March Madness
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 03/16/2010
Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
What happens in the USA during these dates? That's when activity surrounding the NCAA basketball tournament is at its height.
What is the NCAA? The National Collegiate Athletic Association.
So does that mean the Association affiliates only colleges? Yes.
Why does the whole nation suffer from "March Madness" because of a basketball championship in which only colleges can participate? That's a good question to ask Americans. I haven't yet received a satisfactory answer....
Is there any other country in the world where a similar "madness" grips an entire nation because some young people choose to leap up and down a marked court, throwing a round bit of leather filled with air? Well, truth to tell, I can't think of any.
So what symptoms does "march madness" display? Never having been in the USA during those months (I haven't actually visited the USA that often, and when I have it has, with one exception, always either for conferences or to give one or more lectures, so I don't speak from first-hand observation), I can only tell you that apparently nearly every worker participates in gambling on the results organised within the office; all the gossip focuses on the matches, teams and players; and everyone is obsessed with watching videos of the matches.
A company called Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. (which describes itself as the USA's "first, oldest and premier outplacement consulting organization") has calculated the "business cost" of the Madness. By "business cost" it means all the salaries paid by employers but not used by employees for the purpose for which they are employed.
What is the "business cost" according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas? $1.8 billion.
That's an impressive figure.
In that calculation, I wonder if they factored in the BENEFITS to the businesses from the team-feeling that is built up by all the gossip, the joint-watching of matches and videos, and so on?
Prabhu Guptara
