Organisation Behaviour

FORCE AUTOMOTIVE - BREACH OF CODE OF CONDUCT

3rd February 2012, another long day at office had drawn to a close. Varun Vihan, V.P. HR, Force Automotive Pvt. Ltd (FAPL), could feel his head spinning and splitting when he looked at his watch around 9:30 in the evening.

As he stepped out of the auto conglomerate FAPL’s Head Quarter in Noida, the dramatic proceedings of the entire day re-ran in his mind.

He had no difficulty whatsoever in recalling what the Chairman- FAPL, Sankalp Deshmukh told him in no uncertain terms, “Come what may, the commissioning of the new Design Center must happen by the end April 2012, then whether you fire Amitabh or let the incident pass is solely your judgment. But, let me make it VERY CLEAR, this R&D project is very critical for FAPL, I’ll not tolerate any harm to it.”

Varun played an instrumental role in bringing Amitabh Ravinderan onboard as V.P. R&D. Amitabh was primarily added to spearhead the commissioning of the much needed Rs.280 crore Design Center at Nasik. Little did he know then that in a short span of seven months, he would have to consider sacking him for gross violation of Company’s Code of Conduct for employees.

INDUSTRY BACKGROUND

The Indian automotive industry, one of the key drivers of Indian economy, accounted for around 4% of India’s GDP and over 200,000 jobs in the year 2010 (KPMG, 2010). “The Indian auto component industry is one of the few sectors in the economy that has a distinct global competitive advantage in terms of cost and quality. It is also one of the fastest growing industries in India. The Indian auto component industry grew remarkably at 18.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) during FY09-FY12 and reached Rs.2,109.75 bn in FY12. This remarkable growth could be attributed to strong domestic demand, Government initiatives, additional subsidies, formation of various clusters, providing incentives, increase in the per capita income, as well as disposable income”...