Negative marking system and incubating would be managers

This Sunday when I was on my way home after yet another average score with AIMCAT 0902, something nagged my inner self on the fact that 23 marks of mine were gone in negative marking. Negative marking, is it necessary? On my relation with India’s premier institute’s competitive tests, I have had a long one and never a good one. Hey, I am a pretty average student. This long enduring relationship and I am not ashamed of it and though I am 27, made me go back and have a look in my past remembrances. The first competition which I appeared was for sainik school and netarhat. I remember there was no negative marking in Netarhat but there was for Sainik School. I didn’t clear them for I was competing with Geniuses, I guess. But that was school. There was one pattern though, questions are relatively easy where negative marking is and when none is there as in Netarhat and later on IIT JEE , really tough questions and written examination which is different from MCQ questions on a OMR sheet evaluation system. MCQ system makes you an expert in time management and yet it makes you a coward inherently because of this negative marking.
What I think wrong of negative marking is the message it conveys.
If you want to do it, do it right, else don’t do it.
Isn’t it morally wrong?
Because it basically incubates a mentality in the subtle depths of your inordinate minds that trying is wrong if you feel or think you will fail. Now try to translate this to real world scenarios and that too from would be great MBA’s who are required to solve such crises situation in their employer’s finances or marketing or as such any domain.
Now think of me as a manager who has zero experience with real world and I hit a roadblock in say ABC sector where my company has to bring on a radical change to capture market. But I have data that says I can improve sector XYZ with the same investment budgeted for and get good gains because consumers trust my company or say my market is already established. Now one more data says ABC is high risk for me. Why should I try where I think I will fail? Maybe it’s a farfetched comparison but it is still relevant because the negative marking makes you scared to do something new.
Is it a trait required by our managers or we want them to be daring?
In other systems such as R&D and Innovation, it is necessary to be bold to find something new and of course that is innovation. That, no doubt requires an approach where you are not scared to lose. But taking this approach to managerial levels or decision making levels, people say that you need to have a mix of both. This statement is a just another surreptitious statement, if you have never dared to look in the re shaping of minds for different corporate jobs. We know it is a requirement that you don’t do it if you feel you will fail. This is true for managers actually because inadvertently it sends messages that do you r homework completely before you call for a decision. Trace the reason thread, you will find that inculcation of your mind to be scared for the untried territory actually works in favor of managers. Now this certainly holds no good for people who go for R&D and Innovation as in IIT JEE.
Now I have another very interesting issue here that if you are an exceptional engineer and then you get you MBA, does that mean you have the right mix of that “daring and adventurous” issue (learnt from really tough written tests?) and “don’t go in dark” mentality developed from the MCQ tests basis.
This I believe is that once learnt, it takes a lot to unlearn. So it is not an easy task for a great engineer to make up a good manager. Since they have been brought up and taken for innovation and then folding them back in a circle of stop sign approach.

But that is up for another debate.
Next time!