St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (SJIM) is a well-established business school in the heart of Bangalore. SJIM has been catering to the needs of students in business education since 1968, with special emphasis on serving the needs of socially and financially disadvantaged students.
As the world started becoming more globalized, there was desire from both students and the industry for a more global business education. In developing a new pedagogical tool to cater to this desire, a triple challenge emerged:
- one, to capture the complexity of the global business field;
- two, to do so using limited financial resources;
- and three, to maintain a Jesuit character throughout the activity.
In answer, SJIM started the initiative of students across two countries collaborating in virtual teams towards a project that caters to a current social concern.
In 2017, SJIM entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University, USA. Both schools agreed to strengthen ties of friendship and to promote cultural, educational and scientific cooperation towards the mutual benefit of the students, faculty, and management at both institutes.
This collaboration led to several initiatives, including an annual competition in which students from participating schools work in virtual teams to complete a specific project and compete against other teams with the same goal.
Such a format allows several advantages:
- Students gain the experience of working with people from other countries on a live project. Even students who do not have resources to participate in an international exchange program can get an opportunity to (virtually) interact and work with people from another country.
- Coordinating schools (SJIM and Albers in this case) gain the benefits of being able to serve the growing needs of a ‘global’ business education within the limits of their respective resources.
- The project theme is derived from the Pope’s various messages to the community, and is thus based on finding solutions to global societal problems. As a Jesuit business school, SJIM’s vision involves nurturing responsible business leaders with a concern for society and the environment; an important program educational objective is to develop industry ready graduates with a sense of social responsibility.
Impact and lessons learnt
In addition to the benefits for the students themselves —who begin to collaborate with international teams to address diverse issues with global impact,— the initiative has other impacts, such as:
- For SJIM, this initiative has allowed the institution to offer some international exposure to its entire student body, which was previously a lacuna in the institute’s curriculum. For Albers, this initiative has been one of their hallmark programs widely advertised to prospective students and used as a model for successful international collaboration. As a result, the core and advisory members from Albers received special funding in 2019 to visit SJIM (in-person) in order to further strengthen the ties of this initiative and to start new international collaborations.
- Through this initiative, the students from all participating schools are exposed to the difficulties that virtual teams face in real-life in several workplaces. Thus, the students attain a practical understanding of how small issues even in just communication can have larger consequences due to geographic separation and the inability to speak in real-time to a colleague. They also found ways to overcome them in order to collaboratively reach a desired goal. Furthermore, for some students, since they have never been outside their home country, such a global project gave them their first opportunity to interact with someone from another country.
- The students from all participating schools get a chance to have their ideas, plans and decisions reviewed by distinguished industry/governance professionals who are from outside their home country. The insights provided by these judges are unique and from a fresh perspective, thereby allowing the students to better understand not just the problem but also their own decision-making processes from another angle.
- The second-round of project assessment is a live event and the press is invited to cover it. As a result, over the years, SJIM has received publicity for this initiative in various local and national media. In addition to the publicity received, coverage by media outlets also helps to bring awareness about the urgent societal issues that are chosen as the themes of this initiative, thereby meeting at some extent the call-for-action by the Pope on these various societal issues.
- Students participating in this initiative gain experience in collaborating, engaging, and working towards a goal through virtual tools and with international colleagues. These skills are sought by several recruiters during campus placements. Students of SJIM who participate in this initiative have a 5% higher average salary than those who do not.
You can learn more about the project in the document Globally Coordinated Projects through Virtual teams. This article is an extract from the IAJU Best Practices in Jesuit Higher Education, available here.
Rodigues, C., and Krishnamurthy, A. Globally coordinated projects through virtual teams. St. Joseph’s Institute of Management (India)
