Role of Leadership and Corporate Governance: The Case of Tata Group and Infosys

Is your job secured? Do layoffs happen? How long do you plan to work in the same organization? How is your performance rated? These are the set of typical questions asked to bottom-level employees working in multinational corporations. Possibly, gone are the days when an employee used to engage with a firm for a long period of their career. Attrition rate is becoming higher in many firms due to endless reasons. But how far do such trends apply to top-level or C-suite employees? Are they equally impacted such as middle- and bottom-level employees in various circumstances or taken care well by founders and boards of the organization? In this case study, an attempt was made to see if we can get some answers to these questions by considering the recent issues that happened in Tata Group and Infosys during recent times. Expulsion of Cyrus Mistry from Tata Group in 2016 and Infosys 2017 saga rocked the Indian corporate image worldwide and raised issues concerning corporate governance practices. The journeys of an insider chairman of a conglomerate and a technocrat CEO were cut short by two business tycoons Ratan Tata and Narayana Murthy in a much unexpected manner which brought a bad reputation to them. It raises issues regarding leadership styles and roles in such business empires. Transparency, accountability and security are the three pillars of corporate governance, which seem to have failed in these two organizations. It also raises a serious question of credibility, integrity and business ethics of leaders in handling these two issues with the verbal criticism which continued for days in public forum.