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Attitude, Values and Work Culture

Reading Materials for DSP Training Programme on 18
th
October, 2008



1. What Dell does?



Dell Computers of USA is the third most admired company, as ranked by the
Fortune Magazine. The company delivers value to customers through their direct
business model, focusing on customers experience. Primarily data driven, in Dell
managers report on achievement of their targets on day-to-day basis.
Employees attitude at Dell is strongly influenced by their aspiration to be a great
company and a great place to work through the adoption of a winning culture.
Dells primary focus is on the team and on individual contributions to the team.
People/line managers are expected to interact with individuals, and their
performance in this area is closely monitored. Both people managers and
individual contributors are measured on the way in which they deal with people
as well as on their technical proficiency. Theres a consistent emphasis on how
people do their job, not just what they do, including, for example, support for
colleagues and behaving ethically.

The company makes a conscious effort to recruit people who will have a good fit
with its values people who are open, direct and who focus on getting the job
done rather than engaging in office politics. The company runs a leadership
programme each year, which focus on personal development planning.
Employee engagement is driven by the relationship between individuals and their
manager. The expectations of people managers are clearly defined:

Set a performance plan.
Work in each team on individual development plans.
Undertake mid-year review.
Undertake end-year review.
Undertake monthly review with each individual (30 minutes to 1 hour)
Give feedback to improve performance.

Dell measures people managers compliance with their performance
management targets, tracking what has been done at each stage. In addition,
senior managers are expected to take regular opportunities to engage with more
junior staff, for example, at brown bag lunches with different groups, or while
visiting operations in other countries, to help embed a common culture.

Other methods of encouraging dialogue include quarterly results meetings across
the business at which senior managers take questions. Tell Dell surveys every
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six months cover core areas suggested by statements such as Management is
doing a good job positioning the company to win in the marketplace, My
manager is effective at managing people, I receive ongoing feedback that helps
me to improve my performance, My manager sets a good example of ethical
business behaviour, I would recommend Dell as a great place to work etc. The
surveys provide a broad measure of employee engagement.

The data is analysed to identify trends. Managers are then tasked with sharing
their results with their teams and developing team action plans to address issues
and drive improvements.

Read this opening case and relate with DSP. In between the session, you
would be asked to write your feelings.



2. What is Attitude?

Attitude is a mental state of an individual which tends to act or respond or
is ready to respond for or against objects, situation, etc., with which his/her
vested feeling or affect, interest, liking, desire and so on, are directly or
indirectly linked or associated. During the course of development the
person acquires tendencies to respond to objects. These learned
cognitive mechanisms are called attitudes. Changes in knowledge are
followed by change in attitudes. Attitudes are different from knowledge in
a sense that attitudes are emotion-laden. Knowledge reinforces attitudes
and reinforced attitudes in the long run reinforce individual and group
behaviour. Hence, attitude is neither behaviour nor cause of behaviour
but it relates to an intervening pre-disposition or a frame of reference,
which influences the behaviour of an individual.

Attitude is an enduring evaluation positive or negative of people, objects
and ideas. Thus attitudes are evaluative statements or judgments
concerning objects, people, or events. Attitude has three components,
cognition, affection and behaviour of people. A particular attitude of a
person can be based of one component or the other. Cognitive based
attitude primarily based on beliefs and properties of an attitudinal object.
Cognitive component of an attitude is the opinion or belief segment of an
attitude. Cognitive Dissonance Theory helps us to trace any incompatibility
between two or more attitudes or between behaviour and attitudes.
Affection based attitude stems from people's feelings (e.g., attitudes
towards political candidates). Affective component is the emotion or
feeling segment of an attitude. Behaviorally based attitude is based on
self-perception of ones own behavior when initial attitude is weak or
ambiguous. Behavioural component of an attitude is an intention to
behave in a certain way toward someone or something. The Affection-
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Behaviour (A-B) relationship acts as moderating variables (i.e. importance,
specificity, accessibility, social pressures, and direct experience). Self-
perception theory use attitudes after the fact to make sense out of an
action taken

3. Why Attitude is important for DSP?

For any organization like; DSP, attitudes of people is especially significant,
as job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment
largely stems from individual employees attitude. Job satisfaction refers to
the general attitude of employees toward job. Job involvement helps in
psychological identification of people with their job, while organizational
commitment is the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular
organization and its goals, and wishes to maintain membership in the
organization. In organization people seek consistency among their
attitudes and seek to reconcile divergent attitudes to appear to be rational
and consistent.

Attitudinal change of a person takes place by changing the behaviour.
Cognitive dissonance theory facilitates change of attitude through
behavioural reinforcement. Persuasive communication and focus on a
particular issue facilitate such change of attitude.


4. Attitude Models

Yale Attitude Change Model suggests study of conditions under which
people are most likely to change their attitudes. These conditions are;
source of communication (i.e., credible speaker), nature of
communication, and the nature of audience, etc. Communication of a
doctor to a patient on a medical issue (communication source),
communication that do not intends to influence the people (nature of
communication) and persuasive communication to distract an audience
within the age group of 18-25, is likely to yield better result in attitudinal
change.

Elaboration likelihood model on the other hand shows people change their
attitude in two ways; concept (central route to persuasion) and conditions
for central route to persuasion (motivation). Central route to persuasion
motivates people to pay attention to the facts in a communicated
message. When facts are logical and compelling, attitudinal change takes
place promptly. Therefore, the contents of the messages are especially
important. On the contrary, when facts are not compelling, people get
swayed only by the peripheral cues like; mood, emotion, attractiveness of
the speaker. Such peripheral cues may facilitate to enhance motivation
but not the attitudinal change. Conditions for central route to persuasion
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are reinforcing motivation by focusing on personal relevance, so that
people can pay attention to the arguments.

5. Influence on emotion on attitude

Emotion's influence on attitude change depends on the routes to
persuasion. Emotion or mood manipulation is only effective for peripheral
route to persuasion. People pay more attention to a speech, when
argument is strong and effective in changing their attitudes. People in sad
mood take central route to persuasion, while in happy mood they take
peripheral route to persuasion. Therefore attitudinal change takes place
when people take the central route to persuasion, like fear, greatness of
harm, etc. give better result in inducing attitudinal change. Therefore,
managers should use central route to persuasion, duly addressing the fear
arousal, combining persuasive and appealing message.

6. Value Systems and Attitude

In managing behaviour of your people, like personality and emotional
intelligence, individual employee differs also in terms of attitude. Attitude is
defined as the way we reflect our values. For example innate value
systems of employees may make them an optimist, always look for bright
side and work smart to get the positive outcome. They not only nurture
such value-laden attitude in their own behaviour but also view others from
the same perspective.

7. Functions of Attitude

The function of attitudes is to guide the formation of behavioral intentions.
Attitude formation and change is viewed as a process of deliberative
evaluation and belief updating. Attitudes are thought to impact behaviour
indirectly via behavioural intentions. Employee attitudes and commitment
are strongly associated with business performance.

8. Differences between attitudinal components


Cognitive component of an attitude is the opinion or belief segment of an
attitude. Attitudinal responses of people, which stem from cognitive
component, mainly reflect expression of beliefs (e.g. expectancy-value
judgements) and nonverbal reactions.

Affective component is the emotion or feeling segment of an attitude and
it manifests in verbal expressions of feelings and physiological changes in
the organism (e.g. increase of arousal).

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Behavioural component of an attitude is an intention to behave in a
certain way toward someone or something. It reflects through behavioural
intentions and actions.


9. Values and Attitudes

Values are reflected through the way we treat people, the approach we
give to our work, and in our basic work ethic. They are relatively stable
over time. The research indicates that most of our values were formed by
about age 5 or 6.

We have some terminal values and some instrumental values.

We develop terminal values through the process of our upbringing with
cue from our happiness, freedom and friendship.

Since the cycle of our upbringing, by default does not guarantee
happiness every time, we also develop some instrumental values that
guide and shape our values to be cheerful, responsible and showing self-
control.

Cultural differences also cause major differences in peoples values.
Americans want everything now, have little patience with waiting, and are
pushy. Japanese workers tend to be more patient with waiting for job
promotions and are willing to stay with the company for the long run.
Germans believe more on analytic decision making with less interest on
brain storming and quick decision-making. And Indians are influenced
with conservative decision making style, hedging the risk of uncertainty.
We believe in and we are used to take decisions thinking on constraint.
Reason being we survived through ages with scarcity, and we were
brought up with social systems to accommodate and adjust with high
degree of tolerance.

Attitude is the way we reflect our values. An optimist employee always
tends to look at the bright side of an organization, always positive.

Value systems develop largely through our education. Cognitive part we
develop through our knowledge, knowing what is right and what is wrong.
Affective part, being emotional side, we develop through our experience.
Behavioural part is the blend of knowledge and emotions.

10. Management of Values and attitudes

Managing attitude and value systems of employees is important.
Mismatch of value systems and attitude of employees with the
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organization affects efficiency and performance, which, therefore,
renders organization to experience competitive disadvantage. Some
of reflection of attitudes and values at work is listed below.

Job Satisfaction - Overall positive or negative. This is most often
looked at in terms of the long run. I may be having a bad day (or even
week), but that doesnt mean my job satisfaction is bad. Refers to an
individuals general attitude toward his or her job. .

Job Involvement - This is not about being involved in decision making
on the job, but rather its about how important is our job/work. Does it
help to define us? If losing our job would make us feel like less of a
person, we then have a high degree of job involvement. Job
Involvement measures the degree to which a person identifies
psychologically with his or her job and considers his or her perceived
performance level important to self-worth.

Organizational commitment. This refers to how committed we feel to
the goals of the company for whom we work. Most McDonalds
employees are committed to the quality of their burgers. Similarly most
of the EMC (USA) employees are committed to customer service. Thus
the degree to which an employee identifies with a particular
organization and its goals, and wishes to maintain membership in the
organization, decides their attitude towards organizational
commitment.


11. Mapping Attitudes and Value Systems of Employees

Because of importance of attitude and value systems, which largely
influences the behaviour of individual employees, companies always
try to check these aspects before the recruitment. These are done
primarily through reference checking and during interview.

For measurement of attitudes, personality and emotions, we have
many standard psychometric tools. These apart using scenario
analysis (with ethical bent), in-basket exercises, role-playing; we can
measure the degree of fit, keeping in view organizational requirement.
Focus of all these exercises is to predict response and behavioural
pattern of employees on the job.

Some of the attitudinal change exercises, used by organizations are;
modeling desired behavioural standards with instructions to employees
to emulate those. For example a good customer relationship model
can be developed and shown to the employees to practice the same in
their dealing with customers.
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Some of the critical attitudinal problems, which organizations face
worldwide, are managing diversity. Underlying attitude of employees
may not warrant believing in diversity, being it cross-cultural, racial,
religion wise or male-female issues. Only legal stricture cannot ease
this attitudinal problem. It is important for organization show casing
some best roles in the organization (inside) or outside.

By nature people always seek consistency among their attitudes and
behaviour so as to be rational and consistent in their relationship with
organization. Information transparency and building of mutual trust
can ease such mismatch.


12. Mapping Attitude through Scenario Analysis

We know to manage in organization, we need to be flexible, but
nothing at the cost of ethics and values. Keeping this in mind,
suggest how we can deal with the following dilemmas:

a) You are heading Finance Department of DSP. An employee
in your Department approaches you and tells you that a theft
ring involving several employees is operating in your
Department. He begs not to report the incident because he
fears for his safety if the leader of the theft ring discovers
that he has discussed the matter with you.

b) You are Manager of Corporate Planning Department. After
working late, one night you discover that your boss, the Vice
President of Corporate Planning and the Chief Accountant,
are providing inside information to several wealthy investors
about your companys planned merger with another large
manufacturer.

c) After a business trip, you begin to file an expense report. A
co-worker who accompanied you on the trip files a
report that is nearly twice the amount of the expenses
actually incurred. He asks you to file a similar report and tells
you `everybody here pads their travel expenses bill.


13. Other measures of attitudes

1. Physiological

Skin resistance (Rankin & Campbell, 1955)
Heart rate (Westie & DeFleur 1959)
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Pupil dilation (Hess 1965), i.e., attitude inferred
by comparing participants response in the
presence of a neutral object and the presence of
the attitude object.

2. Physiological measures of attitudes (overt
behaviour) and its problems;

Indicate intensity and not direction
Physiological measures sensitive to variables
other than attitudes (Caccioppo & Petty, 1981)
e.g. vigilance tasks lower heart rate e.g. skin
response changes in presence of novel or
incongruous stimuli.
Sensitive issues- bogus pipeline technique
(Jones & Sigall, 1971)


3. Mapping Attitudes through Myth Statements

Hard work ensures better result,
Linking to work with subordinates for prompt
results,
Never say no to anyone; listen to everybodys
problems.
One, who is indispensable, is efficient.
Maintain the hierarchical structure while taking
decisions, very rigidly.

4. Sample Questionnaire Items for Attitude
Measurement

Do you think the expenditure on training is
wasteful? (Give your answer selecting any one
from the given alternatives).

To a large extent
To some extent
To a very little extent
Not at all

What, to your knowledge, are the major
barriers to effective implementation of flexible
working hours in India? (Please arrange the
factors in order of your perceived preference).

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Lack of awareness
Difficulty in implementation
Supervisory problems
Lack of support from workers
Lack of support from unions
Production problems
Any other (please specify)

The first questionnaire item (which reflects the attitude of a person regarding
training) can be evaluated by adding the weighted value of individual responses.
The second questionnaire item allows the respondents to answer the question by
selecting all alternatives in order of their perceived priority. This requires use of
factorial method for quantification of all responses. Let us give an example to
illustrate the matter.

Example

Let there by 15 respondents. Suppose they have responded by giving ranks to
the alternative (a) as follows:

Respondent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Rank of (a) 1 3 5 7 1 4 3
Respondent 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Rank of (a) 2 6 5 1 2 3 4 5


From the above, we get:

Priority/Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Number of
Respondents (T
r
)
3 2 3 2 3 1 1

(Total No. of respondents = 15, No. of priorities/Ranks = 7, i.e., a to g)

Weighted Score Value (WSV) is calculated as follows :

Priority 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Total Value 3 2 3 2 3 1 1
Weights (factorial) 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
WSV 21 12 15 8 9 2 1

In the same way, the total weighted score value for other alternatives can be
calculated from the responses obtained against each. Suppose they are as
follows:

Alternative b c d e f g
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Total WSV 65 30 70 55 60 40

The total weighted score value of alternative (d) is highest. Therefore, alternative
(d) i.e., lack of support from workers should be the attitude/opinion of the group
of respondents.



Case Study Managing work culture transformation

Legacy bound multinational electronics major in India, with the Korean entry in
business, had to revisit their business strategies. Being the first in India to
produce conventional black and white TV and later colour TV, the company took
their captive market privilege as their pride and made Indian customers only to
have what they believe is the best. For years together, they have made no
change in variety or models. Even people there deep-rooted such believe that
they are the best. With the Korean entry, the multinational had to understand the
real burnt of competition in consumer electronics industry. The price competition
rendered their products uneconomical. So also the multiple models availability of
Korean companies, reduced them less attractive to customers. The cascaded
legacy in the mind set of employees also made them to believe that the company
can meet their rising demand in salary and accede to their other bargainable
issues (involving high expenditure).

The company has been acquired by a traditional Indian electronics major, whose
price competition advantage made them successful in the market, next to Korean
manufacturers. The acquisition was legally challenged and even violently
opposed by the trade unions. Workers in large numbers decided not to work with
the new entity, less known than their foreign counterpart. On acquisition, the
Indian major first tried to assuage the feelings of irate employees and the unions
that their employment is protected with golden parachute option, i.e., service
conditions and salary and benefits will remain unaltered. Even that did not help
them to earn the confidence. Many employees took early separation and those
in higher age bracket even opted for voluntary retirement, for which their parent
company, before selling the stake to Indian electronics major, made available
separate provisions. Many employees even decided to opt for wait and see.

During their first phase of operation, the Indian electronics major followed
rigorous communication and transparency of information with all cross-section of
employees. The Chief Operating Officer was advised to spend more than 80% of
his time to meet and talk to all cross-sections of employees, clarify their doubts
and answer their queries, if any. Literally the COO kept him busy in moving
around the shop floors to meet the people, without bothering for immediate
production loss. The COO also made a point to meet employees both in-group
and individually in his office at designated time to discuss any issues, which
otherwise employees cannot share in the shop floors. In between, the COO set
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an example before the employees, making it a point to all the managers and
executives to be on time and disciplined at work place, which was diluted while
they were with the multinational entity. After continuous practice of this for a
month, managers set an example before the workers and then started
demanding from them similar behaviour at work place. Whenever workers made
it an issue that things are not moving at right pace, they have been given
freedom to manage the gang level activities, deciding on their own every aspect
of their jobs. Management extended all supports and facilitated their activities
and even made it a point for any important visitor to the plant to appreciate how
workers can take charge of the shop floor in managing their activities.

The company then identified that there are some common areas of interest both
for the workers and the management. A goal congruence model duly developed
in line with such common areas of interest, made it possible for them to assess
the results of discussions on mutual interest. The company could find that
management issues are not separate from workers. Hence they took the
approach of integrating workers issues with the management, reinforcing
workers attitude to appreciate the need for change. Initial in-house training
support to sell the imperative for change was strengthened with retaining the
expert consultants services, which reinforced the thought process of workers to
realise, why they should change to scale up the activities of the organization for
mutual interest.

Despite such yearlong efforts to change the attitude of workers, it was observed
that company still ridden with some deadwoods, who are not only non-performers
but also chronic absentees. A list of 22 such dead-woods out of 300 pay-roll
workers (who are from erstwhile multinational) have been prepared and the list
was sent to the unions of their affiliation with a request to suggest what should be
the companys standpoint to tackle these dead-woods. Unions were non-
committal at the initial stage and upon persistent communication, they asked
their members to behave in right direction. Hardly there was any impact.
Management then decided to take up the issues at their level, referring it to the
unions that no disciplinary action will be initiated against any one, but external
experts will take them through rigorous attitudinal change sessions, to help them
to understand the need for change. Unions agreed to this and accordingly
management retained experts to take the show.

Experts first used successive ice-breaks to allow the deadwoods to open their
mouth. Some of the deadwoods started talking making alibis that they remain
absent for companys failure to appreciate their achievement of results.
Companys productivity went up by three times after its acquisition, while their
wages marginally increased. That leads to their de-motivation.

Indian Labour laws allow workers to receive their terminal benefits like; gratuity
and pension, even when they remain absent without pay. This will continue till
such time, workers are discharged. Politically conscious workers understand this
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privilege. Therefore, those who can afford to fend for better alternative sources of
income will opt for the same, while remaining on the pay roll of their mother
company, with some surprise visits. The elaborate disciplinary procedures take
time to fix the erring workers by discharge.

Such deadwoods set a bad precedence before others who are sincere and hard
working. Unions often plead their helplessness, as they fear, this may reduce
their membership stake, as rival unions can take these members in their group.
Political interference is not possible, as every body is concerned for their vote-
bank. The company is not able to understand, how they would tackle with these
people.

Question: As a manager suggest, how you will go ahead with this
situation?


Work Culture Examples

General Electric: A majority of GEs businesses worldwide have a presence in
India. The list includes aircraft engines, broadcasting, capital services, lighting,
medical systems, etc. Nearly 19,000 GE professionals are employed in India.
GEs Core Values are Unyielding Integrity, Commitment to Performance and
Thirst for Change and these core values they translate into their culture of
showing passion for customers, meritocracy, global orientation and growth,
respecting employees and their contributions, playing offences by taking the
advantage of size (big) and embracing speed and excellence.

Whirlpool: It has already established its vibrant presence in the domestic Indian
market. They are now the market leader in fully automatic washing machines and
refrigerators. Whirlpools culture is to create customer passion. In India Whirlpool
exhorts all employees to pledge: ``We will generate insight and passion for our
customers thereby creating solutions and benefits that uniquely serve their
needs. In turn, we will be rewarded from our customers with passion and loyalty
for our brands.'' This apart Whirlpool has five values, i.e., respect, integrity,
teamwork, learning to lead and the spirit of winning. These values are critical for
Whirlpool as it drives their business strategy.

For TCS, the Indian MNC, culture is "the operating system" that drives their
actions. It guides their employees to think, act and feel. Their culture even get
reflected in their architecture and dcor. The hard dimensions of their culture
relate to the functional, technical and control aspects, while the soft part of their
culture imbibes inspiration, emotion, energy, enthusiasm, collaboration and
camaraderie, openness, sense of belonging, and many other, which perhaps
leapfrogged TCS globally.

Work Culture Transformation
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There are six keys to success for successful transformations of work culture.

Those are:

A consistent and clear driving vision;
A set of supporting processes, drawing broadly on those affected by
change and often using specific institutions, to refine and communicate
the vision, to quantify and test its reality, and to translate it into
implemental pieces;
A persistent and constant in-place leadership cadre, driving an ongoing
sense of urgency;
The willingness and drive to reengineer any process, doctrine, or
organization and to take risks;
The willingness to allocate the funding necessary for change and to
reprioritize budget allocations; and
A commitment to align the measurement system across the hierarchy and
in accordance with the vision.

Further work culture change can be evolutionary or revolutionary in nature. Some
authors contend that revolutionary change must be implemented at a rapid pace,
while writers such as Gallivan et al. (1994) suggest that revolutionary change can
be implemented in phases. Studies indicate organizations world wide tend to use
revolutionary tactics to design change, but implement Business Process Re-
engineering (BPR) in radical stages. During the process of work culture change,
an inherent tension between the conservation of existing practices and
behaviours, and innovation (Kondo, 1996) takes place. Factors such as the
dysfunctional aspects of an organisation, cultural inertia and risk can militate
against revolutionary change and/or retard its implementation (Miller, 1982; Miller
and Friesen, 1982; Chang, 1994; Jih and Owings, 19! 95; Kilmann, 1995;
Ahmed, 1998).

During the work culture transformation phase, aligning current operating projects
with long-term visions and strategies is a challenge for many executives
(Davidson 1993). He states that, in many companies, operating projects seem to
be pursued in a highly fragmented fashion, almost independent of corporate
vision and strategy. However, achieving alignment between short-term
operational improvement efforts and the long-term vision is central to successful
transformation (Mintzberg, 1994; Novak, 1997). Gould (1996) suggests that each
organisational state comprises four strategies; Fine-tuning, Building, Crisis and
Transformation. The relative dominance of each of the four strategies will vary in
line with contextual changes. When adopting a strategy of fine-tuning, an
"integrated" culture is likely to dominate. This culture protects and sustains core
competencies, beliefs and codes of conduct, and determines the behaviours that
pervade the organisation. When adopting a building strategy, a "diffuse culture"
may develop. This is where behaviours, codes of conduct and values are shared
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within the organisation. Systems are employed to deliver efficiency and add
value. In a crisis situation a "counter culture" may emerge. This creates
conditions where decisive action is taken to suspend "business as usual". Work
culture transformation requires an "empowered culture" which entails continuous
and discontinuous change across the organization (Schoonhoven and Jelinek,
1990; Scott Morton, 1991; Carr, 1996). According to McHugh et al. (1995), virtual
relationships are formed by going beyond business process reengineering to a
state which allows the organisation to "de-invent and re-invent" itself as it faces
increasingly ambiguous markets. This relationship requires open communication
and total trust, as each company's unique set of core competencies and
capabilities make them indispensable to the network.


To illustrate we can site the example of Hewlett-Packard (HP). They are
successful to create a conscious corporate culture, which they call `The HP
Way. HPs corporate culture is based on 1) respect for others, 2) a sense of
community, and 3) plain hard work (Fortune Magazine, May 15, 1995). This
conscious culture they have developed and they are sustaining through
extensive training of managers and all cross-section of employees. Today HP's
growth and success may be traced to their conscious corporate culture.

A good example from international perspective is Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD). AMD is located in Dresden of East Germany and a composite of three
cultures American, West German and East German. The Americans are go-
getters who believe in shooting first and aiming later. West Germans are
analytical, thorough and correct, whereas the East Germans have mastered the
art of innovation with limited resources. The Dresden start-up team designed a
meeting format, which opened with American-style brainstorming sessions. In
this case, the Americans learnt the art of deliberation and the Germans off-the-
cuff dynamism. As a result, this multicultural style gave AMD the much-needed
competitive edge. AMDs case has developed Dilemma Theory (Trompenaars,
F., Hampden-Turner, C., 1998) a much discussed theory now worldwide and
commonly known as THT Theory According to this theory, insidious culture
clashes and most management problems are a result of the human habit of
viewing life in terms of all-or-nothing choices. It is always winning versus losing
strategies, right versus wrong answers and good versus bad values. Business
issues must not be approached as a contest between good and evil, or the
potential benefits of evil might be lost. It is better to interpret clashes as a
reconcilable dilemma.

Apart from the success and failure studies of our sample acquired industrial units
in West Bengal, at the national level, we have the most successful stories of
organizational transformation, i.e., Aditya Birla Group Under Kumar Mangalam
Birla, which has metamorphosised itself into a modern multi cultural
transnational with more than 72,000 people drawn from 20 different countries. In
his words transformation is about turning aspirations into reality, converting
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setbacks into opportunities. It is about courage of conviction. It is about what
Charles Handy calls "the creation of new alchemists from ordinary people".
Transformation is the end result of a highly energized process that combines
human ingenuity with its indomitable spirit to make new things happen and create
value.

This is copyrighted material being extract from the Book of Dr.
D.K. Bhattacharyya on Organizational Behaviour, published by
the Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Use it for training
purposes only with acknowledgement.