Choice of electives among management students in India: A conjoint analysis

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Highlights

  • Identifies attributes considered by the students while selecting electives using conjoint analysis.

  • Perceived knowledge of facilitator, peer & social network influence elective choice-making behavior.

  • Congruence between Affordance theory and personal mastery leads to recommendations for facilitators and school administrators.

  • Recommendation towards building engagement and impression management strategies along with academic input.

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the attributes that influence students' selection of electives in a two-year Master of Business Administration program. The study highlighted the utility of attributes that influences the student choices of electives as they trade-off between pecuniary and non-pecuniary; long term and short-term outcomes. The study deployed a conjoint analysis using the card sort method. It was found that the perceived knowledge of the faculty and recommendation from social networks of seniors and peers were the most significant factors guiding the choice. The study found that despite being a career enhancement course, the students’ motivation to learn and placement orientation of the course did not feature as important. There were no significant differences between how men and women chose electives, though the order of choices varied. The findings guide faculty members towards aligning teaching pedagogies that are engaging and focus on building connections and relationships. This must be complemented with push strategies, impression management, and class management techniques.

Introduction

Since the market liberalization in India in 1991, earning a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree has been a common career aspiration among Indian youth (Aggarwala, 2008; Parmeswaran, 2014). Nearly 300,000 Indians take the entrance exam conducted by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and the Indian Institute of Management, annually, competing for approximately 18,000–20000 seats in the top 100 colleges. With an MBA degree, they are likely to earn an annual starting salary of between USD 5000 and 40,000. However, much of their initial salary depends on the reputation and ranking of the college, elective courses, the area of specialization they choose during the MBA training, and the reputation of their college with respect to that specialization (Mitra, 2011). For students who have worked after undergraduate studies, the remuneration could be hiked by up to 200% (Altonji et al., 2016). An MBA-granting Business school (B school) thus becomes a citadel for students to hone their leadership and managerial skills, which eventually improves their earning ability (Deming & Noray, 2020). Notably, most other master's qualifications may not fetch a similar improvement in career growth and salary improvement. This decision thus has a major implication for faculty members, as they can plan and design their courses to suit and align with priorities and factors that guide the students.

The electives are introduced at the end of the first year of the two-year program of almost all B schools. They prepare the students in the selected specialization in functional domains such as human resource management, financial management, operations management, and marketing management. This choice sets the foundation for the students' first jobs and long-term careers. The ranking and reputation of an elective is a decisive factor in the final job offer and has major implications for the students’ career trajectories (Sinha, 2014). Choosing an elective is complex and challenging for any student (Baruch, 2009), as it impacts their future career and earning (Arcidiacono, 2004; Hamermesh & Donald, 2004; Simpson et al., 2005). This choice represents a unique bouquet of electives, which blends pecuniary and non-pecuniary outcomes (Holtom & Inderrieden, 2007). The former (i.e., pecuniary choices) are related to placement options, salary packages, and/or financial progression through careers, whereas the latter (i.e., non-pecuniary choices) are a blend of interest, passion, and work-life balance.

This study examined the attributes that influence students’ selection of electives in the MBA program using conjoint analysis. We investigated the trade-offs that a student makes regarding the teacher and personal and other attributes during the selection process. Notably, a student can take only a limited number of courses and is forced to trade off for this choice (one out of an average of eight courses offered). Additionally, we also explored whether gender and year of studies made a difference in their choices. We believe this study would help the facilitators improve their teaching deliverables and allow business schools to focus on developing subject-wise specialties and market them to future students.

Section snippets

Literature review

Studies on B school education have focused on macro-level issues such as satisfaction, quality of education, and relevance of the MBA degree in both full-time and part-time programs (Bruce, 2009; Rubin & Dierdorff, 2009). Other areas of research focus on outcomes of online MBA programs (Arbaugh, 2014; Sebastianelli et al., 2015) and the choice of the B school deemed as elite or non-elite, vis-à-vis its impact on future careers (Baruch & Lavi-Steiner, 2015; Fornaciari & Arbaugh, 2017).

Methodology

Conjoint analysis was employed to examine the relative priority and preference among the attributes that influence students’ choice of electives. The study was conducted in two phases.

The first phase of the methodology consisted of the identifying attributes and listing them with their levels.

On the basis of the relevant literature review, we summarized the choices that affect students' decisions using three attributes with the following levels: (A) teacher's attributes: gender, knowledge and

Results

Table 4 shows Pearson's R and Kendall's Tau coefficients, which illustrate the correlation between the observed and estimated preferences and indicate the model's goodness of fit. Kendall's Tau for holdouts was significantly measured as 0.67, specifying the validity of the data, which were rated by respondents, but not considered for the conjoint procedure while estimating utilities. The conjoint model was found to be statistically significant (Pearson's R = 0.89, p < 0.001, and Kendall's

Discussion

This study was based on the supposition of rationality in the decision-making behavior of students while choosing electives. However, we found that teachers' attributes and other aspects, such as alumni and senior's recommendations, are more important than socio-cognitive decision attributes such as self-belief, motivation to learn the subject, and its placement orientation. The perception of the knowledge and expertise of the faculty being the first choice suggests externality in the student

Conclusion

This study examined and reported the influence of attributes that guide the choice of electives among MBA students of elite business schools of India. The findings of the study indicate that students' choice-making behavior is guided by knowledge of the professor, senior, and alumni recommendations; peer pressure; and goal or placement orientation of the course. Their elective choices are also influenced by personal connections with the faculty. This suggests two levels of intervention for the

Author statement

Anamika Sinha: Conceptualization and data collection. Jallavi Panchamia: Methodology, Data analysis Software, Abhishek Sachan: original draft preparation. Sunita Guru: Review and editing.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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