Responsible Leadership : Abstract of Case Study

Responsible Leadership: The Case of Tata Consultancy Services

Rajiv Noronha, AVP & Head Organizational Effectiveness (BPO Services)
Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, VP & Global HR Head (BPO Services)
Venkatnarayanan N K, AVP & Head- HR, Banking Services (BPO Services)

All Authors from Tata Consultancy Services

Paper was presented by Rajiv Noronha at the Symposium on Responsible Leadership at XLRI Jamshedpur and won the Outstanding Paper Award

Abstract

Responsible Leadership is about making business decisions that, next to the interest of the shareholders, also takes into account all the other stakeholders such as workers, clients, suppliers, the environment, the community and future generations[1]. Since 1991 Indian economy has made significant progress and opened up new opportunities for the youth. Yet two areas we have not addressed seriously as a nation, in order to keep up with the pace of changes that happen around us, are employability and education. On employability - today job opportunities are much more abundantly available for graduates and those with advanced degrees in their field of study. Talent supply from colleges has also increased several fold since 1991 but the paradox is that there is a shortage in the midst of abundance. This is primarily an outcome of the lower levels of employability. Several studies and surveys have indicated employability levels of between 20 to 30% among all graduates. In many cases the graduates are employed in jobs that are far below their real potential leading to disguised unemployment. On education – the issue that one needs to worry is the extent of contextual relevance of the curriculum being imparted. Industry captains have been talking about the time lag to update the curriculum to make it relevant to current industry practice. In the learning imparted at colleges we are few years behind in terms of what the industry does and what students learn thereby making it a problem both for the students as well as for the industry. Significant time and effort in training the fresh graduates to make them up to date before they can be gainfully productive can be avoided if this gap is minimized. This case study highlights how Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been able to display the well intentioned facets of responsible leadership to address these two critical challenges that we face as it is directly relevant to the business we are in. A significant point of departure of this case study is that we look at defocusing “Leader” in the sense of a person and focus more on “Leadership” and how the organization can create significant capability in terms of making the difference, enabling a culture that facilitates the needful display of leadership that builds on synchronous and pressing needs for organizations, individuals as well as the nation. We call this a win-win-win and try to understand facets of Responsible Leadership at TCS through this case study. While there are numerous examples that one has seen at TCS we try to bring out how Responsible Leadership is fostered by using two examples from recent years.

[1] Financial Times: Internet reference http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=responsible-leadership (Acc: 10 Sept 2012)