Management of Intangibles in Indian Railways

Managing intangibles is a major challenge before organizations. Increasingly there is an appreciation that for managing hard performance parameters, the softer aspects of management need to be looked into. In fact, several management thinkers believe that understanding and managing the soft aspects, for example the feelings, attitudes, and values of people, their motivation, perceptions about organizational priorities and norms, and elements of the organizational culture, offers an important key to managing the hard and visible aspects such as output, asset utilisation, turn over, and profitability. This paper describes the efforts and outcomes of a project on Management of Intangibles (MI) iin the Indian Railways, in which it was decided to underscore the significance of managing intangibles through a multipronged approach. In the first place, therefore, it was decided to explore the perceptions about the prevalence of certain key managerial attributes among the officers of Indian Railways. At a second, we wanted to assess the prevalence of certain important attitudinal variables trough self-report measures. Appropriate surveys were conducted. Next, two case studies on “Role Models’ in leadership in the Indian Railways were developed. Finally, an action research on management of intangibles was carried out through a seies of workshops held for this purpose. The most important aspect of this study was its “self-driven nature”. The action research part, which formed the heart of the study in terms of managing intangibles was completely designed, executed and written about by the participants themselves, with the researchers only playing a facilitator role. Though only tow experiences have been documented in written form, some of the other experiences are expected to have an impact in the working domain of the participants. The case studies on the two role models brings out that divergent styles can also be “successful”. They offer an opportunity to reflect on what makes a leader click in his/her environment. In terms of difference in the existing and desired level of attributes, concern for external customers, and openness to others’ ideas rank at the top. This is a clear reflection of the direction in which the organization needs to move.