Grading Papers

I went through the MBA "final papers" for the class over the last couple of weeks (more than once) and found them mostly interesting and well written. However, there were some common issues I found through the papers and thought I would generally post the comments here so I didn't have to repeat these ideas in each of the papers.

1. In one of my first posts to my blog, I asked students to go through the online cultural training module created by the University of the Pacific (you can read my original post here). One of the points made in that training is that students who make their first international trip abroad often return to find themselves considered "experts" in the country by people they know. The site urges students to avoid "the tendency to become an 'instant expert'" on the country they have visited. Now that you have this experience that few others in your social circle have had, the urge is to make assertions about what "India is like" - how surprised you were at Indians' overall hospitality, their general strong positive attitude towards customer service, their general religious intolerance, the complete lack of any technology in agriculture, etc. - rather than just comparing your observations with expectations or home experiences. It is critical to understand that your international experience was extremely limited both temporally and geographically and this experience is supposed to be eye-opening and thought-provoking. However, it is certainly not sufficient to make broad assertions about India or Indians (both positive and negative). The comparisons between India and the USA seemed in many papers to be more broad assertions about the people, culture, and attitudes rather than interesting insights into your particular experience in one small part of the country. I once got into an argument with a relative of mine who was visiting the US for the first time. He had flown in to New York and then headed to Mississippi to meet some folks. He kept making comments like "You people are supposed to be the wealthiest country on earth, but the poverty all around is astonishing. There are boarded up houses, poor people on the streets, and indiscriminate shootings on the street. I think you set up a nice showcase city in NYC and then hide the squalor and poverty behind a facade. The racism and intolerance in this country is astonishing," he claimed, "you put black people in their own neighborhoods and let them live in poverty ..." Of course, he was making ridiculously broad generalizations based on about two weeks in the US and a narrow experience in the state of Mississippi. I tried explaining this to him, but to no avail. I can't even imagine what warped view of the US he took back to India and shared with his social circle. The point is that many of the papers had such broad assertions about the country and its people (both positive and negative) based on the very limited and unique experiences you had in the country. It would have been more appropriate to compare and contrast your experiences and raise questions, offer possible explanations, and discuss potential implications of these observed differences rather than drawing broad inferences that possibly may be unwarranted.

2. There also seems to be some general misunderstanding of what Tom Friedman is saying when he talks about how countries like India are evidence that the world is "flattening." Many of you seem to have expected India to be a place of gleaming transformation with high-tech businesses all around and technology infused into every aspect of daily life. Rather, I think Friedman was making the point that despite being an underdeveloped country, the technology revolution (and other flatteners) have resulted in them being able to use some of their natural resource advantages (huge labor pool, recent development of telecommunication infrastructure, vast technically-proficient workforce, english-speaking workforce, almost 12-hour time difference with the US, etc.) to compete globally and fill in the "gaps" in the value chain where they have a competitive advantage. That is, the book tries to explain that no matter how poor or underdeveloped a country is, the ability to disaggregate elements of the value chain and easily have those disaggregated elements delivered by people anywhere in the world, results in a "flattening" of the world such that any country that has a natural advantage at being able to efficiently fill that element of the value chain will do so. He is trying to explain exactly how a country that is inefficient, technologically backward, and with poorly developed internal infrastructure, can still be a global player in the world of technology because they can efficiently fill only those elements of the value chain where they have a competitive advantage. This point seems to have been missed by many of you. Admittedly Friedman causes some of this problem by focusing on the gleaming towers of Intel, Microsoft and IBM in Bangalore early in his book. But he does take the pains to point out that a "flat world" is not the same as an "equal world."

3. I am regularly surprised at many MBA students' inability to organize and structure their reports and papers into sections with appropriate subheadings. To have ten single-spaced pages of thoughts presented in a long string of paragraphs without any clear organizing structure provided by meaningful subheadings is surprising and frustrating. Surely it makes more sense to organize thoughts around meaningful topics (these are just arbitrary topic headings that may or may not have been appropriate for any specific paper) like "Cultural Comparisons," "Political Factors," "Infrastructure Issues," "Doing Business in India," "Business Comparisons," "Implications," "My View of India's Future," "Strengths," "Biggest Threats to India's Future," etc.? I once had a term paper from an MBA student that was entirely in one paragraph. While most of these papers at least used paragraph breaks, they seemed more like a stream of consciousness rather than a well thought out and organized set of thoughts based on the experience. Perhaps it is the experience most MBA students have of writing memos (a page or two at the most) that makes it difficult to understand that longer submissions of prose ought to be organized around topics. Those of you registering for my Data Analysis class, please take note!

4. Observations versus analysis: Related to the first point above, I found that most of the papers were filled with interesting observations, but much less analysis of these observations. The observations were often used to make broad generalizations but less frequently used as a basis for insightful analysis on the potential implications for globalization or the future of international business relationships between these countries. The observations made for interesting reading. Several of you talked about the shopping experience at the local family-owned clothing store. However, few went beyond concluding with a broad statement that went something like "it is clear that relationships are more important in India than in the US" (which, by the way I don't think is completely true). Instead, a less superficial analysis of the kinds of relationships that are important in India and the US, a recognition that small family-owned stores in the US may have acted the same way (and the consequent implications of the decline of mom and pop stores in this country), the importance of networks and JVs for US companies planning on doing business in India, etc. would have reflected greater thought put into this paper.

5. The papers were graded on the basis of how well students (a) described how the India experience has changed their perceptions of international business and specifically business practices in India, (b) made clear comparisons with the US of three approaches to business in India, (c) clear discussion not just of the differences but why they are different, (d) appropriately justified ideas from their readings in and out of class, (e) overall wrote the paper (in terms of organization, spelling, grammar, etc.)