The Tata group is an Indian conglomerate multinational firm, founded by Jamshedji Tata. The chairman of the company is Cyrus Pallonji Mistry. Tata group deals with the manufacturing cars and consulting, software, metal, coffee, tea, chemicals and hotels. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is known as the largest software company in Asia. Moreover, it is the one of India’s largest steelmaker and positioned number 10 in the world. Attractions like Taj Hotels Resorts and Palace is known to be the greatest luxury hotel group in India till date. Tata Power is India’s biggest private electricity company. Additionally, Tata Global Beverages is the second largest producer of branded tea in the world. The revenue of Tata companies in 2014-15 was $108.78 billion. Profit in Fortune in 2002 placed Tata as “one of India’s most beloved companies” and “a mess”. However, Tata has to focus on providing higher standards in order to compete with the world’s top car manufacturing companies. Tata’s purpose The Tata group is determined to improving the standard of life of the communities they sell their products in. In order to achieve their purpose they strive for global and leadership competitiveness in their operating business sectors. Furthermore, we believes in giving back to the society by what they earn, which in return creates customer trust along with the trust of employees, shareholders and the community Values The values which Tata believes in are the reason for its growth and business of Tata companies. There are five important values from which Tata reinforce the way we run the business are:
1. Truthfulness: Tata value is to run their business fairly, with complete truth and nothing should be hidden from the stakeholders. All our action must be able to stand the public scrutiny test. 2. Understand: Tata believes in showing respect, care, love and humanity for all their employees and customers around the world. We believe in working for the welfare of the societies we work in. 3. Brilliance: We believe in trying our level best to achieve the best standards in our daily work and in the quality of the products and services we make. 4. Togetherness: We must work together with our employees in the Tata group, customers and partners internationally. In order to build a strong relationship constructed on tolerance, understanding and teamwork. 5. Responsibility: Our motive is to stay responsible, caring to the countries we work in, along with the societies and environments. So that we can ensure that we are giving back enough to the people. Vision for 2025 Our vision is that by 2025, 25% of the world’s population will experience the Tata motive to increase the standard of living of customers and the community members. As a result, Tata will be in the list of 25 most admired corporate and employer brands internationally. Mission Statement Our mission statement is to develop the life of the communities we work in internationally, with the help of long-term stakeholder value generation through Leadership with Trust. Tata sustainability
Tata has an annual event which is known as Tata Sustainability Month. This event consists of sustainable thinking at the core of Tata group. Tata Sustainability Month June 2-30, 2015 influences communities to make changes through the SMART (Sustainability Meaningful Actions for a Responsible Tata) action plan. Our vision is that by 2025, 25% of the world’s population will experience the Tata motive to increase the standard of living of customers and the community members. As a result, Tata will be in the list of 25 most admired corporate and employer brands internationally, with a market capital comparable to the 25 most admired companies of the world. In terms of business, sustainability is a method that generates long-term stakeholder value by equalizing the economic, environmental and social performance. In order to keep our focus on the growth and development of the company we have five major values: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Truthfulness Understand Brilliance Togetherness Responsibility
Due to sustainability all of these values are able to mix together, which boost up alertness of connectivity of the world and the implications of individual actions. Tata Sustainability Month is an event to help employees to connect, intake and act on sustainability as an individuals and as a group to view the change they can build in their society, businesses, and themselves.
A renowned theory suggests that it takes approximately 21 days to build in a habit. SMART21 is inspired by this theory, and is the main theme for the Tata Sustainability Month 2015. Tata Sustainability Month 2015 aims to: 1. Show how businesses and individuals can have a sustainable result through the SMART21 challenge. 2. Make it easy for people to understand ways Tata group views sustainability as. 3. Influence people to understand and make a change by promising to make a move that advertises sustainability in their lives. The SMART21 challenge will influence employees to take one SMART action everyday for the next 21 days, with a goal to form a sustainable habit, no matter what size it maybe. The reason for this is when one action is mixed with those of 580,000 Tata employees; it can make a lot of difference. The Tata Way All employees working for Tata companies are it the CEO or the new interns share in the same values of their leaders and still a guidepost for every new project within the nexus. Moreover, Tata companies have a group commitment to improving stronger connections between their values and first-in-class business strategies, by working together and finding common beneficial bridges between them. They do not believe in working individually, rather they focus in working as a group with unity. Since early 1990s Tata group has invested in structures and procedures that would slowly bring into line its pro-social and pro-environmental values with brilliance in the business efforts. In 2003 these hard work concluded with the introduction of “The Tata Index for Sustainable Human Development”, which is a strategy aiming at measuring leading and improving the community
work that helps all Tata companies in their corporate social responsibility efforts. The Tata Index for Sustainable Human Development was made by the Tata Council for Community Initiatives (TCCI), a council of Tata companies CEOs chaired by Mr. Kishor Chaukar, in partnership with Tata Quality Management Services (TQMS). Ever since June 2004 Tata Index is taken place every year to make sure that there is a continuous flow of improvement in the practice of corporate social responsibilities at company level. The main reason of the Tata Index is to mark new benchmarks and encourage innovation in sustainability in each and every company’s operations. Tata Council for Community Initiatives (TCCI) provided a mutual platform where each company can share their difficulties and achievements with the others. In this common platform they can learn ways to make themselves stronger in internal leadership structures that enhance business brilliance the “Tata way”. The first initiative of its kind was “The Human Development Index”, within Tata and globally. The framework was started by TCCI in partnership with the United Nations Development Program in Indian in 2001. It has then been upgraded with various different training input from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Price Waterhouse Cooper, Ashoka Group and ICICI Bank. Globally, the index has made an impact and challenged the business industry. It was presented to the United Nation Secretary General Kofi Annan and 700 CEOs, and global business leaders at the UN Business Leaders’ Summit, and the governments and businesses in Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Bangkok, and Canada. However, few companies in India and internationally have implemented on Tata’s approach. The idea of openly keeping a track of social impact was formed with Tata Sons. Under the Chairmanship of Mr. Ratan N. Tata, the group researched for a new and improved way to tie
together group synergies among the Tata companies. This motive resulted to The Business Excellence Model (TBEM), which is an elaborated business procedure improvement which commenced formalizing the set of core values that Tata has followed for many years. The main branch of this endeavor was the introduction of a very systematic, collective Tata approach to Corporate Social Responsibilities, found in Jamsetji Tata’s social inheritance, and the formation of the Tata Index for Sustainable Human Development, a famous approach to charting and calculating the social development efforts of Tata Group industries. The Index is functioning in many of the major Tata companies. In each of the Tata companies, a Corporate Head Social Responsibility which is always a senior executive manages a crossfunctional corporate social responsibility team of facilitators with certain responsibilities for community improvement, environmental management and volunteering. Mr. Nadkarni is the head of the teams and leaders of the operations that is the TCCI team and functions as the Secretary of the Council which is a nexus of 43 chief executive officers of Tata industries. TCCI functions in all of Tata companies as a connective network of more than 200 skilled facilitations and 11,500 plus volunteers. The Index has an astounding innovation which includes: 1. It divided the sustainability responses into three levels: systems (275/1000), people (175/1000) and program (550/ 1000). It makes measuring and improve areas which are needed to be changed easier. 2. Indexation procedure plays a great role in highlighting the outcomes and other factors. For instance, below is how a firm might apply the index to its own business operations:
Each project leader has the job to understand the certain concerns of each community, explaining the important beneficiaries and making a vivid focus on how a firm’ main ability would contribute to a certain need. There would be emphasis on certain tangible measures, in terms of what will be done and of human accomplishment. The project leader will evaluate the human brilliance pointers and explicitly point out which aspects have a visible sustainability payoffs for the community engaged. Why does Tata companies care so much? The answer is simple, because it is the Tata Way and our employees are reliable and expected to approach their actions by keeping the society in mind. There is no financial motives attached to their work but just because it matters to their business model, own enhancement as leaders and to the legacy Tata has to leave behind. Harvard Business School professors Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter and many others has given recognition to Tata that such an orientation can cause disruptive innovations. At Tata, the Index has formed a disruption in the way of doing business, to make sure that Tata’s pledges to sustainable business will increase in the mere future and throughout the global base of operations. “One hundred years from now, I expect the Tatas to be much bigger than it is now. More importantly, I hope the Group comes to be regarded as being the best in India – best in the manner in which we operate, best in the products we deliver and best in our value systems and ethics. Having said that, I hope that a hundred years from now we will spread our wings far beyond India…” ( Ratan Tata, 2005)
Tata Group has been motivated to influence its learning by sharing the ideas of indexation and more practically how-to’s of the Index with Tata suppliers, competitors, and collaborators in India through the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and global organizations, for instance the Global Reporting Initiative, Tata group has been a member of GRI and the Social Accountability Initiative. On the other hand, many of the companies may not have the sustainability history or the ethos of Tata Group, the systematic approach of indexation can be easily implemented to work for various corporate identities, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) can be tailor-made for different activities and areas of improvement. If industries have mastered the strategic commitment it works on in order to make the world a better place for the people to live in, the Index helps you to perform by giving you a guideline approach to making sure that your systems, people and programs will be better in various steps. It helps to keep the business to stay in track. Tata Group Role of Leadership In all of the four companies there are fewer disputes for both senior and middle managers in equalizing social, environmental, and financial performance. The reason for this is that these disputes are solved in the higher part of the organization and are combined into the informal systems. The upper management has introduced the advantages relating to sustainability. This is why individuals are able to create specific tradeoffs, because they are aware of the fact that their leaders will be support them. One of Nike’s nine strategic importances is the corporate responsibility. In addition, leadership engagement is number one. The CEO and other leaders in the company support the idea of corporate responsibility crucially, and think of it as an improvement motive in helping to reach the strategic goals. “Making a sustainable decision that negatively impacts margins is not so wrong, but they have to inform me because we can offset
this somewhere else,” one of the vice president explained, “I want to give guidance to subordinates because I don’t want to have them struggle with it (the tradeoffs related to making social, environmental and financial decisions) And we need to teach them because all these decisions cannot be done by me alone.” The training for this is done with the help of information sharing and teamwork. People learn many things when they are a part if the process where leaders make critical decisions. This tactic is visible at P&G where the main focus is on sustainability commences with a visible motive on the part of the leadership to make things work out. One of its core values is leadership, and P&G’s leaders have the job to create a successful integrating sustainability which works with the P&G business. “We aim to make sustainability something the business units want to do because it helps build the business,” as said by one of the vice president. People need to understand the objective of the firm in order to be flooded with creativity and innovation. The Home Depot thinks of the job of the individual store manager as one of the most momentous in the firm. With the CEO, they are motivated and passionate about sustainability and volunteerism. The CEO of Nissan plans the corporate route and centralizes corporate social responsibility (CSR). The company plans out a proper midterm plan that related to the question “How to grow a business in harmony with sustainability?” and publicly pledges to a stern plan. In the North American Nissan Company, the managers’ job as a leader is to encourage stakeholder value with various orientations to environmental concerns. There is the belief that it is very essential to make people take part in decision making roles, who have the mindset of “Now we have limited natural resources.” Leadership helps in establishing future grounds for sustainability, it is also important for many companies in the business industry.
