Leadership Case Study

Leadership Re-organisation: Wipro's Co-CEO Model

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Abstract:
In April 2008, Wipro, India's third largest software services firm announced the appointment of Girish Parajpe and Suresh Vaswani as co-CEOs for its IT business. Over the years, divergent personalities like Ashok Soota and Vivek Paul brought in their style of management and moved the business ahead. Wipro expects the appointment of co-CEOs would enable the company to take advantage of blending complementary skills and experience, easing the strain of responsibility and workforce synergies to help the company move up the value chain in the global software industry. However industry experts are sceptical about the model, as such earlier global attempts have not been too successful. But in the Indian scenario, specifically IT, companies have managed well with a collective style of leadership. Will Wipro achieve what it set out to do by appointing joint CEOs or will it be pulled in different directions by the two leaders?

Pedagogical Objectives:

• To different leadership styles and challenges faced by leaders.
• To leadership changes in Wipro and how it affected the business.
• The rationale behind the decision to appoint joint CEOs.
• The likely impact of the decision.

Keywords :  Wipro, Azim Premji, Co-leadership, Joint CEO, Ashok Soota, Vivek Paul, Girish Paranjpe, Suresh Vaswani, Wipro Technologies, Wipro Infotech