Leading business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact has roped in professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow to give its employees lessons in management skills and improving productivity.

Through electronically enabled interactive sessions, workers at Genpact’s operation hubs in Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Jaipur will learn the finer nuances of management, soft skills and strategic planning from senior professors of the business school.

This is an e-certificate programme in general management (e-CPGM) and there are 119 participants, most of whom have worked for one to three years.

“The objective of this programme is to develop managerial capabilities among people who are at the early stages of their career to enable them to effectively undertake managerial responsibilities,” said Ajay Singh, course director of IIM Lucknow.

The programme is divided into 12 modules. Keeping in mind the requirements of the industry, the modules are designed to create managerial and leadership competence among the professionals. There are 120 hours of e-enabled interactive sessions.

Singh said the programme was being run from IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus, which was being developed as a centre of excellence in the area of executive education.

The India headquartered Genpact operates service delivery centres in India, China, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the US.

The relative efficacy of a global marketing strategy vis-à-vis a tailored marketing strategy remains one of the hotly debated issues of international marketing. As is the case in any debate, polarizing arguments for (or against) each abound. Proponents of a global strategy point to the increasing homogenization of customer tastes and preferences and suggest that significant economies of scale can be attained by standardized products marketing world wide (Levitt 1983). Critics, on the other hand, dismiss the potential of a global strategy and underscore economic, environmental and other cultural differences among nations as impediments to its implementation. They argue that reflect adaptation strategy to market-country differences will generate improved response (Kotler 1986).

Often overlooked in this fierce debate is a middle ground approach that takes into account not only differences or similarities among both markets but. As Quelch and Hoff (1986) point out, the real issue is not whether to standardize but rather how to tailor the global marketing strategy. Indeed, reliance on a global strategy can result in missing out on important target markets and positioning inappropriate. Likewise customizing marketing strategy to individual countries implies loss of potential economies of scale as well as exploitation opportunities for product ideas on a scale against (White Lock and Chung 1989).

The writings of recent genre suggest that comprehensive and tailored strategies are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that they can be used in tandem to reap the maximum benefits. In this vein, Jain (1989) and Kale and Sudharshan (1987) offers interactivity Market segmentation approach to world markets and point to the feasibility of identifying homogeneous segments which transcend national boundaries. Once identified these so-called strategic segments equivalent (Kale and Sudharshan 1987) can be reached via global marketing strategies aimed at different cross-national segments (Verhagen, Dahringer and Cundiff 1989). The idea of reconciling the different viewpoints of global marketing strategies and tailored intuitively appealing and is certainly represents a significant forward link in the design of multinational marketing strategies. However, the empirical support to middle ground viability of this approach is evidence to scanty and its Effect comes mainly in the form of anecdotes (Ohmae 1985, White Lock, 1987).

The study reported here is intended to partially fill in this void. Specifically, consumers in six countries including the United States, Mexico, The Netherlands, Turkey, Thai and Saudi Arabia were studied for InterBase Market segmentation on the basis of two criteria, perceived risk and brand loyalty (Kreutzer 1988). Consumers were questioned about their degree of perceived risk and loyalty for two brand products, bath soap and toothpaste. These products were chosen since they are widely available in different brands and are purchased on a frequent basis by the consumers in these countries. It was maintained that the consumers in these countries are not sufficiently similar regarding the effects of risk perception on brand loyalty, the underlying rationale for a single global marketing strategy at least within the context of products here would disappear under consideration. On the contrary, such a circumstance would render the middle ground approach feasible.

An international seminar will be held here on 16 September a platform management practitioners, policy makers and scientists to pursue their views and experiences on the theme “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Kerala: Current Issues and Future Trends “.

The opening of borders for the strengthening of economic activity showed mixed results and reactions in different parts of the world, Prof. D Rajasenan, Department of Applied Economics and Director of the ICEPA, Cochin University of Science and Technology, told a press conference can be found here.

Although sporadic, there were cases in which different interest groups have reacted with the strength of corporate responsibility, he said.

The call to boycott products of Coca-Cola and Nike for its so-called issue, environmental standards and labour practices in developing countries shows that companies be constantly monitored, he added.

Representatives of Kochi Refinery Ltd (KRL), Cochin Port Trust (CPT) and Management Institute in India, Delhi, among the participating companies. Researchers from the Netherlands, Italy, Bangladesh is also present their views on corporate social responsibility in their respective countries.

Netherlands Embassy funded the seminar, organized by the International Centre for Economic and Policy Analysis, CUSAT in collaboration with the University of Tilburg Netherlands, restructuring the public sector and internal audit and management committee Kerala Association.

The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) announced today the selection of 401 new Ford Foundation International Fellows from among nearly 22,000 applicants worldwide. IFP accepts applications from people in 22 countries and territories throughout the developing world.

“IFP Fellows are thriving in their diverse academic settings, distinguishing themselves as excellent scholars and bringing valuable new perspectives to the universities where they are studying,” said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation.

Award winners in this fifth round of IFP competitions were selected on the basis of IFP’s three core criteria of academic achievement, strong leadership skills and potential, and commitment to the development of their communities and countries. IFP especially seeks candidates from groups and communities with little access to higher education.

“IFP’s strategic university partners know that IFP Fellows bring their strong cultural attachments and passion for social justice to their studies,” added Donald McHenry, chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Fellowships Fund, IFP’s parent organization, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. “Their diverse experiences, and their diversity itself, is a boon to any academic community.”

IFP Fellows receive support for up to three years of post-baccalaureate study in an appropriate university program anywhere in the world. Currently, more than 1,000 IFP Fellows have enrolled at 385 different universities in 41 countries. IFP is expanding its network of “strategic university partnerships” with leading institutions around the world that provide language training, mentoring, and academic support for clusters of IFP Fellows. IFP now has formal agreements and clusters of Fellows at over 30 universities in a dozen countries. Among IFP’s university partners are the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, the Australian National University, the Center for Tropical Agronomy Research and Education in Costa Rica, Columbia University in New York, the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, and the Universities of Sussex and Birmingham, UK.

“Grouping Fellows at excellent institutions has real benefits for Fellows,” said IFP Executive Director Joan Dassin. “The universities provide increased language training and academic support and mentoring, and our Fellows are able to quickly begin building a network among their IFP colleagues that aids their studies and their professional development.”

Over the past year, numerous IFP Fellows have been recognized for outstanding work in both academic and professional spheres, winning prestigious awards from their host universities, development agencies and national governments. Their extraordinary success is an important indicator that candidates chosen from groups and communities traditionally excluded from higher education can excel in competitive graduate programs. Several universities have offered outstanding IFP Fellows additional support to pursue doctoral studies after the term of their IFP Fellowship.

IFP continues to sponsor networking and leadership activities that complement formal graduate-level studies and aim to build an enduring cohort of IFP Fellows who can gain from each other’s learning and experience. IFP conducted four Leadership for Social Justice Institutes in 2004, in Mexico, the Netherlands, Thailand, and the USA.

Over 3,300 IFP Fellows will be chosen through 2012. The new IFP Fellows were chosen from among 21,684 applications received in Chile, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Palestine, Peru, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. A total of 1,509 IFP Fellows have been selected since the program’s first Fellows were chosen in June 2001. Brazil, Kenya, Russia, Tanzania, and Uganda will rejoin the selection cycle in 2005.

As part of its efforts to bridge the digital divide, TeX Users Group (TUG) has decided to tackle the geographical divide. For the first time, the annual meeting of the TUG is to be held at a venue outside Europe or North America. The 23rd annual conference of this free software users association will be held in Thiruvananthapuram Technopark this week, Mr Dominik Wujastyk, Director, Welcom Centre of Medicine, University College, London told a press conference, here. Mr Wujastyk, a Sanskrit scholar and a member of the programme committee of TUG-2000 said the three-day meet starting September 4 will be chaired by Mr Sebastian Rahtz, Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services. The conference will have 32 delegates from Australia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. There will be 32 Indian delegates too. In India, TeX is widely used in institutions like the IITs, the Indian Institute of Science, Saha Institute of Theoretical Physics, and the Indian Statistical Institute. In Thiruvananthapuram, the Centre for Mathematical Sciences has long used TeX, as has Focal Image Pvt Ltd, an Indo-UK joint venture that has been using TeX for over a decade to run a profitable text processing venture. Mr Satheesh Babu, chairperson of the TUG-2002 organising committee said the meet would give a fillip to the wider utilisation of TeX in India. The organisers of the meet in India are Indian TeX Users Group, department of IT of the Kerala government and Thiruvananthapuram Technopark. The conference will be preceded by three days of tutorials, said Dr Srivatsan, Director, IIITM-K (Indian Insitute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala). Around 22 Indians have registered for the tutorials. Apart from the more specialized talks devoted to technical aspects of TeX, TUG 2002 will feature talks on typesetting traditions in India, an overview of TeX usage in India, an Indian perspective of new horizons in free software, fonts and packages to typeset Bengali script using TeX, and typesetting in Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian. TeX (derived from the Greek letters “tau”, “epsilon” and “chi” and pronounced “tech”, also alludes to “techne”, the Greek root meaning art as well as technology) is a computer program written and designed by famed computer scientist Donald Ervin Knuth of Stanford University for preparing publishable documents, especially those of a technical or mathematical nature. TUG, the TeX Users Group, is an international association of individual and institutional members who promote TeX, and discuss issues and problems related to TeX, principally through TUGboat, the quarterly publication of TUG.