WIMC Versus Innovative Self-Help Modes of Restructuring and Revitalisation

Restructuring activity has picked up in corporate India, and many of the largest Indian companies have been opting for the services of Western international management consultants (WIMC). The writings of some of these consultants indicate the sort of restructuring they tend to favour. Recent restructuring examples, of BILT and SBI, in which WIMC were hired, indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the WIMC mode. The WIMC mode of restructuring is contrasted with an innovative, self-help mode of restructuring pursued by several Indian and Western corporations. This mode relies on participative diagnosis of the strengths and weakness of the organization, mobilization of the stakeholders for change and for identifying needed changes, improvisation by the stakeholders of the way changes are to be brought about, and participative implementation of changes. There is only very limited reliance on external consultants, and top management plays more of a catalytic than a directive role. Two examples are discussed, the first of the restructuring of SAIL in the mid-eighties, and the other of the restructuring of Siemens Nixdorf, the German IT major, in the mid-nineties. Some implications are advanced for Indian corporates wishing to restructure.