Mumbai-based Arkay Supplies Ltd. (Arkay) manufactured office equipment.

The CEO of the company, Robert Franco (Franco), believed in employee empowerment and participation. He entrusted his immediate managers with a lot of responsibility. The head of procurement division, Rajiv Gulati (Gulati), enjoyed full autonomy. Gulati could finalize purchase deals amounting to Rs 90 crore without consulting Franco. The marketing manager, N. Shivamani, could design and launch an expensive promotional campaign and then make it known to Franco. Franco did not reprimand the manager if the campaign failed to generate the desired response among customers. But he would not tolerate it if the manager repeated the same mistake again. He wanted his managers to analyze the reasons for failure and take steps not to repeat them in future. He expected his managers also to empower their subordinates, allow them to take risks and develop their leadership skills. Ravi Raj (Raj) was a procurement manager in the division headed by Gulati. Raj reported to Gulati. Under Raj, there were three subordinates designated as purchase executives who assisted him in his work. When the vendors submitted their tenders, the purchase executives scrutinized the proposals, selected the top 10 proposals and forwarded them to Raj. Raj studied the proposals, selected the best of them and then sent his purchase executives to the vendors site to examine the quality of the raw material. The executives personally examined the quality of the raw material, and brought some samples back to their firm for examination. The quality control department at Arkay tested the samples and determined the quality of raw material supplied by the vendors. On the basis of the reports from the quality control department, Raj selected the best vendor(s) and explained to Gulati why he chose those vendors. If Gulati was not satisfied with the explanation, he obtained proposals from other vendors and examined them as well. But if he was satisfied with Raj's explanation, he called the vendors concerned and negotiated on price, the date of delivery, amount and quality of material to be supplied, with them. Gulati ensured that everyone in his department completed their work and did it perfectly before they left for the day unless there was a valid reason for the employee to leave the work pending. If Raj or his subordinates did not understand what they were expected to do, Gulati explained it to them patiently. They could walk-in any time and get their doubts cleared if they had any. Gulati never allowed raj to negotiate with vendors to finalize the price. If, for some reason, Gulati was not free on the given date, he asked the vendors to postpone the date for negotiation. Otherwise he asked Raj to consult him throughout the negotiation and not to finalize the agreement until he came and read all the clauses. Gulati never asked raj to participate in the negotiations lasted till late in the night and Raj was glad that boss did not ask him to stay during the negotiations, so that he was free to leave for home. The final documents of the contract were typed by a clerk the next day and formally signed by Gulati and the vendors. Franco praised Gulati for striking the best deals. However, in the marketing division, it was a different story altogether. The marketing manager, Shivamani, set sales targets for die marketing executives. Most of the executives complained mat the targets he set were very high and difficult to achieve. But Shivamani never agreed to lower the targets once they were established. Many executives complained that Shivamani expected high level of performance from them but never offered them the support required. If Shivamani observed that any executive did not achieve at least 80% of the sales target by the date he gave them, he punished the marketing executive by denying him leave, preventing him from claiming reimbursement for expenses incurred by refusing to sign his form, and so on. Many executives who could not stand Shivamani's highhanded behavior left the organization. 1. Do you think Gulati should assign greater responsibility to Raj or allow Raj to continue to work to the extent he does at present? 2. Compare and contrast the leadership styles of Gulati and Shivamani using a leadership grid.