Monday, September 7, 2009

Arbit CP Cult

In case anyone thought that all we do is study at ISB, here's what happened during a class today. The session was on Management of Organization Theory (Organizational Behaviour). The prof, in a bid to explain fundamentals of formation of culture in organizations, gave us a small group task to design a new cult and present its workings in the class. Before delving into what my group came up with, here's some contextual knowledge on CP in an MBA setting.

CP: Class Participation: B schools assign some % of total marks (say 10-25%) based on contribution to class discussions. It is expected that any CP be relevant to the current topic of discussion.
However, in practice, CP shows up in some other forms namely:
ACP: Arbit CP: With a view to garner points in CP when knowledge about topic of discussion is limited, some students engage in speaking on anything under the sun. Most of these thoughts start with something like..." In my last organization...", "Hypothetically...", "It may not be relevant but...", etc
DCP: Desperate CP: This is very similar to ACP but the timing differentiates it. Generally, when students haven't spoken in a while in the class, or in the last few classes, they engage in DCP to gain whatever points they can.
ICP: Infinite CP: As obvious from the nomenclature, this is the CP that goes on and on and on...At ISB, we have a tradition that the captive classmates start clapping when CP inches towards ICP :)
Now with this background, let me present my group's cult: The ACP cult.
1. Purpose of its existence: Encourage ACP!
2. Core values of beliefs that will inform behaviour in the cult: The right to free CP, The obligation of people to listen to ACP.
3. Examples of behaviour you would expect the cult members to demonstrate: Always raised hand, interrupt others, have opinion on everything, forgetting the question after answering for 15 min (happened to VR, a student)
4. Type of people you recruit into the cult: All Pappus (last week, during the interval someone changed the name tag of one particularly vocal student to "Pappu"!)
5. Procedures for inducting new members into the cult: Ability to ask 25 questions in 15 min, Hands raised before listening to the question, blackballing
6. How cult members will be distinguished from non-cult members: Raised hands, anyone who understands the meaning and can speak on "liberal paternalism" and "subliminal advertizing" (RS gifted these 2 phrases to the class on his way to ACP glory last term), anyone whose phone rings while they are not in class (it happened when V went out during the class - the prof commented then that she must be calling from outside!).
Other groups came up with gems like "Sleepers in class Cult", No Arbit CP Cult", Kela lovers Cult(!), etc

All in all this is the kind of fun we have in class. Man I'm loving it here!