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Organizations and Organizing in an Indian Context
Edited by Peter Stokes, Mitch Larson, Suram Balasubrahmanyam, Sanjay Kumar Singh
1 Introduction
The issue of what makes managers/executives successful has been of interest to researchers and professionals for long. Factors such as social skill, interpersonal ease, luck, good connections, timing, positive self-esteem ([9] Berglas, 1986); drive, energy, and desire to do an outstanding job, set priorities and work accordingly ([98] Stuart-Kotze and Roskin, 1983); and ability to handle people have been considered important in the attainment of success. [52] Iacocca (1984) and [93] Sorcher (1985), contended that predicting success is an extraordinarily difficult task as it involves considerable ambiguity, the complexity of trying to match and balance an individual's behavior, abilities, personal characteristics, experience, and accomplishments with a different working environment, new roles, new tasks, and new interpersonal relationships. Many people or organizations predict success from analytical ability. Others give importance to self-confidence, tough-mindedness, willingness to work hard, and a sense of honour. Predicting success may be possible if one understands what one is trying to predict. The issue has become complex as the meaning of success itself has been changing from time to time.
Three main strands of thought and feeling out of a number of competing versions of the ideal success have been found by [20] Cawelti (1965). The emphasis of the first strand was on values of piety, frugality, and diligence. The definition of success of the second tradition of thought was purely economic. It became dominant toward the end of the nineteenth century. With the rise of industry, possession and control of wealth had become more desirable goals. The second strand stressed qualities such as initiative, aggressiveness, and forcefulness whereas the protestant tradition stressed the self-disciplinary and religious virtues. The third strand defined success in terms of individual fulfillment and social progress rather than in terms of wealth and status. The emphasis was on personality development which meant acquisition of those qualities which would make the individual an effective participant in the struggle for success. Personal magnetism, a quality which was thought to enable an individual to influence others, became one of the keys to success. Having appreciated these diverse interpretations of individual success, this paper has made an attempt to explore the...