Case Study-1

Karishma’s Dilema
Karishma Kapoor is the supervisor of an engineering firm at Pune. Morale in her office has been
quite low recently. The workers have gone back to a 9.00 am to 5.00 pm work schedule after
being on flexitime for two years. When the directive came allowing Karishma to place her office
on flexitime, she spelled out the rules carefully to her people. All the employees were to work
during the core hours from 10.00 am to 2.00 pm however, they could work the rest of the eight-
hour day any time between 6.00 am to 6.00 pm. Karishma believed her workers were honest and
well motivated, so she did not bother to set up any system of control.

Every thing went along well for a long time. Morale was high and all the work seemed to be
getting done. In November, 2007 a consultant found that Karishma’s workers were averaging
seven hour a day. Two employees had been working only during the core period for more than
two months. When Karishma’s departmental head received the consultant’s report he told
Karisma to return the office to regular working hours. Karishma was upset and disappointed with
her people. She had trusted them and felt that they had let her down.

Questions
Q1. What went wrong? Is it wrong to trust all your people?

Communication with team

Q2. What should have Karishma done?

Q3. What kinds of control processes should have been installed in this particular case and why?
Make sure that all peoples must be there/present before 10.00. If failed, then entire team should
be knowing about the expected in timing of an employee.
Also an employee can come late once / twice in a week based on produc delivery situation. If an
employee exceeds this limit, then make sure to communicate with him/her about the same.

This process will result in making sure two things

Case Study-2
Nippon Tyres (NTL) was a medium-sized tyre company, manufacturing tyres of various types and
grades. It had 6,000 workers and 400 executives on its rolls. Pankaj Gupta headed the
manufacturing division. Kapil was the chief engineer reporting to Pankaj Gupta directly. The
division had 400 workers, 20 executives and 40 supervisors. Baluja joined the manufacturing
division four years back as a skilled worker. He was technically sound, hardworking and
performed his duties sincerely. He was promoted as a supervisor recently.

On Monday, Baluja was taking rounds in the department. It was a routine inspection and he
spotted a worker, Raghu, doing nothing. Baluja advised Raghu to concentrate on the job given to
him instead of wasting his time. Raghu shot back saying ‘You mind your business. I am the
senior-most in this department. Do not think you have become big after your recent promotion.’
Other workers witnessed the exchange with interest and burst into laughter when Baluja tried to
retort. Encouraged by the favourable response from his teammates, Raghu retaliated by using
obscene language. In frustration, Baluja had to report the matter to the chief engineer, Kapil.
Kapil took a serious note of the situation and issued a stern warning to Raghu, ignoring the fact
that Raghu was quite notorious for such incidents in the past as well. Baluja was able to get along
with others in the departments, despite occasional flare-ups over matters relating to discipline and
production targets.

After a two-year stint, Baluja was in the midst of a crisis again. A worker named Roberts came to
duty in a drunken state and was celebrating his birthday with other colleagues, disrupting work.
Even after half an hour, the noise did not subside and Baluja had to intervene and ask Roberts to
go back to work and allow others to resume normal duties. Roberts got wild when he was
physically forced to go to his workspot. In a fit of anger, Roberts resorted to physical abuse and
slapped Baluja in front of others. Not content with this, Roberts reported the matter to the union,
alleging verbal as well as physical abuse from the supervisor, Baluja.

Three days afterwards, Baluja got the shock of his life when he came to know about this from
another supervisor. After the ugly incident, Baluja had to rush back to his house for admitting his
son in the local hospital for viral fever. Since Roberts was drunk and it was his birthday, Baluja
never thought of reporting the matter to his boss. The union presented a highly fabricated case to
the chief of manufacturing, Ramlal, and demanded immediate disciplinary action against Baluja.
Pankaj Gupta instructed Kapil to demote Baluja immediately so that he would mend his violent
ways of dealing with workers. Kapil advised restraint since this would send wrong signals to other
supervisors and would demoralize them thoroughly. Kapil, however, fearing revolt from the union,
had to demote Baluja. Unable to swallow the insult to his ego, Baluja resigned immediately
thereafter, citing personal reasons. Kapil was quite unhappy with the turn of events and sought
advice from the personnel manager, Khurana. Khurana was quick to respond.

‘Incidents of this nature should help us realize the importance of picking up people with good
interpersonal skills as supervisors rather than technical skills. After all, they need to extract work
from others, without losing their cool even under provocative situations. You see, we cannot put
unions in a spot even when they are on the wrong side.’

Kapil: ‘I know people were after Baluja, since he is sincere and hard-working. He was a
racehorse. Others were not. With a little bit of tact, Baluja could have managed the situation well.’

Pankaj Gupta: ‘It is sad to lose people like him. However, Kapil, workers are illiterates and
respond negatively when you talk tough language. A supervisor should use his brains rather than
hands while dealing with people. This fellow rubbed shoulders with union people on the wrong
side previously too. Other supervisors seem to be OK. Be careful in your selections from now on.’

Questions:
1. What is the main problem in the case?
He is not good leader. He has studied from IMT.
Main problem is motivating employees to do work.
2. What would you do if you were in Kapil’s place?
First Scenario:
Senior most person, get feedback, get their experience, get ways of improving
productivity, get info on getting more profit.

Second Scenario:

3. Do you think Baluja was wrong on both occasions? Why? Why not?
First Scenario: He did correct.
Second Scenario: He did wrong thing. He should not physically abuse and after that he
should inform to Boss immediately.
 4. What ways do you suggest for dealing with tough employees in an organization?
We will ask them about their needs.
We will suggest/advise them that if work is done/ if profit is achieved, then everyone will
get benefit.
For B’day’s, entire team/company will celeberate in centre place. Maybe company can
sponser for B’day (for every month) lunch. Strictly no liquour. Giving gift.

Case Study-3
John Neill at Unipart
While most parts suppliers for the United Kingdom’s automobile industry struggle, one company
is doing just fine—Unipart. This EUR 2.3 billion company has done well largely because of the
decisions made by its CEO, John Neill. In 1974, at the age of 29, Neill was made the managing
director of the Unipart division of British Leyland (BL). He immediately began to ruffle the feathers
of conservative BL executives by developing innovative marketing campaigns and focsusing
company attention on the parts business (in contrast to its cars and trucks). He increased the
division’s marketing budget sixfold, created a retail shop programme, altered the packaging, and
began promoting the division’s parts on television. His ‘parts first’ pitch did not go down well with
his bosses, who saw it as an attack on the viability of BL itself. But it was too fate for BL’s top
management to do much about it. Neill had created a viable business, while the rest of the
company (which later became part of the Rover Group) laboured along, losing market share
every year.

Almost from the beginning, Neill envisioned making Unipart independent from BL. In 1987, he did
just that. He negotiated a EUR 89.5 million management buyout of Unipart from BL. He then
immediately began taking actions that would allow Unipart to stand on its own. ‘We knew the
future would be worse,’ Neill recalls, ‘because today’s market share was smaller than yesterday’s.
So the parts business would go down unless we did something dramatically different.’ That
‘something’ was to move away from providing original parts for Rover. Instead, Unipart was
committing to creating a strong consumer brand built around replacement parts. Today, Unipart
has become a highly recognizable consumer brand in the United Kingdom. It has also diversified
into a range of other businesses. Producing and selling automotive parts is still the company’s
main activity, but it also runs a successful warehouse, a logistics business and has created an
Internet trading platform.

In 1987, when Unipart became independent, sales to Rover represented 90 percent of its
business. It is now down to 3 percent. No longer are Unipart’s fortunes tied singularly to Rover. In
fact, one of Unipart’s most profitable current businesses is running Jaguar’s entire parts operation
on a fee basis. Despite Neill’s success since the buy-out, Unipart faces tough times ahead. The
UK auto industry suffers from massive overcapacity. Intensive downward pricing pressure on
suppliers is likely to eat away at Unipart’s profits. In response, Neill has expanded Unipart’s
logistic business by paying EUR 292 million for auto parts distributor Partco. This acquisition
makes Unipart the biggest automotive parts distributor in the United Kingdom. Neill is also
diversifying beyond Unipart’s automotive parts roots, especially on the E-commerce front.

Questions:
1. ‘John Neill is not smart; he is just lucky.’ Do you agree? Explain.
2. Did intuition play a role in Neill’s decisions? Discuss.
3. Contrast the major strategic decisions at Unipart and British Leyland.
4. Do you think John Neill would have been equally successful if, back in 1987, he had been head
of BL? Explain.