But the day threw one more surprising development today – abrupt sacking of Cyrus Mistry – the 48 year old Tata Group chairman who had succeeded the formidable and most admirable face of the Indian corporate world, Ratan Tata, in December 2012.
But like the SP family (and thus party) feud smacks of intriguing stories, mysteries, conspiracies, sabotage and even flat rebellion, there is nothing that you would tend to read in the Tata Group development.
Because branding and perceptions are entirely different here.
The SP feud is about politics, the craft, the entity, the social practice, whatever we want to call it, and politics has almost no credibility when it comes to branding, when it comes to conform to the established norms of humanity and human rights, the trust value, the most basic thing with branding. Life of a political party or a politician is full of controversies – a detriment to the branding perceptions (and thus exercises).
But the Indian corporate world is better placed here, with bag of mixed possibilities, depending on who commands what. And Ratan Tata is the one person whom almost everyone admires. He is epitome of integrity, humanity and business excellence. And the same can be said about the Tata Group even if the conduct of some of its companies do attract controversies (but basically business-oriented in nature).
So, even if it is going to be the most surprising and (shocking) high-level sacking in the Indian corporate world so far and Cyrus Mistry is going to challenge it legally, it is going to be seen as just yet another business-oriented controversy, because it has Ratan Tata’s endorsement who has replaced Cyrus as Tata Group’s interim chairman till the group finds the next one.
And that makes the reason, that Cyrus was micro-managing everything and was not allowing CEOs of different Tata companies to work independently that in turn was affecting the group’s work-culture and that in turn was affecting performance (except TCS and JLR, other Tata Group companies are not performing well), the most plausible (and hence the most acceptable) logic behind this sudden move, something that may not seem that sudden if you keenly watch the Indian industry.
So, no mysteries here.