The two fundamental features of the architecture of the programme are:

• Application of knowledge
• Customisation

The programme will consist of 24 courses spread over four phases for a 18 month period as under. This will be followed by four months of project work.

Each participant from a basket of general management subjects would choose electives.

Participants are required to work on a project that has immediate relevance to the company and can be readily implemented. Project is to be jointly selected by participant, his mentor/ dept head and SPJIMR. A Faculty guide will be appointed to each participant by SPJIMR to guide him/her on the academic inputs.

Equal importance of and complementarity between Learning in the On-campus and Off-campus modes. E-learning facilitates the learnings in the Off-campus mode.

During the On-campus residential contact sessions, the morning classes will serve primarily as an opportunity for Clarification, Synthesis and Integration of concepts previously studied by participants in the Off-campus mode. Discussions, Group-work, Case Analysis, Simulation will form the agenda for the afternoons followed by pre-dinner talks or similar socially interactive sessions. Participants will retire for the day after self-study time for the next day's preparation.

During the 3rd phase of the program, the participants will select Elective subjects for deeper study and specialisation. A real-life problem or issue faced by the sponsoring company will be taken up as the dissertation topic/theme. The participant will develop implementable plans. This will be approved and then evaluated for adequate efforts, separately by the organisation and the Institute.

Participants will be permitted, provided the class space is available to attend the 2nd year PGDM classes at SPJIMR, if required for special topics.

At every stage, participants will be encouraged to introspect and ask themselves: So what to me? and So what to my firm? with a view to inculcating in them an ability to use intellectual curiosity to handle real life problems and learn from the outcomes thereof.

Mentorship

Sponsoring companies would need to appoint an internal Mentor for each/ group of participants during the tenure of the Executive Management Programme. A mentor is obviously someone who is senior to the participant and whom he can look up to for guidance and inspiration to cope up with the demands of the program during the off-campus period while at the same time doing justice to his job. The role of a mentor would be as under:

1. guidance for sourcing company information from various departments required for application exercises;
2. guidance in selecting subject for thesis/ project;
3. prima-facie assessment (over and above Faculty's) of application exercises- as Acceptable, Unacceptable , Excellent to establish the authenticity of the participant's submissions;
4. interaction with SPJIMR periodically to review participant's performance;
5. panel member along with SPJIMR faculty for assessment of capstone dissertation

Performance Criteria

Evaluation of the participants will be on a continuous basis and would include assignments, exams/tests, groupwork simulations, e-chats etc. A Post-Graduate Diploma titled Executive Management Programme will be awarded on successfully meeting the requirements.

Pedagogy

1. Over and above conventional classroom learning and groupwork, a repertoire of innovative pedagogic approaches have been built into the program design including Practice exercises, Conceptual exercises, Application exercises, Simulations, E-chats, Video-conferencing
   
2. E-Learning support is visualised as a major aid during the Off-campus learning period and will consist of Summaries/explanations of concepts, Power point presentations of major topics, diagrams/illustrations, quizzes/games/puzzles, simulation exercises, Internet links to important and relevant sites for various topics, self-test aids and to concerned Professors in the Institute as well as peer group participants.
3. Application exercises are carefully designed so as to enable participants to apply the concepts learned in class to their department/ division/ company level thereby consolidating the knowledge garnered in the classroom by application in real-life situations- thus learning is customised to a large extent.