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The paper aims to describe the innovative learning culture, practices and processes at ThoughtWorks India (TWI), a software application development company in India. These practices support continual learning and development at the level of employees, project teams and the entire organization.

The paper draws upon the unique case of TWI. It describes the need for continual learning at TWI. It then describes how the organization has promoted a culture of continual learning on an individual, team and organizational level. It explains how the learning practices and processes aligns to the project level and organizational goals.

Because of the complex and difficult nature of software development projects that TWI takes up regularly, it needs its employees to be at the cutting edge of technological skills and know-how. If this was to be attempted through formal training programs, it would turn out to be extremely expensive and inefficient way of learning for TWI. Instead, TWI relies on on-the-job-learning. It does so through a variety of innovative work practices that are described in the paper. It also achieves its learning goals through a culture that supports continual learning and development of employees.

The learning related practices, processes and mechanisms used at TWI can be emulated by companies in the software development industry. This will ensure that employees learn and develop their skill-sets all the time and remain at the cutting edge of technological developments. This will help organizations pitch for and successfully deliver difficult and complex software development projects that add very high value to their clients.

The social implications of the approach followed by TWI are positive. Employees are motivated to improve themselves every day. They understand the need for doing so. Also, they appreciate the fact that TWI supports continual learning and development. Knowledge sharing among employees is encouraged through the practices followed almost daily in projects.

The paper considers a unique set of learning and development practices, processes and mechanisms in TWI, a software development company in India.

This paper aims to focus on Tata Motors, an automobile company from an emerging market, and its successful acquisition of two global marquee car brands in Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR). It traces the evolution of JLR under the stewardship of Tata Motors over an eight-year long period and examines the strategic reasons for the success of the acquisition.

The paper approaches strategic issues in cross-border acquisitions using an illustration of a successful deal. It is based on statements of leaders and secondary data about the acquirer and acquired organizations. The paper explores the strategic challenges faced when emerging market firms carry out cross border acquisition deals. It recommends the short-term and long-term strategies that acquirers can follow to improve the chances of a successful acquisition.

Any acquisition is challenging. Cross-border acquisitions face greater challenges, especially if the acquirer is from an emerging market country while the target company is from a developed country. Success of the acquisition, especially over the long run, depends on both internal factors that are under the control of the acquirer’s management, as well as external environmental factors that it needs to address. Both patience and luck are required ingredients for success in such contexts.

While the general temptation in any acquisition is to extract synergies as quickly as possible, the Tata Motors’ acquisition of JLR is an exception. Tata Motors carefully handled short-term challenges and continued to invest in the core competencies of JLR and reaped benefits over the long run. It was also fortunate that a variety of factors in the external environment turned favorable for Tata Motors and JLR in the eight years since the deal took place.

It concedes that during an M&A deal, the leaders of a seller organization may be nervous about their future. JLR trade union leaders were initially not sure whether jobs in UK would remain secure. To ensure success of the deal, the leaders of the acquirer firm need to balance the interests of multiple stakeholders, both in the short-term, as well as over a longer-term perspective.

The paper considers the Tata Motors’ acquisition of JLR. It is an example of a large, difficult cross-border acquisition by an emerging market based company. While the acquisition proved difficult in the short term, it has yielded excellent dividends to the parent company over the long term. This paper explores the reasons why this cross-border acquisition succeeded and recommends strategies that other companies considering cross-border acquisitions can consider to improve their chances of success.

This paper aims to focus on the HR issues that seller organizations face during the pre-deal stage of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It recommends the HR strategies that strategies that seller-side organizations need to adopt to improve their chances of successful M&A.

The paper explores the HR-related issues faced by seller-side organizations. It highlights the key dilemmas and challenges involved at this stage of M&A deals. It recommends the HR strategies that seller companies can follow during the pre-deal stage of an M&A deal.

What the seller’s HR leaders do (and do not do) during the run up to an M&A deal can significantly affect the success of the post-deal integration and future success of the combined firm. During the pre-deal phase of an M&A journey, HR leaders face a range of dilemmas. They have to decide whether to maintain business as usual or change their HR strategy, decide when to hide information and when (and what) to communicate internally and also have to prepare the seller organization for an HR audit by the buyer firm.

HR leaders in seller organizations need to continue to increase the value of the organization by continually aligning the HR strategy to the organization’s overall corporate and business strategy. During the early stages of the deal, they have to camouflage certain confidential details. When the deal is at an advanced stage, HR leaders have to communicate extensively with employees about the deal. They need to ensure that the organization is prepared for an HR audit by prospective buyers. However, they also have to ensure that the reasons for the seller organization’s success are not revealed fully and prematurely.

It concedes that during an M&A deal, the HR leaders of a seller organization need to balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. These include the firm’s owners, top managers, employees and key customers. Those who are unable to do this effectively and consistently may end up harming the interest of the seller organization during an M&A deal.

The paper considers the highly dynamic e-commerce industry in India. It is a sector that is seeing rapid growth. Many new players are entering the market and the battle is for size and scale. In such a scenario, companies such as Flipkart are using the M&A route to scale up inorganically. Recently, Flipkart acquired Myntra, a strong player in the online retailing of fashion garments. The paper provides insights in to the challenges faced by the seller organization’s HR managers during the pre-deal stage of M&A transactions and recommends strategies that they should follow.

Faced with dynamic and challenging environments, organizations today expect all their leaders, including their women leaders, to be highly intrapreneurial. However, intrapreneurship is traditionally perceived to be a masculine activity. In order to appear intrapreneurial, women leaders consciously behave like men and suppress their feminine characteristics. This results in “emotional labor” that causes undue stress, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. Organizations can help intrapreneurial women leaders succeed by a combination of gender-related sensitization, focused training, setting up sharing and communication platforms, encouraging self-support groups and providing formal and informal mentorship to their women employees.

We carried out qualitative research which involved 31 in depth semi-structured in-person interviews (including 11 repeat interviews) with 20 women leaders from seven large organizations from the Indian IT industry. The interviewees had 15 years of average work experience, were in the 35-50 years age group, and held senior management functional or project management responsibilities. The interviews were typically 60 minutes each. The researcher took detailed notes, and subsequently, manually carried out multiple levels and multiple rounds of coding (initially open-coding followed by focused coding) to identify and abstract the themes and categories.

Our study identified that women leaders who are expected to behave as intrapreneurs, face “emotional labor” which results in stress, emotional exhaustion and burnout. To help women leaders succeed, a well-defined set of organizational interventions including gender sensitization, training, sharing & communication platforms, self-support groups, and formal and informal mentoring are useful.

To increase the generalizability of our study beyond the Indian cultural context and beyond the IT industry, future researchers may carry out both qualitative and larger sample quantitative studies in other countries, and draw upon data from multiple industries. The issues arising out of emotional labor of women intrapreneurial leaders are likely to be present in a wide range of industries and cultural contexts. However, there may be nuanced contextual differences that need further exploration. Future research can build on our findings and explore moderators, contingencies, and boundary conditions that affect the suitability of organizational interventions that we have suggested.

Emotional well-being of women intrapreneurial leaders would help them take innovative organizational initiatives, and make the organization strategically agile. To help women leaders be intrapreneurial, organizations need many interventions and need to provide the required supporting infrastructure.

Ways to resolve gender-related issues in workplaces are suggested.

Our study is valuable as it simultaneously considers two strategic organizational objectives of intrapreneurship and gender diversity of leadership teams. The paper provides useful prescriptions for organizations to help women intrapreneurial leaders succeed. This will help organizations that are facing dynamic external environments become innovative and strategically agile.

This study aims to explore the role of the linguistic style used in the brand-posted social media content on consumer engagement in the Fintech domain.

A total of 3,286 tweets (registering nearly 1.35 million impressions) published by 10 leading Fintech unicorns in India were extracted using the Twitter API. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary was used to analyse the linguistic characteristics of the shared tweets. Negative Binomial Regression (NBR) was used for testing the hypotheses.

This study finds that using drive words and cognitive language increases consumer engagement with Fintech messages via the central route of information processing. Further, affective words and conversational language drive consumer engagement through the peripheral route of information processing.

The study extends the literature on brand engagement by unveiling the effect of linguistic features used to design social media messages.

The study provides guidance to social media marketers of Fintech brands regarding what content strategies best enhance consumer engagement. The linguistic style to improve online consumer engagement (OCE) is detailed.

The study’s findings contribute to the growing stream of Fintech literature by exploring the role of linguistic style on consumer engagement in social media communication. The study’s findings indicate the relevance of the dual processing mechanism of elaboration likelihood model (ELM) as an explanatory theory for evaluating consumer engagement with messages posted by Fintech brands.

This paper aims to explain how airlines in India and customers can both benefit by the unbundling of services.

The paper explores how a recent regulatory change allowing unbundled services will affect the airline industry in India. Using illustrations, it highlights the benefits to the airlines and to the customers. It recommends the strategies that airlines can follow.

Airlines in India can now offer unbundled services. However, regulatory authorities need to allow greater flexibility to airlines. Given more flexibility, airlines can design offerings that will improve their profitability while simultaneously benefiting customers.

The government needs to go beyond the current regulatory changes. Providing increased flexibility will benefit both airlines and customers. Airlines would need to understand customers more intimately, experiment in the market, lobby for flexibility and develop strategic agility to benefit from the changed regulations on unbundled services.

It concedes that airlines can now design unbundled services such that only those customers who value a service get charged for the service. Those customers who do not need a service can get away by paying a lower fare. The government has taken the first steps in the right direction. Once it provides greater flexibility, the airlines in India can benefit significantly.

The paper considers the unique context of the airline industry in India where recent regulatory changes are likely to make the industry more dynamic and improve profitability of airlines. It provides insights in to the challenges faced under the current system and recommends strategies for the government and companies to follow.

This article focuses on the lessons that can be learnt from the bankruptcy of Kingfisher airlines (KFA).

The paper explores the key reasons behind the failure of KFA. It follows the strategic decisions and actions that KFA took over its lifespan. It highlights the key mistakes that it made and how these ultimately contributed to its demise. It recommends the strategies that other companies can follow to avoid the same fate as KFA.

KFA made many strategic blunders. It frequently and needlessly changed its business model. It unnecessarily spent on providing offerings that customers did not value. It was strategically blinded by the flamboyance of its owner. In addition, it took too long to read the writing on the wall. Even when clear signals were available of the impending crisis it faced, KFA showed limited urgency to resolve the issues.

Companies need to focus on a sharp business model and not try to be everything for everyone. Companies that gain valuable insight of what its customers value and design their business model to satisfy these requirements have higher chance of survival.

It concedes that airlines need to balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. These include its owners, managers, employees, customers, regulators and suppliers. KFA was unable to do this consistently and hence could not survive in the dynamic airlines industry in India.

The paper considers the context of the highly dynamic airline industry in India. It is an industry where new competitors are entering, regulatory changes are frequent and industry profitability is low. In such a scenario, companies such as KFA who do not have a consistent and coherent strategy find it difficult to survive. It provides insights into the challenges faced and recommends strategies for the companies to follow so as to improve their chances of long-term survival.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by independent writers who add their own impartial comments and place the articles in context.

In patriarchal societies such as India, there is great reluctance to allow women to take up leadership roles. Although the benefits of gender diversity in board composition are understood by organizations, there is limited progress. The government, companies and women who are potential board members all need to coordinate and work together towards solving this issue in the long run.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Aims to describe the key role of human resource management (HRM) in providing a better workplace environment to women employees at NobelTek, India, thereby stemming attrition and increasing employee satisfaction.

Describes how a few simple changes made by HR managers to the workplace layout and design can make a tremendous difference to the life of women, especially expectant mothers. Draws on interviews with the company management team and the author’s observations.

Shows that, quite often, poorly designed workplaces mean that women cannot deliver to their full potential. HRM can play a key role in improving this.

Reveals how HRM’s interventions led to employees continuing to contribute to software-development projects and managing their own health and well-being simultaneously. This means that the talent and experience of women employees remain available to the company.

Research shows that many women withdraw from the formal economy, either temporarily or permanently, when they become mothers, or are about to become mothers. HRM can play a crucial role in ensuring that women stay in employment longer and continue to contribute to the economy during their pregnancy. This not only benefits the company but also the economy and society as a whole.

Considers the context of expectant mothers working in the software industry. Provides insights into how the challenges faced by expectant mothers can be reduced and overcome by well-designed and implemented HRM practices.

This paper aims to describe an innovative recruitment process at ThoughtWorks, a software-application development company in India.

It details the skills and qualities that ThoughtWorks looks for in its software developers and how recruitment is aligned to project and organizational goals.

It reveals that despite high growth pressures, ThoughtWorks recruits very selectively to ensure that the quality of its programmers and the culture of the organization are maintained.

It shows that the recruitment practices of ThoughtWorks can be emulated by other companies in the software-development industry. This will ensure that new recruits are compatible with the organization’s culture and suitable for the chosen project-delivery approach.

It concedes that the high rejection rates because of the difficult recruitment process put a strain on the recruitment team as well as on project managers and others involved in the interviewing process.

It considers an unusual recruitment process in a software-development company in India that follows agile project practices.