SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. Mohammad Shariat Ullah

SUBMITTED BY:
Md. Saadman Sakib

CASE STUDY 5
Ques. 1. Write a summary of the case and highlight the key aspect of discussion and debate.

Ans: The case study “EAST VERSUS WEST: ARMADA INDIA’S INGENIOUS APPROACH
TO HRM” talks about V.K. Singh who was the GM of Maintenance at Armada Factory Isapore.
Armada India was an engineering and manufacturing company with a very good reputation in
India’s private sector. Its customer centric approach helped Armada India to pioneer in
commercial vehicle. The Indian Government opened up defense production to private sector and
Armada India secured the license. Now they were making defense vehicles and ammunitions for
the Indian government in their Isapore factory. Armada India planned to get all the defense
licenses and increase their factories in various location in India. They started to gradually
increase their international presence and thus were willing to make the company and its policies
to international standards.

Armada Factory Isapore (AFI) was a factory of Armada India which was marred with
inefficiency and filled with uneducated workforce. There was a dispute with locals which
made AFI recruit locals and was unable to bring skilled workforce from other parts of the
country. Karan Guha was the CGM of AFI and Singh was moved to AFI to work as GM of
Maintenance. They were both friends when they worked at Trichy Unit of Armada India. But
that soon changed when Singh came to AFI. Guha’s tone and behavior changed to harsh.
Scraping that aside Singh prioritized his work to eliminate inefficiency and increase AFI’s
production. Using his existing HR knowledge and Indian culture Singh started to devise a plan.
Singh didn’t get a good office so he started looking around the factory. He saw that the union
leaders made an unauthorized staff pantry beside the factory provided one. That place was very
lively, everyone chatting, playing cards, etc. Singh decided that he will sit in the pantry and
try to get closer to the staffs and find out the problems. So he talked with everyone and got
to know many problems regarding the factory. Gradually he started to offer them his car for
weddings, gave them time off, worked hand in hand with them fixing machineries which were
laying there idle. Soon everyone started to like Singh and they were listening to what he told
them to do.

Singh went to Japan once and saw they were using following Total Productive Maintenance,
which gave him the idea to implement it in AFI. A staunch believer in Buddhism, he drew
upon it, especially the three “Gacchams” that Buddhists looked to for guidance:

Buddham, sharanam, gacchami (I go to the Buddha for refuge).

Dhammam sharanam gacchami (I go to the Dhamma for refuge).

Sangham sharanam gacchami (I go to the Sangha for refuge).

Singh divided the staffs into ‘Sanghams’, group of 5 people. Since there was a lack of
knowledge, the skilled staffs were made group leaders. Their job was to educate the rest of their
team members. The team were supposed to make decisions on their own. Decisions came from

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the bottom up. Everyone was supposed to speak the truth if they made mistakes. This way they
gradually got skilled and the production of AFI increased quite a few folds.

The top management of the company brought in Marina Kumar to work as HR Manager
in AFI. Her arrival was in line with the company’s goal to internationalize and revamp its
HR practices and policies. Kumar completed her studies and worked in the US. As soon as
she arrived she went on to scrutinize Singh’s HR practices and mocked his Buddhism
approach. Singh got hurt by this. The management and the CGM were also not pleased with
Singh’s policies. Singh was in a dilemma whether he will resign or make a comeback.

Ques. 2. Can you consider Sing’s experiment innovative? Justify your view. Singh is not an HR
manager and yet he made successful HR interventions. What reasons could be given for his
success?

Ans: I would definitely consider Singh’s experiment as Innovative. Many HR managers go

through their textbook approaches without keeping in mind what is wrong with workforce and
what is lacking from the companies side. Singh went to Japan and learned their way of approach
towards solving problems. He implemented this in India with his tweak including Buddhism. As
we know majority of Indians follow Hinduism. So implementing a Buddhism approach and
getting good results is quite challenging and innovative.
Singh is not a HR manager by profession but he knows how to connect and interact with the
workforce and find out problems. He is very empathetic and therefore the employees like him
very much. AFI was located in Isapore and the workers there were local. Singh didn’t speak their
language and it was very hard for him.
He tried to connect with them by sitting in the pantry where they all hung out. The Power
Distance between singh and the workers were very low. He worked with them hand in hand
with the machineries rather than sitting in his AC room.
Singh gave them power to have an active role in the factory’s decision making. The
knowledge they were gaining by getting involved was empowering and exhilarating. He treated
the uneducated people as intelligent and wise human beings.

Singh believed in collectivism. He thought that the workers were the key to the factories
improvement. So he worked with them all, talked with them about their problems, educated
everyone and asked them to share their knowledge amongst the others who didn’t know.

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Ques. 3. Can you consider Singh’s experiment a success in the real sense of the term? Why or
why not? What would you do if placed in a similar situation ad faced with a local workforce?

Ans: Yes, Singh’s experiment with the Buddhism approach was a successful one. His main
priority in AFI as he got there was to improve its efficiency and increase production. The
rejection rate of items were to be reduced. We have seen from the report that efficiency
increased from 30% in 2008 to 75% in 2010. Singh brought idle and broken machineries to life
with the help of the workers. Those were lying there idle for more over 5 years.
The rejection rate was high, 1:1, which was overlooked by an independent quality department.
Gradually it came down to 1:3 in three months and 1:30 in two and a half years.
Purchase decision rates were also reduced to 24 hours for small one and 1 week for bigger ones.
If I were to be in a similar situation I would do the same things Singh did. I would communicate
with them and find out the problems one by one and work to fix those. I would have given them
some decision making powers so that it didn’t hamper the production. Educating the workers
who don’t know much would be taken care of.

Ques. 4. What should Singh do now? Should he bounce back and assert himself, as in the past,
or should he quit?

Ans: The management of Armada India is suffering and lacking rational decision making. They
are trying to transform the whole company into international standards and implementing state of
the art management tools. But they are forgetting that most of their plants are in areas where the
workforce is local and have lack of education. It will be very hard to run them through this high
end measures. Singh’s approach was a basic albeit effective one.
Now both the higher management and the CGM of AFI is against Singh and his old fashioned
practices. Even though there are drastic improvements in efficiency and production, they are
adamant in their decision to make it to international standards. They are suffering through what
we call Escalation of commitment and hindsight bias.
Singh tried his best to make peace with Kumar and bring her to like his policy but she has again
and again turned it down, rather aggressively. So it would be in his best interest to quit.

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Ques. 5. If you were in Kumar’s situation, what would you do?

Ans: If I were Kumar I would work with Singh and try to bring out new approaches by blending
international approaches and Buddhism approaches together. Even though Singh’s approach to
reduce inefficiency worked great, it should be also taken into consideration that Armada India
was going global and had orders coming in from abroad. Introducing my USA based skills here
in Isapore, India directly would result in workers rejecting them completely as most of them
were uneducated. Since Singh already made a platform to communicate deeply with workers, my
ideas and approaches should be collaborated with his and make his channels my pathway to
implement new management tools and policies.

Ques. 6. From a cross-cultural management perspective, what the key lessons from the case?

Ans: People from different ends of the world/country think and act differently. So in order to
work with them and make them understand your goal you have to understand them first, what
they want, how they work, what makes them happy.
When a company brings an employee from a different part of the world, they have to make sure
that the person is willing to work hand in hand with the local employees. They should accept the
ways things run rather than mocking them or doing something harsh. Different country have
different cultures and norms and no one from outside should come and try to change those. It
creates instability amongst the employees.
Motivation is a big part of achieving highest output from your employees. People get motivated
in different ways, so it is the job of the manager to find out how to motivate those people. In
these case Singh motivated the uneducated people by treating them as educated people and
whose decisions mattered the most to run the factory. He worked with the workers amongst the
fumes and heat which made the workers accept him as a role model and follow him.