HBR

Now that my professional life is about to include management, its time to upgrade my managerial skills to improve my chances of success in the new bad world of management! Nope, my technical skills are not gonna be traded for managerial skills. Its more of an add-on, atleast I hope so:)

Towards that, I just started spending some time reading Harvard Business Review (HBR). I already am an avid reader of Economist towards boardening my perspective on a wide array of topics - I strongly believe that one has to develop a whole range of peripheral knowledge to be able to improve decision making and leadership abilities.

I cant believe it took me so long to find HBR - its such a great resource for any professional - not just senior managers. Anyways, I will post my experiences reading HBR from time to time.

For people who dont want to pay for HBR (its expensive - $99 a year for basic subscription, $129 a year for premium subscription), there is a free component, HBS Working Knowledge, that carries a few of the articles from HBR.

To illustrate its relevance and usefulness in everyday life, I found this article on corruption and bribe - Should I pay the Bribe? Over the weekend, a few of my friends in my charity organization circle were sharing our thoughts on corruption in India, and how corruption could be tackled. "Should I pay the Bribe?" is a case study of a foreign business operator's dilemma about oiling the official machineries! The structure of the case study is as follows:
- The premises of this casae is explained in detail
- 4 experts serve up their judgements as commentaries

As I expected, the answer to these question was a resounding NO. While I am happy to see the academics agreeing on principle, I am skeptical about business leaders following these morals. An anonymous , scientific survey among foreign businesses operating in a few countries would provide some useful pointers.

While reading this article, I found references to a few interesting websites that I have bookmarked for further reading:
www.transparency.org
www.c2principles.org (The Wharton School, UPenn)
Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2004

Enough for the day (previous day)!