How does one judge the “all is well” comment made by founder N.R. Narayana Murthy on Infosys, after the return of Nandan Nilekani to the helm?
Quizzed by reporters in Bengaluru last week if he was satisfied with the leadership of Mr. Nilekani, he said, “absolutely, all is well.” Not just that, Mr. Murthy went on to suggest that Mr. Nilekani had one too many complex issues on hand and that he should be left alone to handle them.
In the evolving business ecosystem where things happen at a fast pace and disruptions are dime a dozen, an organisation of the standing of Infosys requires to continuously foster a healthy partnership with all stakeholders, and more so with an iconic founder such as Mr. Murthy.
Even as it is trying to put the internal turmoil firmly behind it, Infosys has come under flak for its management of the GST (goods and services tax) information technology backbone. Read in this context, Mr. Murthy has said the right thing. This should ease up the atmosphere at Infosys.
Unanswered questions
But there are still many unanswered questions. Can the present conveniently gloss over the ugly happenings of the past? Stakeholders are yet to be given the true picture of the events that led to the departure of R. Seshasayee as chairman and Vishal Sikka as CEO in the wake of a no-holds-barred public campaign unleashed against them by Mr. Murthy. Besides the huge severance package paid to former CFO Rajiv Bansal, the alleged wrong-doings in the acquisition of Israeli automation technology firm Panaya led to a widening chasm between Mr. Murthy and the erstwhile management.
Last month, the Nilekani-led board announced that there was no evidence of wrongdoings in the Panaya deal and asserted that the management won’t make public the investigative report on the purchase. This led Mr. Murthy to express his disappointment.
“... Would you have posted the full report if you were running Infosys? You wouldn’t, as you didn’t in instances that needed detailed investigation,” wrote Omkar Goswami, a former director of Infosys, in August this year in an open letter to Mr. Murthy, who had called on the Seshasayee-led board to make public the report.
Mr. Murthy now feels “all is well” at Infosys though the current board, too, has not made the report public.
Why the fuss?
Corporate democracy advocates majority rule. The question is: how was a single shareholder — however iconic he/she may be — allowed to sidestep the majority view? If indeed there were no wrong-doings in the purchase deal as was announced by the current board, why was this big hullabaloo raised by Mr. Murthy? Why did he go public, and aggressively at that?
The Infosys stock had taken a heavy hammering in the marketplace during the time Mr. Murthy indulged in a public spat with the erstwhile management. In the din that followed, the voice of the concerned stakeholders was hardly audible.
Nothing changed in the board position — be it of the present one or that led by Mr. Seshasayee — vis-a-vis the Panaya deal till date. A sense of calm may have returned to Infosys. But in its wake, the whole episode has made a mockery of corporate governance. Was there a real erosion in corporate governance at the IT firm?
Or, was the governance issue used as a tool to settle power equations within the board? Why didn’t the regulatory watchdogs step in to rein in the raging spat that spilled over to the public domain. From hindsight, it could be argued that the whole fracas did no good to either the company or the founders. Names and reputations have also been hit in the process. And, it is no advertisement for the Indian IT industry in the world economic order.
Yet, there is a larger lesson to be learnt in its aftermath. Institution building is one thing. Keeping it growing on a progressive path is, however, a tougher task. We need corporate statesmen who look beyond the present, care for the future, and act without personal prejudice.
