India Inc jittery over CEO's death

MUMBAI, INDIA: The dreadful news of CEO’s murder last week virtually came as a bolt from the blue for the business community in India, which is trying hard to cope with the global financial tsunami.

Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian auto-part maker, was stabbed to death by a mob of expelled employees.

This cannot be seen as an isolated incident in the Indian context. Indian businesses and enterprises had never expected a conflict between management and its work force taking such a gory turn.

Definitely, the incident has forced the Indian CEO fraternity and the corporates to have a closer look into the two integral parts of business, the management and the work force.

In a bid to understand the two inseparable parts – management and workers for business and its existence, CyberMedia News tried to interact with some of the enterprising business heads of tech firms.

According to Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, which deals with integrated business intelligence reporting software and query analyzer tools, this sad incident is more related to the social and psychological makeup of a region and its people.

“The north region has always remained more violent and aggressive in nature. It reflected in the people’s approach, their understanding and mindset. Same as, the people in east or south region have typical psyche, different from the west,” he observes.

One may differ with Mehta but his reflections connects to some other violent incidents in past. For instance, in a failed kidnap attempt, US firm Expedience e-solutions India’s CEO, Kashir Dwivedi, 37, was dragged from car and attacked by four youth on September 26, 2008.

Adobe India CEO Naresh Gupta’s three-year-old son, Anant was abducted and released under mysterious circumstances on November 13, 2006.

It’s a coincidence that all these incidents happened in Noida, the industrial town in Uttar Pradesh, on the outskirts of Delhi.

Also, Dr. Phool Chand Ram, Food Corporation of India’s executive director was abducted by the banned organization, United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) from Guwahati in 2007.

Though all these happened due to different reasons, it all points to a pertinent question about the safety of top officials at the managerial level in large corporates.

Further, “In non-IT sector, the workforce at large are low in literacy, which can be a reason that restricts these workers in understanding other’s view during any conflict situation,” says Mehta.

“At times the workers fail to accept any good move of the management to benefit them or can doubt the company’s motive. And the CEO being a company’s integral part and its liability, he’s highly vulnerable and susceptible to workers’ aggression” he added.

Mehta reckoned education barriers between the two sides could easily develop into mistrust or suspicion affecting the relationship of employer and its staff. Interestingly, C Praveen Kumar, CEO and CIO, Titan International – a KPO company in Mumbai, called it a generation thing.

“Each generation behaves differently. Today’s generation-Y are more aggressive than the earlier generation-X. Every generation has its own attributes. In an organization, the management has to understand the employees’ thinking and accordingly has to work out its plans that suites the employees.”

Here, Kumar has stressed how the management can utilize workers’ skills, knowledge and experience in view with overall understanding of individuals or group that can be crafted to business goals.

 And so one can say, the employer’s onus is more than its staff or both needs back each other’s strengths.

Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging and founder of F5ive Technologies in Chennai was shocked by the news of CEO’s murder. “In corporate world, one can expect mass resignation or lockouts but it can’t go to such an extreme where life is lost. I read news reports and think both sides might have showed rigidity or one side demanded for more, which could have resulted into the murder,” he observed.

“Egos plays a major role that balloons up any confusion into big issues. Hence, the management should take into account the workers or the class of people while dealing them,” Shanker explained.

Aftermath of the CEO’s murder has diluted overall business atmosphere in India, there’s a jitteriness among the top executives about safety and has set panic in corporates.

“Those CEOs who are facing similar rows in their organizations, will surely beef-up personal security and would avoid direct contact with the workforce. It will bring in change in the worker policies to curb down issues,” Mehta opined. And the companies with good healthy relation with workers would take it as an isolated incident, he said.

According to Kumar, the personal security aspect in view with the murder can vary from one CEO to another.

“Normally, the CEO doesn’t deal with the workers as there are middle and junior level staffs in the management hierarchy. It depends on each CEO and his management policies that determine the handling of work issues. Hence, personal security is very individual matter.”

Personally, Kumar disapproved the idea of having security personnel. Sankar opined, CEOs of multinational companies (MNCs) would surely beef-up personal security and this could curb their freedom.

“A day after the CEO’s murder, a CEO friend of mine hired security guards for his school going daughter’s safety,” Shanker pointed out.

“Certainly, events like this or the Singur row will impact foreign investment and top foreign executive will avoid trip to India. It has triggered a wrong message across the world and could backfire at our emerging economy and affect the employment here,” Shankar concluded.

Will this gruesome incident darken the face of Indian enterprising community and business? Will it put the employer and its workers relationship under the scanner? Will it take away job opportunities and trust of hardworking Indians? Will it impact the overall growing economy of India? All these questions deserve a strong and meaningful debate.