NHRD Network Journal

Culture is just like a ‘breeze’ that cannot be seen while for sure it can be felt and experienced. Often organisations believe that the success of any change initiative depends on the strength of execution focus, while on the contrary the success of transformation is sustainable only when it is driven through the organisations’ DNA. Organisations’ DNA is ingrained in its ‘culture’ dimension. Business success is not just about embracing a change one time, but it is about internalising the change in a manner to sustain and experience consistent outcomes benefiting all the associated stakeholders. This article would bring out the practical aspects of aligning culture and transformational change to attain sustainable outcomes. Exploring the cultural journey of organisations would not be complete until we deep-dive on aspects such as origin of organisational culture, impact of new technology and ways of working, dynamism of the ecosystem and the business-critical success factors. Success of transformational change is determined by the strength of its alignment with business benefits. Through our study, we have seen several organisations that in order to reap the fullest business benefits, transformational change needs to be evolved, ingrained and habituated through the dimensions of organisational culture.

This article describes how a pharmaceutical organisation adapted itself to the changes in the industry and transformed from a traditional product centred approach to an approach that focusses on improving the whole patient journey. This called for a cultural alignment—right from re-purposing of the organisation, identifying inspirational values and using these as organisational anchors for steering the business strategy. Also, the organisation has significantly invested in its leadership capabilities to constantly skill-reskill-upskill to stay future-relevant. The approaches undertaken by this organisation for future-proofing business are valuable insights which are applicable across domains.

Culture as a competitive advantage. Your culture, is your identity, is unique and differentiating, it not only inspires your employees to come to work but gives them an environment where passion meets purpose, it attracts your customers to choose you over your competitors and it enables your shareholders & stakeholders to have trust in your brand. The right culture can help grow your company multi-folds. The success of any large-scale intervention process depends upon Involvement, Co-creation and Execution of/by/from your various stakeholders. Cultural Transformation is the biggest change management initiative for any organization. It includes hand holding your employees in the journey of change management, capturing voice of the customer & market, building a case for change, deriving business behaviors and leveraging them to Business Benefits, envisioning a new vision along with your stakeholders, displaying commitment towards execution, reinforcing the new business behaviors and celebrating the success stories of your cultural heroes. Culture is not an initiative but it’s a catalyst for all the initiatives.

This paper is an attempt to understand the psychology of the senior managers of a large acquiring bank in the recently announced merger of public sector banks in India through a case study. The data revealed that contrary to the conventional wisdom, which suggests that employees of the acquiring organisation are likely to have a sense of ‘conquest’ or ‘pride’, the senior managers, in this case, did not display any such feelings. Rather, they had concerns regarding the merger, which are discussed. A few had apprehensions and some showed confidence that the process will be a success. We conclude that each case of merger is impacted by its unique history, HR practices and cultural moorings and needs to be understood in its unique background. The interventions for successful mergers will therefore need to be designed with this uniqueness in mind.

The literature on mergers and acquisitions reveal mixed findings with respect to synergy potential and cultural distance. While some researchers suggest that high cultural distance would lead to better performance, others suggest that low cultural distance would lead to better synergy and performance. I propose that the degree of relatedness between the two firms and the integration approach adopted by the management could be potential moderators in this relationship. The aim of this article is to explore which integration approach (absorption, preservation and symbiosis) would lead to maximum synergy in mergers and acquisitions of firms from related and unrelated industries. A review of literature and case studies on mergers and acquisitions was done to develop a framework for the same. Limitations and directions for future research have been discussed.

Police forces, traditionally, were tacitly assumed to be rule-bound, legalistic, bureaucratic organisations, in which top-down policies prevailed through a quasi-militaristic rank hierarchy and strict discipline code (Reiner,2016). The profile of the police organisations has been radically transforming, in view of the wider politico-economic and cultural context of re-emerging conflicts and social divisions in the recent past. Because of loose ends in the legal powers and processes, police officers at the operational level were characterised by the extent of discretion on how to behave or misbehave (Newburn & Reiner, 2012).

An empirical study was carried out in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh using Convenience sampling on 680 (340 respondents from police from different cadres and public each through separate structured questionnaires for each category of respondents), covering three variables, namely police beat, patrolling and responding to public calls.

This article presents how Visakhapatnam Police could focus on the beat and patrolling, responding to public calls as part of aligning its working processes and bring in the cultural change not only in the Police Organisation as a whole, but also among the stakeholders. The Visakha Police is today known to be more citizen-friendly, tech-savvy and relatively fast in addressing and resolving issues.

Several advances in technologies have enabled teams to work outside of the conventional physical workspace. Widespread changes in the nature of work due to the technologies have enabled productivity between teams that are dispersed and contributing to an emerging digital economy. At the same time, it is hard to ignore the sociological and human resource impact of such teams, and the conditions that they are subjected to in the form of digitally-enabled teams, or as this article articulates, global virtual teams (GVTs). Taking an observer’s view this article explores the process of learning and knowledge transfer in GVTs and proposes a framework for minimising stress and maximising outcomes from virtual teams.

As an organisation, Cognizant firmly believes that giving back to the society is an earnest reflection of the values we stand for. Our vision is to harness our technology expertise and the diverse skillsets of our global workforce to drive change and inclusion and thereby be a force for societal good. One of our biggest innovations in this endeavour has been ‘Outreach’, our employee-led grassroots social initiatives programme that leverages the power of employee volunteerism to drive a culture of purpose. Outreach is underpinned by our belief that while an organisation’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) ethos is crucial, what really drives change and creates impact is the individual social responsibility (ISR) quotient: the community conscience that inspires our employees to address today’s socio-economic challenges. This article outlines how Cognizant Outreach has synergised the social conscience of our employees with the organisation’s social responsibility to create a vibrant volunteering platform for the larger good of the society.

Stress in leadership roles has been dramatically increasing over the years. The constant challenge to address VUCA obstacles, while steering the ship to safer shores, tends to take a toll on the physical and emotional well-being of a leader. This article deep dives into some of the commonly cited causes of leadership stress and explores potential coaching journeys that could help the person to identify self-renewal behaviours, thereby sustaining high performance.

This article is based on interviews with industry leaders to get their insights into how the industry-wide disruptions are evolving. Accordingly, they share their views on the transformation journey that HR should undertake, with focus on learning, unlearning and relearning, in order to get ready for its HR4.0 avatar. HR4.0 definitely has a scope to make a bigger impact by designing and influencing talent management and development practices beyond organisational boundaries.

Organisations have used matrix structures to stay agile and flexible to do more with less. However, these structures with a dual chain of command have been fraught with power struggles, defeating the purpose of a matrix. Unfortunately, in most cases, the business continues to struggle with these issues. In India, managing the generational difference in family-owned businesses is akin to the matrix organisation and hence has similar complexities.

Human resources (HR) as the custodian of organisation culture has the power to restructure. To do this, HR first needs to reinvent itself and make itself a trusted partner to the business. This article highlights some of these practices that HR needs to unlearn and learn that would help HR address the organisation structure to peak performance.

Innovation is high on every CEO’s agenda across all industries. In some sectors, where disruption is prominent, innovation is critical to survival. But as many surveys have highlighted, the majority of innovation efforts in organisations fail. There is a clear mismatch between ambitions and achievements. The argument I put across in this article is that HR leaders have a strategic and critical role to play in making innovation happen. Innovation and Digital transformation are not about technology, but about people and processes. The crucial drivers for innovation are organisational culture, structure and communicating success.

Business ethics has always been a primary determinant of organisational identity. With increasing instances of corporate wrongdoing and unethical behaviour, organisations do try to invest in corrective actions, but their emphasis tends to be on the ‘letter’, i.e. the legalities of operating a business within the law. However, there is a very strong influencer element that lies in the ‘spirit’, i.e. the values, thought and the practice embedded within the organisation culture that makes things right. This article deep dives into the enhanced role that the human resources (HR) function needs to play to nurture and develop an ethical organisation. This article is based on an interview with Dr Mukund Rajan, the Tata veteran who has held the office of the Chief Ethics Officer of the Tata Group. His views are supplemented with research findings on organisation practices supporting ethical culture.

Gig economy is very attractive due to its alluring factors of flexibility, control work–life balance and entrepreneurial activities, but is it enough to bring them back to the same platform companies. Stickiness and gig economy are opposites as stickiness defies the core principle of gig economy, which is temporariness. But stickiness needs focus as more gig workers are dependent on it as a steady source of primary income. Companies also look at them for getting highly skilled workers at lower costs. This article delves into the factors which bring repeat business from the same gig worker to the platform company.

For a human resource professional, training and learning are a way of life. They have to constantly re-invent themselves to tread the water. Understanding the needs of the new generation (Gen Z) of employees, charting new initiatives for them while making business sense of those initiatives is essential for the human resource managers of today. A changing world brings with it different perspectives on employee morale and new-age challenges (such as the abuse of technology and social media play). Positive mental health and its impact on a stable, sustainable and productive workforce is another critical aspect of human resource management. This paper is based on the journalistic construction of human resources and perspectives based on personal experience. The aim is to provide a basic view on human resources preparedness to meet the challenges of tomorrow by analysing the operations of yesterday and recalibrating the workings of today.

Culture en vogue in organisations is the visible and invisible behaviour patterns of people, visualised as the ego state of organisations as they transit business cycles. The author discovers the characteristic of successful Indian organisation culture as RISC—resilience, integrity, sensitivity and compassion. In future, HR will learn culture audit, develop customised scorecards for culture champions and embrace the six value orientation essential for consolidating culture. They need to fine-tune servant leadership, empower autonomous delivery groups at the bottom of the pyramid and educate people on how to use critical feedback from stakeholders to rejig processes that uphold culture. Short stories from L&T, TVS Motor and Freudenberg Group operating in India exemplify the contextual validity of culture en vogue.