wipro ceo structure Essay
313 158 1
IBS Center for Management Research
Wipro at Crossroads: The Failed Dual CEO Structure
This case was written by Hadiya Faheem, under the direction of G V Muralidhara, IBS Hyderabad.
It was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion
rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation.
2013, IBS Center for Management Research
IBS Center for Management Research (ICMR)
IFHE Campus, Donthanapally,
Sankarapally Road, Hyderabad 501 504,
Andhra Pradesh, INDIA.
Ph: +91 9640901313
E mail:
[email protected]
case centre
Distributed by The Case Centre www.thecasecentre.org All rights reserved
North America t +1 781 239 5884 ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
Wipro, the third largest player in the Indian Information Technology (IT) industry, had traditionally
focused on investment banking in the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) vertical, and
on the telecom sector. Both these segments had reportedly taken a beating in recent years.
While the investment banking segment had reported muted growth, the fact that clients in the
telecommunications sector, especially in Europe, were reducing their technology spend had also
negatively impacted Wipro s performance. In addition to this, the company s dual CEO structure
adopted in April 2008 did not yield the expected results. This, according to analysts, was because the
two CEOs Girish Paranjpe (Paranjpe) and Suresh Vaswani (Vaswani) did not focus on key segments
that helped Indian IT companies recover growth post the global financial crisis 10.
Thus, Wipro lagged behind its peers such as TCS and Infosys.
To arrest the decline in sales and profitability, Wipro s founder and executive chairman, Azim
Hasham Premji (Premji), scrapped the dual CEO structure in January 2011, to make way for company
veteran and head of the Eco Energy Business, TK Kurien (Kurien), to take over. In a bid to turn
around the company, Kurien restructured the organization to make it nimbler and focused on key
segments such as the BFSI and consulting to chase growth. Moreover, the single CEO model was also
adopted to ensure that Wipro