Tips to Streamline Business Communication from the Best B.Com College in Greater Noida

The best B.Com College in Greater Noida, Ishan Institute of Management & Technology follows a teaching methodology that aims to develop skills for higher education and professional lives of students in their future. To this extent the academicians of the B.Com College have observed that students need to be taught the difference between generic and business communication. Communication in the generic sense is based on feedback. Business communication defines the scope and ambit of that feedback and thus streamlines the expected outcomes and reaction functions. Hence the adage of “think before you speak” is all the more relevant to business communication than to generic communication. While it may be too heavy to use the term of “professionalism” and expect undergraduate students to absorb subtle nuances of business communication when mature adults and working professionals find the going tough, we have defined a template to offer some time tested advice that is applicable to business communication across different dimensions of time, space and scale.

The 5S of Business Communication

The 5s of business communication refer to substance, science, story, style and speed. These 5s are the pillars of business communication and need to be focused on. The substance of business communication is the core. It is the heart of communication. Depending upon the second party in the conversation and the possibility of grape vine, there has to be a measured action towards choosing the summary of the subject matter. Science in business communication refers to following a measurement system to assess and analyze the effectiveness of communication. Modern day social media platforms come with tools that enable measurement of metric like the number of likes, shares, comments and the level of user engagement. The science of measurement is vital to the scalability of communication. There is a simple thumb rule. Repeat or scale up the substance that scores high on positive affinity from the target audience and eliminate the stereotypes that produce negative feedback. In daily lives the science of measuring effectiveness of communication may be difficult but not impossible. Next there has to be a great story around a business communication attempt. There has to be a punch of passion in the way one communicates in business. Story telling in fact is a skill that great marketers use to great effect to sell dreams and encroach upon the minds of their target audience. Great ad films, jingles, films, sops and plays have a story that we remember and relate to. Unless the audience feels that they are a part of the communication it is difficult to motivate them to produce the desired outcome in business. Style in business communication is an outcome of many factors like confidence, audience analysis, sense of timing, presentation and coordination with the audience or the other party. This is particularly the case in corporate presentations, meetings, seminars and conferences. In fact at the local level even a client meeting in a very seemingly casual Indian backdrop also mandates the fulfilment of this condition. This is an element of art and maturity. Art in business communication is not to be mistaken with art in the generic sense though. Art in business communication carries a value component that is integral to business.  Speed in business communication is managed according to short term and long term business actions. Many business actions of the short term are urgent and most of the business actions with a long term orientation are important. There is a big difference between urgent and important business actions. We have in the recent past covered the difference between urgent and important business actions through a separate post on Goodmorning Ishan. To cut a long story short it is important to understand which conversation will have multiple rounds and those that will end within definite number of rounds.

3Vs of Business Communication: Vocal, Verbal and Non-Verbal

The 3Vs of business communication are vocal, verbal and non-verbal elements of business communication. Communication in business has three different forms. The voice quality of a communicator includes features like pitch of the vice, clarity, tone, power and most importantly voice modulation. Think of great business leaders and even actors. They have a great ability to bend their voice according to time and space. This quality is truly an asset. These virtues are counted under vocal elements of business communication. Verbal communication refers to not just spoken form of communication but the choice of language in spoken and written forms of communication. Of course there are differences between the implications of spoken and written forms of communication but in the modern day landscape that is driven by technology, one has to be prudent in the choice of language. Non-verbal communication refers to the leveraging of coded forms of communication. Coded forms of communication refer to implicit substance that may not necessarily be communicated in words that are spoken or written. For example the dress code for a social or professional setting, hairstyle, shaven or unshaven look, furniture arrangement and decoration of a place and others reflect implicit messages that are visible to people who observe keenly. Visual merchandising is the biggest evidence of non-verbal communication in business.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, we use unique techniques like business movie screenings of art films and middle cinema, role plays, theatre and memory association games to improve business communication skills of students. Our efforts in innovating the teaching methodology include special screenings of the works of Shyam Benegal, Satyajit Ray, Daniel Boyle, role plays on “How Stella Saved the Farm” by C.Vijaygovindrajan and Chris Tremble and “An Enemy of the People” by Henrik Ibsen.

The Argumentative Indian: Insights on Free Trade from top B.Com Colleges in Greater Noida

Top B.Com colleges in Greater Noida encourage academicians to engage in freewheeling intellectual debates and deliberations on free trade and globalization. This is to assert that the study of economics papers like business economics and business environment in the domain of undergraduate degree programs in commerce assumes a place of pride and great importance. To streamline the track mentioned above it is important to note that a discipline like business environment requires surgical precision in the usage of mathematical economics to inject the much required positive element in the study of social sciences along with the fusion of philosophical foundations of economics, economic history and trade theory to cater to the requirements of normative approach. The statement might appear subversive if not paradoxical that many top B.Com colleges while dealing with a paper like business environment tend to under-emphasise the scope and importance of trade theory and the related debate on issues of free trade and globalization. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, academicians make a deliberate intellectual endeavour to engineer a scientific approach to the track (based on mathematical modelling) while trying to retain the human element of a non-lab based science like economics. Our perspective on free trade is premised on the works of noted trade and development theorist like Jagdish Bhagwati, Paul Krugman, Arvind Panagariya, Joseph Stiglitz, Debraj Ray, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu and the late Harry Gordon Johnson.

Advocating Macaulay’s Vision of Trade as an Engine of Growth

Given that we live in times of when a uni-polar world order is misconstrued as a flat world, it makes enormous good sense to assert that trade has indeed acted as an engine of growth. The point though is to scratch deeper to get beneath the pseudo-intellectual passions running high on the animal spirit of capitalism and question the exact classification of winners and losers in this definition of international trade. Economists like Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and others have exhibited empirical evidence based approaches to substantiating claims about trade led economic growth. To a great extent it is only humble for us lesser mortals to wholeheartedly accept their doctrines based on the economic growth rates that the Asian Tigers, China and India have achieved by engineering an economic system design whereby trade policy acts as a gateway to gains from exchange and gains from specialization The Flying Geese model of trade liberalization also adds fuel to the fire of this raging advocacy of free trade and the enormous potential that it has to address issues of world poverty, unemployment and low per capita incomes. The Cambridge version of Edward Denison also greatly steers the pro-free trade lobby to the shores of safety while amply exhibiting evidence amounting to the runaway success of softer economic borders.

Advocating Social Market Democracy for Economic Development

The social market democracy advocated by the likes of Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and the rest have in their discourses on trade theory fashioned a strong critique of free trade and the over the top usage of neo-classical policy making that is now renowned as the “Washington Consensus”. In fact they have also produced mounting evidence to the contrary that free trade twinned with colonialism has led to free massacre of indigenous peoples across communities in the Third World. They have with documentary evidences substantiated the cost of overly relying on mathematical and statistical modelling for the purpose of policy formulation and decision making while taking the liberty of omitting human spirits of development and gross national happiness. Yet it is fashionable to suggest that howsoever intellectually stimulating this side may seem, none of these economists have spent too much time in India for teaching, research, voluntary pro-bono social causes or any kind of campaigning to take poverty heads on. It is equally true for the former lobby of economists as well.

Is Free Trade the Same as Fair Trade?

To take the debate on free trade and globalization to its due climax, it is worthwhile to ask for the legitimacy of free trade and its capacity to resolve rather than create challenges for the Third World. This is to suggest that the Third World is where more than 60% of the global population resides. To quote the legendary Massachusetts economist Paul Samuelson, we are dealing with “the importance of being unimportant.” The lion’s share of humanity resides in the third world and thus going by the concept of universal adult franchise and intellectual democracy, the votes of the impoverished, overpopulated and plagued peoples matter more if not as much as the votes of the First World. Economic history on a global scale offers compelling evidence on the North-South Divide, the centre- periphery argument and the infant industry argument of Friedrich List. It is not enough to have a borderless world. It is also important to respect borders and sovereignty of nations.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top B.Com Colleges in Greater Noida, the academicians of the faculty of business administration and commerce engage in active research on the tracks of free trade, infant industry argument and poverty in search of solutions to real life challenges with the hope that we can offer academic and intellectual inputs for profits, people and the planet. We also acknowledge the efforts of our B.Com students Himanshu Sharma, Aril Wadia, Anu Sharma and Saumya Shukla in collaborating with academicians to step up academic efforts in the study on free trade. 

Fast Facts on Game Theory & Mahabharata from Top B.Com Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top B.Com Colleges in Delhi NCR improvise within the framework of the academic curriculum to offer fresh and innovative insights on different disciplines. Game theory is one such topic that invites the attention of students from diverse disciplines such as mathematics, economics, commerce and management. While game theory is one of the hot tracks for research and higher studies in management and has found wide spread application in the domain of academic and business research, there is still ample scope to explore more about the subject. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology one of the top B.Com Colleges in Delhi NCR the academicians move beyond the traditional examples of usage of game theory in business economics and business environment. Here are a few interesting fast facts on the same.

Game Theory and Mahabharata

It is very fascinating to note that the Mahabharata apart from being an epic of epic proportions and thus being a treatise on subjects of political science, philosophy and literature is probably the first ever treatise written on game theory. Many academicians from the Anglo-American school of economics are not very aware of the crystal clear applications of game theory that the Mahabharata has. To put things into perspective it shall be encouraging to note that the Mahabharata has brilliant expositions of different aspects of game theory. In fact the entire story of Mahabharata can be retold in the form of game theory centric rounds.

Asymmetry of Information: To Be or Not to Be is The Question

The background story of the Mahabharata notwithstanding the portion of the Mahabharata that is relevant to game theory is that of gambling. “Dyut Krida” in ancient Indian terminology refers to game of gamble and speculation. Perhaps it makes enormous good sense to assert that the evolution of non-cooperation between the two warring parties in the epic premises itself on the paradigm of speculation. The decision of the Pandavas to accept the invitation to a game of speculation was not an incorrect decision. In game theory centric terms it was not a well informed decision.

The asymmetry of information with regard to any transaction or game can have significant consequences for the game and in extreme cases drastically alter the very conclusion of the game as is seen in the case of the Mahabharata. In game theory terminology as also in actuarial sciences there is a widespread application and importance of the use of asymmetry of information. A well informed decision that takes into consideration both the costs and benefits of playing a game is the rational basis of a decision to play the game or not. As such there are ample examples of real life situations and business transactions where paucity of information for a single party or information surplus to another party may lead to the distortion of markets. As is evident from the Mahabharata it is the asymmetry of information that leads to decisive one sided outcomes in different rounds. The decision of the Pandavas to play the gamble, the decision of Kauravas to go to war, the decision to enter the Chakravyuha and even the killing of Karna by Pandavas are all examples of asymmetry of information at play. It makes great sense to reiterate the words of William Shakespeare:

“To be or not to be is the question.”

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection

In many cases of real life and business we come across situations involving a definite lack of transparency. Asymmetry of information acts as a double-edged sword. It works in favour of the party having access to information surplus and works adversely against the party facing an information deficit. Intellectual property rights like product and process innovations that are safeguarded by copyrights, trademarks and patents are potential weapons of non-price competition used in business and politics. Moral hazard plays out in favour of the party that has access to secret knowledge resources like a new invention, new technology, more efficient plant, equipment and machinery and the likes. Adverse selection plays out against the party with lower access to information resulting in ill-informed decision making. The Mahabharata is replete with instances of both moral hazard and adverse selection whereby one party scores over the other by virtue of greater access to and better safeguarding of resources that have higher efficiency.

Games with Multiple Rounds: Cheating and Tit for Tat Strategy

The Mahabharata comes across as a game with multiple rounds. Assuming that the parties at war did not know the number of rounds of warfare required to achieve victory it may be referred to as a game with indefinite number of rounds. Again it may be said that in most business and real life situations games alter their nature from indefinite to definite ones as the partied proceed from one round to another. The debates on this aspect however do not eradicate the questions of incentives to cheat.

The most popular literature on the incentives to cheat in business & economy, politics and governance is The Evolution of Non-Cooperation by popular scientist W.D. Hamilton and economic theoretician Robert Axelrod. Yet it makes sense to suggest that the earliest exposition of cheating and tit for tat strategies as is used in oligopoly analysis to resolve the breakdown of cartels is found in the Mahabharata. The spontaneous and sporadic movement from one episode of murder to another one is premised on the breakdown of cartel on the lines of cheating and tit for tat strategies.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top B.Com colleges in Greater Noida, Delhi NCR we have discussed case studies on the usage of game theory in the Mahabharata and business in the paper of business economics. We intend to take up the theme in greater detail by engaging in academic research on the same.