Dharam Singh, general manager at ‘Prithviraj Chemicals’ was worried about his future, even
though he had been told that after ‘Prithviraj Chemicals’ is merged with Orchid Phamaceuticals
he would be promoted anad also be required to shoulder the additional responsibility of
identifying those who should be retained as employees even after the merger. Dharam was
concerened because he had heard that the orgnisational culture at ‘Orchid’ was computer
driven, while at ‘Prithviraj Chemicals’, the focus was on “relationship”.
A month later after the official merger of the two companies, the new management took the
decision to shift the headquarters to Bangalore from Mysore. This decision when
communicated to its employees, (many of ‘Prithviraj Chemicals’) had approached Dharam
Singh to ask “Why was the new management shifting its Head Quarters to a new place
(Bangalore), was it because the two managements did not trust each other?” This question was
posed especially because most of Prithviraj’s employees had become used to the ‘quite, risk
averse and friendly work environment’ and were worried whether in Bangalore, with ‘its
cosmopolitan outlook would lead to cultural clashes.
As anticipated there were certain instances which had Dharam Singh wondering how to solve
such cultural differences. The ‘Prithviraj employees’consensus, relationship-result oriented
approach always believed in an open communication system with all employees keeping each
other informed about any decision and bring about a consensus with their ‘individual’ work i.e.,
they were more focused on ambitious cost-cutting goals an each employee was individually
responsible for quantifiable results.
• Whenever any work related problem arises, the ‘Prithviraj employees adopted an
attitude “Tell us about the problem from all angles and we will discuss and tell you how
best to handle it”. In contrast, the ‘Orchid’ employees attitude was “just tell me how this
problem will/may affect my work, I am not interested in the whole problem”.
• Many of ‘Orchid’ employees had worked in other cities of North India and few of them
had also travelled abroad for official work and thus were more confident, more
computer savvy, tough and didn’t mince words. Because of this, the ‘Prithviraj
employees felt threatened and preferred to describe ‘Orchid’ employees as “loners”,
“tough” and “hard working”.
• At ‘Prithviraj’, employees were required to make weekly financial and staffing updates
to their “bosses”. However, at Orchid this formality was considered to be a waste of
time and they didn’t adopt or accept this practice.
Dharam Singh had been with ‘Prithviraj’ since the last 12 years and knew that ‘Sudhir’ (the M.D.
at ‘Prithviraj’) had a lot of confidence in him when he had said “Dharam, I am very sure that we
can count on you to see that there is no dissent among the employees after merger. The new
company is looking upon you to solve the societal-level cultural difference which is prevailing
among the employees, so that we can have our own unique culture which would be a blend of
both ‘Prithviraj’ and ‘Orchid’s way of doing business”.
Source: Nair, Suja R (2010). Organisational Behaviour. Mumbai, India: Global Media, p. 439.
Identify the focal problem, develop research question and hypothesis, discuss and propose alternative quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigating the underlying causes of this problem.
Extend your discussion by focusing on techniques for moving beyond interpersonal conflicts to identifying and testing underlying management practices or approaches that cause problems for the organization’s functioning.
Integrate and discuss biblical implications found in Deuteronomy 25:13-15 regarding the importance of having accurate and honest weights and measures.