5 days ago
In the MBA classroom, Guru teaches Finance, Swades explains Operations, and Rocket Singh, Marketing
Movies, for a long time, have been a part and parcel of our lifestyle, as a mode of entertainment. However, some of the feature films are so inspirational that they have left an indelible mark on the lives of most of us and changed our personalities and perspectives.
On the other hand, in the recent past, we have come across movies focusing on real-life business scenarios, thereby enabling Business Schools to incorporate them as a part of their pedagogy to enhance the learning outcomes of MBA students. This article examines the ways in which Business Schools in India and abroad have been deploying this innovative visual pedagogy to align with the learning ecosystem of the current generation, challenges faced in this process, and how they can be overcome.
Thematic trends of movies
Cinema has long been a reflection of lifestyles, societal values, economic trends, and cultural shifts. In the last 50 years, the main themes of Hollywood feature films have been diverse and evolved from social commentary, spy thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction to include business themes such as biopics, the rise of start-ups, technology boom, and further moving on to real-life corporate business management issues and stock markets. As technology becomes all-pervasive, movies reflect contemporary debates on the impact of cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Block Chain on people, organisations, and society at large and their implications.
A similar trend is observed with regard to the themes of Bollywood movies, though to a lesser extent. The themes started with romantic social themes and family values (Deewar, Sholay, Dilwale Duhin Le Jayangi) and moved to biopics such as Bhag Milka Bhag based on the life of the sprinter Milka Singh. Guru portrayed the rise of a business tycoon inspired by Dhirubhai Ambani. Big Bull chronicled the stock market scam inspired by Harshad Mehta.
Regional language films have been following a similar trend. Now, there is a plethora of visual narrative content in a wide variety of domains, thereby offering flexibility to Business School academicians to deploy film pedagogy in classrooms.
Rationale for using movies
Feature films offer a unique medium to present complex business concepts through interesting narratives, making them effective, particularly for teaching aspects like leadership, ethics, strategy, and organizational behaviour. Additionally, as per Kebaya and Mokaya (2023), movies have special power to draw the attention of students and stimulate critical thinking, as learners are encouraged to analyse and integrate visual and narrative elements in the movie.
By incorporating movies into the teaching and learning process, educators can provide a more dynamic and interactive learning environment that promotes active engagement and deeper comprehension. In contrast to conventional teaching methods , movies offer multisensory experience with sounds, images and stories that suit a variety of learning preferences.
As per the Cognitive Experiential Self Theory (CEST), propounded by Seymour Epstein (1994), there exist two distinct modes of processing information by the human mind, the experiential and the rational systems. Out of them, the experiential approach, like film pedagogy, has a more compelling and longer-lasting impact on the students' learning and behaviour than knowledge acquired through rational systems such as textbooks.
Adoption by leading business schools
Leading global Business Schools such as Harvard Business School (HBS), INSEAD, Stanford, MIT Sloan, London Business School and Wharton have been using Cinematic Pedagogy since the early 1990's in various functional domains like Strategy, Leadership & Organizational Behaviour, Marketing, Finance and Operations. Likewise, Indian Business Schools like the IIMs and leading private ones have also been integrating movies into their pedagogy. Following is an indicative list of such movies.
Several films, both English and Hindi, have been transformed into case studies by renowned publishers such as Harvard Business School Publishing, IBS Case Research Centre, and the IIMs. Some Business Schools have been using short-form, byte-sized visual content like TV serials, You Tube films, Web Series and reels, as a part of their visual learning pedagogy.
Challenges in implementing visual-media based pedagogy
Not all the western films may fully resonate with Indian management contexts. Some part of the content of the films may be culturally sensitive or controversial, necessitating careful selection, curation, and contextualization.
Access to the films and necessary playback equipment may be a constraint in some cases. Full-length films may not fit into the standard class durations, requiring viewing of select clips or may be given as supplementary assignment. All the students in the class may not find film-based learning to be effective as some may prefer traditional teaching methods. Some students may be distracted and may view the films only from the entertainment perspective, rather than learning.
Business environments evolve faster than the film content, and, at times, contemporary issues may not be reflected in the films. Additionally, the use of movies in the classroom requires teachers' guidance and facilitation to ensure its effectiveness. Evaluation of the students may also pose challenges.
Strategies for effective use of films
Most of the institutions use various strategies and practices to extract maximum learning value. The leading Business Schools carefully select and curate the films aligned with the profiles of the student cohorts, courses and the expected learning outcomes. Some of them use only clips or scenes to illustrate specific points, to accommodate time limitations.
IIM Ahmedabad assigns preparatory readings, linking film content to theoretical concepts. Harvard Business School provides discussion guides before screenings, highlighting key management themes. It is ensured that the students view the films with a structured analytical framework.
Case Western Reserve University employs the '3C Framework' (Character, Conflict, Conclusion) for analysis. ISB conducts role-playing exercises, wherein the students re-enact critical decision-making scenes. INSEAD gives reflective assignments to analyse the leadership styles in the films. XLRI uses film-based simulations for group assessments.
Besides deployment in the classrooms, some of the Business Schools recommend a list of motivational movies for self-viewing by the students so as to strengthen their personality.
How business schools can access movies for classroom use
In India, as per the Section 52 of the Copyright Act , 1957, screening a movie for educational purposes is considered 'fair use', and therefore, a license is not required, if the audience is limited to the staff and students in the classroom. Certain scenes from a movie can be screened as video clips for educational purposes, as part of a classroom activity or lesson.
However, in order to enable a comprehensive resourcing strategy , inputs from 'Lost The Plot' ( ), India's only film distributor for non-theatrical screenings, may be of help. The company, with a catalogue of over 3,000 licensed films, from Hollywood and Bollywood, provides a range of options for screenings.
Other options such as You Tube, Netflix and Amazon Prime may also be explored.
Comparison with other methods
Cinematic pedagogy is one of the methods of Experiential Learning, which includes other approaches such as Case Method, Role Plays, Project-based learning and so on. As per a study on the comparison of effectiveness of the movie-based method versus case method by Bagheri et al (2025), it was found that both the methods have their own advantages. The case-based method may improve the application of theories, whereas the movie-based method, by engagement of emotions, visual and auditory senses, can improve attitude and behaviour. Therefore, a combination of multiple methods may be adopted, depending on the situation, in order to maximise the learning of the students.
Way forward
As highlighted in the National Education Policy 2020, it is essential for Higher Educational Institutions to adopt student-centric and experiential pedagogies to impart application skills, along with critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities to the students. Cinematic pedagogy is an innovative experiential method, aligned with the interests and aptitudes of current generation students and can help in achieving this objective. However, it needs focused efforts on the part of Business Schools to integrate them effectively in the teaching-learning ecosystem so as to enhance the learning outcomes of the students.
(Dr O. R. S. Rao is the Chancellor of the ICFAI University, Sikkim. Views are personal)
