University of Calcutta (IISWBM)

MHRM 4th SEMESTER EXAMINATION 2020

Instructions to the examinees: Provide following information in the cover page of

the answer sheet. There should be page numbers in the answer sheets.

Examination: MHRM 4th Semester 2020

Subject:

Paper Number:

University Roll number of the student:

University Registration number of the student:

Date and time of submission:

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Paper 405: HR Consulting

Time: 2 Hrs. Full Marks: 80

Answer any 4 (four) questions out of the following and submit the same within the
stipulated time.
1. You have been invited by a reputed organization to submit a consulting proposal on
a HR issue (this may pertain to an area of your choice, say Competency
Management or Organizational Development or Performance Management or any
other subject). Draw up the proposal covering all relevant aspects for submission to
the Management. (20)

2. You have been employed as the HR Resource in a Consulting Organization which is

facing various people related challenges relating to attracting, retaining and
enhancing consulting productivity etc. Your Management wants you to study best
practices in major Consulting Organizations and submit a report with your
recommendations. Please prepare the Report. (20)

3. As HR Consultant your services have been retained by a reputed Indian MNC to

facilitate the acquisition and merger of an enterprise in Africa. Please elaborate on
actions you will take pre acquisition and post merger including geographical /
location challenges relating to HR. (20)

Read the following cases and answer accordingly:

4. Case: ‘Things Are A-Changing’

Rajeev was truly amazed. He came to India after around 25 years. He left the
country at the age of 25, after getting a prestigious scholarship from the US for his
post-doc and eventually joined a university there teaching physics. He got married to
an American lady and settled there happily with two children. He was never overly
sentimental about his country and came to India only once after the death of his
mother. Though Rajeev was the only son, his mother preferred staying at their
ancestral house near Bhawanipur. She had a couple of loyal old servants and was

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well looked after. But Rajeev’s real problems started after her death. To clear the
financial tangles and accounts, fixed deposits, lockers and all these with the banks
was an uphill task. All these were real horror stories! He had to go to the banks so
many times and was always facing so many difficulties that he lost count! He had to
take three weeks’ leave to settle down all of these. That was 25 years back. This time
he came with his wife for holidaying. His wife had never been to India. At the time of
his mother’s death, she could not accompany him, as the kids were too young to
travel. They had checked in at a five star hotel (five star hotel in Kolkata?) near the
south of the city, not too far from his ancestral house. As he was now getting old and
with the children grown up and all settled for themselves, perhaps nostalgia was
slowly gripping him! The house at Bhawanipur was still there, robust and fi ne,
though certainly in need of some repairing. Rajeev decided to speak to the person
who looked after the house and start the repairing soon. It was perhaps not
altogether a bad idea to have a spot of his own in Kolkata! However, for all these he
would require to open a bank account and transfer some money into it. But the very
thought of going to a bank was scaring him to death. He had not yet overcome the
memories of banks in the past. However, with much prodding from his wife, he
finally made a trip to the branch where his mother had her account. And he was
truly amazed! The manager was cordial and helpful! He even met him at his hotel to
sign the papers and promised to activate the account before they return.
Questions:
a. Do you think the effectiveness of the organization in question (the nationalized
bank in India to be more specific) has increased over the years? Differentiate
between the terms efficiency and effectiveness. Explain the changed performance
of the bank now with the help of the competing value model of organizational
effectiveness as proposed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh(1983).
b. Identify the forces for change working on the said organization at the present
time in India. (10+10)

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5. Case: ‘Change Efforts in a Government Organization’

They were deliriously happy with their success, all four of them. They just
graduated from one of the premier management institutes in the country and
already had a fat job offer in their pocket from the campus even before appearing for
the last semester examination. They joined after their final result was published.
The interesting thing is that all of them are posted in the head office in the same
city where they had studied, with two of them being residents of the city itself. The
job is not only well paid but is prestigious as well, being in the large PSU. They are
employed in the HR department as scale one officers and were so excited at the huge
learning opportunity lying in front of them. The organization, a large PSU,
manufacturing parts of railway rakes and machineries, employs several thousands
of employees and there are so many things they have studied in their course to do
first hand now.
The office for the new recruits was actually fun. They have not yet been given their
proper place to sit. They were instead given a big room where four of them sit
together with just one desktop to share among them, and that too without the
Internet connection. But they did not really mind. It was almost an extension of
their college days and they work, discuss, talk, chat and discuss and chat again, and
of course, work—just like what they were used to do as students till the other day.
They were two boys Shuvendu and Mahindra and two girls Sumedha and Rini, all
between 23 and 25 years of age. Both the boys had previous work experiences and
they are slightly older than the girls. Shuvendu, the city boy, is a serious type who
naturally assumes the leadership role within their small group, as he had always
assumed earlier in the college. Mahindra is from Punjab, a strikingly handsome and
infinitely naughty boy. Both Rini and Sumedha are good students and would often
poke fun at the boys in a friendly way.
The problem was that they were not only happy, but also looked very happy too. And
that was a sore point for the other employees in the bank. Most of the employees in
the HO were middle aged with a sizable number of them being practically on the
verge of retirement. What is there to be so happy about? They could never
understand that. Why all four of them were posted together in the same branch, and
that too in the HO? And what they talk about all the time? What is there to talk

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about in the first place? The other employees could not understand a thing about
this ‘gang of four’. They were almost hated for their happiness, youthfulness,
excitement about life in general and also for their die-hard enthusiasm. However,
after around a month in their job, they were called by Mr Sanyal, the chief manager,
in his room. He looked at them straight into their eyes and said, ‘I want you to work
on a pretty serious project. This is about employee competency mapping which had
long been planned by the authority but couldn’t be implemented so far for lack of
trained people. Now you people are there. I hope you know the basics about the
competency mapping. Prepare a detailed plan, check with me and after my approval
start working straight from here. You got me? Are you OK with this?’
Of course they were. They were looking forward to putting their hands on anything,
and competency mapping is surely a challenging assignment. They said so. Mr
Sanyal looked at them a shade too long this time and then said slowly, ‘Never
discuss it with anybody else here, and don’t rush. You wouldn’t take a step without
informing me. It is serious.’ They were puzzled. They could not fully understand the
worry of the chief manager. Nevertheless, they started working on the project with
their usual enthusiasm. Shuvendu took the lead role and they all would sit together
for hours chalking out the general outline of the project and got busy in preparing
questionnaires.
Next two weeks or so went off working hard on the project. The questionnaire they
initially prepared went through detailed scrutiny and was eventually approved by
their boss after several revisions. Then they started interviewing the employees
armed with the questionnaire little expecting the reactions that were in store for
them. The very first interview with a middle level manager in the HO taken by the
girls was a real shocker. The gentleman was amazed to see the ‘audacity’ of these
new joinees and said he was ‘extra civil’ with them only because they were girls,
otherwise he would have thrown them out. Though they did hardly find him civil
they didn’t argue and politely told him that they are doing just as instructed. The
person was still terribly agitated and pointed out that being fresh from the college
they hardly had any idea of the real world. He is working in this company from
before they were born and now they are asking him what he is good at. The girls
hurriedly tried to explain that they were no doubt inexperienced and they really had

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no clue about such a complex responsibility as hold by this senior person. And that
was precisely the reason. They wanted to learn and that is why they have come to
him. This pacified him to some extent.
The boys had an even worse experience. They met a senior staff, actively involved
with union activities. He was in his late 50s, a bald headed thin springy kind of a
person who is thoroughly bitter with life and believes that he knows everything
under the sun. He seemed to take extra pleasure to be rude with them, these
‘professionally’ educated fools in front of him. He told them on their face that he
knew all their tricks and was well aware how they landed up in these coveted post
and started their career right from the HO. But whoever at high levels might have
supported them, he didn’t care. The experience was more or less the same across the
branch. The main refrain was how could these youngsters dare to ask them what
they do in their job and how good they are at that. What did they know? Having a
high sounding degree from a prestigious business school never gives them the
license to do whatever they wish to.
Questions:
a. Why do you think people reacted in this way?
b. What is happening here? (10 + 10 = 20)

6. Case: ‘Shift in Business in United Engineering’

The attraction was mutual and from the very first moment. When Shantanu Roy, a
middle aged practising foundry-man trouble shooting in and around Kolkata and
Howrah, was looking for someone to prepare a very precisely finished machine
component, he stumbled into a cubbyhole workshop in the interior of Howrah, fondly
referred to as the ‘Manchester’ of India for its population of indigenous craftsmen
who could create miracle in small workshops. The proprietor, a young man of around
30 years of age, quoted a price of Rs. 60 only for that piece of machinery, which was
far too low for Shantanu’s expectation. He was delighted, as that would leave a
pretty good margin for him before he would supply it to the end user at the rate of
Rs. 250. When the material was at last delivered after a longish wait, the proprietor
fumbled that it had actually cost him Rs.160 and not Rs. 60, as quoted by him
initially. Without a question, Shantanu put the amount on the table. The young

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proprietor however took only Rs. 60, leaving the hundred-rupee note. Shantanu was
genuinely pleased to see the honesty of the young fellow. He was seeing a near-
extinct species of human race - a gentleman! Anil, the young proprietor of United
Engineers, also found Shantanu quite a fascinating, if not slightly quirky,
individual. He was around 20 years older than Anil, had long practical experience in
this field, a tough nut to crack. He was a proper sahib in his English accent, terribly
sharp and rather intuitive, as far as the business was concerned, and at the same
time indulgent and affectionate in his own ways. In spite of his elite background,
Shantanu could easily relate to the working class people and always showed a
genuine respect to them.
That was the beginning! Within a year or so, Shantanu joined Anil, and lent him his
expertise in developing his modest workshop into a prospering business. Anil hailed
from an educated upper middle class Bengali family, and according to Shantanu,
‘without an iota of business sense’. Shantanu, however, visualized the tremendous
growth potential for Anil’s modest workshop, with a meagrely turnover of only Rs. 8
lakhs per annum. In spite of the bleak business scenario and consistently low profit
margin, which made even the salary payments to the employees often a daunting
task, there were a few good things that could certainly save the firm. The fact that
this modest workshop was a registered vendor of Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW),
Varanasi, a part of Indian Railways, was indeed the ‘silver cloud’ as the entire
volume of the products they could yield was taken by Indian Railways. In addition to
the Indian Railways, it was also enrolled with the Gun & Shell Factories in
Cossipore and later in Ishapore as registered vendors. Though the rates were not
exactly lucrative as the usual practice with the large PSUs, the orders were steady
and the payments assured, even if delayed.
When Shantanu joined Anil, he correctly identified the chief causes of the malady,
that is, the sluggish business with a low profit margin. The most troubling one was
evidently the cash crunch. Secondly, the huge quantity of rejection was posing dual
problems—wastage as well as storage cost. The third culprit was the lack of an
intelligent product line with fewer competitors, which was responsible to a large
extent for the low profit. As most people in the business were creating similar kinds

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of products, it was imperative to keep the price low, thus severely eating away the
margin of profit.
Shantanu worked very hard to allay these. In the first place, he approached the
bank for funding. However, this was never hassle free, with the bankers’ primary
emphasis on conforming to the rules without much concern to the small
manufacturing unit’s various predicaments and enormous backlogs in payments
from the Government concerns, which were the major clients with United Engineers.
While trying to tackle the second problem, that is, the huge rejection rate, he found
a solution to the third problem, that is, creating a new product line less fraught with
competitors. Shantanu had more than four decades of experience in the foundry line
and as an active member of the Institute of Indian Foundrymen he was aware of the
shift in general demand for non-ferrous foundry products. He steered the company to
the production of non-ferrous foundry products (copper- and aluminium-based
alloys), which, apart from responding to the market demands, could also successfully
address the issue of huge rejection. The rejected parts of the iron and steel products
had to be simply sold off at an abysmally low price as these could not be recycled and
would incur unnecessarily high storage cost. However, these non-ferrous rejected
materials could be either recycled or would fetch a considerable higher price when
sold as scrap.
Around this time, the DLW was changing the model of their diesel engines and
adopting the General Motors’ models of locomotive engines (GM Loco), with higher
HP and better hauling capacity, and was in the process of slowly replacing the
existing diesel engines in the Indian Railways with GM Loco. In the GM Loco, the
machine parts required were all non-ferrous, especially with copper and aluminium-
based alloys, the areas where Shantanu was an authority because of his extensive
exposure and specialization. The shift from ferrous to non-ferrous foundry was truly
a Midas touch for United Engineers, and it did not require any major change in
technology or know-how and the existing in-house skills and expertise could produce
the products with ease. Thus, after a long time in business, United Engineers
started to taste real success for the first time. The shift in the product line from
ferrous to non-ferrous (aluminium- and copper-based alloys) foundry solved two
gnawing problems at United Engineers - reducing the rejection cost and entering

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into an area with relatively lesser number of competitors with adequate expertise.
By this time, the reputation of United Engineers had gone up well in the market
with more contracts pouring in. Eventually, United Engineers started venturing into
the foreign market. They already had the import-export license and after entering
into collaboration with a local organization having export-oriented business, United
Engineers took the export seriously for two main reasons. Firstly, the scope for
increasing the profit in Indian soil was largely limited because of the fierce
competition and conservative pricing of the PSUs, the main customers for United
Engineers. The business pattern here was thus largely growth deterrent, as it
required blockage of huge investment with poorest ROI. Secondly, in the export-
oriented business model, the possibility of remaining competitive by offering the
lowest price and still enjoying a good ROI in terms of INR was feasible owning to the
drooping INR value. Thus, United Engineers is at present doing brisk businesses
with countries like Vietnam, Canada and Brazil, with ample possibility of further
business scopes in other countries. The saga of United Engineers highlights how a
changed outlook can turn around a modest small-scale workshop to a flourishing
business.
Questions
a) What do you believe is the real reason for success at United Engineers?
b) Would you agree to call Shantanu an OD practitioner rather than just an expert
engineer? Why?
c) Identify the different phases of OD programme taken up by Shantanu.
(4+6+10 = 20)

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