3.4.1 Survey A - Assessment of organisational policies and practices in the Indian Railways
Survey A sought to find an answer to the first research question: ‘What are and what should be Indian Railways’ core values, style of management, growth strategies, competitive strategies and changes in organisational structure / management system so as to transform Indian Railways into an excellent organization’?. One of the gaps which the literature review had shown is that there has not been any organisational study of Indian Railways. Thus there was no prior set of information available on which this research could build on or cross verify with.
Thus some known model which could help assess Indian Railways’ organisational values and practices in the context of organisational excellence needed to be identified.
Khandwalla (2002) has assessed the response of Indian public sector organisations and private sector organisations to liberalisation and arrived at a model of organisational policies and practices which he calls a community of adaptive “best” policies and practices that yield performance excellence in an competitive and liberalised environment which Indian organisations are facing today (Khandwalla 2002, p. 443). Khandwalla has developed a questionnaire which assesses the prevalence of these policies and practices in an organization. A detailed discussion about the reliability and validity of the questionnaire is available in Khandwalla (2002). Part of that questionnaire consists of open ended and pre-coded questions about core values, style of management, growth strategies, competitive strategies and changes in organisational structure / management system which an excellent organization follows. This part of the questionnaire labelled ‘assessment of organisational policies’ is shown in Appendix 2. Since the questionnaire developed by Khandwalla was used to assess excellence in Indian companies and the objective of survey A was to assess prevalence of different aspects of organisational excellence in Indian Railways, Khandwalla’s questionnaire was used for survey A of this research.
Question I of the questionnaire consists of open-ended questions. Question II to question VI are the pre-coded questions. An open-ended question provides the respondents
freedom to give their opinions. Also, this can provide such dimensions of information which a Likert scale based questions may not be able to elicit from the respondents. Since the answers to the first research question was expected to throw light on the organisational policies and practices of Indian Railways, which, in turn could explain much of what this study was to subsequently uncover in stage 2 and stage 3, the more the ways in which answers to the first question were tapped, the more reliable were to be the conclusions. Thus the use of a questionnaire which included open ended questions and pre-coded questions as in this questionnaire added to the reliability of the conclusion.
Sampling strategy: The questionnaire was given only to the chairman, board members, general managers and principal heads of departments of Indian Railways as they were the persons who could be said to have enough exposure to the strategic part of Indian Railways to do justice to the full questionnaire. It was noted that Khandwalla, in his study too, had administered the questionnaire to the chairmen and managers who reported to the chairman of an organization. (Khandwalla 2002, p. 436). Also, senior staff can provide more reliable information about their organization than junior staff (Ticehurst & Veal 2000, p.143).
In the bureaucratic set up of Indian Railways, the tenure of the chairmen and board members are normally not more than one to two years because one can reach that level just before retirement. Thus, for the sake of comprehensiveness, the questionnaires were sent to all the chairmen and board members who retired since 1991 and whose contact details were available. The Indian industry has opened up to the global economy and to the concept of TQM roughly since 1991, therefore soliciting the opinion of board members and chairmen since 1991 was considered desirable. The data collection and data analysis of this survey is dealt with in chapter 4.
3.4.2 Survey B - Assessment of cultural values of Indian Railway personnel
Survey A provided insight on work specific policies and practices about the Indian Railways. However, it did not assess the impact of Indian culture on the organisational values of the Indian Railway personnel. It is recalled from the literature review (section 2.2.6.1) that hierarchical relationship, tendency for personalised relationship and dependency on the superior have been identified as some of the culture based organisational values which, however, are reported to be changing in view of the liberalisation of Indian economy. It is also recalled that hierarchical relationship is not conducive for TQM implementation, but collective orientation is conducive for TQM. Thus, it was all the more important that one
looked for an instrument through which one could measure culture specific dimensions among the Indian Railway personnel.
A perusal of the work on NT leadership by Sinha (1995) indicated that he has developed a questionnaire which measures hierarchical tendencies among Indian managers.
The questionnaire is shown in Appendix 3. The hierarchical tendencies are measured through the three constructs of ‘status consciousness (S)’, ‘personalised relationship (P)’ and
‘dependence proneness (D)’. These three constructs are defined below (Sinha 1995, p.99):
(i) Status consciousness – It is a tendency to obey and respect seniors and superiors.
Anger and hostility against a superior are suppressed and displaced. The seniors are listened to more deferentially. The tendency is to direct one’s effort to appease the superior who in turn must help, protect and guide the subordinates.
(ii) Dependence proneness – Preference for hierarchy fosters dependence proneness.
It is a tendency to seek support, guidance and encouragement in situations where one is apparently competent to make decisions.
(iii) Preference for personalised relationship – It is a tendency where a subordinate expects to be taken care of in a personal way, to solve his/her problem, tell him/her what to do .
The questionnaire was administered to Indian Railway personnel to assess their culture specific value of hierarchy.
The reliability and validity of the instrument is dealt with at the end of Appendix 3.
Sampling strategy: Indian Railways has about 8000 persons in the managerial category. They are called officers. About 4000 of them are called class-1 officers or more formally group ‘A’ officers. They are directly recruited into the managerial cadre on the basis of an all India examination. (In Indian organisational context, a cadre means a group of professionals belonging to a particular category). The balance 4000 are class-2 officers or more formally group ‘B’ officers. They join the railways in the worker/ supervisor cadre as class-3 ( or group ‘C’ ) employees and then rise up to become class-2 officers. Almost 95%
of them retire at the first or second rung of the managerial cadre.
Since class-2 officers are generally less educated and are less exposed to position of responsibility in their work, it was postulated that they should show higher hierarchical tendencies than class-1 officers. On the same logic class-3 employees should show higher hierarchical tendency than class-2 or class-1 officers.
The literature review has shown the deeply embedded hierarchical tendencies among Indians. However, recent studies (Pearson & Chaterjee 2001) have also shown changes in
this value. It was thus postulated that younger employees should show lesser hierarchical tendencies than older employees.
Based on the above reasoning, three hypotheses were framed for testing -
(i) Class-1 officers show lower hierarchical tendencies in comparison to class-2 officers.
(ii) Class-2 officers show lower hierarchical tendencies in comparison to class-3 employees.
(iii) Younger employees show lesser hierarchical tendencies than older employees.
To test these hypotheses, samples of railway employees were collected in the following categories:
Class-1 Class-2 Class-3
Age less than 30 years Age less than 30 years Age less than 30 years Age between 30 years
to 50 years
Age between 30 years to 50 years
Age between 30 years to 50 years
Age more than 50 years Age more than 50 years Age more than 50 years
The rationale behind this grouping was this: The process of liberalisation in India started around 1991. Those who were less than 15 years old at that time were less than 30 years old in 2005. It was reasonable to postulate that this age group was exposed to a social system which was in transition because of the opening of the Indian economy. Further, the age group of ‘more than 50 years’ is roughly one generation above the youngest group. Thus these two group presented two contrasting categories for comparison.
The data collection and data analysis of this survey is dealt with in chapter 4.