THE GROUP THAT NEVER COMMITTED

By:Dr. SPK
The following incident illustrates what happens when management students form a study group to
carry out an assignment for an outside client.

On 25th July 1999, Ms Arati Joshi went to see the Director of Institute of Management after a gap of
eight years. As an alumnus of the institute she was rather happy to visit the campus and remembered
how she dreamed of making a career in the field of Advertising. Now as a manager in charge of Client
Servicing and PR in Flare Publicity Pvt Ltd, she needed professionally trained young boys and girls for
a market research assignment. The Director told her that live projects were always good for learning
and asked her to contact the faculty in Marketing, Dr Iyer and wished her the best.

Since first year students of Management course had returned from Summer Training, Dr Iyer
suggested to Ms Joshi that he could announce her requirement in his class on Marketing Research.
He assured her that students were already working in small groups of 3 to 6 members in the area of
MR so that they would learn the subject through all the stages of research: from conceptualization and
design to implementation and analysis. Moreover, they would also learn how to work in groups.

During his lecture, Dr Iyer told the students about the assignment and advised interested students to
contact Ms Joshi next day in her office.

Sachin Baxi who has opted for Marketing as an elective subject was rather excited by the idea mainly
because Dr Iyer, who also happened to be a faculty in charge of placements, told the class that it
would be a good addition to bio-data.

Sachin was a disturbed person when he returned to the institute from Summer Training He had
realized the difference between the easy life as a student in the institute and the demanding work
schedule in corporate office. He was totally shocked when his supervisor told him to ‘forget the theory
he has learned in the institute and learn the practical aspects of the job’. In fact, Sachin had lost a bit
of his confidence and wanted to recover it by doing live assignment that the faculty had
recommended.
Sitting in the canteen with his classmates, Sachin opened the topic,” Companies do not ask for
percentage of marks these days but they want people with experience. We should meet Ms Joshi”, he
told Gautam, who agreed that they should not miss this opportunity since placement week was a few
months ahead.

Next day Sachin and Gautam met Ms Joshi in her office and learned that the project was on market
research for food products of a well known brand in Pune. She said that it would require students who
knew Marathi and she would give more details when the entire group was present. She assured them
that they would be paid adequately. Sachin told her that he would inform other members from his
class and get back to her.

Since Sachin didn’t know much of Marathi, Gautam wondered how he would work on this assignment.
But he didn’t say so and thought that it was Sachin’s responsibility.

Sachin was quite excited by the idea of getting a real project with back- up help from professionals.
He quickly decided to rope in another group of four students who had tentatively decided to work on
customer perceptions of college mess.

Next day, Sachin, Gautam and those four students went to Ms Joshi's office for a briefing.
Ms Joshi was happy to see six students willing to work on the project and remembered the
discussion she had the previous day with her consultant, Dr Bang. Her Agency was working on
another project. It was on LPG lamp- cum burner of a new company “ Indo –Light”. She showed the
product catalogue and explained the technical aspects. Fortunately, Dr Bang had already prepared
and worked on the design of the questionnaire. She advised the group to meet Dr Bang at his
residence in the evening so that he would brief them on categories of respondents and give them
guidelines of administering the questionnaire. She also gave them the draft of the six-page
questionnaire, and assured them that they would be paid Rs 15000 for completing 500 questionnaires
within 10 days. Since the client wanted the MR report urgently she told the group that her staff would
do analysis as soon as the group collected the data from 500 respondents

Sachin thanked Ms Joshi and took Dr Bang’s address.When the group came out of the premises of
Flare Publicity, Sarang suggested to the group that they should first sit in the institute for at least 10
minutes to discuss the implications of the project. Sachin sensed that everything was not quite right
with the group but having taken the initiative he did not want the group to back out “ We have already
made a commitment and we can easily do it.
It is only filling in forms and we are being paid well for it, we won’t get such a structured assignment”,
he said. Saurabh and Vivek seemed to support what Sachin said. Sarang was not convinced and
wanted to quit as he visualized the time and effort needed to cover 10 respondents each day but he
kept his thoughts to himself. The group dispersed without further discussion

Two days later, Ms Joshi rang Mr. Marathe, the registrar of the institute and told him to inform Dr Iyer
that the group should contact her immediately. Sarang was on the campus and he was told to contact
Ms Joshi.
Sarang was rather surprised to hear that nobody had met Dr Bang till then and apologized for the
delay and promised to meet him. Ms Joshi told him that she would fix an appointment with Dr Bang
the same evening and inform him within an hour. Accordingly she kept message with Mr. Marathe that
Sarang and others should meet Dr Bang at 6 pm.
Sarang searched for other members but no one was available on the campus. He was upset and did
not know what to do next.

He strongly suspected that Sachin would dump the project on his head , as he was one of the two
members in the group who knew Marathi well. He chose to practice for the TT match rather than
contact Dr Bang.
Next day Sachin asked Shirish to contact Ms Joshi, as he was not confident that the group would
support him if he spoke on behalf of the group. He wanted Shirish to get involved but to his surprise
Shirish refused and said that he had decided to opt out of the assignment, since he was busy as a
member of the placement committee.

Sachin looked for Sarang but couldn’t trace him. Anyway he would have given another excuse for not
meeting Dr Bang. Sachin said to himself “ If they do not take responsibility why should I be blamed for
it?” Somehow he could not gather the courage to tell Ms Joshi that the group had disintegrated and
had failed to honour the commitment.

For the next two days, there was no communication with Ms Joshi. On Thursday she again kept a
message with the registrar that the students should collect the copies of the questionnaire and get
down to work on Friday. Wen Sachin got the message, he told the group members that it was high
time to meet Ms Joshi and apologize for their inability to work on the project..

On Friday morning, the whole group, except Sarang, met Ms Joshi in the office. Sachin explained,
“Madam we are very sorry but it is not possible for us to work on this project. It is mainly about
administering the questionnaire and no analytical work is involved in it” Ms Joshi quickly replied “If you
so desire you can involve yourself in that work too, we have no problem if you do it in time”

Gautam changed the topic and said ‘But Madam we have to finish it in 10 days and we have to attend
classes and have other assignments also”.

By now Ms Joshi had lost her patience and was convinced that there was no point in discussing
further with this ‘Good – for –Nothing Group’ She had already lost precious seven days by depending
on these students of her Alma Mater .She hurriedly ended the discussion. When the students left the
room she began to organize her thoughts on the whole episode that had angered her so much.
On Monday 9tht August,2000 the Director of the institute received the following letter from Ms Joshi

“Dear Sir

It was a pleasure as always to meet you after a long time and to visit the Institute’s campus. However
the reasons for writing are not pleasant. If you recall Sir, the reason for my visit was to scout for
interested students who would like to conduct Market Research Survey. As directed I did speak to Dr
Iyer and some students visited our office.
They were briefed about the survey and accordingly agreed to undertake the project. Our meeting
took place on 1st August and they were to start the exercise right away and complete it within a period
10 days.
Unfortunately, they failed to be in touch and as a result the entire crucial week was lost. What was
more painful is that the total lack of courtesy or should I say ‘Professionalism’ on their part for not
communicating their reasons for not being able to do the project. I had followed up with Mr. Marathe
and he has kindly given my messages to the students but to no avail.

My complaint is not so much about their lack of interest in doing the project but the careless attitude
due to which I lost on time. As a result, I was unable to keep my commitments of completing the
project in time.

It was after a great deal of thought that I wrote this letter. The two years that I studied at the institute
taught us a lot but the most important lesson was of responsibility and accountability.

With Regards
Arati Joshi “
The Director asked Dr Iyer to come to his office to discuss how to make the students understand the
seriousness of the message and learn from the experience.