Demystifying Accounting Assignments: Expert Support Offered
Instilling and maintaining a collaborative spirit in the teams can be quite a challenge, too. At the moment three of the teams function well, but the situation has become quite tense in the fourth team. Recently, the team has made a few regrettable mistakes that appeared to be due to internal misunderstandings and lack of communication. Amrita has been told that this resulted in open quarrels between the team members, but she did not witness this herself. So far, no one has been willing to tell her exactly what the problem is and the team leader, Balvinder Singh, is evading her questions. It is clear to her, though, that communication has not flown easily between the team members since the arrival of her section’s newest employee, Shankar Savarkar, a competent chartered accountant. Shankar comes from a Brahmin family and thus belongs to the highest-ranking caste according to the traditional Indian view. Amrita is concerned that he tends to act in a rather standoffish manner with Balvinder and two other members of his team, and she has noticed that he never eats lunch with them. She thinks that the team members’ different backgrdundS may be at the root of the team’s problems, even though she feels that this ought not to be so in a professional working environment. It is a delicate issue. According to Indian legislation, the higher castes are not to enjoy any special privileges in the workplace, and caste is never openly discussed in Pharmaz. Amrita is at a loss at what to do to address the team’s difficulties. The car arrives at Bangalore’s largest technology park and stops at the entrance to wait while the security guards check the vehicles in front. Next to the line of cars, employees queue up and move slowly through the gates as the guards finish checking their entrance cards. As a senior manager and a familiar face, Amrita simply nods to the security guards and her car enters the technology park, which offers quite a change of scenery compared to the buzzing, dusty road lined with the shacks of the poor in front of the larger houses. In the park, all the buildings are tall and sleek, constructed in glass and steel, and between them the green lawns are dotted with well-kept flower beds. The company car lets Amrita off in front of the building where Pharmaz India is located, now occupying three full floors. Amrita gets out of the car, habitually taking care not to disarrange her clothes in the process. She almost always dresses in a traditional Indian sari, and today she has chosen one of her best, a bright pink one, to feel as confident as possible during the important meeting, She wears a bindi (a dot of color, usually red, applied in the center of the forehead) of a matching shade. Her hair style is the same as always: a long black plait. Generally, the employees in Pharmaz dress smartly but relatively informally. A few women wear jeans and Western-style shirts or blouses, but the majority are dressed traditionally in either a salwar kameez (loose trousers and a long tunic) or a sari. The men wear shirts with long sleeves and dark trousers, but normally jackets and ties are only worn for the occasions of important external meetings. Amrita takes the lift to go to the ninth floor where the financial services center is located. 328 CASE 7 BALANCING VALUES: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORATE VALUES FROM SCANDINAVIA On her way to the meeting she stops by to say hello to the regional manager, Ganesh Karanth. The regional manager has been in Pharmaz India since the subsidiary was founded and has worked his way to the top. His long career in Pharmaz has given him a lot of insight into the company and Amrita likes talking things through with him before important meetings such as the one she has today. She would like to get an idea of what the rest of the management in Pharmaz India thinks of Niels’ approach and plans. Also, she would li ke to ask the regional manager for advice on how to solve the problems in Balvinder’s team. Although Ganesh has of course never said so, she knows that he is a Brahmin because of his name, his food preferences, and his social network of other Brahmins. Amrita would not want to raise the topic of caste explicitly with Ganesh. But she thinks that he will understand without her having to spell it out. And she has seen him chatting with Shankar several times, so he may already be familiar with the situation in the team. But unfortunately, Ganesh is not in his office this morning. Niels texts her that he is delayed. Stuck in a traffic jam. Amrita asks the new thai wallah’ to bring her a tea. He is a thin, quiet man of middle age, and as she expects him to speak poor English she addresses him in Hindi. She is still not comfortable with the local language, Kannada, since she is not from Bangalore originally. Not that it matters very much in her daily life, otherwise she would probably have learned it by now. But most people in the fast-growing city of Bangalore seem to be from somewhere else, especially the professionals. English is Pharmaz’s official corporate language and here everybody except the thai wallahs’ and the janitors speaks it fluently and uses it for all work-related purposes. Amrita gets her hot tea, and as she sips at her cup absentmindedly she is getting increasingly impatient and nervous. The expatriate finance director and his plans Amrita is always apprehensive before meeting with Niels, and she knows that today’s discussion will be difficult. His direct and demanding way of communicating was initially a bit of a shock to Amrita and several of her colleagues, and she still finds it a challenge. Niels urges and expects a free exchange of ideas, and Amrita finds that discussions with him can be quite inspirational. He is good at showing his appreciation when he likes the viewpoints and ideas presented; Sometimes, however, he can be difficult to convince:, This, in Amrita’s experience, is especially the case, when your arguments refer to the particularities of the Indian context and the need to bend Pharmaz’s car,: porate values in order to put them into practice ina realistic manner. Niels took up his position as finance director in Pharmaz India three months ago. He is Danishy 40 years old, and he already has many years of., experience in Pharmaz, not only from headquarters , but also from the subsidiaries in Mexico, China, and Spain. He insists that everybody should use his first name and dislikes it when subordinates address him: asAmrita remembers when he first corrected her”l in this regard with the explanation that “what counts and deserves respect is not a person’s title, but his or her skills and competences”. Niels’ management style is strongly embedded in the company’s ideas’;; about empowerment, equal opportunities, and oper(.., ness. And, in line with Pharmaz headquarters’ asprations, he never misses a chance to practice these values conspicuously within the Indian organizatiori. ,, , Though Niels’ knowledge of the organizational context’ is li mited after just three months in Bangalore, he haS’ strong opinions about what to do and what not to do; He believes in implementing the corporate culture by managing explicitly through the values — for instance; with a view to speeding up decision-making processes_ by minimizing control and bureaucracy. As far as prac7 I tically possible, he believes that decisions are to be , r made by the people who will carry them out and live with them in their daily work. Now he finds that the time has come to reorganize the work processes in the financial services teams so that they reflect Pharmaz’s: , business model and values better. And he has decided to start with the four teams in Amrita’s section. Amrita is not against changes being made in her, teams, but she hopes to be able to make Niels realize that you cannot go all the way with Pharmaz’s ment style and values right away. Moreover, she would’ also like to use the opportunity to suggest that a way. , of motivating employees to accept more responsibil, ity in their daily work would be promotions and prices: She has already mentioned this idea briefly to Niels, but she is not sure what he thought about it. He seemed to find it a bit amusing, somehow, so maybe he just. CASE 7 BALANCING VALUES: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORATE VALUES FROM SCANDINAVIA 329 did not get the point. So this time, perhaps, she should also emphasize that promotions and prices can be important instruments for Pharmaz to use in order to retain their qualified employees in the competitive and dynamic Bangalorian labor market for financial experts. Question: Identify the main issues raised and discuss how they may be explained in terms of the cultural and institutional contexts of Pharmaz in general and Pharmez India in particular. ACT 2 Pharmaz India’s office in Bangalore, 17 October 2016, 9.30 a.m. Amrita and Niels meet to discuss challenges and possible courses of action Niels arrives 30 minutes late, He is dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved blue shirt and sandals. Amrita reflects that, with his laidback attire, one could almost mistake him for one of the American tourists she saw in Goa last month when she spent a long weekend there with her family. He apologizes so profusely for having kept her waiting that it almost makes Amrita feel as if he is the subordinate and she the superior. Although it makes her slightly uncomfortable, it also makes her feel that he respects her as a person, so she is a little more at ease when Niels comes straight to the point and addresses the issues he would like to see solved. Niels begins by showing her a long email sent to him by Sebastian Skram, the corporate finance director. It is in Danish (and Amrita is tempted to remind him that the corporate language is English, but she checks herself), so Niels translates for her. The mail reads: Dear Niels, [Some initial small talk about the bleak weather in Copenhagen and enquiries about the well-being of Niels’ family; he leaves this pad out when translating to Amdta.1 As you no doubt remember, we took some measures last year here in the corporate finance department at headquarters to make sure that our corporate values of empowerment and open knowledge sharing are implemented as fully as possible. Among other things we redefined the team leaders’ job descriptions so that they now spend less time on supervision and more time on development of new se/vices and procedures in dialogue with our colleagues from the departments involved. They do, of course, still involve themselves in the teams’ tasks, especially • the more complex ones, but they spend less time following up and checking the team members’ work. Although this means that an occasional minor error slips through from time to time, we have found that it has freed up a lot of resources for more creative purposes. in addition, we have also introduced a team bonus to promote the collaborative spirit. It is a very minor part of the employees’ pay, so the psychological aspect of the incentive has probably been more important than the money in itself. The team leaders as well as the team members find that the changes have made their jobs more interesting — as clearly reflected in our latest employee satisfaction survey. 1 mentioned this to Emil [Emil Bistrup, the corporate CEO of Pharmaz] when we had lunch together yesterday, and he was very enthusiastic about it you know how much weight he attaches to our corporate values. He suggested that similar efforts be made in the financial se/vices center in Bangalore; with the plans for its growth it will soon be more important to the company than our corporate nhance department here. I promised to take it up with you, but 1 realize that other measures may be more appropriate in Bangalore, so I leave that up to your judgement entirely. What matters is the result: the best possible implementation of our corporate values. If you believe it will be helpful I’m sure we can find the means in the budget to put the center’s employees through a more elaborate course in our corporate values. Anyway think about it and let me know what you plan to do and how I can assist you. Best regards, Sebastian The mail makes it clear to Amrita that the financial services center has the attention of the top management, and although this may be an advantage in her future career, she cannot help feeling a little apprehensive about it. Also, she finds it puzzling that the corporate finance director appears to say in his mail that he does 330 CASE 7 BALANCING VALUES: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORATE VALUES FROM SCANDINAVIA not see an occasional error as a problem. She thinks that is a risky attitude in a finance department, but she decides not to mention this to Niels as she does not wish to appear overly critical of her superiors. She asks Niels what he intends to do, and he says that the mail only underlines the need for changes that would be necessary anyway. He elaborates: the growth plans for the financial services center mean that the future and present employees need to be empowered to work out more solutions independently – or together in their teams, but without constant managerial input and follow-up. As long as the center’s tasks primarily consisted in invoicing for the headquarters and other relatively routine-oriented tasks, this was less important. But now the center is expected to carry out more and more complicated tasks, not just for the headquarters but also for many different subsidiaries. Colleagues from all over the world call the center when they need help to solve a wide variety of financial issues. And Niels has received some complaints that, although everybody is very friendly on the phone, it sometimes takes several days to get an answer to a fairly straightforward question. Niels knows that the center’s employees have all been very carefully selected and, as he sees it, their technical qualifications as financial experts cannot be questioned. So the problem, he says, is not that they are unable to respond, but rather that their work procedures are too bureaucratic and that the employees do not feel empowered to do much without the explicit approval of their team leader. in many cases they will also wait for the approval of their senior financial manager, Amrita. He would like her to spend less of her ti me exercising micromanagement and more time on actively empowering her subordinates. In addition, Niels goes on, it has been mentioned by several of the center’s users that the team members do not seem to know very much about each other’s work, so when the person they have talked to previously is off or at a meeting, no one else on the team seems to be able to help them or to know anything about the issue. He concludes that more knowledge sharing is called for – in line with Pharmaz corporate principles. As always, Niels Nielsen asks Amrita for her opinion and feedback on his thoughts. The question is how he and Amrita can ensure that the employees get the corporate values under their skin and act accordingly, ideally without even thinking about it. Amrita feels embarrassed because her management style has been criticized, and she finds it difficult to come up with solutions right away. She tells him that, in principle, she agrees, the values are not implemented fully and some changes may be called for. She does not, however, believe that another course in the corporate values – which the employees have been told about so often that they know the exact wordings from the annual report by heart – will change very much. Niels agrees; something else is needed to teach the employees how to “live” the values. Amrita tells Niels that she has actually done her best to put the corporate values, especially the value of empowerment, into practice in her dealings with her subordinates. She has left a lot up to them and given fewer orders, But so far it has not been a success. Indeed, the latest anonymous employee satisfaction survey in her section showed, as Niels already knows, that she was rated poorly as a manager. Naturally, this worries and frustrates Amrita. Previously she was rated much better, and she thinks that her low score can be attributed to the attempts she has made to empower her subordinates. With some exceptions, Amrita does not believe that the employees in her section share Pharmaz’s ideas of what a boss should be li ke. She suspects that they expect a good boss to know all the answers and not wait for the employees to come up with good ideas. He or she should take on the responsibility for everything, give explicit orders and follow them up. When Amrita thinks back on her own experiences in the Indian educational system, she tells Niels, she does not find their attitude very surprising. She believes it may be different in some educational institutions today, but the way she remembers it she was not rewarded for being critical or coming up with new approaches when doing her assignments. On the contrary, the easiest way to get good grades was to stick as closely as possible to the teachers’ or professors’ exact instructions, maybe even repeating their wordings where appropriate. Amrita is not convinced that all her subordinates are eager to take on more responsibility in daily work. Niels reflects on this. Her interpretation of her low score surprises him. He finds it strange that employees should complain about a boss who gives them too much freedom, but on the other hand what she says may make sense here in India. He thinks to himself that he has probably been too optimistic – the implementation of Pharmaz’s corporate culture will take time and hard work. Niels says to Amrita that he CASE 7 BALANCING VALUES: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORATE VALUES FROM SCANDINAVIA 331 appreciates that she has taken headquarters’ wish to practice empowerment seriously and that she