On B-School Competitions And Prisoner's Dilemma - XIMB

I think we are capable of doing better than that. For every college, the first year students are going through their Summer Internship Process and whenever a company comes to the campus the surrounding environment becomes tense. Everybody is apprehensive about the shortlist, the group discussions, trying to give their best at converting the company. Ensuring that at the end of the day they emerge as the winner. But what about those who lost? Those who failed in spite of their best efforts just because luck decided to favour someone else?

They deserve a pat on the back, a kind word that ‘its okay, it’ll be better next time’, ‘you’ll ace it in the next process, don’t worry’. And they need this support from us, from their fellow classmates who are supposed to stand by each other no matter what. But all we care about is us, our shortlist, our interview, our careers- I and not we. But isn’t a b-school all about being one big family working together, striving towards achieving the same goal? Isn’t that how large corporations throughout the world work? Have a common goal and add value to the society, to the world?

The answer my friend is ‘yes’ because maximizing the social utility always makes you better off both individually and also as a group. Let me explain this to you better through a concept called ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. Suppose two criminals are imprisoned for committing a crime and they are to be interrogated separately. They have two options in front of them- to confess that they committed the crime or not to confess. Now since both of them are questioned separately we can have two cases arising out of this situation. One case that both of them confess and the second case that either of them confesses and the other does not. Now let us consider the following pay off matrix.

                                                                                            Prisoner 2
Confess             Don’t Confess

Prisoner 1                 Confess                (-8,-8)                 (0,-10)

Don't Confess                 (-10,0)                (-5,-5)

From this matrix, we see that-

• If Prisoner 1 decides on his optimal choice assuming that Prisoner 2 has chosen to confess, then Prisoner 1 will decide to confess because that will result in 8 years of imprisonment unlike 10 years of jail post no confession.
• If Prisoner 1 decides on his optimal choice assuming that Prisoner 2 has chosen not to confess, then Prisoner 1 will choose to confess because that will result in no imprisonment unlike 5 years of jail post no confession.

The same situation will occur for Prisoner 2 as well. In the end, both will choose to confess resulting in 8 years of imprisonment for both of them whereas if they had worked as a team and been there for each other by not confessing then they would have ended up with only 5 years of imprisonment each.

Thus through this simple example, we see that it is always beneficial to work as a team instead of stamping each other on the way to success. So my fellow would be MBA graduates, please learn to be compassionate, to be humble, kind, caring and most importantly considerate of your friends, of your surroundings and of everyone around you because being selfless is what makes you a good manager, a good team leader and in the end a good human being.

-Mayurakshi Mukherjee

Batch of 2018-20, XIMB