1.

1 Report Aim:

‘Follow your dreams, be a good human being and create your own identity
as the best in your profession‘– is my father’s resounding advice to me.
Since childhood, I have followed this advice in litter and deed. At present I
am looking forward to pursuing Master of business Administration.
Thereafter, I wish to work in an organization related to my field to map the
learned concepts to practical situations, gain prolific experience and learn
more about the learned concepts to practical situations, gain prolific
experience and learn more about the job and its requirements.

I once read that “Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age.
Nothing does – except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age.
But only if the grapes were good in the first place.” (Abigail Van Buren). I
feel that there is a world of truth in this quip. To gather professional and
personal and personal knowledge and wisdom, I must seek high standard
training and exposure at your university in MBA programme. The time is
propitious as my learning skills have been honed by my training and
educational exposures. I am confident that I have to take up the challenge
of a world class course and take forward the tradition of excellence. My
stint at masters will be a gateway to further prospects in life and I look
forward to this experience wholeheartedly.

1.2. Personal Background:

I come from a small village called Jaatwali in India. I was never exposed to
much progress or developments of the world outside. I completed a
Bachelors degree in Arts for Economics subject. After graduation i joined a
securities and commodities company as i was always interested in stock
market and economical growth. But after a period of a two years I had
progressed and had been promoted to highest designation possible and in
tune with my qualification. Now i felt that my career was not going
anywhere further. Hence I planned to do further studies. Management
posts are still vacant in my field. I wish to take up those posts before they
come to a saturation level.
1.3: Future Plans:

M.B.A is one of the most important and coveted degree today, simply
because it opens up a range of exiting and fulfilling careers for people. An
MBA programme emphasizes on the development of the student’s skills
and abilities to apply management theories and concepts to live problems
in business and industry. An MBA programme would enable us to channel
our quantitative and qualitative skills in analyzing and solving the issue
created in business and industry. The programme focus on the new
management agenda composed of issue characterized by globalization
and regional integration, technological innovation, organizational
transformation and corporate governance, e-business and information
management in driving in international competitiveness etc.

M.B.A course will provide me with clear insight into modern business
administration. I assume fundamental aim of the programme is to provide
an advanced body of knowledge of individuals wishing to work in the
financial sector or those who seek research training in MBA. The
philosophy of the programme is “Real World”. MBA course is providing me
with a very special environment for increase my knowledge skills and
make me eligible for a good part in corporate world. So after increase your
knowledge skills as well as specialized business acumen gained you are
confident that you will have very bright future in various industries in
corporate world which are targeting India as hot destination for business. I
would like to reach the heights never achieved before in my desired field.
The developments, which have taken place around the world, are mostly
due to application of the principles.

2.1: Learning Style Questionnaire:

In the Honey & Mumford learning style I found myself as a theorist .Even
at various situation I have observe that I always took some time before
coming to the final conclusion. I measure the situation logically which
requires great amount of skills and justify the outcome. I believe that
practical approach is very reliable because it requires some amount of
time and knowledge. But most of the time I stick to application of logic of
theories. And deal all the process very mechanically and solve a problem
step by step as per protocols. I feel that I have a mix style of learning as I
got some marks in every style. I had a prejudice mindset that I was much
of a pragmatist but surprisingly I discovered that I am very spontaneous
and sometimes jump to the conclusion before thinking or making a plan. I
thought I was much of strategist and planned my steps well in advanced
by looking into logic and applying organised approach. But after looking at
results I realised it was a theorist learning style. The results of my
questionnaire can be realised as shown below in the graph.

2.2: Learning Strategies:

Being a theorist in management is not a good idea as management is

beyond theories. Practical analysis and real life application of utmost
importance in business studies and application. Hence I think I should
keep alive my organised ways of working but also learn to learn from
experiences both self and others. Though the questionnaire shows some
good numbers as reflector and pragmatist but yet I am more of a theorist
as I score a 19 on it.
I sometimes get too cautious and rational and try to apply reason to every
outcome. This kind of very judgemental approach might cause ignorance
to obvious common sense. On thinking over it and discussing it with many
friends I discovered these facts. One other problem that I face being a
theorist is that I cannot frame statements of my own as and when I try to
explain a theory i tend to use the same words as read by me and sound
very monotonous.

I am going to apply my pragmatist skills and reflective skills hereafter. To

have a practise of the same I am going to learn to interview many people
and learn to analyse all possible view points to a problem. I am going to
ask my friends to sit for a group discussion with me once every week.
Hereafter whenever I get to take decisions I will look back in my past
scenarios and learn to take information from it. I might as well maintain a
record in diary about all my achievements and failures so that I can refer
them every now and then. Case studies are one such thing I can learn
from. Doing a regular reading of annual reports of variety of firms. Doing
this will provide me a insight into different problems.

2.3: Critique Analysis

My views are well supported by the authors Levin and Greenwood in the
ninth chapter of the Handbook of Action research. In which they bring out
two main features of Pragmatic learning style. One of which is to learn
from the experiments and evaluative spontaneous action. They may be
referring to the trial and error method of learning style. They also talk
about participative democracy, but here of-course he is not talking about
the literal meaning of the term but mean involvement of the candidates
and that too very active one. It is very rarely seen that

3.1:Personal Objective

I wish to go back to India and join the company I quit and attain a better
role in it. Once i create a very good rapport with the customers that i gain.
I wish to better serve them with more efficiency. At a later stage the
foundation of client confidence that i have earned i intend to use it to
open my own firm of securities and commodities and do the same. It will
help me in my entrepreneur venture.

3.2: Personal Development plan:

Goals How Who When Measurement

Short Term: Watch others With help of Before I leave Already made
Learn carefully in library and United Kingdom one
communication presentation, faculties. presentation
skills Practise more with and learnt to
the use of self help converse
books. formally.

Mid Term: Gain Meet many people Cardiff as a During the term Learnt about
contacts and and mingle with whole. time. Cultures from
experience many groups. the museums
and national
history outlets.

Long Term: Return to the job Senior staffs As soon as I go Will be

Return to the firm and apply newly and executive back to India. evaluated
I use to work and gained knowledge boards at work when I go back
help flourish it. and skills. place. and join work.

3.3: Discussion

I use to work in a stock market (securities and commodities) firm back in

India. I took a lean period leave from my job just to improve my
personality and awareness on international relations and FOREX structure.
I lag a lot in communication skills as I always worked behind the counter
in the back office. I use to deal only with limited customers which were
introduced to me by the marketing staff. I dealt with them quite very well
but as and as our firm progressed we started getting a variety of
customers out of which some where least bothered about the profits but
some wanted to know everything of their investments. Staff in our firm
found it difficult to communicate with diverse kinds of people. Also I was
one of those staff members who had problems with conversing though i
was very good at what i was doing practically but was lagging in extra
knowledge and advancements. Besides my career had come to a
standstill and it won’t proceed any further. I had to polish myself and
acquire more knowledge effectively and quickly. I could see only one
option that is to study Master in Business Management. Postgraduate
courses in India are of two years duration. However in United Kingdom it’s
only one year. I thought to save a year of my life and study a MBA course
in United Kingdom.

Making the reasons for my MBA in United Kingdom very clear I proceed
towards key steps I will follow to attain my goals. I will closely analyse
everything taught in the lectures and make my notes relating it to the
scenarios I have faced in my career. I have planned to join any kind of
work here and learn customer relations. I have applied for training in few
FOREX firms, I am quite sure I will get a call from them soon. This will add
to my stock exchange skills and improve my knowledge in my area of
work.

3.4: Justification

One of the reasons why I came here is many of my friends who studied in
the UK have shown good progress and efficiency in their business profiles.
Looking at their progress it gave me confidence that I had a lot in store for
me to develop at United Kingdom. In the company where I work I use to
deal with commodities market. But was unaware of the technicalities of
the factors that drive the market. Though my experience is enough to
deal with India’s market but now that my company is expanding I need to
know the international scenario and TRP growing aspects. We use look at
the progress scales of commodities. Which use to depend upon demand
and supply chains of the commodities? This aspect also trigger the
production of the said commodity. Technical research and historical ups
and downs of a commodity product was of utmost importance for my
decisions. Here in the MBA program I aim to learn to do the same more
effectively and efficiently. The access to e-library is a very big resource for
my research and learning aspect. Its a valuable data abundantly available
to me. I intend to use the ocean of information to gain all the knowledge
that i wish to acquire. I always wanted to more and more about the
market research tactics and market tendencies. I plan to take up financial
international business as my elective for next semester so as to learn
more on market derivatives and shares.

4: Conclusion:

My working tactics were very ground level and preliminary. For example
to examine the gold market rates i would count on the demand and
supply of gold and compare it to the production rates of mines in Africa. It
was also observed that gold is of more demand in India. But after coming
here and in my talks to few faculties and learned men in Cardiff i realised
that this was a very shallow research method. A more critical approach
towards market research was needed. Hence i also wish to learn critical
learning abilities. University of Wales Institute Cardiff is a university that
offered a MBA course despite my inability to prove English language skills.
I wish to take up this as an opportunity to polish my skills. It is a very
popular saying that raw diamond is not worth unless it is given proper
cuts and polished to shine well. Similarly i consider myself to be a
unpolished uncut diamond stone out of which i plan to make a bright
shining valuable stone. Through the skills that i have discussed above i
plan to cut this so called uncut diamond stone into a well cut diamond and
shine with flying colours.

References:

1. Honey,P. and Mumford,A. 2006. Peter Honey Publications Limited, Berks.

2. Levin,M. and Greenwood, D. 2004, Chapter 9 Handbook of Action Research, Sage
publications , New Delhi