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Pradip Khandwala
Management is not standardized. Like an octopus, it can adopt a variety of forms and colours (Khandwalla, 1995). The top management of any organization has a distinctive importance. Its orientation affects all the stakeholders of the organization. Some managements are highly enterprising and experimentalist. Gujarat boasts a tradition from Ranchhodlal Chhotalal to Ambalal Sarabhai, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, and Ambani of such managements. Other managements are known for their traditionalism and caution. All of us are familiar with professional management, but even today, many relatively small organizations, possibly a majority, have little faith in professional management and instead function on the basis of experience-based wisdom and common sense. There are organizations - especially governmental organizations - that are rigid, rules-bound, and bureaucratic, while there are also managements that are called 'organic' that are high flexible, and stress teamwork, profuse interactivity without regard for departmental boundaries, and cooperative action. Some managements emphasize ethics and altruism, and contrary to these there are managements that think ethics are a deathknell in a dishonest world. Instead they stress personal and organizational self-centeredness. The Tata Group and Satyam Computers are examples of these opposite orientations. . Finally, some managements are highly authoritarian, while some believe in decision making on the basis of consensus through participative management. Creative Management
In relatively smaller or mid-sized organizations, creativity can flourish if the head is an innovative individual. Let me give the example of JMEL, a company owned by the Government of Rajasthan (Mukherjee, 1989). Originally the company was privately owned, but it fell sick, and was taken over by the Rajasthan Government to preserve employment. The company produced electrical meters, aluminum conductors, wires etc. In 1980, it had staff strength of 2000. It continued to fare badly as a public sector company. However, in 1983, an IAS officer, Mr. Kavadia was appointed as the CEO. When he took over the management there was gross staff indiscipline. He promptly suspended 600 militant workers. He did the unheard of in the public sector - he presented the unions with a charter of demands, and threatened that he would close the plant if the demands were not met ! The unions agreed to redeployment of workers to needed jobs from redundant jobs. An agreement was signed with the workers on the steps to revive the company. He restored discipline, and fired some unreliable officers. Kavadia thought up a strange way of motivating the workers of a loss making company - he offered them equity shares and seats on the board of directors in lieu of higher productivity standards, freeze on pay raise, and increased working hours ! The unions agreed. Kavadia introduced participative management. He set up plant-level committees in which both workers and management were represented. They met to sort out operating problems. On their own these
