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Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

Organisational Behaviour II Project

A Structural Change Witnessed In The
Workplace, Its Reasons And Impact



Submitted By:
ABHISHEK SOHAL PGP/17/002
V SHARADA PGP/17/058
YASHASVI KANSOTIA PGP/17/062
AKSHIT GUPTA PGP/17/065
ALKA PGP/17/066
ABHISHEK BHASKAR IYER PGP/17/127
AKHILA JYOTHI SHANKAR PGP/17/129


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Introduction and Background to the Case
April 5
th
, 2012 was a Friday evening like any other at Minglebox Pvt. Ltd. , an educational
services company that provided coaching to aspiring students of various engineering, medical ,
management and other competitive examinations.
In the third floor of the large Bangalore office, Priya, 23 paced about nervously. The smart,
young engineering graduate from NIT Trichy, Priya had worked with Minglebox for little over a
year. In that short span of time she had risen from the post of Associate Content Developer for
Mingleboxs e-learning module for the AIEEE exam to her current post as Senior Manager.
As the Senior Manager, Priya was responsible for overseeing the entire content, delivery and
development of the courses offered for IIT-JEE and AIEEE preparation at the Bangalore branch
of Minglebox.
Priya stood at the window and watched the Bangalore traffic inching its way forward. Though
she was supposed to be busy preparing for a meeting with the board that would take place in a
couple of hours, she couldnt help thinking of the year that had passed.
The time that she had spent at Minglebox had been a rewarding and enriching experience for her.
A year ago she had left her job at a large PSU and had joined Minglebox, eager at the prospect of
working with an educational start-up but unsure about whether she would fit into the work
culture there. From the very first day however, she knew she had made the right career choice.
At Minglebox, she felt for the first time that she was doing something worthwhile. The work was
challenging and never mundane. The organisation had a great culture of camaraderie and she had
been welcomed into the fold and been made to feel a part of the large family that the organisation
was.
Minglebox had a flat organisational structure, very different from the hierarchical and strictly
formal structure that Priya was used to at the PSU she had worked for. The span of
responsibilities that employees handled varied according to their experience. But there was no
chain of command or seniority ladder as such.
In her first week at the new job, Priya had been shocked and pleasantly surprised to find
Mr.Rajesh , one of the founding members, at her table in the cafeteria. Nervous at first, she was
soon put at ease by his friendly nature. She spent the rest of the lunch break discussing her
apprehensions and ambitions regarding the new job with the founding partner!
Six months into the job and Priya felt like a veteran. She had been completely absorbed into the
culture and the eco-system of the organisation.
One of the great benefits of the flat structure was that right from the outset, she was entrusted
with a lot of responsibility. She was given the freedom and flexibility to choose the manner in
which she wanted to work. Work was done by employees who were loosely grouped into teams.

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Any effort was a collaborative one, with all the employees pitching in. Again there were no
hierarchies within the team. Every member was privy to all the information available.
However this mode of functioning required a lot of coordination and inter-communication
among the employees.
In the second half of the year, several problems crept up. Minglebox had originally been one of
the pioneers of the e-learning methodology. Gradually, established players like T.I.M.E had
started expanding their operations into this space.
Educational services being a category that relied heavily on reputation and building up a trusted
brand name, new and hitherto unknown players like Minglebox found that they were being
edged out of the e-learning market-space with the entrance of established players like T.I.M.E.
With T.I.M.E. becoming the dominant competitor, Minglebox suddenly found their strategies
and mode of operation highly inadequate in the face of this unexpected competition.
It took T.I.M.E., a corporate educational services provider only a few months to muscle its way
and eat into the market share of the small business that had been painstakingly built up over 3-4
years.
Minglebox could not match the vast resources that T.I.M.E had at their disposal and the kind of
aggressive promotional campaigns that they launched extensively across the country to promote
their foray into the e-learning category.
T.I.M.E. entered the new market with a well planned strategic and highly professional approach,
in the face of which Mingleboxs haphazard and home-built approach stood no chance.
Students were delighted with the highly structured and timely manner in which T.I.M.E released
content on their website. T.I.M.E offered a number of value-added services like live-chats and
customised counselling sessions online, monthly contact workshops , All-India web based test
series etc.
Minglebox, which operated with a limited and overloaded staff, often could not get content up on
their website on time. Their servers were not built to handle large demands and often suffered
from breakdowns during live online mock-tests.
Gradually much of Mingleboxs customer base started migrating to T.I.M.E.
During the crucial months of August to October, right before the season of competitive
examinations commences, T.I.M.E managed to poach a large number of Mingleboxs student
base by offering online crash courses and test series at attractive prices. T.I.M.E could afford to
heavily discount their offerings and also promote heavily. This move by T.I.M.E led to a sharp
dip in Mingleboxs already declining profits.

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The month of October ushered in a climate of panic at Minglebox. The sudden, unexpected and
alarming environmental changes had to be met by some sort of action by the management.
Mr. Jaidev, another of the founding members and an XLRI alumnus, analysed the situation and
felt that it was the complete lack of structure and organisation that was the cause of much of
Mingleboxs woes. He felt that the employees did not feel the pinch of accountability with the
existing flat structure. This led to a complete disregard for schedules and deadlines. Furthermore
the coordination among the employees was insufficient.
There were no established channels of communication and control which added to the delays and
the transaction costs of employee interactions.
In a meeting with the other managing partners, he proposed that a new organisational structure
be implemented. The existing one would be completely overhauled and there would be a shift to
a MATRIX structure.
The proposal was accepted and implemented with immediate effect. The idea behind it was to
bring more cohesiveness and clarity to the structure, introduce relationships of authority and
responsibility which it was hoped would enable the organisation to cope better with the current
climate of environmental uncertainty.
Post the implementation of this decision, the months of October to December were a very a
turbulent period for the organisation. A number of employees had to be laid off with little or no
prior notice. With the kind of losses that Minglebox was suffering, they could not afford to hold
onto the underperforming employees or those who rigidly refused to adapt to the new structure.
The organisation, known for its jovial and informal work-atmosphere was suddenly plunged into
an atmosphere of uncertainty, tension and suspicion. The employees feared for their jobs and the
general morale was abysmally low. Used to a more informal style of functioning, they now had
to learn the intricacies of the new reporting structures as well as cope with the rising work
pressure.
The employees were expected to deliver results and deliver them fast. This period of transition
was a tough time for the organisation and also for Priya personally as she watched a number of
friends and colleagues being laid off.
However she had to admit, grudgingly though, that the new structure did have its merits.
While earlier there was a lot of miscommunication and confusion especially around the time
when the deadlines were looming close, now there was a lot of role-clarity.
The added authority the managers now wielded meant that they had better control over their
subordinates. They could direct their better and obtain improved results from their subordinates.
Priya herself had experienced this in her interactions with her team.

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She sighed to herself. She had spent enough time mulling over the events of the past year. She
now had to prepare for the upcoming meeting.
The meeting had been called by the senior management for the purpose of evaluating the new
structure, its pros and cons and also for reviewing the process of transition. The organisations
performance during this period also had to be evaluated.
Priya in her capacity as the manager in-charge of the engineering entrance courses at her branch
had to share with the management the progress of her team. She took a deep breath and started
working on her report.
About the Company:


Mingle Box was founded in 2006 as Indias first campus network. Its network is expanded across
250 cities with a 4mn + student and young professionals base. It facilitates education material
access on a timely basis on diversified topics of interest. Donning the roster on the site is test
preparation material in addendum to 500000 courses in engineering, medical and management
arena. The database of the site is quite strong having tie ups with 30000 institutes and a database
of 10000 queries. Popularity of the institute stems from the fact that students from not only India
but also abroad are being leveraged by the services the site provides.
The online portal provides a hassle free solution to the accessibility issues many students face
while on the e portals of other sites. This is one such front where the Mingle box enjoys the
liberty to expansion because of multeity growth opportunities in foresight. The penetration radar
is plenary focused on young and budding professionals who want to study further. They have
launched mobile applications on android for MBA preparations. It's one of the highest
downloaded Indian education test preparation. Different kinds of mobile applications are
available for download such as CAT Prep Android App, CSAT Prep Android App, JEE Main
Prep Android App, IELTS Prep Android App, GRE Prep Android App, GATE Prep Android
App, WAP Mobile Website and College Finder.
With 4mn + monthly visits in the peak season, it leads Alexa rankings for Indian education sites.
200 leading education providers use Minglebox platform for Visibility, Targeting, Response
Generation and Lead Management.


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Previous Structure in Minglebox:
Open Structure:
Minglebox on their advent of educational stint in India was primarily following a very open
structure with no hierarchical bifurcations so as to facilitate learning in a comprehensive way. In
open structure, the company has followed :-
Decentralization : With decentralization, less direct managerial supervision is needed.
Authority is delegated to the lower levels. Decentralization does not eliminate the need
for many hierarchical levels.
Formalization: The rules and regulations were not strictly adhered to and hence in the
initial stages the methodology followed was quite informal.
Specialization: The jobs were narrowly defined and hence dependance on unique
expertise was not there because people were doing work from all arenas such as MBA,
engineering, medical etc.
Standardization: The work activities were not defined and hence there was a minimal
level of standardization.
Complexity: Since it was a startup the level of complexity was low.
Hierarchy of Authority: The degree of vertical differentiation across levels of
management was low.

Problem Faced by the Organization:
The peak season is from April to May where the students and young professionals demand for
the test series, question banks, reading materials and expert advice increase manifold. Due to
lack of proper structure they were not able to meet the demands as the experts on board were
overburdened and hence could not release the material on time. Due to the aforementioned
reasons the loyalty base of the students shrinked and majority of the students shifted to T.I.M.E.(
another coaching institute).

No. of visitors :




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Competitor Analysis:
Triumphant Institute of Management (T.I.M.E)
One of the main reasons for the success of this institute is its strong and stable organizational
structure that has been able to affectively divide the workload that maximizes the utilization of
its functional resources. Also this has helped them to adapt and evolve to different situations and
thus face the tests of time. It basically has a very standardized form of structure that doesnt vary
from place to place, and so it is easy for people from across the country to relate to it irrespective
of the place where they access it form.
Theirs is a flat organization and a functional structure that is one which is more
horizontal than vertical and makes a division of labor on the basis of the subjects that
each has to teach. This allows the members to focus on their respective subjects and give
more time to the students. Also they have integrated these divisions very effectively using
proper time and resource management so that the students dont face any problems.
Their core competences are the experienced eminent members that add value by speeding
up the process of forming the study materials due to their huge knowledge base and
know-how of the system. This differentiation brings a lot of stability to the structure as
they dont have to spend much time on brainstorming, hence saving on time and money
unlike their new competitors who strive to compete due to lack of such basic
requirements.
Plus they have a very close fit with their environment since they are flexible in terms of
changing in accordance to the need of the hour. Like they have now expanded into the e
sector and their Test Series is very famous among the students.


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Solution for the Crisis:
Structure Employed by Minglebox:
The open, decentralised structure was replaced by a matrix structure.
In the new structure, individuals were grouped by both function and product. Employees were
grouped based on the Sector (Physics/Chemistry/Maths/Biology/ etc) and the sub topics
(AIEEE/JEE/PMT/CAT etc.) they were further classified as product developers, software
developers and other roles. Because the matrix structure is a combination of other structures,
matrix structures can range from a matrix structure closer to the functional structure to one closer
to the project structure.
Inspite of the initial resistance by the employees towards the change, the new structure proved to
be helpful to the current situation that minglebox was going through. It was a much dynamic to
change and could manage the change in demands effectively. The structure allowed team
members to share information readily across task boundaries and it subsequently increased the
depth of knowledge. It also ensured that the project had individuals who were best suited for the
requirements.



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Tackling Employee Concerns and Apprehensions Post Structural Change
Due to inevitable forces of change, Minglebox adopted a structure to suit its current situation,
circumstance, sizes, teams and strategies. No matter how much thought process the organisation
puts into the changes, the human capital is always left feeling threatened due to these changes.
These changes in the structure caused a huge downsizing, and changed the span of control of
many employees, and thereby greatly affected the employee performance.
These changes also pose some challenges to the management of these organizations. After the
implementation of the structural changes, the focus was to examine the effects of structural
changes on employee performance. Surveys were floated out in the office, to study the employee
satisfaction to the current changes, and what they perceived as challenges. It was then analysed
by using both descriptive as well as inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics included
frequency distribution tables, percentages and pie charts, while inferential statistics involved the
use of chi-square.
To averse the adverse effect of structural changes, Minglebox is currently employing team
building strategies such as to:
- Organize meetings: Meetings were held with the whole team with the founding
members. Supervisory and clinic objectives were discussed and the team was encouraged
to discuss their concerns.
- Organize the team: the team was given a clear definition of roles and responsibilities
that they needed to act upon. It was based on the foundation that if everyone has a clear
role, individuals would be less frustrated and would willingly work together as a team.
Discussions were carried on as to who would assume leadership roles for different team
activities.
- Explain the rules: The norms and standards were discussed. The rationale behind these
decisions and the rules along with their implications in day-to-day practices were
informed to all.
- Promote team responsibility: The members of the team were encouraged to take up
responsibility for completing tasks and to solve issues as a team. Rewards were modified
and along with individual performance rewards, rewards were introduced if the entire
team met the objectives.