MUMBAI: World's most popular game football is no longer restricted to entertainment or fitness, as B-schools are now using this sport as a tool to educate its students and help hone their management skills.
The Vivekanand Education Society's Institute of Management Studies & Research, a leading educational institution in the city, known for its love for cricket, has kicked off a competition for its nearly 200 final semester students.
The competition involves writing a paper on management lessons from the ongoing Fifa World Cup, with a shot at winning Rs 10,000 for the deserving candidate.
Divided into groups of four, the students have been asked to focus on the strategies adopted by these soccer teams and their team management during the games.
The topics for the article/paper include leadership challenges, individual vs team behaviour, confidence building, importance of coaching, work allocation, resource utilisation, failures, the institute said in a statement.
"This is not just to pep up the excitement around the World Cup. It is a serious effort to prompt our students to critically analyse the game based on their knowledge, instead of just enjoying it," the institute's director Satish Modh said.
"All big management lessons are in a way translated into the football ground also through different tools.
Management techniques are relevant if it is the biting instance of Luis Su?rez or crisis management post the injury of Neymar. Even the work allocation for each member of the team should be backed with some management technique," he added.
The institute is run by the Vivekanand Education Society, Chembur founded by the late Hashu Advani and has over 18,000 students on the roll of 28 institutions, including schools and professional colleges.