F LAM E

Organisational Behaviour in a Start-up

For: Prof. Indira J. Parikh

Individual and Group Processes
Trimester I

By
Group 1
Aakash Agarwal
Dipika Bothra
Nidhi Sheth
Kamya Pahwa
Shashank Sethi

TAB LE OF CONTE NTS

FLAME as an organisation
2
life cycle stage
2

structure
3

communication
6

Organizational Behaviour Issues

7
culture shock
7

insecurity and anxiety

8

resentment
8

Commitment, Involvement and Motivation

8
Aspirations, Attitudes and Expectations
9
Future Prospects
10

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

1


F LAM E
Organisational Behaviour in a Start-up

Group 1

The Foundation of Liberal And Management Education (FLAME) was founded in 2004. Its
expressed mandate was “to offer a flexible pattern of education that encourages inter-
disciplinary studies”. An undergraduate school of liberal education, a school of business and a
school of communication has been established. It is the first academic year and is thus a start-
up organisation, with teething problems.

FLAME as an organisation
L I F E C YC L E S TAG E

While FLAME was conceptualised approximately four years ago, the campus became opera-
tional two months back, with the commencement of the academic year.

rity Dec
= FLAME
Matu line

th
ow
Gr
n
io
at
rm
Fo

Entrepreneurial Collectivity Formalisation & Elaboration of Decline Stage

stage Stage control stage structure stage • high employee
•Ambiguous Goals •Informal com- • formalisation of • more complex turnover
•High Creativity munication rules structure • increased conflict
•High commit- • stable structure • decentralisation • centralisation
ment • emphasis on effi- • diversification
ciency

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

2


It has passed through the entrepreneurial stage - pooling of resources, attracting faculty, acquir-
ing legal approvals, etc. It was at this point that creativity and commitment was the highest,
because the task at hand was so challenging.

Since then, it has entered the co%ectivity stage. The mission of FLAME has crystallised. The
structure has not stabilised, and will adapt to the growth of infrastructure. While a basic foun-
dation of formal rules and processes have been laid down, the constitution of FLAME is still in
progress. Communication channels are not yet clear.

By the next academic year, the formalisation and control will be under way. Assuming construc-
tion of basic infrastructure will be done, the organisation will attain a level of stability. The
next batch will have a more formal system of rules and processes in place.

As the batches graduate, FLAME will enter the elaboration of structure stage. Decision making
will be decentralised.

PRESIDENT
Indira J.Parikh

DEAN (FSB, FSLE) DEAN (FSC) HEAD, HR

P.M.Shingi Achyut Vaze Veena Yadav

ASSOCIATE DEAN (FSLE)

DEAN, STUDENT ACTIVITIES
Himanshoo V. Bhat Navangul
FACULTY
FSLE = FLAME School of Liberal Education
ASSOCIATE DEAN (FSLE)
FSB = FLAME School of Business
Vanarase Vidyanidhee STAFF
FSC = FLAME School of Communication

FSLE FSB FSC

STUDENTS STUDENTS STUDENTS

STUDENT COUNCIL

S T RU C T U R E
Academic Administration

The academic organisation follows a set pattern in universities. The President, Indira Parikh,
presides over the academic bureau, and works closely with the Chairman, who co-ordinates the
administrative bureau. She is the key representative of the institution and its academic com-
munity, and her endorsement attracts both recruiters and academicians. The goodwill gener-

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

3


ated by all the faculty and staff associated with FLAME is essential to its growth. The Presi-
dent’s most demanding responsibility at this time is bringing in placements.

Each school is headed by its Dean, who work with the Associate Deans to determine the direc-
tion of academic study. and the administration of their respective school. Program co-
ordinators synchronise with the students.

Of the four different institutional culture models developed by Birnbaum (1988) (the collegial,
the bureaucratic, the political, and the anarchical) FLAME’s academic department exhibits
traits of the collegial culture. According to Birnbaum (1988), collegiality has three major com-
ponents: “the right to participate in institutional affairs,” membership in a community of
scholars where “friendship, good conversation, and mutual aid” can develop, and finally, colle-
giality upholds the ideal that all knowledge is of equal worth no matter the discipline (p. 87).
Professors are independent and free to design their curriculum and conduct classes as they
wish.

Most of the faculty commute daily to the campus as faculty accommodation is incomplete.
While the faculty is approachable, this creates some communication gaps and scheduling is-
sues. Eventually, they will be more involved in day-to-day activities of the students and institu-
tion.

Institutional Administration

FLAME’s institutional administration is headed by its chairman, Parag Shah, who is also
jointly funding the institution. He is overseeing the building of the institution, and his plan is
to retire after four years when the first batch of undergraduate students graduate. He provides
leadership and direction to a host of administrative functions that generally includes student
services, institutional support, maintenance and operation of the physical plant, and auxiliary
enterprises. FLAME being a start-up, his management style is very hands-on. As a result, the
structure of the organisation is personality-based and hierarchical.

The day-to-day running of the institution is divided into various departments. Many of these
functional departments have been outsourced to different firms. This is a common phenome-
non since the latter part of the 20th century, which increased demands of greater efficiency,
productivity, and entrepreneurial management at colleges and universities. The flip side of this
is that communication between these various modules is not seamless, initially.

The accounting department is located at the Baner Road office. The student counsellor
Ratna Khurana helps prospective students.

Rajendra Singh is heading the Help Desk and co-ordinating between the students and de-
partments such as transport, cleaning (BVG) and a general maintenance team (of 25 people).

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

4


There is a tie-up with outside parties - Royale Cars and Girikand Travels - for providing
transport services.

Dining services is contracted to Sodexho, is a French multinational corporation. FLAME is

the second such institute in India Sodexho is catering to. A 20-member team, living on campus,
provides breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its head, Sikander, co-ordinates with the representative
of the student food committee, Ankesh Kothari, as well as Parag Shah and Pooja Shah, directly.
A comments register is also extensively used by the students to provide feedback and sugges-
tions. Sodexho also helps students acquire special items like birthday cakes, on request.

Security is supervised by Javed, who reports directly to General Mehta. A group of 50 people,
live on campus and work in 12-hour shifts. They also man the exits, and keep track of student
entry and exit.

House maintenance and cleaning is outsourced to Bharat Vikas Group (BVG). This 60-
member team is supervised by T.R.Shankar. The workers are mostly from nearby villages and
work in 12-hour shifts.

A local Pune company, Cleanz, provides laundry services, at an allocated space in the campus.
Students can avail of free laundry services for a maximum of 40 clothes in a month. The cam-
pus has one small cafe Pit Stop. The Sports facilities, such as tennis, basketball, volleyball,
badminton, table tennis and other indoor sports, is looked after by Bhagwant Singh. Though
the library building is yet to be constructed, the temporary set-up is operational. Medical fa-
cilities consists of two in-house nurses and Dr Santosh Eknath. . He is independent in his
working and has the authority to take any kind of decision related to medical issues.

The I.T department manages the wireless internet services, repair and maintenance of com-
puter facilities. All arms of the institute is supposed to be connected with each other, using
My-lyceum.net, so that funds can be transferred to student accounts, library books issues, as-
signments and grades exchanged. However, the software is not operational and no temporary
networking solution is being used.

Vastu Shilp Consultants, one of the most renowned Architectural firms in India, headed by Dr.
B.V.Doshi and Architect Rajeev Kathpalia, have designed the master plan of the campus. Un-
der their supervision, various local subcontractors are carrying on the construction
activities. The interior design is being looked after by a different team. Since extensive work
is left, labourers are living in the campus, just off the main area.

Students

There are 200 students in the current academic year, whoa are divided into three schools -
School of Liberal Education for undergraduates, School of Business and School of Communi-

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

5


cation for post-graduates. They are from many different regions in India, which brings diversity
in the institution.

The undergraduate students have their own separate housing and are subject to a different set
of rules than the post-graduates.

The student body has elected members of the Student Council. Students are divided into
five houses, and a captain and vice-captain has been elected in each house. Additionally, each
school has nominated and elected its School Captain. These 13 representatives elected the
FLAME Captain among themselves.

The student council are forming committees to co-ordinate with the student body and various
departments. Presently, these include - food, sports, travel, IT, etc.

C O M M U N I C AT I O N

The pit-stop and class notice boards are one of the main site of exchange of information be-
tween the administration and students. Notices regarding policies and events are put up here
and students are expected to check it every day. The other major medium of communication is
announcements by the programme co-ordinator or the class representative in class. Some-
times, information is passed on through email or LAN.

It has been observed that there are very few clear channels of communication between differ-
ent departments and groups. Even between collaborating task forces, there is often a lot of
miscommunication. For example: As more accommodation becomes available, students are be-
ing shifted to new rooms. However, the allocation changes frequently and students are not al-
ways aware where they are shifting. Last-minute information about academic issues are often
verbally communicated and never reach the students that live far away from the academic
block and pit stop.

There are no systems of sharing information in place. The transportation department has data
on hand about how many students have left the campus and thus will not have meals. However,
this data is not available to Sodexho and wastage occurs. The IT infrastructure was supposed
to take care of such co-ordination, and till its implementation no effective alternate system has
been devised.

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

6


Organizational Behaviour Issues

C U LT U R E S H O C K

High Understand
(tend to under- and accept
stand and accept) Acceptance of new culture new culture

Optimism and
excitement about
new culture

Frustration and confu-

Low
sion about new culture
(tend to be con-
- culture shock
fused and reject)

1 2 3 4 5 6
Months living in a new culture

Students have experienced a certain amount of culture shock, in their transition from an un-
dergraduate to post-graduate or school to undergraduate course. The process of dealing with a
new culture has been observed to follow a trend.1

It is observed that there is an initial period of excitement, and optimism about being in a new
place. In FLAME, this has passed and students are now frustrated and confused as they strug-
gle to adjust to the new environment, i.e culture shock occurs.

In the case of post-graduate students, this is a acute problem for freshers. Having never
worked in an organisation before, they are not used to the unambiguity inherent in the course.
The collegial culture, as mentioned, can itself be intimidating to an outsider who may not im-
mediately perceive the embedded norms and values of the institution. Being the first batch,
they cannot refer to the experience of senior students nor is there a tried and proven socializa-
tion process.

1 Behaviour in Organizations (2003) Jerald Greenberd, Robert A.Baron

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

7


INSECURITY AND ANXIETY

The post-graduate student body is also dealing with insecurity over their skills and ability to
meet the expectations of professors. Even though people joined the institution because of the
promise of world class faculty, they are now intimidated by the same. FLAME aspires to the
standards of IIM, but is trying to form a synthesis between those standards and its own phi-
losophy of liberal education.

Additionally, there is a constant underlying anxiety and worry about the future of the institu-
tion, and by extension, their own future recruitment opportunities.

RESENTMENT

Students

A lot of facilities (free transport to the city, refreshments during classes) were made available to
students free of cost in the first few weeks to help students adjust with the infrastructural
problems. Now that these have been withdrawn, a considerable amount of resentment is being
generated in students. If the campus was closer to the city, students would have had a lot of
choice and flexibility. Given the situation, the price and quality of a cup of coffee and a single
photocopy becomes a bone of contention.

Security

Not all departments are satisfied with their relationship with the management. The security
team in particular feel that they are not being given their due respect by the administration.
Moreover, they have problems with lack of facilities. For example, they are not provided with
drinking water and have reported several cases of illness; but no action has been taken.

Commitment, Involvement and Motivation

The faculty and some of the administrative executives have been intimately involved in the de-
velopment of FLAME, and have high levels of affective commitment. They strongly agree with
the underlying goals and values of the organisation.

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

8


The students display a mixture of all three kinds of commitment - continuance, normative and
affective. Some feel that having made a choice to join FLAME they are obliged to see it
through (normative) or feel the risk of leaving is too high (continuance). At the same time, they
want to see FLAME’s mission come to fruition (affective). Initially, their level of affective
commitment was high and they were willing to make sacrifices and compromise for the sake of
the institute, but that soon degraded.

Events have been organised to motivate and involve students. These range from treks and so-
cials (like Dandiya Night and Bollywood Night) to inter-house activities. There is a continuous
effort to foster FLAME spirit; to perhaps mitigate the feeling of isolation and make them feel
that their student community is all they need. Just as corporate organisations need to motivate
their employees and foster commitment, to increase productivity and decrease turnover, a
start-up like this needs to do likewise.

Employees of BVG, for example, find their job satisfying primarily because they feel respected
and are not constantly under supervision. Once allotted their particular jobs, the supervisor
inspects their work some time in the day. Some say that the job gives them opportunity to in-
teract with many people and learn many things. However, some want an increase in pay. And
most face problems with travelling to the campus.

Monetary incentives are being provided to the security staff to catch and report students using
drugs and liquor or smuggling contraband on campus. Motivational exercises for labourers, in-
clude movies on Sundays and celebrations on festivals. They are provided with medical facili-
ties and free weekly check-ups, and a vehicle is kept available for emergency purposes in case
of any accident. Around 5 labourers have met with major accidents., and the expenses for
treatment have been born by the institute.

FLAME has a strong sense of corporate social responsibility and has provided the children of
labourers with a school and mid-day meals. This also achieves the goal of making workers more
productive as well as motivated.

Aspirations, Attitudes and Expectations

FLAME, as a whole, has very high aspirations, centred around being ‘different’ from other
educational institutions. It prides itself on its philosophy of liberal education, which it hopes
to synthesise with the traditional guru-shishya ethos. The students, on the other hand, ex-
pected a ‘liberal’ atmosphere along with liberal education.

The management is taking all the initial chaos in stride and not getting discouraged. The atti-
tude of the students, on the other hand, is a refusal to compromise after having paid a consid-
erable amount of fees.

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

9


The expectations of both the faculty and students are, however, more in line with each other -
holistic personal and intellectual growth.

Future Prospects

We can say that in the next academic year a lot of the organisational issues, borne out of lack
of infrastructure, will be resolved to an extent. At the very least the various task forces or de-
partments will be a lot more organised. The next batch of students will still experience anxiety
about their future but at a smaller scale as they will have the current batch of students to guide
them through. FLAME also will have summer placements for post-graduate students to dem-
onstrate its quality of education. In fact the current batch will be lot more confident and this
will influence the atmosphere at FLAME.

With faculty staying on the campus full-time, there will be a stronger academic ambience. Fac-
ulty will be more involved in the daily activities in campus.

The culture of FLAME, once strong, will exert itself on the various outsourced departments,
integrating each employee into the larger organisation. Communication issues will be slowly
ironed out. There will be well defined tasks, a proper structure of communication, committed
teams of people and necessary infrastructure.

Also, the management will, in time, tend towards de-centralisation of power and decision-
making. Processes that are being supervised, at present, by professors or students will be taken
over by professionals. The atmosphere of being a ‘family’, with its inherent system of division
of labour, will give way to a more professional atmosphere. Given this, there will be great deal
of focus on academics.

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

10


B I B LI OG RAP HY
“Colleges and Organizational Structure of Universities -
Governing Boards, The President, Faculty, Administration
and Staff, Students, Future Prospects”
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1859/Colleges-Un
iversities-Organizational-Structure.html

Jerald Greenberd, Robert A.Baron. “Behaviour in Organiza-

tions” 2003

Jamie Park Hennigan, “Corporate Culture in an Instiution

of Higher Education” (2005)

IGP Midterm Assignment (19/11/07)

11