BALANCING VALUES – AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORATE VALUES FROM SCANDINAVIA

ACT 1
Bangalore, October 17th 2012, 8.45 AM

Amrita Chopra, a senior financial manager in Pharmaz India, is sitting in the back seat of one of the
company cars while the driver slowly but skilfully manoeuvres the car forward through Bangalore’s
dense traffic jam, using the horn diligently. This morning, Amrita is on her way to a meeting with her
new immediate superior, a recently arrived expatriate, Niels Nielsen. He has told her that he wants
them to discuss the alignment of local work procedures with Pharmaz’ corporate values.

Pharmaz India
Pharmaz India in Bangalore is a subsidiary of multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered
in Denmark. Pharmaz employs around 6000 people, 2500 work in Denmark, the rest in subsidiaries
in more than 30 countries around the world. Pharmaz’ top management, and the CEO in particular,
like to characterize the company as ‘value-driven’. At Pharmaz the corporate culture is taken very
seriously, not least at the headquarters. It has developed slowly as the company has grown over the
years, for the first many years primarily within the borders of Denmark. But now, as the company
finds itself in a process of rapid globalization, the headquarters is making very conscious efforts to
disseminate the corporate culture across borders.

Pharmaz is strongly focused on research, and this is reflected in its corporate culture and values. The
company attempts to create a learning environment for all employees, not just those working in
R&D. Pharmaz’ website and latest annual report state: ‘New ideas are our business and what we live
from. Therefore our corporate culture strongly encourages all our employees, regardless of their
position, to learn continuously and to work together creatively’. In accordance with this ideal, three
corporate core values have been formulated:

 Empowerment, implying that all employees should be able to make independent decisions
within their respective areas of responsibility.
 Equal opportunities for all employees to develop their competences and advance in their
careers.
 Openness in communication between employees at all levels in order to further free
exchange of knowledge and ideas.

Pharmaz India has been in existence since 1983, but until 2005 it was a local sales office with 10–15
employees. The local management was allowed considerable latitude since the subsidiary’s strategic
importance to the company was limited. In 2005 this situation changed when Pharmaz established
an offshore financial services center in Bangalore. This location, known as the ‘Silicon Valley of India’,
offers low costs and qualified, English-speaking professionals in the relevant fields. The process was
initiated with two local employees, and gradually, more employees were recruited to form teams
responsible for registration of invoices and various accounting and controlling tasks. At first, the
center only performed tasks for the headquarters in Denmark. After a couple of years, the center
began expanding more rapidly, and tasks requiring collaboration with employees in other
subsidiaries were gradually introduced. Today, the center employs 50 people and this number is
expected to grow to more than 130 employees in the course of the next two years as more financial
activities will be transferred from other parts of Pharmaz to India.
In 2007 Pharmaz acquired a part of a locally owned Indian company in order to be able to establish
its own production facilities, including some R&D activities, in Bangalore. The acquisition added
more than 100 employees to Pharmaz India’s workforce. So today Pharmaz India comprises, in
addition to various staff functions such as HR, a production unit, a R&D department, a sales
department and a financial services center. The subsidiary employs more than 200 and according to
Pharmaz’ plans, a considerable number of new people will be recruited in the years to come, not just
in the services center. Thus, Pharmaz India has achieved crucial strategic importance and has
become a center for growth. This increased focus on Pharmaz India means that the management at
headquarters is very keen that the corporate values of empowerment, equal opportunities and
openness are fully implemented, or ‘lived’ as the top managers like to put it, in the subsidiary.

The senior financial manager and the challenges she is facing

Amrita Chopra is 45 years old and she has worked for Pharmaz for three years. One of the company
drivers takes her to the office in the morning around 8 am and picks her up in the evening around 6
pm. Although she lives only 20 km away the journey takes about an hour. She prefers not driving
herself on the bumpy and chaotic roads where holes in the asphalt, motorbikes, bikes, dogs, cows
and pedestrians abound. Amrita also appreciates the opportunity to arrive home without being too
stressed, especially because she has a family to take care of; she is married and has two sons who
are 12 and 15 years old.

The financial services center where Amrita works is divided in two sections: one providing financial
services to the headquarters and subsidiaries in Europe, and one providing services to the Pharmaz’
subsidiaries Asia, the US and Latin America. Amrita heads the first section where currently 20 people
work; they are divided into 4 teams. As for Amrita’s background, she has a master’s degree in
finance from a reputable Indian University and is a chartered accountant. She was born in Delhi
where she lived until she got married. Her husband is in the hi-tech business, and Bangalore seemed
to be the best place for him to be in terms of enhanced chances for career progress, so the couple
decided to move there.

Until Amrita got the job as a senior financial manager with Pharmaz, she worked in the finance
department of a locally owned IT company. She achieved good results in her former job, but she
often felt that she had to struggle to obtain respect in the company that was very male dominated
and managed in a way she thinks of as ‘traditionally Indian’. She was the first employee ever in the
company to take maternity leave and some of her male colleagues seemed genuinely surprised
when she came back to work after her leave. She did not receive any training, the pay was average,
and her working hours were long. Still, she was not unhappy in her former job. Her work was
interesting and she always felt that she had the support of the CEO who did his best to help her
when problems occurred. By comparison, Pharmaz offers more advantageous working conditions.
The salary is better, though admittedly not quite as good as in some other international companies
in the area. Amrita has been on various types of training in Denmark and she appreciates that the
company invests in her professional development in this way. At Pharmaz there is a lot of talk about
work–life balance, especially from the headquarters. The idea is that employees should be able to
have shorter working days and more flexibility in their schedules because of more efficient
organization of work. As a manager Amrita is rarely able to leave very early, but her working days are
still shorter than they used to be, which makes is possible for her to spend more time with her
family.

Although Amrita likes her job, her family is her first priority. Her husband earns enough for all of
them to live comfortably, and she has at times been tempted to stay at home and be a full-time
housewife. But it seems to her that it would somehow be a waste, considering her education. Also,
since they live with her in-laws, there is always someone at home to look after the children and the
house. And they have a live-in maid who does most of the housework. Like her own family, Amrita’s
in-laws are quite liberal in their attitudes to women’s role. When they moved in, they told Amrita:
‘You just go ahead and look for a job; we will take care of the children’. Amrita is glad that they have
given her this opportunity to continue her career.

Still, life in Pharmaz is not uncomplicated. Amrita finds that the corporate values are in line with her
own ideas of what management ought to be, at least ideally, but she finds them difficult to
implement in an Indian context. As a middle manager she often feels squeezed between the
headquarters’ wishes and the expectations of her employees. Visiting managers from headquarters
have voiced that they find her management style a little too authoritarian and have encouraged her
to ‘act more like a coach, delegate more and give fewer orders’. Amrita argued that as the senior
financial manager, the results of the section are her responsibility. Therefore, she sees it as her job
to tell her subordinates what is good and what is not good enough so that they can improve their
performance. The managers from headquarters answered that of course she should intervene if
someone kept making mistakes, but in general, they believed the employees would learn more from
being empowered to work independently. Amrita was – and remains – unconvinced, but as a
manager in a subsidiary she feels compelled to follow directions from the headquarters. So she
delegates more and gives fewer orders. Yet, her employees complain that she expects too much of
them when she tries to adjust her behavior to the headquarters’ suggestions in this way. If she
leaves it up to them how carry out their tasks and how to organize their work, some of them just
keep coming back to her and ask for directions anyway. Others appear to interpret this approach as
an indication that she does not find their work important and consequently, they get very little done.
There are exceptions, of course – a few of the most competent financial analysts seem to thrive
without managerial interference.

Instilling and maintaining a collaborative spirit in the teams can be quite a challenge, too. At the
moment three of the teams function well, but the situation has become quite tense in the fourth
team. Recently, the team has made a few regrettable mistakes that appeared to be due to internal
misunderstandings and lack of communication. Amrita has been told that this resulted in open
quarrels between the team members, but she did not witness this herself. So far, no one has been
willing to tell her exactly what the problem is and the team leader, Balvinder Singh, is evading her
questions. It is clear to her, though, that communication has not flown easily between the team
members since the arrival of her section’s newest employee, Shankar Savarkar, a competent
chartered accountant. Shankar comes from a Brahmin family and thus belongs tothe highest ranking
caste according to the traditional Indian view. Amrita is concerned that he tends to act in a rather
standoffish manner with Balvinder and two other members of his team, and she has noticed that he
never eats lunch with them. She thinks that the team members’ different backgrounds may be at the
root of the team’s problems, even though she feels that this ought not to be so in a professional
working environment. It is a delicate issue. According to Indian legislation, the higher castes are not
to enjoy any special privileges in the workplace, and caste is never openly discussed in Pharmaz.
Amrita is at a loss what to do to address the team’s difficulties.

The car arrives at Bangalore’s largest technology park and stops at the entrance to wait while the
security guards check the vehicles in front. Next to the line of cars employees queue up and move
slowly through the gates as the guards finish checking their entrance cards. As a senior manager and
a familiar face, Amrita simply nods to the security guards and her car enters the technology park
which offers quite a change of scenery compared to the buzzing, dusty road, lined with the shacks of
the poor in front of the larger houses. In the park, all the buildings are tall and sleek, constructed in
glass and steel, and between them the green lawns are dotted with well-kept flower beds.

The company car lets Amrita off in front of the building where Pharmaz India is located, now
occupying three full floors. Amrita gets out of the car, habitually taking care not to disarrange her
clothes in the process. She almost always dresses in a traditional Indian sari, and today she has
chosen one of her best, a bright pink one, to feel as confident as possible during the important
meeting. She wears a bindi (a dot of color, usually red, applied in the center of the forehead) of a
matching shade. Her hair style is the same as always: a long black plait. Generally, the employees in
Pharmaz dress smartly, but relatively informally. A few women wear jeans and Western-style shirts
or blouses, but the majority are dressed traditionally in either a salwar kameez (loose trousers and a
long tunic) or a sari. The men wear shirts with long sleeves and dark trousers, but normally, jackets
and ties are only worn for the occasions of important external meetings. Amrita takes the lift to go to
the 9th floor where the financial services center is located.

On her way to the meeting she stops by to say hello to the regional manager, Ganesh Karanth. The
regional manager has been in Pharmaz India since the subsidiary was founded and has worked his
way to the top. His long career in Pharmaz has given him a lot of insight into the company and
Amrita likes talking things through with him before important meetings such as the one she has
today. She would like to get an idea of what the rest of the management in Pharmaz India thinks of
Niels’ approach and plans. Also, she would like to ask the regional manager for advice on how to
solve the problems in Balvinder’s team. Although Ganesh has of course never said so, she knows that
he is a Brahmin because of his name, his food preferences and his social network of other Brahmins.
Amrita would not want to raise the topic of caste explicitly with Ganesh. But she thinks that he will
understand without her having to spell it out. And she has seen him chatting with Shankar several
times, so he may already be familiar with the situation in the team. But unfortunately, Ganesh is not
in his office this morning.

Niels texts her that he is delayed. Stuck in a trafficjam. Amrita asks the new ‘chai wallah’ to bring her
a tea. He is a thin, quiet man of middle age, and as she expects him to speak poor English she
addresses him in Hindi. She is still not comfortable with the local language, Kannada, since she is not
from Bangalore originally. Not that it matters very much in her daily life; otherwise, she would
probably have learned it by now. But most people in the fast-growing city of Bangalore seem to be
from somewhere else, especially the professionals. English is Pharmaz’ official corporate language
and here, everybody, except the ‘chai wallahs’ and the janitors, speaks it fluently and use it for all
work-related purposes. Amrita gets her hot tea, and as she sips at her cup absentmindedly she is
getting increasingly impatient and nervous.

The expatriate finance director and his plans

Amrita is always apprehensive before meeting withNiels, and she knows that today’s discussion will
be difficult. His direct and demanding way of communicating was initially a bit of a shock to Amrita
and several of her colleagues, and she still finds it a challenge. Niels urges and expects a free
exchange of ideas, and Amrita finds that discussions with him can be quite inspirational. He is good
at showing his appreciation when he likes the viewpoints and ideas presented. Sometimes, however,
he can be difficult to convince. This, in Amrita’s experience, is especially the case when your
arguments refer to the particularities of the Indian context and the need to bend Pharmaz’
corporate values in order to put them into practice in a realistic manner.
Niels took up his position as finance director in Pharmaz India three months ago. He is Danish, 40
years old, and he already has many years of experience in Pharmaz, not only from headquarters, but
also from the subsidiaries in Mexico, China, and Spain. He insists that everybody should use his first
name and dislikes it when subordinates address him ‘Sir’. Amrita remembers when he first corrected
her in this regard with the explanation that ‘what counts and deserves respect is not a person’s title,
but his or her skills and competences’. Niels’ management style is strongly embedded in the
company’s ideas about empowerment, equal opportunities and openness. And, in line with Pharmaz
headquarters’ aspirations, he never misses a chance to practice these values conspicuously within
the Indian organization. Though Niels’ knowledge of the organizational context is limited after just
three months in Bangalore, he has strong opinions about what to do and what not to do. He believes
in implementing the corporate culture by managing explicitly through the values, for instance with a
view to speeding up decision-making processes by minimizing control and bureaucracy. As far as
practically possible, he believes that decisions are to be made by the people who will carry them out
and live with them in their daily work. Now, he finds that the time has come to reorganize the work
processes in the financial services teams so that they reflect Pharmaz’ business model and values
better. And he has decided to start with the four teams in Amrita’s section.

Amrita is not against changes being made in her teams, but she hopes to be able to make Niels
realize that you cannot go all the way with Pharmaz’ management style and values right away.
Moreover, she would also like to use the opportunity to suggest that a way of motivating employees
to accept more responsibility in their daily work would be promotions and prices. She has already
mentioned this idea briefly to Niels, but she is not sure what he thought about it. He seemed to find
it a bit amusing, somehow, so maybe he just did not get the point. So this time, perhaps, she should
also emphasize that promotions and prices can be important instruments for Pharmaz to use in
order to retain their qualified employees in the competitive and dynamic Bangalorian labor market
for financial experts.

Question:
Identify the main issues raised and discuss how they may be explained in terms of the cultural and
institutional contexts of Pharmaz in general and Pharmaz India in particular.

ACT 2
Pharmaz India’s office in Bangalore, October 17th 2012, 9.30 AM

Amrita and Niels meet to discuss challenges and possible courses of action

Niels arrives 30 minutes late. He is dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved blue shirt and sandals. Amrita
reflects that with his laidback attire, one could almost mistake him for one of the American tourists
she saw in Goa last month when she spent a long weekend there with her family. He apologizes so
profusely for having kept her waiting that it almost makes Amrita feel as if he is the subordinate and
she the superior. Although it makes her slightly uncomfortable, it also makes her feel that he
respects her as a person. So she is a little more at ease when Niels comes straight to the point and
addresses the issues he would like to see solved.

Niels begins by showing her a long e-mail sent to him by Sebastian Skram, the corporate finance
director. It is in Danish (and Amrita is tempted to remind him that the corporate language is English,
but she checks herself), so Niels translates for her. The mail reads:

Dear Niels,
[Some initial small talk about the bleak weather in Copenhagen and inquiries about the wellbeing of
Niels’ family; he leaves this part out when translating to Amrita.] As you no doubt remember, we
took some measures last year here in the corporate finance department at headquarters to make
sure that our corporate values of empowerment and open knowledge sharing are implemented as
fully as possible. Among other things we redefined the team leaders’ job descriptions so that they
now spend less time on supervision and more time on development of new services and procedures
in dialogue with our colleagues from the departments involved. They do, of course, still involve
themselves in the teams’ task, especially the more complex ones, but they spend less time following
up and checking the team members’ work. Although this means that an occasional minor error slips
through from time to time, we have found that it has freed a lot of resources for more creative
purposes. In addition, we have also introduced a team bonus to promote the collaborative spirit. It is
a very minor part of the employees’ pay, so the psychological aspect of the incentive has probably
been more important than the money in itself. The team leaders as well as the team members find
that the changes have made their jobs more interesting – as clearly reflected in our latest employee
satisfaction survey. I mentioned this to Emil [Emil Bistrup, the corporate CEO of Pharmaz] when we
had lunch together yesterday, and he was very enthusiastic about it – you know how much weight
he attaches to our corporate values. He suggested that similar efforts are made in the financial
services center in Bangalore; with the plans for its growth it will soon be more important to the
company that our corporate finance department here. I promised to take it up with you, but I realize
that other measures may be more appropriate in Bangalore, so I leave thatup to your judgement
entirely. What matters is the result: the best possible implementation of our corporate values. If you
believe it will be helpful I’m sure we can find the means in the budget to put the center’s employees
through a more elaborate course in our corporate values. Anyway, think about it and let me know
what you plan to do and how I can assist you.

Best regards,

Sebastian

The mail makes it clear to Amrita that the financial services center has the attention of the top
management, and although this may be an advantage in her future career, she cannot help feeling a
little apprehensive about it. Also, she finds it puzzling that the corporate finance director appears to
say in his mail that he does not see an occasional error as a problem. She thinks that is a risky
attitude in a finance department, but she decides not to mention this to Niels as she does not wish
to appear overly critical of her superiors. She asks Niels what he intends to do, and he says that the
mail only underlines the need for changes that would be necessary anyway. He elaborates: The
growth plans for the financial services center mean that the future and present employees need to
be empowered to work out more solutions independently – or together in their teams, but without
constant managerial input and follow-up. As long as the center’s tasks primarily consisted in
invoicing for the headquarters and other relatively routine oriented tasks, this was less important.
But now the center is expected to carry out more and more complicated tasks, not just for the
headquarters, but also for many different subsidiaries.

Colleagues from all over the world call the center when they need help to solve a wide variety of
financial issues. And Niels has received some complaints that although everybody is very friendly on
the phone, it sometimes takes several days to get an answer to a fairly straightforward question.
Niels knows that the center’s employees have all been very carefully selected and as he sees it, their
technical qualifications as financial experts cannot be questioned. So the problem, he says, is not
that they are unable to respond, but rather that their work procedures are too bureaucratic and that
the employees do not feel empowered to do much without the explicit approvalof their team leader.
In many cases they will also wait for the approval of their senior financial manager, Amrita. He would
like her to spend less of her time exercising micromanagement and more time on actively
empowering her subordinates.

In addition, Niels goes on, it has been mentioned by several of the center’s users that the team
members do not seem to know very much about each other’s work, so when the person they have
talked to previously is off or at a meeting, no one else on the team seems to be able to help them or
to know anything about the issue. He concludes that more knowledge sharing is called for – in line
with Pharmaz corporate principles.

As always, Niels Nielsen asks Amrita for her opinion and feedback on his thoughts. The question is
how he and Amrita can ensure that the employees get the corporate values under their skin and act
accordingly, ideally without even thinking about it? Amrita feels embarrassed because her
management style has been criticised, and she finds it difficult to come up with solutions right away.
She tells him that in principle, she agrees, the values are not implemented fully, and some changes
may be called for. She does not, however, believe that another course in the corporate values –
which the employees have been told about so often that they know the exact wordings from the
annual report by heart – will change very much. Niels agrees; something else is needed to teach the
employees how to ‘live’ the values.

Amrita tells Niels that she has actually done her best to put the corporate values, especially the
value of empowerment, into practice in her dealings with her subordinates. She has left a lot up to
them and given fewer orders. But so far, it has not been a success. Indeed, the latest anonymous
employee satisfaction survey in her section showed, as Niels already knows, that she was rated
poorly as a manager. Naturally, this worries and frustrates Amrita. Previously, she was rated much
better, and she thinks that her low score can be attributed to the attempts she has made to
empower her subordinates. With some exceptions, Amrita does not believe that the employees in
her section share Pharmaz’ ideas of what a boss should be like. She suspects that they expect a good
boss to know all the answers and not wait for the employees to come up with good ideas. He or she
should take on the responsibility for everything, give explicit orders and follow them up. When
Amrita thinks back of her own experiences in the Indian educational system, she tells Niels, she does
not find their attitude very surprising. She believes it may be different in some educational
institutions today, but the way she remembers it, she was not rewarded for being critical or coming
up with new approaches when doing her assignments, on the contrary. The easiest way to get good
grades was to stick as closely as possible to the teachers’ or professors’ exact instructions, maybe
even repeating their wordings where appropriate. Amrita is not convinced that all her subordinates
are eager to take on more responsibility in daily work.

Niels reflects on this. Her interpretation of her low score surprises him. He finds it strange that
employees should complain about a boss who gives them too much freedom, but on the other hand,
what she says may make sense here in India. He thinks to himself that he has probably been too
optimistic – the implementation of Pharmaz’ corporate culture will take time and hard work. Niels
says to Amrita that he appreciates that she has taken headquarters’ wish to practice empowerment
seriously and that she should not be discouraged; they must expect the process to take some time.
And maybe she went about it too abruptly so that her subordinates felt suddenly left to their own
devices? Amrita nods, this could well have been the case. Niels specifies that empowerment does
not imply that the employees are expected right away to be able to figure everything out entirely on
their own, but he would like her to coach the employees so that they understand why things are
done in certain ways. The idea is to explain the background and the reasoning behind Pharmaz’
business model, financial guidelines and principles for collaboration so that they will, eventually, be
able to reason in the same way themselves and make more independent decisions. Amrita is still
hesitant, but says that maybe, after a phase of very close managerial monitoring to help employees
understand how to adapt to the new demands, Niels’ ideas might work, eventually.

Amrita has given less thought to the value of open communication and knowledge sharing, but she
tells Niels that sometimes it is a little difficult to motivateteam members to share what they know.
All her subordinates have good credentials and experiences from other off-shore centers. As she and
Niels both know, the labor market for professionals in Bangalore is highly competitive, and generally,
her employees are eager to advance their individual careers. This may lead some of them to view
knowledge as a strictly personal resource that can be depleted if it is shared with colleagues. Amrita
realizes that this is not the way Pharmaz would see it, but in a sense, she understands her
employees’ concerns in this respect. After all, colleagues are competitors, too, since not everyone is
likely to get promoted to head a team, for instance.

Another problem, as Amrita sees it, is that the organization is very flat compared to most Indian
companies. There, it is clear who refers to whom in the hierarchy, and when you make progress in
your work, you are promoted to the next level on the career ladder. At Pharmaz, her employees are
all officially ‘financial analysts’, even the team leaders, although their wages are higher. Amrita
believes that it would have a motivating effect to introduce more titles. It would give people
something to work towards and it would make them feel appreciated, in a manner visible to all, also
to their family and friends outside the company, when they reach a goal. Why should the team
leaders not be called ‘financial managers’, for instance? And the best of the team members ‘senior
financial analysts’? She has suggested this to headquarters before, but was told that her idea did not
fit into Pharmaz’ title structure.

Amrita also suggests that they could nominate an ‘employee of the quarter’ in the services center
and give him or her a small symbolic prize, maybe a small amount of money, as well as a certificate
to frame and hang on the wall in his or her cubicle. She believes that her employees would
appreciate such a gesture, and she also knows that they would probably like to beable to attach such
a certificate to their CVs to document that they have done well. Niels ventures a remark there is no
tradition for prices at Pharmaz’ headquarters and that there, most people would find it
presumptuous or even slightly ridiculous to flaunt such a certificate on their wall Otherwise, he
listens carefully without interrupting. Finally, he says that he finds her ideas interesting, also
considering that a couple of the center’s most qualified and ambitious financial analysts have
recently handed in their resignations and accepted positions with major US-owned companies. Then
Niels asks Amrita to come back the following week with a proposal for integrating Pharmaz’ values,
especially empowerment and knowledge sharing, in a more explicit manner in her section. Also, he
asks her to elaborate on her ideas about how to motivate and retain employees

Question:

Imagine yourself in Amrita’s position. Which proposal would you make to Niels Nielsen and how
would you argue in order to convince him?

ACT 3
Pharmaz India’s office in Bangalore, January 17th

2013, 2.00 PM

Amrita and Niels meet to evaluate the process so far

Amrita and Niels are seated at the meeting table in Niels’ office. They have been told to expect a visit
from Sebastian, the corporate finance director, next week. In preparation, he has asked them to
evaluate the last three months’ developments in the center so that they can discuss the progress
made, especially as to the implementation of the corporate values, and decide what else needs to be
done.

Amrita has worked very hard to change the way in which her section works. She suggested in her
proposal that new job descriptions would have to be written for everyone, specifying exactly their
areas of responsibility and explaining the types of decisions they would be expected to make on
their own. Also, each team is to hold a short meeting every morning to inform each other of what
they are doing, and everyone is expected to contribute. Other than that, Amrita suggested that as a
first step, most of the focus should be concentrated on the team leaders to make sure that they
understand what empowerment and knowledge sharing means and that they practice it in their
teams. They have all read about the values and attended several presentations of them, so the
challenge is the daily practice, not the theory. Therefore, Amrita suggested in her proposal that she
should dedicate some days each week to follow a team leader, observe his or her work, and
afterwards discuss with him or her how the corporate values can be promoted more. Niels accepted
Amrita’s suggestions in these respects and told her to go ahead.

This afternoon Amrita tells Niels that she is satisfied with the results. The employees appear to be
much happier now that it has been made clearer to them what Pharmaz expects from them. Some
still ask their team leaders or Amrita for approval before they make decisions or send their reports
to the center’s users, but most do it less frequently now. And all the team leaders try hard to follow
Amrita’s new directions. Niels replies that Amrita has done a good job, but adds that when he saw
the many pages with job descriptions she has produced he could not help worrying that they are
creating more bureaucracy instead of reducing it.

Amrita argues that they are necessary: if empowerment is to make sense to her subordinates, they
must know exactly what they are empowered to do. Otherwise, it is just an abstract notion. Also,
when Niels comes to visit Amrita’s section he has noted that she monitors the team leaders very
closely indeed and gives them detailed instructions on how to plan their days and how to delegate
tasks to different team members, for instance. To Niels, this close monitoring does not seem like
empowerment, and he knows that Sebastian would probably agree. But after six months in
Bangalore, Niels begins to feel that it may not be worthwhile insisting on implementing the
corporate values in completely the same manner as at headquarters. Maybe different versions of
empowerment, equal opportunities and knowledge sharing are possible – and even necessary? He
shares these thoughts with Amrita who is clearly pleased that he finally understands this. Niels is not
so sure that Sebastian will agree, though. It may not fit his vision of Pharmaz as a global, value-driven
company – they will have to discuss it next week.

In accordance with Amrita’s suggestion, Niels introduced a more differentiated title structure for the
center in late October. He is not personally enthusiastic about it, and he finds that in principle,
people ought to pay more attention to the content of their job than to the title it entails. This is also
an opinion he has frequently heard expressed by his colleagues at headquarters. But he decided to
be pragmatic in this matter. After some months in the center he was already well aware of the local
employees’ impatience to advance visibly in the company hierarchy, so he did not doubt that Amrita
was right in assuming that new titles would have a motivational effect and probably result in more
willingness to take on responsibility. But at the same time, he was wary of creating titles that would
be incompatible with the company’s overall global title structure and create misunderstandings in
other parts of the organization. Now, the team leaders have been promoted to ‘financial managers’,
and the best of the team members have been encouraged to apply for positions as ‘senior financial
analysts’. Several local employees, including all the team leaders, have expressed their satisfaction
with this decision, and although it is too early to judge the effect for sure, Amrita tells Niels that the
team leaders are eager to prove that they have earned their promotions. So Niels believes it was the
right thing to do, although some of his colleagues at headquarters have been joking a bit about the
apparent inflation in titles in Pharmaz India.

Niels was very surprised, however, when he was approached the other day by Pavan Surin, one of
the team leaders in Amrita’s section, who suggested that the title structure should be expanded
further. He felt that he needed an additional category between ‘financial analyst’ and ‘senior
financial analyst’ in order to be able to reward a team member who was very good, but not quite at
the ‘senior financial analyst’ level. Frankly, Niels found this slightly ludicrous – how many hierarchical
levels are necessary in a team of five people? One for each individual? But since he knows Pavan to
be competent and respected by his colleagues, he would like to discuss it with Amrita before
dismissing it altogether. And since he has consistently told all his subordinates to feel free to
approach him any time with any ideas they might come up with as to how the center’s work can be
improved, he thanked Pavan for his suggestion and promised him that he would give it some
thought.

Amrita is not very pleased that Pavan chose to discuss this directly with Niels instead of taking it up
with her first. She knows better than to mention this to Niels, however. She knows that he sets great
store by the corporate value of ‘openness in communication between employees at all levels’, and
she does not feel like being lectured about it. She hesitates to take a very firm stand regarding
Pavan’s suggestion, but as she says to Niels, he is probably right that the introduction of an
additional step on the career would motivate some team members.

In her proposal to Niels, Amrita suggested the introduction of a reward system where employees are
rated for their performance by their immediate superiors in order give a bonus prize to the
employee with the highest score each quarter. In this matter, Niels did not quite follow her
suggestion. He felt that a reward system would indeed be appreciated by the local employees, and
he had been told that it is customary in most companies in Bangalore. He worried, however, that
Amrita idea would not be conducive to team work. Therefore, he has devised a system where people
are not only rated by their superiors for their individual performance, but also by their colleagues for
their ability to share knowledge and collaborate. In this way the reward system can serve not just to
motivate hard work, but to promote Pharmaz’ values of openness and knowledge sharing, too. The
system was introduced recently so no one has received a bonus prize yet. When it was presented he
felt it was well received, but Niels is eager to hear Amrita’s opinion on whether or not it has had any
impact yet.

Amrita tells him that she believes the employees are genuinely happy with the introduction of a
bonus prize, something which they had long found to be missing in Pharmaz. But she proceeds to tell
him of a problematic recent episode: Balvinder’s team has been given a special assignment by
headquarters. It consists in a thorough, critical financial analysis of a business unit in Germany that is
experiencing some severe difficulties. The financial report will form part of the basis of the strategic
decision as to whether or not to close the unit down. Because of his excellent qualifications, Shankar
has been asked to take on the main responsibility for this task, and he has very happily accepted.
The problem is that he has become very possessive of this task and discloses next to nothing about it
at the team’s daily morning meetings. Balvinder finds – and Amrita agrees – that everyone on the
team could learn something about Pharmaz’ business from this important, strategic assignment.
Therefore, he asked Shankar last week to involve his colleagues and delegate some of the less
complicated tasks involved. This, however, did not happen. When the team leader took it up with
Shankar again after some days, he seemed rather annoyed. Amrita, who overheard their
conversation as she passed Shankar’s cubicle, was shocked to hear Shankar tell Balvinder that he
intends to rate him as poorly as possible – and tell Shivesh [one of his colleagues on the team] to do
the same – if he keeps nagging him. Balvinder has not brought the issue up with Amrita, but she
would like to do something about it. When she raised the issue during an informal chat with Ganesh
this morning, he defended Shankar. He pointed out that he has exceptional qualifications and is very
hardworking, so he will be able to do the job better and faster on his own without spending time on
involving the others. Amrita had to agree, this is probably true, but somehow she finds it beside the
point.

Niels says that they have to find a way to deal with the problems in Balvinder’s team, but he needs
some time to think about it. Right now, they have to decide what to tell Sebastian about their
progress, the issues that remain to be solved and their suggestions for future action.

Questions:

Step out of Amrita’s role and answer the following:

1. Do you feel that the measures taken to implement the corporate values and reorganize work in
the financial services center have been appropriate?

2. Would you have done anything differently?

3. How should one proceed now to achieve the best possible result for Pharmaz India’s financial
services center?