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1. To understand the importance of creating and implementing a vision for enhancing gender diversity and inclusion relevant to the manufacturing and engineering sector in an emerging market.

2. To develop insights into the vision and characteristics of an inclusive leader.

3. To evaluate the strategies and organizational levers that created and nurtured a climate of gender diversity and inclusion in Cummins India.

4. To identify organizational levers that will enable the sustenance and institutionalization of a climate of inclusion.

This case study traces a 16-year journey of diversity and inclusion at Cummins India, a subsidiary of the Fortune 500 manufacturing organization Cummins Inc. headquartered in the US. Initially spearheaded by Anant Talaulicar, and then continued by Ashwath Ram, gender D&I initiative at Cummins India has made significant strides. Talaulicar had an opportunity to immerse himself in the ethos of the parent company before joining the Indian subsidiary.

In India during the early 2000s the external environment was characterized by rapid technological and regulatory changes and increasing complexity. To make matters more difficult, the internal culture was steeped in a traditional manufacturing mindset marked by dismal female participation rate and an over-representation of locals with similar beliefs and value systems.

Given the mammoth task already taken up by Talaulicar by improving the diversity numbers from 3% to 33%, Ram had big shoes to fill. On one hand, he had to drive the business amidst uncertain market conditions; on the other hand, he had to carry on a legacy. Given that he himself had a lived experience of Cummins global values, he knew D&I was an integral part of the Cummins way of life. His familiarity with the socio-cultural challenges of the country coupled with his drive to continue and rejuvenate the D&I agenda, brought some interesting, yet challenging, questions for him. With the internal and external pressures looming large before him, could he institutionalize a climate of inclusion that could serve as a strategic lever to place the company on the path of growth, vibrancy and economic prosperity?

Through qualitative research conducted by the authors, this case study brought out learnings pertaining to linkage of leadership in creating a climate of inclusion and expansion of talent diversity through a set of people strategies and HR practices. The contribution of this case study is primarily to theory and practice in the field of Human Resource Management, D&I as well as in developing inclusive leadership.

MBA programs and leadership development programs

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

This study aims to explore the career transition process of women professionals when they return to the workplace after a break and re-integrate with their career aspirations.

This research used a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews for data collection. All 20 women participants have returned to their careers after a break.

The data analysis reveals women’s career transition and re-integration process into the workplace after a career break. Supervisory support, work–life balance practices, role models, coworker support and career success emerged as factors enabling successful transition. The employing organisations’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring strategy emerged as an important mechanism for re-entry.

Although previous research has studied women professionals returning after a break, the “transition process” that enables re-entry is missing.

The paper investigates how the interplay of women-specific human and social capital factors with ownership structure impacts her chances to get director level appointment in the light of recent amendments to the Indian statute.

The strength of the study lies in fitting a logistic regression model to the unique hand collected data on women director characteristics from 100 large listed Indian firms.

Counter intuitive findings reveal negative effects of social capital on appointment of independent women directors. This relationship gets reversed when social capital is moderated by ownership structure.

Companies may be influenced to take into cognizance the underlying gender biases prevailing in the highest echelons of management and employ un-gendered fair selection practices for board level appointments in order to progress towards gender balanced corporate boards.

The paper is a first of its kind that combines aspects of human capital and ownership structure using Indian data. By developing several new proxy variables to enrich the construct of social capital it contributes to the corporate governance literature and lastly, through main and interaction effects, the paper offers a deeper understanding about the impact of endogenous factors of corporate boards on women's representation at leadership levels in India.

Reasons that have an effect on the continuity and career progression of women in corporate India are complex. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that have an effect on the women leadership pipeline of Indian organizations.

The present study adopted a qualitative research methodology within a dyadic framework by including women managers and their respective supervisors in the study.

Thematic analyses of the qualitative study conducted on Indian women managers as well as their supervisor revealed rich insights into the antecedent social-psychological factors of a women leadership pipeline that can be summarized under three broad categories, namely, intra-personal, interpersonal and organizational.

The limitations are the small sample size and the qualitative nature of this study. An important implication is that the results of this study can be used for cross-cultural comparisons because most studies that have focused on the effect of gender on career advancement have used western conceptualizations and measures.

The findings of this research suggest designing organizational interventions that can help women professionals in navigating the complex social environment in order to create their own leadership identities supported through a high-quality leader-member exchange.

The study takes an important step toward developing a better understanding of the factors affecting the career advancement of women managers by contextualizing the way women professionals perceive their career identity and the meaning they imbue to career advancement. The findings of this study can aid policy makers toward arresting the leaking women leadership pipeline.

The study contributes by exploring several social-psychological dimensions of objective-subjective career success perceptions and their interplay among women managers drawn from three organizations in India.

This study aims to examine the relationships among leader‐member exchange (LMX), innovative work behaviour (IWB), and intention to quit. The mediating role of work engagement is tested within the relationship of LMX, IWB, and intention to quit.

Respondents to a survey were 979 Indian managerial employees working in six service sector organisations in India. Structural equation modelling was used to test hypothesised relationships.

Results suggest quality of exchanges between employees and their immediate supervisors influences engagement. Work engagement correlates positively with innovative work behaviour and negatively with intention to quit. Work engagement mediates the relationship between LMX and innovative work behaviour, and partially mediates intention to quit.

A cross‐sectional design and use of self‐reported questionnaire data is a limitation of this study. Since the study focuses only on service‐sector organisations, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution.

This study makes important theoretical contributions in three ways. In the domain of work engagement, it addresses factors that influence employee engagement and its outcomes. It expands knowledge about organisational resources that foster work engagement. For LMX, this study complements existing research by investigating work engagement as an outcome. Identifying LMX and work engagement as antecedents of innovative work behaviour, it also extends research in that domain. An important contribution is positioning work engagement as a means through which job resources are linked to employee outcomes. The study is also a rare examination of the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to present the diversity and equality perspectives from the national context of India and introduce a special issue about equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in India.

This special issue consists of six articles on current EDI issues in India. The first three of the contributions are focused on descriptions of diversity challenges and policies regarding caste and disabilities, while the remaining three papers address gender diversity.

In addition to providing an overview of this issue's articles, this paper highlights developments and current themes in India's country-specific equality and diversity scholarship. Drawing on the special issue's six papers, the authors show the relevance of Western theories while also pointing to the need for reformulation of others in the context of India.

The authors conclude with a call to further explore diversity in India and to develop locally relevant, culture-sensitive theoretical frameworks. Religious and economic diversity should receive more attention in future diversity management scholarship in the Indian context.

How does India experience equality and diversity concepts? How are India's approaches similar or different from those experienced in other countries? How do theoretical frameworks originated in the West apply in India? Are new, locally grounded frameworks needed to better capture the developments at play? These questions are addressed by the contributions to this special issue.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of innovation management capability on organisational performance. Based on the resource-advantage theory, this study addresses: “To what extent do intellectual and emotional assets influence marketing management capability which loads to the organisation’s performance?”

To understand the research objectives, the data was collected via 35 in-depth interviews with managers and academics from various multi-national companies and new empirical insights were offered.

This study recognised three components of intellectual and emotional assets (knowledge and competence; digital technology; and reputation) and their influences on business performance.

The focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) limits the generalisation of this study. To scrutinise the relations documented in this study, future research should be conducted in other country settings and different sector.

This study contributes to the sustainability literature by developing a conceptual model that explains the development and role of innovation management in a market context with its associated sustainability management outcomes. The results are of importance to both SMEs and policymakers. Clear need to investigate further how organisations can benefit from such capabilities for greater growth is identified.