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Working Papers | 1987

Job Stress of a Creative Manager

Manimala Mathew

The 'inverted-U' relationship between stress and performance is well-known. It is reasonable to assume a similar relationship between stress and creativity. However, very little is known about the reverse relationship; the stress potential of creativity has rarely been studies. The major hypothesis of this paper is that because of the special characteristics of the creative person and the nature of the creative process, it is likely that there are a few special types of stress experienced by the creative manager, which are moderated by the organizational context. The model that emerges views the job stress of a creative manger as a consequence of the interaction among (1) the traits of the creative person, (2) the nature of creative process and (3) the organizational context. The special traits of the creative personality may make him susceptible to stresses such as pressures of conformity goal/role ambiguity, task difficulties, exposure to hazards, boredom with routines, social boycott, loneliness, interpersonal conflicts and time-pressure. For the owner-manager, the most important of these is loneliness. Stresses implied by the nature of the creative process may be identified as self-doubt, agony of abandoning pet notions and theories, feeling of stuckness, outcome/uncertainty, fear of failure, communication anxiety, evaluation anxiety, difficulties in keeping up group morale and interpersonal problems. The organization context may mitigate or enhance one or the other of these stresses. For example in a non-creative organization/role, the most dominant stresses will be boredom, frustration, self-role distance, role-stagnation, approach avoidance conflicts about the job and the like. In a creative organization, however, the influence of the organizational context is minimal on the stresses resulting from the personality traits, the creative process and/or their interaction. Since the job-stress of a creative manager is viewed as an outcome of the interaction of three variables, the coping strategies adopted would depend on the extent of influence of the personal and organization variables in a particular context, assuming that the creative process remains largely unchanged. Hence, the coping strategies are broadly classified into two, namely, the personal and the organizational, which are also discussed in some detail.

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Working Papers | 1987

Founder-Culture in Organizations - Its Impact on Organizational Growth, Dynamism and Innovativeness

Manimala Mathew

Organizational culture has recently emerged as one of the prominent focuses of organization research. This is partly because of the disillusionment with the research on the more 'objective' phenomena such as structure and technology. Several researchers point out that culture could be the most important factor that 'determines' the other characteristics and performance of an organization. It may be naturally asked how an organization's culture evolves. One of the hypotheses of this paper is that a major influence on the development of organization culture is the founder. A review of existing research shows that the founder's influence is critical and is difficult to change except during a crisis created by changes in the environment. It is also proposed that the type of culture would vary with the type of founder. An external (or organization) oriented founder (as opposed to a self-oriented one) is likely to create a professional, dynamic and sometimes innovative organization. On the other hand, the organization created by the self-oriented founder would remain non-professional, and non-innovative, characterised by limited growth and dynamism except if it changes its culture in response to a change in the environment and a consequent crisis within the organization. The change, which may take place either through 'heretics' in an incremental fashion, or through new leaders in a discontinuous fashion, can turn these organizations around to make them adaptively or innovatively dynamic. The paper discusses these influences and changes through a model of founder's influence on organizational culture along with eight other propositions.

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Working Papers | 1987

Organization Development in Social Development Organizations

Manimala Mathew

Social Development Organizations (SDOs) have an important role to play in the social and economic development of the people particularly in developing countries following capitalist/mixed economy systems. However, many SDOs are organizationally ill-equipped to carry out their important functions in society. This is partly because of their origin as a half-heartedly tolerated appeasement tool with inappropriately borrowed values, structures and systems, and partly because conventional OD values and techniques developed in the context of industrial/commercial organizations have limited success with SDO's which are different from other organizations in their more humanitarian value systems, greater need for client orientation, greater dependence on external, scarce and uncertain resources, greater need to co-operate with other agencies and so forth. While SDOs do have some common characteristics, they cannot be considered a homogeneous lot. They differ among themselves on the basis of their greater or lesser orientation towards rules, structure, expertise, value, need, people, external agencies and the like. Thus, the OD needs of SDOs are different, on the one hand, from those of the industrial/commercial organizations and, on the other hand, among different types of SDOs. OD in SDOs should focus on : (1) value management, (2) perspective management, (3) participation management, (4) dependency management, and (5) withdrawal management. Specific OD needs of government and voluntary SDOs are discussed, and the directions of future change in OD with special reference to SDOs are indicated.

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Working Papers | 1987

Values, Design and Development of Strategic Organizations

Garg Pulin K and Parikh Indira J

This paper explores the connotations of concepts of social development, Organizations and values in the Indian society. Social Development has so many meanings that no coherent action seems to emerge. The Indian scene, in recent decades, is also animated by an unprecedented effloresce of all varieties of organizations : governmental, non-governmental and private voluntary ones. Some of these are definitely engaged in social development. These organizations tend to operate more as structures held together by leaders with charisma who good, cajole, tempt, reward and punish the organization members for producing outputs and results. A fully functioning organization involves two modalities-the institutional and structural, with their support systems. The institutional modality (representing coherence of philosophy, mission, and direction) requires sentient systems to sustain the process of meaning-making in organization. The structural modality (representing the congruence of concepts of business, strategy goals, etc.) requires management and administrative systems to make organizations functionally effective. In the second section, the paper provides a brief narrative on the values (normative, phenomenological, and existential) that get internalized in organizations through various mechanisms and interfaces. Thereafter, a comparative analysis of the different ethos (Indian and western) at inter-play in Indian organizations is provided. These illustrations highlight the cultural context of Indian organizations wherein both the ethos and the design are neither congruent nor convergent with the values operative in role taking processes. Hence, greater ingenuity, innovativeness and adaptiveness are needed for designing strategic organizations, Particularly for social development. It is necessary to identify the institutions needed to foster the sentient-investment of the community for initiating new organizations. Furthermore, there is a need for creating institutions of debriefing to create a shared, concrete concept of organizational reality in terms of demands and policies. The organizational model being outlined in our paper endeavours to harmoniously blend the value considerations and structural exigencies in the design of developmental organizations.

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Working Papers | 1987

A Project is a Compound - Not a Mixture: Conceptual Problems in Valuation

Ragunathan V and Srinivasan G

There is considerable literature in the field of finance concerning the valuation of negative cash flows. Consequently, it is widely held that a project should be valued by valuing each component of the project's cash inflows and outflows separately, either by discounting the cash flowing at appropriate RADRs or by using the certainty equivalent approach. This paper discusses the implicit inadequacies in using the above approach for project evaluation and recommends valuing the Net Cash Flow of the project either by using a single RADR or using the certainty equivalent framework.

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Working Papers | 1987

Demand for Money: An Empirical Examination of Unsettled Issues for India

Gupta G S

The paper examines the unsettled issues on the demand for money function with a particular reference to India. It uses the annual time series data for the period 1954-55 through 1982-83. A special feature of the study is that it generates a uniform series on the narrow money concept (M1) for the whole sample period, and employs the same for empirical estimation and testing. The principal findings are: a. Both the narrow and wide concepts of money are well explained by the well-known and limited number of arguments in the money demand function. Thus, on this criterion, either definition of money is equally acceptable. b. Permanent income is more relevant than the measured income in the money demand function. c. The ratio of non-agricultural income to agricultural income was found to be irrelevant argument in the money demand function. This, in some sense, argues against the hypothesis of different money demand elasticities with respect to the two components of aggregate incoem. d. Short-term rate of interest has proved to be the relevant interest rate in the money demand function.

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Working Papers | 1987

Role and Conduct of Monetary Policy

Gupta G S

The paper contains the text of the lecture delivered by the author at a seminar organized by the Department of Economics, M.S.University, Baroda under its UGC Special Assistance Programme during December 20-21, 1986. It highlights the state of the art with regard to the role and conduct of monetary policy, and throws some light on this aspect for India. In particular, it argues that monetary policy is significant not only with regard to the price level and in the long-run, but also with respect to real GNP and in the short-run. Further, it supports whole-heartedly many of the recommendations of the Chakravarty Committee on the way the monetary policy should be conducted in India.

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Working Papers | 1987

Growth Variations Across Developing Countries: How Much and Why?

Gupta G S

The paper examines the extent and the causes of variations in economic growth across twenty-nine developing countries. The sample countries come from Asia, Africa, and South/Central America. It finds that while Brazil, Cameroon and Korea have witnessed a relatively higher growth rates; Chile, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and Jamaica have experienced lower growth rates during the Sixties and Seventies. The principal factors responsible for varying performances are found to be the saving/investment rate, export, government expenditure, price distortions and multi-national corporations economic penetration rate. While the first three factors promote economic growth, the last two hamper it.

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Working Papers | 1987

Male and Female Managers in United States and India: A Study of Change Agent Styles Personality Factors and Biographical Differences

Ottaway Richard N and Deepti Bhatnagar

This paper reports results of a study conducted to investigate the differences in male and female managers in America and India. Two samples were used, one male and one female, in each country. The samples were matched cross-culturally for comparability in age, education, and level of management in the company. The Indian data were collected from participants attending management development programmes at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The American data were collected from attendees at MBA programs (evening and weekend further education for practicing managers) in business schools in New Jersey. Three questionnaires were used for data collection. Hall and Williams Change Agent Questionnaire was used to collect data on change style. Personality data was collected on Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. The biographical questionnaires collected data on educational level, managerial level, age, salary, area of work, type of industry etc. Analysis of data showed the female managers to be significantly different from the male mangers. These differences were across all the three areas that were inveighed, namely, change agent styles, personality factors, and biographical characteristics. The female mangers used the credibility style of introducing change more often than the male managers. Female managers emerged as more hardworking, achievement-driven, having higher standards, experiencing greater conflict and being more hurting than their male counterparts. Female managers were younger, more educated and less paid than male mangers. A comparison of the American female managers with Indian female managers showed the former to be further behind the salary of male American managers than their Indian counterparts while being comparable in education and job status.

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Working Papers | 1987

Investigation of Decision Criteria for Investment in Risky Assets

Samir K. Barua and Srinivasan G

This paper examines the empirical validity of stochastic dominance rules and the mean-variance framework by analysing data generated through an experiment on individual investment decisions under uncertainty. The analyses indicated that none of the two approaches provided adequate explanation for the observed pattern of choice. An alternate framework, based on preference for skewness, in addition to mean and variance, was examined. This framework provided a significantly better explanation compared to the two parameter framework. The preference for skewness was significant at higher levels of borrowing and at all levels of wealth.

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