen has one of the lowest carbon footprints and encourages its people to adopt cycling as means of commuting

· In Freiburg, people set up a car free neighborhood to conserve energy.

· In city of Hague, the residents used their own money to restore inactive windmill and thus helped in forming alternate energy system.

· In Hangzhou, residents have adopted bicycle sharing.

These are only few examples and there are many such cities where technology and people worked together to build a smart city.

One can understand that successful smart cities we find across the globe places emphasis on economy as well as ecology. This should be taken as a success mantra as India goes into building its own smart cities. Since building smart cities in India would be a Brownfield project rather than Greenfield, it requires full understanding of the city. A single solution may not be suitable for all the cities since each city and its culture will different from one another. One must come up with customized plan for each city keeping in view its residents, their culture and views. Building a smart city in collaboration with its people will certainly help in coming with a sustainable model that will serve the present as well as future generations to come. Building a smart city is not just a job for the Government and few private players. It is the responsibility of each and every individual citizen to make it happen.

References:

1. Krishnamoorthy, R. (2015), Visions for Smart India – Industry Perspective. In Mohan Rao (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

2. Gowda, Sandhya. (2015), Visions for Smart India – Industry Perspective. In Mohan Rao (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

3. Kohale, Jayant. (2015), Smart city visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

4. Puzhakara, Abhilash. (2015), Smart city visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

5. Avinash, K. R. (2015), Smart city visions from around the world. In Raja Srinivas (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

6. Chekuri, Srinivas (2015), Smart city visions from around the world. In Preeti Sinha (Chair), Smart Solutions for Smart Cities. Symposium conducted by CII and APTDC, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

7. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/What-is-a-smart-city-and-how-it-will-work/listshow/47128930.cms

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city

9. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/smart-city.html

10. http://www.smartcitieschallenge.in/

SKETCHES

1) Mahadev

Mahadev is not born from his mother's womb. He is forged in the heat of battle, when he wages a war to destroy evil. Har Har Mahadev - All of us are Mahadev.”

2) WONDER WOMAN

I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.”

MS. HASITHA CHAGANTI

MBA FIRST YEAR

GIRL’S-ISSUE

No words I found,

To describe myself in town.

Scariness touching the height,

Safetiness decreasing every night.

What is the role of the government,

Become to fulfill their enjoyment.

Why we girls born in this hell,

No respect for us as well.

Mom asks me to stay at home,

Values of my goals are no more.

If the country wants our absence,

Why they create our presence.

Under the section of selection,

Girls are lacking in mention.

In this whole population,

Girls are having more information.

Don’t dare to dare us,

We can change the world,

Either we can make it or destroy it…..

Ms. G.Prathyusha

IMBA 4^th yr

My-Dear-Falling-Star

I once heard the tale of a falling star,
It landed on earth,
So bright and beautiful,
God didn't know what to do with it.
After much thought, he finally decided-
To reshape it into a woman,
A woman so bright and beautiful,

Spark in her eyes as bright as stars.
I never believed in the tale.
But,

When I saw you,
I began to think about it.
When I started talking to you,
I began to believe in it.
And now,
I truly believe that you are the falling star,
My dear falling star,
Landed on earth for me.
I promise to keep you as bright and beautiful,
Maintain the spark in your eyes as bright as stars,
With you in my life.

Dedicated to…

- Still in search.

Mr. M. Sai Shashank

MBA Final

Be-Human

Now-a-days I have been watching reports on television and reading big columns in newspapers highlighting the menace of the stray dogs. They are suggesting methods like sterilizing or even killing them to combat the menace.

But before that, we need to know why these dogs are biting someone or frightening someone. The reason for their behavior is that they are full of hunger and thirst and no one ever cares about feeding them. Few days back I fed a few stray dogs near my home with the food that was leftover and yesterday when I fell down from my bike they came rushing to me as if they were coming to help me out.

The point is, often it is we who are being cruel. So from now on please don’t just complain about the dogs; try being a human and feed them.

Mr. Ch. Sai Akhil (BBA Business Analytics 1^st year)

BASICS -OF-STRATEGIC-MANAGEMENT

The “Strategy” of a company is a comprehensive master plan which states how the company can achieve its mission and objectives. Strategy which is well built, maximizes competitive advantage of the company and minimizes its competitive disadvantage.

A typical business company considers three types of strategy – Corporate, Business and Functional.

Corporate Strategy describes a company’s direction on the whole in terms of its general outlook towards growth and its wise management of various businesses and product lines.

Business Strategy usually occurs at the business unit or at product level and improves company’s competitive position through its various products or services either in one industry or many industries.

Functional Strategy / Operational Strategy is usually taken in a functional area such as marketing, operations like Research & development, etc. to achieve corporate or a business unit objectives by maximizing productivity or throughput with limited resources. This strategy helps in developing and nurturing the core competence of the company and gives the company necessary advantage or the edge over the others. Business firms use all these three types of strategies simultaneously to meet their goals and reach their objectives.

Importance of Strategic Management

Research has revealed that companies that engage in strategic management generally do better than those companies that do not follow strategic management. The appropriate match between a company’s environment and its strategy gives a positive impact on a company’s performance. Strategic management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long-run performance of the company. Strategic management as a field of study incorporates the business policy of the company along with a greater emphasis on environmental factors and its strategy. Strategic management has now evolved so much that its primary value is to operate successfully in a dynamic and complex environment we live in today.

In the past, a competitive strategy simply meant defining a competitive position and protecting it. But with growing technological and functional excellence and advancement, companies are finding that there is no concept of permanent competitive advantage, as we do not have stable environments any more anywhere. In this ever changing dynamic environment companies must develop strategic flexibility, which in turn demands long-term commitment to develop and nurture company’s vital resources. Strategic flexibility demands that a company become a learning organization, which strives to continuously learn, implement and evolve. For an organization to be learning, people at all levels, not just the top management, need to get involved in strategic management and be the part of that learning curve.

Basic Model of Strategic Management:

Strategic Management consists of four basic elements:

· Environment Scanning – It is to monitor, evaluate and distribute the information acquired from both external and internal environments. The external environment consists of various opportunities or threats outside the organization along with those that operate within a company’s specific task environment. The internal environment consists of strengths & weaknesses of company’s inner circle but those which are not usually within the control of top management in short run such as corporate structure, culture and resources.

· Strategy Formulation – It consists of development of long – range plans for the effective management of corporate SWOT (Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis. Strategy formulation includes corporate mission, objectives, strategies and policy guidelines.

· Strategy Implementation – It is a process by which strategies and policies are used for the development of programs, financial planning and formulation of procedures of the company, where all these are put into action in such a way that might bring in the changes within overall culture, structure or the system of the whole company and in all areas of its operations.

· Evaluation & Control – It is a process which monitors the company’s activities and performance results, which are compared with actual vs. desired performance results. Managers of the companies use these results for corrective action and to resolve the problems. Based on performance results management needs to adjust its strategy formulation, implementation or both.

A sound strategic management involves a continual improvement in all these four elements along with a solid feedback system, as it helps the company to strengthen its operations and improve the lacunae in meeting its mission and objectives.

- Ms. Madhavi Eswara, Research Scholar (PhD)

ACHIEVING-INNER-PEACE

“Po (The Panda): Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles.

Oogway (The Turtle master): Quit, don't quit... Noodles, don't noodles... You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

The above few sentences are some of the legendary lines from one of the best Hollywood movies ever, The Kung Fu Panda.

Why did I take these dialogues? Yes, primarily because I am an ardent Hollywood movie follower and more specific reason is for the intent these dialogues have in them. With a hope that all of you have watched this movie (If not, please do it immediately), I would like to put forth the following percepts with respect to two great human beings, one, Father of the nation, M. K. Gandhi and the second, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, idol for the modern man.

Not to sound boring, I would like not to re present the thoughts of these two great men, like a copy cat but would like to interpret them as a young Indian, as a youth who has a lot to do for his self, his family, his society and on a whole, his nation at large.

The best part of few of the sayings which are common in both these men zero down to what I found in the movie, The Kung Fu Panda, is the Inner Peace. Inner peace is something that not all can attain. It is something that is not a piece of confectionary, just to buy it from the stores. It has to be won, achieved and mastered.

It is the process of winning the fiercest of battles ever, the battle with one’s self and attaining the unidirectional thought of mind, body and soul together. Taking yet another dialogue of Oogway (The Turtle Master), “One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it”, it can be proved that we all tend to go into the path much travelled rather than taking that very path, virgin in its core, untouched and untapped.

What we all fall into is the “PARISTHITHI” which is the social situation, and, start acting according to the will and wish of the society. Just remember, possibly the act you made yesterday, or wait, just before reading this line is not what you wanted to do but is because the society wanted it.

What we actually need to have is the “MANOSTITHI”, which is the positive condition or state of the mind. The time when you overcome all the flitters and flatters, finally be true to our self, this kind of situation I need not explain, for I know when each one of us would feel so. This is the time for introspection, and introspection makes you realize and influence Manostithi.

When Manostithi overcomes the happenings of Paristhithi, an unparalleled phenomenon arises, the “AATMASTITHI”. This situation is when we live by our soul and heart but not merely by our mind. But, when the contrary happens, we fall into a chaotic, unmannered and untamed situation called the “DUSTITHI”. Remember, Dustithi is also a part of paristithi. But, Aatmastithi is beyond paristithi, it is evolved.

Taking another fiction character as an example, Ultron, from the movie Avengers. Ultron, says, “we are all puppets, tangled in strings”, strings of social bugaboos, taboos, conceptions and belief systems, I say. We need to get these strings away from us, unfettered is what we should be.

My dear friends, what we have to start doing is to observe those animal instincts (ego, anger, jealousy, frustration)in ourselves and start taming them so well that, we finally would attain the inner peace. At the end of the day, all that matters is SUKHA NIDRA, a peaceful death.

Mr. Avinash Duvvuri (MBA Final)

Monday, October 26, 2015

GUEST LECTURE FOR BBM STUDENTS

Mr. S.Venkataraman, Manager Incharge, Coir Board, Visakhapatnam, addressed the students of BBM Final year on the topic “Employment Opportunities in Coir Industry”, on the 29^th August 2015, offering new insights into a relatively lesser known area.

GUEST LECTURES FOR MBAs

On 19^th August, 2015, MBA students had the benefit of listening to two guest lectures by eminent personalities – Mr. S. Rama Rao, Retd. Director, World Intellectual Property Organization, United Nations, New York and Sri Baban Rajale, Vice President (HR), Hospira Pharmaceuticals. Sri Rajale spoke on HR Policies in Hospira Pharmaceuticals

EDITORIAL-WORKSHOP

On 25^th July, 2015, an Editorial Workshop on Publishing Research Books and Journals was organized by Prof. G. Raghavaiah and Dr. B. Nalini at the Knowledge Resource Centre, GITAM University. It proved to be very enlightening especially for young authors, academicians and research scholars.

LECTURE BY EMINENT SCHOLAR

Eminent scholar Dr. Surya Chelikani, Professor of Finance, Quinnipiac University, USA delivered a lecture on “Financial Risk Management” for the MBA First Year students on 24^th July, 2015, at the Institute. His refreshing perspectives keeping in tune with the latest global trends in the field proved to be very enriching for the students.

GODAVARI PUSHKARAM - 2015 COMPETITIONS

On the occasion of Godavari Pushkaram, 14^th to 25^th July, 2015 as per the directives of Commissionerate of Technical and Collegiate Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh, GITAM Institute of Management conducted essay writing and debate/elocution competitions that saw wholehearted participation from various departments of the Institute. Elocution competition was held on the topic: “Suggest ways and means to make Andhra Pradesh into a Knowledge Hub”. The topic for Essay writing competition was “The role of Students in building of Swarnandhra Pradesh”. The winners in the various categories are:

Essay Writing:

I Prize - D. Avinash - MBA II Year

II Prize - M.Vaishali - MBA I Year

III Prize – Sonali Gupta & Pratyasha Ray - MBA I Year

Elocution:

I Prize - Sai Shashank - MBA II Year

II Prize – Subhojit Ghosh - MBA I Year

III Prize – Ayana Sen Gupta – BBM III Year.

WORKSHOP FOR HR PROFESSIONALS

On 4^th July, 2015, a one-day session on “Leveraging HR for a Competitive Advantage” was conducted by Prof. K.Siva Rama Krishna, Dean & Principal and Dr. K.V.Sandhya Vani, Assistant Professor at Hotel Taj Gateway, Visakhapatnam. The very beneficial workshop saw good response from the HR professionals.

ANTI-RAGGING CAMPAIGN

The anti-ragging campaign was kickstarted with Dr. K.Manjusree Naidu, Chairperson, Student Affairs, participating in a meeting with the District Collector , Visakhapatnam vis-à-vis Prevention of Ragging in Educational Institutions on 15^th June 2015. Subsequently, anti-ragging committee and anti-ragging squad comprising of faculty and student members were constituted and the committee first met on 10^th July,2015. These bodies have been pro-active in keeping the campus ragging free. In all interactions between seniors and freshers, students took the Anti-Ragging pledge.

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