The Hindu puranas talk of devas and asuras churning the milky ocean to extract nectar from its depths — an elixir that promises immortality to those consuming it. There was, however, a problem. What came out first was a lethal poison of such virulence that it required the combined efforts of Shiva, who swallowed it, and Parvati, who stopped it coursing down Shiva’s throat.
Nasty though the poison was, there were, however, many goodies that came in its wake: precious stones, a divine cow (Kamadhenu), divine tree (Kalpavriksha), and so on.
The scam involving the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (Vyapam) too, in a sense, resembles the cosmic exertion of churning the milky ocean. There is the poison in the form of corruption in high places, and the murders and suicides of many individuals. But there are also managerial insights to be gained. Indeed, it is fair to say that rarely does a news development and its coverage in the media offer so much management fodder to chew on, as this scam has done.
Core competence
For instance, does the ability to conduct an admission test and select candidates for an undergraduate course in medicine also lend itself to choosing sub-inspectors for the Madhya Pradesh police? In short, what is the ‘core competence’ of Vyapam that differentiates it as a successful service provider in the market for recruitment services spanning different qualifications and skill-sets?
That is not all’ the many aspects of the scam provide a rich tapestry of material to reflect on other managerial concepts, such as outsourcing versus insourcing, aptitude versus skill, decision theory and so on.
Vyapam began its journey as an agency conducting eligibility tests for admission to undergraduate courses in medicine in Madhya Pradesh. Later, it was tasked with conducting tests for admission to engineering courses in that State. Before long it was administering tests for admission to all manner of professional courses, from animal husbandry to teachers’ training.
Wider scope
In more recent times, there has been a qualitative shift as it was given the responsibility for recruiting all kinds of government employees, from police sub-inspectors to rural extension officers. As CK Prahlad and Gary Hamel point out in their celebrated article on core competency (‘The Core Competence of the Corporation’, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990) businesses must focus on the underlying skills and capabilities that is a common strand across their portfolio of products.
It is an understanding of such capabilities and clear articulation across the entire workforce that helps an enterprise venture into new areas that bring success. Alternatively, it helps them shed products that don’t fit in with such a capability before they bleed the organisation to death.
From this perspective, the core competence of Vyapam is an ability to handle selection on a mass basis, be it for admission to a course in medicine or recruitment of rural development officers. Indeed, few activities offer the potential for handling volume on a mass scale as that of selection of students for an undergraduate programme in medicine.
Inadequacies
Once an organisation has mastered the selection of candidates for a medical course, others must pale in comparison from the point of view of volume. Indeed, there are efficiency gains to be had, as the infrastructure created for handling an episodic event such as the selection of candidates for a medical course (typically at the start of a new academic year), can be deployed better if recruitment and selection activities are undertaken right through the year.
Where did Vypam go wrong? And it did in more ways than one. Leveraging one’s capabilities to the hilt is not always a recipe for success. As an organisation moves up on the ‘core competence’ ladder, its inadequacies (the anti-thesis of capabilities), that didn’t seem to matter initially, become a potent threat later.
The internal discipline and control systems designed to ensure integrity of the selection process may be robust enough when the selection and recruitment exercise is confined to one event every year, such as medical college admissions. But even a capable organisation becomes hopelessly inept when it seeks to translate such a capability across diverse recruitment operations. The robustness of its control systems, effective in a one-off setting, loses its rigour when it becomes a round-the-year activity.
Failing to reinvent
Even if Vyapam had not turned itself into a multi-purpose recruitment agency but had stayed close to its initial remit of medical college admissions, it might still have become a failure if it did not possess another capability — the ability to continuously reinvent itself so that it is always a step ahead of those attempting to undermine the integrity of its selection process. A photo identity was long thought to be an effective check against impersonation. But the Vyapam scam has demonstrated that it is not good enough.
Vyapam might have failed miserably in preventing fraudulent practices in its selection/admission process. But what of the user departments that had outsourced their recruitment functions? Take the case of the MP Government’s education department, tasked with raising the standard of enrolment and educational attainments of primary school children. Recruitment of school-teachers is perhaps the most important function for this. Outsourcing this process separates the authority and accountability aspects of a managerial function, so that the education department has no say in who gets appointed but is nevertheless accountable for educational outcomes.
Ceding control
It is a truism in management that an organisation must have complete control over areas of its operations that are key to its success. This is so not just for those that are commercially-oriented but also not-for-profit or public welfare-oriented organisations. Outsourcing recruitment functions in organisations where human resources are vital to success is a recipe for disaster. And corruption in such recruitment only makes the outcome doubly unfortunate.
Every job has ‘skill’ and ‘aptitude’ dimensions to it. The relative weight of either of these factors may vary from one job or educational course to another. By emphasising one aspect so much as to exclude the relevance of the other means the selection process ends up placing square pegs in round holes.
Which attribute is more important is not easy to answer. Even in something as straightforward as selection of candidates for higher education, it is not quite easy to say that skill is more important than aptitude, or vice-versa. The present system, with its emphasis on subject knowledge as evidenced by marks obtained, emphasises ‘skill’ to the point of excluding ‘aptitude’ altogether.
If ‘skill’ alone is all that matters in higher education, there would have been no need for tests on ‘scholastic aptitude’. When selection processes are centralised, as the MP Government did for admission of students into courses of higher education or recruitment of employees in public administration, there is a danger of it becoming one-dimensional.
Media coverage
The discussion would not be complete without a reference to the media coverage of Vyapam developments. The coverage, with its emphasis on reporting the death of every person who had any connection to the scam as evidence of foul-play is a perfect example of ‘confirmation bias’ in decision-making.
Take the case of the death of the journalist of the regional channel Aaj Tak. The death is, without doubt, a very unfortunate event. But when hundred journalists, if not more, were covering some aspect of the scam or the other at the time of this death, and are still going about their job without let or hindrance, to paint this one death in such terms that is nothing short of sensationalism, may or may not be ethical reporting. But it is certainly evidence of fitting a fact/facts to a suit a pre-conceived belief or ‘confirmation bias’ in decision-making.