Please read the requirements file
Purpose The goal of the challenge papers is to demonstrate your ability to apply the material in a compelling way to the case and to a broader business context (see grading rubric). Do This First Before beginning the challenge paper, please be sure to complete these tasks: 1. Read the HBR article titled "The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj," considering the individual differences discuss within the module as you read. Instructions The extraordinary heroism of the employees of the Taj is largely attributed to how they select and motivate their employees. 1. First, while the Taj is relying on the Indian context to make decisions about hiring (with the goals of customer service in mind), how do the traits and characteristics they hire for map on to the traits discussed within the lecture modules (such as locus of control, Machiavellianism, moral attentiveness, and moral identity)? 2. Second, many of the training and motivation approaches at the Taj appear to sustain ethical (even heroic) behavior. · How do these practices potentially reduce biases in the cognitive model of ethical decision making (for example: escalation of commitment, limits of information processing, egocentrism, and illusion of control)? · Could any of these practices be bolstered even further by incorporating the research findings described by Dr. Desai? 3. Next, compared to the Taj, how do you think most Fortune 500 companies within the U.S. take values and ethics in to account in their hiring (hiring for knowledge, skills, and abilities first, or looking for minimal qualifications while prioritizing values)? 4. Finally, the Taj hired/trained for a service culture that might not work for other industries (e.g., the financial sector, high tech). · What specific actions might publicly-traded companies in the U.S. consider to make values a part of their recruitment and selection processes? · Please feel free to search for examples and include them in your writing. Submission Details All challenge papers should be approximately 4-5 double-spaced pages in length. Please cite all references consistently (format of your choosing, as long as it is consistent). The Ordinary Heroes Of the Taj How an Indian hotel chain’s organizational culture nurtured employees who were willing to risk their lives to save their guests by Rohit Deshpandé and Anjali Raina The Globe On nOvember 26, 2008, Harish Manwani, chairman, and Nitin Paranjpe, CEO, of Hin- dustan Unilever hosted a dinner at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai (Taj Mum- bai, for short). Unilever’s directors, senior executives, and their spouses were bidding farewell to Patrick Cescau, the CEO, and welcoming Paul Polman, the CEO-elect. About 35 Taj Mumbai employees, led by a 24-year-old banquet manager, Mallika Jagad, were assigned to manage the event in a second-floor banquet room. Around 9:30, as they served the main course, they heard what they thought were fireworks at a nearby wedding. In reality, these were the first gunshots from terrorists who were storming the Taj. The staff quickly realized something was wrong. Jagad had the doors locked and the lights turned off. She asked ev- eryone to lie down quietly under tables and refrain from using cell phones. She insisted that husbands and wives separate to reduce the risk to families. The group stayed there all night, listening to the ter- rorists rampaging through the hotel, hurl- ing grenades, firing automatic weapons, and tearing the place apart. The Taj staff kept calm, according to the guests, and constantly went around offering water and Photo Caption goes here Ph ot o g ra Ph y: g et ty Im ag es AbOve employees and guests of the taj mumbai hotel are rescued as fire engulfs the top floor on November 26, 2008. hbr.org December 2011 harvard business review 119 1430 Dec11 GLO Deshpande.indd 119 10/26/11 11:02 AM asking people if they needed anything else. Early the next morning, a fire started in the hallway outside, forcing the group to try to climb out the windows. A fire crew spot- ted them and, with its ladders, helped the trapped people escape quickly. The staff evacuated the guests first, and no casual- ties resulted. “It was my responsibility…. I may have been the youngest person in the room, but I was still doing my job,” Jagad later told one of us. elsewHere in THe HOTel, the upscale Japa- nese restaurant Wasabi by Morimoto was busy at 9:30 pm. A warning call from a ho- tel operator alerted the staff that terrorists had entered the building and were heading toward the restaurant. Forty-eight-year- old Thomas Varghese, the senior waiter at Wasabi, immediately instructed his 50- odd guests to crouch under tables, and he directed employees to form a human cordon around them. Four hours later, se- curity men asked Varghese if he could get the guests out of the hotel. He decided to use a spiral staircase near the restaurant to evacuate the customers first and then the hotel staff. The 30-year Taj veteran insisted that he would be the last man to leave, but he never did get out. The terrorists gunned him down as he reached the bottom of the staircase. wHen KArAmbir singH KAng, the Taj Mum- bai’s general manager, heard about the at- tacks, he immediately left the conference he was attending at another Taj property. He took charge at the Taj Mumbai the mo- ment he arrived, supervising the evacua- tion of guests and coordinating the efforts of firefighters amid the chaos. His wife and two young children were in a sixth-floor suite, where the general manager tradi- tionally lives. Kang thought they would be safe, but when he realized that the ter- rorists were on the upper floors, he tried to get to his family. It was impossible. By midnight the sixth floor was in flames, and there was no hope of anyone’s surviving. Kang led the rescue efforts until noon the next day. Only then did he call his parents to tell them that the terrorists had killed his wife and children. His father, a retired general, told him, “Son, do your duty. Do not desert your post.” Kang replied, “If it [the hotel] goes down, I will be the last man out.” Three years ago, when armed ter-rorists attacked a dozen locations in Mumbai—including two luxury hotels, a hospital, the railway station, a res- taurant, and a Jewish center—they killed as many as 159 people, both Indians and for- eigners, and gravely wounded more than 200. The assault, known as 26/11, scarred the nation’s psyche by exposing the coun- try’s vulnerability to terrorism, although India is no stranger to it. The Taj Mumbai’s burning domes and spires, which stayed ablaze for two days and three nights, will forever symbolize the tragic events of 26/11. During the onslaught on the Taj Mum- bai, 31 people died and 28 were hurt, but the hotel received only praise the day af- ter. Its guests were overwhelmed by em- ployees’ dedication to duty, their desire to protect guests without regard to personal safety, and their quick thinking. Restau- rant and banquet staff rushed people to safe locations such as kitchens and base- ments. Telephone operators stayed at their posts, alerting guests to lock doors and not step out. Kitchen staff formed human shields to protect guests during evacua- tion attempts. As many as 11 Taj Mumbai employees—a third of the hotel’s casual- ties—laid down their lives while helping between 1,200 and 1,500 guests escape. At some level, that isn’t surprising. One of the world’s top hotels, the Taj Mumbai is ranked number 20 by Condé Nast Trav- eler in the overseas business hotel category. The hotel is known for the highest levels of quality, its ability to go many extra miles to delight customers, and its staff of highly trained employees, some of whom have worked there for decades. It is a well-oiled machine, where every employee knows his or her job, has encyclopedic knowledge about regular guests, and is comfortable taking orders. Even so, the Taj Mumbai’s employees gave customer service a whole new mean- ing during the terrorist strike. What created that extreme customer-centric culture of employee after employee staying back to rescue guests when they could have saved themselves? What can other organizations do to emulate that level of service, both in times of crisis and in periods of normalcy? Can companies scale up and perpetuate ex- treme customer centricity? Our studies show that the Taj employ- ees’ actions weren’t prescribed in manuals; no official policies or procedures existed for an event such as 26/11. Some contextual factors could have had a bearing, such as India’s ancient culture of hospitality; the values of the House of Tata, which owns the taj approach to hr Seek fresh recruits rather than lateral hires. Hire from small towns and semiurban areas, not metros. reCruit from high schools and second-tier business schools rather than colleges and premier b-schools. induCt managers who seek a single-company career and will be hands-on. FoCuS more on hiring people with integrity and devotion to duty than on acquiring those with talent and skills. train workers for 18 months, not just 12. 120 harvard business review December 2011 THe glObe 1430 Dec11 GLO Deshpande.indd 120 10/26/11 11:02 AM the Taj Group; and the Taj Mumbai’s his- torical roots in the patriotic movement for a free India. The story, probably apocry- phal, goes that in the 1890s, when security men denied J.N. Tata entry into the Royal Navy Yacht Club, pointing to a board that apparently said “No Entry for Indians and Dogs,” he vowed to set up a hotel the likes of which the British had never seen. The Taj opened its doors in 1903. Still, something unique happened on 26/11. We believe that the unusual hiring, training, and incentive systems of the Taj Group—which operates 108 hotels in 12 countries—have combined to create an or- ganizational culture in which employees are willing to do almost anything for guests. This extraordinary customer centricity helped, in a moment of crisis, to turn its employees into a band of ordinary heroes. To be sure, no single factor can explain the employees’ valor. Designing an organiza- tion for extreme customer centricity re- quires several dimensions, the most critical of which we describe in this article. A values-Driven recruitment system The Taj Group’s three-pronged recruit- ing system helps to identify people it can train to be customer-centric. Unlike other companies that recruit mainly from In- dia’s metropolitan areas, the chain hires most of its frontline staff from smaller cit- and neediness (how badly does his family need the income from a job?). The chosen few are sent to the nearest of six residential Taj Group skill-certification centers, located in the metros. The trainees learn and earn for the next 18 months, stay- ing in no-rent company dormitories, eating free food, and receiving an annual stipend of about 5,000 rupees a month (roughly $100) in the first year, which rises to 7,000 rupees a month ($142) in the second year. Trainees remit most of their stipends to their families, because the Taj Group pays their living costs. As a result, most work hard and display good values despite the temptations of the big city, and they want to build careers with the Taj Group. The company offers traineeships to those who exhibit potential and haven’t made any egregious errors or dropped out. One level up, the Taj Group recruits supervisors and junior managers from ap- proximately half of the more than 100 hotel- management and catering institutes in In- dia. It cultivates relationships with about 30 through a campus-connect program under which the Taj Group trains faculty and fa- cilitates student visits. It maintains about 10 permanent relationships while other insti- tutes rotate in and out of the program. Al- though the Taj Group administers a battery of tests to gauge candidates’ domain knowl- edge and to develop psychometric pro- files, recruiters admit that they primarily ies and towns such as Pune (not Mumbai); Chandigarh and Dehradun (not Delhi); Trichirappalli and Coimbatore (not Chen- nai); Mysore and Manipal (not Bangalore); and Haldia (not Calcutta). According to se- nior executives, the rationale is neither the larger size of the labor pool outside the big cities nor the desire to reduce salary costs, although both may be additional benefits. The Taj Group prefers to go into the hin- terland because that’s where traditional Indian values—such