Tata LOG: Eight Modern Stories from a Timeless Institute by Harish Bhat

Tatalog: Eight Modern Stories from a Timeless Institution by Harish Bhat
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A book for the fan of the Tata Companies. The book is about the key successes of the Tata Companies in the recent past.

The topics are
1. Success of Indica - A car conceptualized and designed in India
2. CSR by Tata Chemicals in Okhamandal: A complete community has benefited from this initiative.
3. Openness of handling crisis at Tata Finance: The handling of the situation where the Tata group went out of the way to ensure that no investor lost out because of fraud done by the key management personnel at Tata Finance.
4. The success of Tanishq - The first corporate to succeed in Jewellery business
5. Setup of Second Careers - An opportunity for women who have opted out of the corporate world to manage children, to come back and restart their career.
6. The creation of EKA the super computer for India.
7. The take over of Tetley an international giant by a much smaller Indian company.
8. Tata Steel winning the Deming award for quality control.

The stress is on the ethics that are core to these success.

While it is true that the Tata Group of Companies are more ethical than many of the other corporate houses, the sheen is wearing off. The present avatar of the companies are aggressive an it is probably only a matter of time before more companies are exposed as Tata Finance was. These companies are no longer as compassionate as they used to be in the past, thanks partly to the share holder pressure for profits and growth and thanks partly to the influence cut-throat competition from the other corporate houses.

When the trend is to use any tactic to earn and show profits and growth it is difficult for any one corporate to maintain ethics and honest and continue to show a similar growth and profit as a more aggressive corporate. When growth and profit is in focus many other aspects like employee satisfaction, environmental concerns, and ethical practices get thrown to the wind.

One only hopes that the rot is stemmed and the Tata group of companies once again become as ethical and compassionate as they used to be in the past even if they do not show as much growth and profitability as the rest of the companies in the same field.

A decent read.

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