Introduction

Avanza Solutions is a USA based company, with its representation in

Spain, USA, Middle East and Pakistan. It was founded by Mr. Junaid Rabbani,
Ex MD and Global Head of Derivatives at Citicorp. The company has evolved
from a small IT solutions firm to one which now provides solutions to the Banking
Industry in Pakistan. It was recently selected by Kabul Bank, one of the largest in
Afghanistan, to provide them with ATM Solutions.

Vision of Avanza Solution

To be recognized and respected as "the best in class

S o f t w a r e a n d S e r v i c e s Corporation" – an organization built on core
values of integrity, professionalism and excellence

The Leadership through the Past 10 Years

• Former CEO: Junaid Hamid Khan

• Former CEO: Naseem Siddiqui
• Current CEO & Former CFO: Mahmood Kapurwala

Why Avanza?

• A yet unexplored company and a relatively less known industry

• The leadership styles of companies within the IT industry differ from
other industries, that encompasses unique leadership styles and
relatively high dependence on teams
• We wanted to investigate as to how the CEOs instilled the aspect of teamwork
and how their leadership style has affected as the teams’ operation in this
organization

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a

g r o u p o f p e o p l e t o achieve common goals.

TRAITS

Research has proved that a leader requires certain traits which equip him/her to
influence others more easily. To describe leadership as a trait is quite different
from describing it as a process. The trait viewpoint conceptualizes leadership as a
property or set of properties possessed in varying degrees by different people. We
analyzed Mr. Junaid Khan’s and Mr. Kapurwala’s stand on their traits.

Mr. Junaid Khan’s Traits

Intelligence:

Coming from an IT background and possessing a degree from one of the top most
IT institutions, Mr. Junaid was equipped with the best technical expertise. He had
excellent communication skills. It was his self-assurance that enabled him to assure
himself that his attempts to influence his employees are appropriate and right. The
sole reason for choosing him as the CEO was the combination of his excellent
managerial and leadership skills. He is labeled as ‘sharp’ for his superb
intelligence.

Self-confidence:

He always showed great confidence not only in his own work but also that of his
employees’. Determination: His determination made his get the job done through
his employees effectively. He provided them with the right level of motivation and
then gave them empowerment to get the work done as suited by the individual. He
was proactive and had the capacity to face the obstacles heroically. He was always
available to give directions to whoever desired them. He believed in focusing on
getting the work done rather than petty issues demanding his employees to come to
office early morning. Integrity: His employees trusted him as they had his support
and his presence never made them uncomfortable.

Sociability:

His employees looked up to him as a friend rather than a boss, a trait which helped
him getting the required work done much quicker and much efficiently. His
friendly nature put them at ease. He always made them feel that it is he who is at
the front-line. Whatever adversity comes, will come to him first and then to them.
This helped his subordinates to tackle with their fear of making mistakes.

Mr.Mehmood Kapurwala’s Traits

Intelligence:

Not having a formal IT education, according to Mr. Kapurwala, was not a

disability but a challenge for him, a challenge which he faced bravely and
successfully. But being able to drift swiftly from a finance field to the IT field
gives evidence of his intelligence. He has strong verbal, perceptual and reasoning
abilities.

Self-confidence:

During the interview, he showed noteworthy confidence. His speech and body
language demonstrated extroversion and self confidence. It was obvious that his
sense of self-esteem is high and he really believes that he can make a difference to
the organization. He has always faced the business challenges willingly, global
recession being the most recent challenge.

Sociability:

He gives considerable importance to seeking pleasant social relationships, a trait he

learned from Junaid Khan’s success. He believes in treating his employees as
friends. When he became the CEO, he put substantial amount of time and efforts in
building relationships and according to him, it has paid off well. He wants to
understand his employees’ problems and issues. For this, he holds regular lunches
with them to be informed about them by promoting informal discussions. He wants
to empower his employees so that the organization as well as the employees can
gain benefits.

Integrity:

But above all, he says, is that to be able to have others look up to you, one has to
prove that he is worthy of it. One has to become a role model for others. One has to
prove of his trustworthiness. Only then will the employees consider the leader
dependable.

SKILLS
According to the three-skill
skill model, a leader should hold three skills which are:
Technical, Human and Conceptual. The top level management required lesser
technical skills and more human and conceptual skills.
skills

Mr. Junaid Khan’s Skills

Before joining Avanza Solutions, Mr. Junaid had worked for NCR NCR-Dubai and TPS.
NCR has its own ATM machines and provide software solutions whereas TPC is a
direct competitor of Avanza. The purpose of including these details is that he had
prior technical experience and expertise. He joined Avanza as the Chief Technical
Officer and his performance on this job was outstanding. Despite of the top level
management requiring lesser technical skills, the business that Avanza is in
demands great technical
echnical skills even at the top level. Thus, Junaid outshone in all
the three skills.. This was another important reason for his effectiveness as a leader

Mr. Mehmood Kapurwala’s Skills

Mr. Kapurwala holds an MBA in finance from SZABIST. Prior to joining Avanza,
he has worked for “Stocksage” and “Newer Vision”, both of which are finance
related jobs. He joined Avanza in 2001 as the Head of Finance, was promoted as
the Chief Finance Officer of the middle-east and Pakistan and finally made the
CEO. The reason for choosing him as the CEO was that all the CTOs were
performing well on their jobs and the movement of any one CTO would have
created disturbance in the business. Choosing any person from within Avanza was
the priority as internal employees have knowledge and are already aware of the
business conditions. Since the CEO has to deal with the bidding and pricing of the
software and Mr. Kapurwala had that experience therefore, he was chosen for that
position. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, Kapurwala ranks IT skills
need for a CEO as 7. He admits he lacks any formal IT education, but on the other
hand, he says the motivation for moving from the finance side to the IT was desire
of learning and handling corporate affairs. He had always looked for challenges in
not only IT area but also marketing and operations. But the lack of IT skills has
impacted his ability to become as effective as Junaid, a fact which reinforces that
certain skills are required to achieve leadership. As for his conceptual skills, they
are excellent and are a vital force in letting him carrying out the leadership position

STYLE

The style approach emphasizes the behavior of the leader and focuses exclusively
on what leaders do and how they act. Leadership is composed of two general kinds
of behaviors: task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Task behaviors facilitate
goal accomplishment; they help group members to achieve their objectives.
Relationship behaviors help subordinates feel comfortable with themselves, with
each other and with the situation in which they find themselves. The central
purpose is to explain how leaders combine these two kinds of behaviors to
influence subordinates in their efforts to reach a goal.
The leadership grid demonstrates how leaders help organizations to reach their
purposes through the two factors stated before: concern for people and concern for
production.
Mr. Junaid Khan’s Style:

His style was such that he always put strong emphasis on both tasks and
interpersonal relationships. He believed in getting work done from his employees
by being friendly with them. He promoted a high degree of participation and
teamwork at Avanza. His employees enjoyed working for him and Avanza was a
successful organization during his tenure which proves that the work was done
efficiently. Despite having close relationships with his subordinates, few
employees were dissatisfied with the reward system of Avanza. They felt they
were poorly rewarded and since the reward system of any organization should be
decided strategically byte top level management, Junaid should have taken
measures to address to this problem. He believed in empowering his subordinates
and trusted them to complete the work at their own pace within the deadline. It was
only in times of crisis or the handling of a very big project that he ever intervened.
Therefore, his dominant style was medium concern for people and high concern for
production. It was only a few exceptional times that he had to use a backup style
which was the Authority-Compliance Management to obtain results.

Mr. Mehmood Kapurwala’s Style

After becoming the CEO of Avanza, layoffs have been done in order to cut costs
even though the performance targets for the first quarter of 2009 have been
achieved. Mr. Kapurwala has taken this step not because of the poor performance
of the firm at the moment, but because of the potential future problems he has
taken such a strict measure. Thus, his concern for results is high and concern for
people is low. There could have been other ways to cut costs and avoid future
problems, for example, reducing expenses, cutting salaries or reducing bonuses.
This style of leadership is “Authority-Compliance Management”. He failed to
communicate with his subordinates about this decision

SITUATIONALAPPROACH

The situational approach focuses on leadership in situation, as different situation

calls for different kind of leadership. For a successful leader to assess what is
needed in a specific situation, a leader needs to understand the employees’
motivation and degree of commitment and accordingly take appropriate leadership
style...

Considering the situational approach of leadership, comparing Junaid Hamid Khan

and Mahmood Kapurwala, we have found that Junaid Hamid Khan can e
categorized as supporting in leadership style. As he had very sound technical
background therefore he used to be very interactive and talked to people and
helped them getting out of trouble when they stuck into. He kept a balanced
between task accomplishment and social support of the employees. Listening,
interacting and giving feedback was very much observed in his attitude during his
tenure at Avanza. He was of the opinion that just assigning task to team or project
manager was not sufficient to for effective production until and unless you have
right motivation and productivity of the lower level of employees, hence he was
very encouraging to lower employee and helped them both morally and
technically. As we have asked one of the employees, he responded that though he
was CEO of the company yet he used to sit together with software engineers, listen
their problems and discuss them to get the optimal solution of the problem. This
has created a friendly environment in the organization which has boosted
innovation and employees never get feared to make mistakes; and thus helped to
develop a culture of finding better, feasible and cost effective services for the
clients. Regarding Mahmood Kapurwala, the current CEO of Avanza solution, he
can be categorized as delegating in leadership style. As having no technical
background and less one to one interaction, he normally delegates authority to
team leaders and let them do their tasks. He has less involvement in providing
technical support to them; however he strongly motivates and keeps confident in
the team efforts and thus support their initiatives. Though he has good relationship
with the upper management yet he is trying to build good relationships with lower
employees as well. After assigning tasks he gives full authority and let
subordinates take responsibility for getting the job done the way they see fit.

PATHGOAL THEORY

The concept of Path goal theory tells about how leaders motivate subordinate
to accomplish designed goals. The path goal theory explain show leaders can help
subordinate along the path by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to
subordinates’ needs and the situation in which subordinate are working.
The concept of path goal theory can’t be directly applied to the above leaders, as
the task accomplishment is delegated to project manager, support manager and
team leader; hence it is not the responsibility of Cento involve actively at every
step for task accomplishment. The CEO irresponsible for getting good clients,
creating good relationship and providing quality products to the corporate clients.
He is more concern to grow Avanza and compete into the dynamic market. While
getting maximum and effective outcome is assigned to project manager and they
are responsible to convey and communicate goals to their team members, support
them in day to day operation, provide them technical and necessary support so that
the accomplishment of project can be made certain. Here, project manager make
confirm that their team is well aware of the goals, defines specific deadline and
provides supports at every step so that task can be get accomplished in due time.
The involvement of Mahmood Kapurwala has not been much unless a critical
situation needs it. There has been restructuring of their organization and he meets
monthly to the head of department and discusses updates and status of each
project. The head of departments then communicates to the project manger about
the expectation and new direction given by the CEO. On the other side Junaid
Hamid Khan was very interactive; he used to be very participatory and get direct
feedback from them. As one of the employees remarked that Junaid Hamid Khan
was not comparable with Mahmood Kapurwala as both having different ways of
getting worked done from the employees. Mahmood Kapurwala has set an
organized structure of reporting, however at Junaid Hamid Khan there was no such
system of organized reporting, yet there was no question on his exceptional
performance. Junaid Hamid khan had achievement oriented leadership style as due
to technical expertise and participatory in nature, housed to challenge and guide
their employee to bring new and cost effective product into the market.

LEADERMEMBEREXCHANGE THEORY

Leader member exchange theory focuses on interaction between leader and

follower. The central concept is the dyadic relationship that a leader forms with
each of his her subordinates. The theory explains the differences in how goals are
accomplished using in group as compared to out groups are substantial.

The concept of Leader- Member Exchange theory can be applied as formerCEO;

Junaid Hamid Khan served for a considerable tenure and developed a good
relationship with their employees. This has turned employees to work for
organization more than their job description. Secondly development of software
products calls for flexibility and mastery on a number of skills, hence the concept
of in group emerges and it is necessary for employee’s tube in group so that they
can better meet the dynamic nature of the products. Considering the nature of
product development, Junaid Hamid Khan supported in group environment
where people can share their expertise, taking on new and different responsibilities
so that subordinate can work on different and new task efficiently. On the other
side those who keep them isolate and think that they are responsible tasks
matching their job description are part of our group. These people can’t sustain in
the very dynamic nature of job at Avanza. Subordinate who are in group are very
much rewarded and supported and their initiatives are considered for their
promotion. Mahmood Kupurwala has set organized structure of reporting and
meets every month to the head of the department and discusses them about the
progress and updates of different projects. The process helped boosting
accountability and interaction among employees.

The Charismatic Leader

An analysis of the leadership styles, traits and methods leads to the conclusion that
while Junaid Khan lies in the between a transformational and transactional leader,
Mehmood Kapurwala is transactional with some signs of Laissez-faire. This
distinction comes due to difference in the educational backgrounds and working
knowledge of the two leaders.

Avanza Solutions is a high technology dependent organization. For this reason, it

requires the CEO to have some measure of technical know-how. Where Junaid
Khan is a hardcore developer, Mehmood Kapurwala comes from a financial, non-
technical background. Theoretically, the company can run soundly even without
extensive technical knowledge. However, the highly supportive relationship that
became the culture of Junaid Khan’s tenure has caused some pressure for
Mehmood Kapoorwala. Even though he is thoroughly knowledgeable about the
company functions, projects, customers and operations, the lack of IT know-how
has forced him to act as a more transactional leader by delegating tasks to the
subordinates. The factors that make Junaid Khan a transformational leader are:

1. Idealized influence

Junaid Khan had the personality that influenced those who worked under him to
look up to him for direction and motivation. The initiatives that Junaid Khan
took to control employee turnover and reduce dissatisfaction amongst the
employees contributed to establishing his influence. These include:•Birthday
parties every 3-4 months Annual dinner and award night Company picnics2.

2. Inspirational motivation

His close association with his employees encouraged them to seek him out as a
leader. Motivational factors like easy working environment and empowerment
in taking work related decisions. Mehmood Kapurwala has further empowered
employees as he does not take project decisions. However, his attitude is also
more comfortable with the senior executives but not with the entire work force.

3. Intellectual stimulation Avanza Solutions operates on pre-developed business

solutions. However, the development team keeps on updating and upgrading the
product. The implementation team is responsible to customize the solutions to
fit organizational needs and the Q&A team works to keep the systems at the
top-level of quality. The new projects continuously keep the employees on their
feet to set and accomplish new targets.

4. Individualized considerations mentioned previously, Junaid Khan had the

unique relationship style whereby he took interest in individual performances
and achievements, rewarded personalized efforts and shared the success and
failures of all individual employees. He tried to maintain a dyadic relationship,
which was restrained by organizational structural constraints.
Junaid Khan’s charisma

Background: One of the factors that made Junaid Khan more comfortable to
work with was his technical knowledge and background. With a computer
science degree and having worked in the software industry as a developer, he
could easily relate to employee problems, dilemmas and needs.

Personality: Junaid Khan was a man of determination. He wanted results and

for that he took all possible courses of actions that made people put in their best
efforts into their jobs. His self-confidence and integrity drew the trust of his
subordinates.

Reducing employee dissatisfaction: To overcome employee dissatisfaction and

high turnover rates, which is common feature in the software business, Junaid
Khan introduced an Event Management Committee. The tasks of the committee
included planning and conducting extra-curricular activities for the employee.
Some of these activities were:

• Annual dinners where distinguished employees were awarded

• Discouraged late sittings

• Company picnics Junaid also established a culture that discouraged late

sittings, another norm of the software (and other services) industry.

Relationship with subordinates:

Junaid Khan tried to establish a dyadic relationship with his subordinates. At his
level, this relationship was strongest with the top executives of the company.
However, at the same time, he tried to keep good ties with lower level
management and task force.

Empowering employees: The most interesting factor in the organizational

culture set by Junaid Khan was the power awarded to the employees to
determine their own course of action when dealing with clients. Higher
management involvement was limited. Almost all the transactions were carried
out by the work teams themselves.

Challenges faced by Mehmood Kapurwala:

Background:

Mehmood Kapurwala comes from a financial background. Previously he served

Avanza in the capacity of a CFO. His valuable services, good repute and honest
interests in Avanza got him his position as the current CEO. For any
organization, high conceptual and average human skills are acceptable to lead
the organization successfully. However, in the wake of Junaid Khan’s legacy,
the absence of technical knowledge is causing a strain between the Mr.
Kapoorwala and his subordinates.

Relationship: Being from the executive body of Avanza prior to becoming the
CEO, it was easy for Mehmood Kapurwala to resume very good relations with
the executive team. However, this is not true for the rest of the crowd. Not
being very social, the other employees of the company hardly know him. This
would take them time to recognize him as a new leader.

Leadership:

Mehmood Kapurwala has continued to adapt Junaid Khan’s methods of looking

after employee interests. In the process, his limitation in technical knowledge
has given him a disadvantage as he has not taken up any new initiatives on his
own. However, it should be kept in mind that Mr. Kapurwala’s tenure has only
been of a short 2 year period as yet. Given time he may be able to improve on
the situation.

Dealing with a crisis situation: The true test of leadership comes at the time of a
crisis. One may speculate that Mehmood Kapoorwala did not clear it with
flying colors. Due to the recent recessionary period, Avanza Solutions also
came under tight monetary constraints. This is because their projects are high
costing solutions that other companies may not be willing to indulge in right
now. At such a time, when jobs are also short in the market, Kapoorwala
responded by laying off 40 employees. This move by a relatively new CEO has
led to further distance between the leader and his subordinates rather than vice
versa.
Organization Structure

There company is divided into two main departments,

1. E-Business

2. E-Banking

Teams in E-Business E-Business is a project based department i.e. it does not

offer any specific products to potential clients. If any organization or potential
client wants to get a system developed, it submits the functional specifications
or requirements to the e-Business department. Once the project is signed-on, the
project development teams, consisting of Software Engineers and developers,
first design the product and then develop its prototype. The prototype is then
extended to a final product through continuous client feedback.

Besides the Project Development team, e-Business has its own Quality
Assurance team, which tests each project and ensures if it meets client
specifications or not.
The Quality Assurance team carries out several rounds of tests both at the office
premises and at the client site, once the project has been deployed. The Quality
Assurance teams consist of Quality Assurance Engineers.

Sequential Interdependence in E-Business

Quality Assurance team is sequentially interdependent on Project Development

team. The project has to be developed by the software engineers first, before it
can be passed on to the Quality Assurance Team for testing.

Teams in E-Banking

E-Banking is a product based department, i.e. it offers banking solutions. Two

of its most prominent products are Nimbus and Rendezvous, which automate
transactions like ATM transactions, credit card/debit card transactions, mobile
phone transactions and transactions over IVR (Interactive Voice Response). E-
Banking is structured into three teams namely, development team,
implementation team and quality assurance team.

Since Nimbus and Rendezvous provide solution to a multitude of banking

activities, these products need only to be customized to the needs of each
individual bank(client). The responsibility of the Development team is to
enhance and upgrade these products, and add features to them as the changing
banking environment deems it necessary. The Implementation team customizes
these products to match the requirements of the client. It ensures that the
functions and features requested by the client are in place in the version being
deployed, and that those which have-not been requested are removed. It also
has the responsibility to deploy the system at client site. The Quality Assurance
team in e-Banking helps to make the system error free, similar to the Quality
Assurance team in e-Business.

NATURE OFE-BUSINESS& E-BANKINGTEAMS

Teams at Avanza fall in the ‘permanent and formal ‘category. Teams in the e-
Business and e-Banking departments have defined hierarchy, which makes the
relationship formal. Also the teams have been permanently created, and projects
are assigned to teams as they come up, rather than teams being formed for every
project that is signed on.

Temporary teams are formed for special projects that come up, which require
the expertise of people from different existing teams. For such unusual and
special projects, people from different teams are picked up and assigned to the
project. Such temporary teams exist as long as the project is in progress and
adjourn once the project is complete. However, these teams too have a formal
reporting structure and fall in the ‘temporary and formal ‘category.
Organizational and Team Environment Reward Systems:

The reward system at Avanza Solutions is not well established. The members
are rewarded based on their individual performance and not the basis of their
team performance. Since in the IT industry, nearly all projects are team based,
the teamwork aspect is not taken into account. Instead personal performance of
an employee is the indicator of the rewards that they will be entitled to.

Communications System and Physical Space:

The communications system at Avanza is well established. The cubicles with

the working space are randomly assigned to encourage interaction among team
members and office colleagues. This encourages interaction among the team
members and its helps in building a health relationship. Most of the formal
communication is done over email and telephone.

Organizational Environment:

Avanza Solutions enjoys a good reputation in the market. Mr. Mehmood

Kapurwalatold us that Avanza has a number of corporate clients and strategic
clients. It has enjoyed good reputation with its clients, which has helped it to
spread it wings globally. It enjoys good relations with its clients and rarely
faces any trouble in managing its clients and external resources.

Organizational Structure:

The Organizational structure at Avanza Solutions is a purely flat team based

structure. Every team has a team lead. However the team members enjoy open
communication with the team lead. The CEO is also easily accessible. The
individual teams are given enough autonomy to select and manage the projects
on their own. The CEO only gets involved, when a project does not meet the
company strategy or when the strategic partner’s interests are at stake.

Organizational Leadership:

The leadership at Avanza needs to be more encouraging and motivating. The

team members at Avanza Solutions are not motivated enough, mainly due to the
rewards systems. Also since the teams are given too much autonomy, they are
responsible for any mistakes and actions on their part. Therefore they
sometimes get discouraged. Therefore the management needs to make an effort
to make the environment more encouraging, motivating and rewarding.

This involves the concept of task interdependence i.e. the degree to which a task
requires employees to share common inputs or outcomes or to interact in the
process of executing their work. They follow the model of
SequentialInterdependence.The team members depend on each other and the
work output is regularly shared among the employees. In an IT industry, the
team members work on their separate modules and come together for the final
integration. However thesis a continuous process and the modules have to be
aligned properly. Therefore team member’s task characteristics, within the
Development, implementation and quality assurance teams, fall into the
category of Sequential Interdependence, which involves continuous updates
from every team member within the loop. However Pooled Interdependence
exists for e-Banking and e-Business Department son Marketing and Human
Resource Departments

Team Size:

The team size is small. It comprises of 3-4 individuals working under a team
lead. The team members have diverse capabilities to make up for the dynamic
nature forth industry and the project.

Team Composition:
Teams at Avanza Solutions are mostly homogeneous i.e. the team members
share common technical expertise, qualification and skills. There is a lot of
gender diversity; however the male population is larger.

Organizational and Team Environment

Team Norms:

The teams at Avanza follow certain norms. One of them is punctuality. Team
members adhere to being punctual and on time during their office reporting
hours. Secondly, the team members resort to information sharing. It is not as if
they withhold information. They work for the company and whatever
information is necessary for the successful completion of the tasks and projects
is shared with the team members. Thirdly, the team members take initiatives to
come up with unique problem solving solutions which is important in today’s
dynamic industry. They also adhere in meeting the tight deadlines that might
exist.

Team Roles:

The team roles are well defined at Avanza Solutions. The team works
independently under a team lead. He reports to the project manager. The team
lead has a number of developers and software engineers working under him.

Team Cohesiveness:

The teams at Avanza are pretty much cohesive as members come from almost
the same background. The team sizes are small, ranging from 3-5 individuals,
which encourage open communication among the team members. Also
member interaction in encourage to build team cohesiveness. The team often
faces critical situations, such as an approaching deadline and work together in
order to overcome it. Due to high team cohesiveness, a high task performance is
seen.
Based on all this we conclude that the Team Design and Team processes help
achieve the organizational goals of Avanza Solutions. However despite having a
good team based structure, we do see some dissatisfaction among the team
members. This is due to the fact that lack of guidance and leadership in certain
critical situations leads to dissatisfaction among the team members. Members also
sometimes feel that they are poorly rewarded. The turnovers rate it very high and
new members come in to create entirely new teams. This takes up valuable time
and the new employees take some time to adjust to the environmental fit. The high
employee turnover is an indicator of member dissatisfaction.

VIRTUALTEAMS:

The virtual teams at Avanza are organized as such that they have several
communication channels on which they communicate with the team members. The
primary mode of communication is through email, while they also communicate
through phone. The team tasks are divided as such so that every team member is
aware of his or her responsibilities. The tasks are not ambiguous. The teams are
composed of individuals with diverse background and experiences so that they
complement each other.

CSR TODAY Although Avanza has progressed quite rapidly in the Software
Industry and has developed a strong standing in banking solutions, the company
lags in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). One major reason for
negligence of corporate social responsibility is lack of CSR initiatives by other
companies in the Software Industry. There is no trend of CSR activities in the
Software Industry and the companies are primarily focused on profit taking and on
capturing a larger share of the market.

Another factor for low consideration of CSR is the size of Software companies in
Pakistan. Most of the software firms in Pakistan are medium-sized. Since no
supports given by the government for the development of small and medium sized
enterprises, these firms have to strive hard to grow to international markets, and as
such no attention is given to the well-being of the society in the initial growth years
of the company.
CSR TOMORROW

Now that Avanza has successfully developed a global presence with strong
domestic and international clients, the company’s new CEO plans to initiate CSR
projects as well. One of the CSR projects in line is the COMPUTER
EDUCATION &TRAINING OF THE UNDERPRIVILIGED. Under this program,
the company plans to provide computer education and training to young people
who cannot afford to get a computer degree from a reputable organization. The
plan is to provide education and training at the company’s expense, and to target
individuals who’re willing to pursue a career in the software industry.

This program will help the company get access to cheap resource, meeting the skill
and expertise needs of the company. The trained individuals can then be offered
jobs in the company, giving a decent livelihood to the individual and offering the
company skilled human resource.

Recommendations

After studying the leadership styles and team formations at Avanza solutions, we
came up with the following recommendations for the company:

•Mehmood Kapoorwala should adopt a more transformational style to win the trust
of his employees

•Leadership at the team level i.e. Team leads should be more directive and
structure tasks

•More initiatives to build employee association with the company should be taken

•Teams should be seated together to improve intra-team communication

•CSR initiatives should be taken up to enhance company image

References Mr. Mehmood Kapoorwala, CEO Avanza SolutionsLeadership,
Teamwork and Corporate Social Responsibility Course Book, Compiledby IBA