Organization Structure & Behavior
Project Report On I-Next: The Youth’s Paper
Submitted to: Submitted by: Dr. Rahul Verman Naman Purwar (11448) Professor, IME Dept. Vivek Jaiswal (11817) IIT, Kanpur Abhishek Srivastava (12033) Nilay Jain (12449) Vinay Kumar (12806)
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur Organization Structure and Behavior
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Focus of Study
3. Methodology of Collecting Data
4. Organizational Structure
5. Process of News Flow
6. News Coverage through Reporters
7. Functioning of Editorial Team
8. Example of “Jyoti-Murder Case”
9. Inferences from the “Jyoti-Murder Case”
10. Conflict of Interests
11. Contingencies
12. Strategy of Differentiation of I-Next
13. Organizational Culture
14. Organizational Politics
15. Learning from the organization
Annexure: News Clippings from I-Next related to “Jyoti Murder Case”
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Introduction One of the most enduring symbols of world is the newspaper man who makes his daily round, come rain or shine. For centuries, the Newspaper has been the source of information for people and has played a crucial role in the world’s socio- economic development. Media is regarded as the fourth pillar of Democracy.
I-Next, a venture of Jagran Prakashan Ltd, is a bilingual tabloid which has come up with a new and innovative concept of attracting dynamic and quirky readers and has captured significant market in major cities of Hindi-speaking states in India in the last eight years.
I-Next was initiated with the purpose of being a ‘Target Group’ oriented newspaper. Unlike broadsheet newspaper with the motive of informing the general public, I-Next targeted the Urban Upper and Middle class, youth and student age groups while launching. As I-Next evolved, the management realized the importance of catering to other reader groups also whom they never thought about while publishing paper like mango citizens up to age group of 40 whether poor or rich. Thus, I-Next expanded its ‘Target Group’ and started publishing news catering to the extended reader groups too, which led to its massive popularity.
A comprehensive study of I-Next elaborates how a media company gathers information and present it to the public, with an aim of maximizing profit and minimizing cost following the strategy of differentiation.
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Focus of Study
Indian media is the huge industry whose services are consumed every day. To decide focus area we started developing questions. How does an incident happening around us reaches media and how do they decide what to publish what to not? How does media industry earn profits while selling the paper at such marginal costs? What kind of organizational structure does it have? How decision making takes place? How exactly news flow takes inside the organization once reporter reports news? How do they decide on the news? What are the challenges and contingencies they face?
To find answers to these questions in this organization we decided to understand deeply the process of news flow from place of news source to printing space on the newspaper. We tried to follow a trending incident that happened in Kanpur that is “Jyoti murder case” and made efforts not only to understand various aspects of news coverage but also various attributes of news editing to news printing. We tried to understand how the complex phenomena of news printing via this organization and also tried to analyze its competitive advantage. Studying it’s day to day functioning; we tried to find answers to above questions. Our analysis of the company comprises the study of functioning mechanisms of various units and inter-relational operations among them. We tried to analyze in depth and relate to theory that we have learned during the course of, Organizational structure and behavior.
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Methodology of Collecting Data
First of all we started collecting data online about I-Next. In online media we tried to collect as much data as possible. We accessed the large amount of data available on Jagran Prakashan Ltd. and I-Next’s official website.
However, for the information about actual happenings, which was the main input for our analysis, we have no other option than visiting the head office of I-Next, Kanpur. During our visits, we got warm and co-operating response. People in the office showed interest in our project related talks unless they were not busy with their work.
As our first task was to get knowledge of end to end process that how ordinary news flow works. For this initially we scheduled our meeting with the Reporting team,which comprises of Mr. Pankaj Tripathi, Mr.Vishnu Tiwari,Mr. Manoj Khare,Mr. Abhishek Mishra. Our reason for being there was very different from their day to day working, and everyone was busy in his/her work. But as soon we reached the premises we were greeted very respectfully.
During our further visits to I-Next office we tried to meet Senior News Editor along with desk in charge team and other employees too.
Employees at lower level responded very little though some of them were interested to talk with us. The reason was quite visible that they were too much busy in their work. So we tried to get some more information through observation of workplace for which we got that permission quite easily.
For gathering information related to Jyoti Murder case, one of us went with the reporter to the court to understand their methodology and attitude pertaining to Jyoti Murder case.
In this way we tried to collect data. We have made efforts to recreate our study, experiences and learning about I-next in next few pages.
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Number of visits to I-Next office 6
Average duration per visit 2 hours
Names Roles
Mr. Umang Mishra Senior News Editor, I-Next Kanpur
Mr. Manoj Khare Chief Reporter, I-Next Kanpur
Mr. Pankaj Tripathi Reporter Education Sector, I- Next Kanpur
People met Mr. Abhishek Mishra Reporter Crime Sector, I- Next Kanpur
Mr. Vishnu Tiwari Reporter Public Sector, I- Next Kanpur
Others People at court while visiting with reporter, Jagran officials, Desk team of I-next, security Office guard,No. of etc.times
I-Next , Civil Lines 5
Jagran Office, Rawatpur 1
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Organizational Structure
Director (Jagran group)
CEO/Editor in chief of I-Next
Kanpur Other Edition Editions
Head Head Marketing Senior News Distribution Team Editor Team
Central Desk Chief Reporting Incharge Reporter Team
Online Sub-editing Content Designing Education Crime Sports Public Sector team Reporter Reporter Reporter Reporter Team
Organization Structure and Behavior
The Organization: I-Next
I-next has hierarchical structure as in figure. It claims to be dynamic in nature as every department is independent in itself. Mr. Alok Sanwal (CEO and Editor in chief) comes under the director of Jagran Prakashan Limited (JPL) in the structure. I-Next functions as a complete decentralized and autonomous unit of Jagran Group. Different independent department headed by managers/Editors reports to CEO. The city editions are autonomous in nature. Advertisement team is responsible for getting advertisements. Central reporting team covers national and International, sports and other news which are not city specific. It also collaborates with independent news agencies like ANI etc. to collect the required news. Printing and distributions are responsible for doing their own job. Printing press is same as that of Dainik Jagran as both are owned by JPL. Distribution department analyzes the exact market demand and takes care of distribution of newspaper. SNE (Senior News Editor) or NE (News Editor) or DNE (Deputy News Editor) heads the local offices that work exclusively on local issues and news. Presently Kanpur and Varanasi editions are headed by SNEs and others are headed by NEs Or DNEs. There are two teams under SNE/NE. One is reporting headed by chief reporter. Another is Desk headed by Desk In charge. Function of desk include designing the layout of paper, managing e-paper and website of newspaper, and editing news to fit the available spaces on the paper. Both work independently. Reporters covering different things like crime, education, Nagar Nigam, Local administration etc. are part of Reporting team. They have their own sources for covering news and stories. Desk decides the available space for news to be put on the paper with marketing team and then selects the news, which fits the available space on the newspaper. There are around 40 people in Kanpur Office. The employees in I-next are younger in age to their counterpart in other newspapers. When it comes to experience, I-next prefers people with medium experience and avoid people with much more experience who are not supposed to fit its young and dynamic organizational culture. Decisions are taken in morning and evening meeting on the ideas, agenda, goals and coverage for the day. The opinion of SNE/Editor is preferred. To complete these goals, Reporters and Desk people are supposed to take decisions at their level independently and use their experience, contacts and skills to give their best efforts.
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Process of News Flow
Sources
Reporters
Chief Reporter
Editor Desk-in-charge
Printing
Distribution
In the 10 am meeting, reporters discuss the stories and events they are willing to cover with editors. Editors approve or reject these ideas. Finally, reporters gather facts from site and sources and report to the Chief Reporter in the evening. Editors, Reporters team and Desk-in-charge hold second meeting in the evening where they discuss the reports and stories of the reporters. They discuss which stories can be taken forward based on the importance of the issue and the availability of space for Editorial. By 8 pm, all reporters have to submit final reports to the Desk official. Desk personnel edit and format the report to include it in the space available in the newspaper. At 11 pm in the night, finally designed newspaper is dispatched for printing. Thus, no late-night events are reported. After printing, distribution channel circulates the copies to local distributors.
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News Coverage Through Reporters
In order to understand the whole methodology of news coverage we framed few questions and started asking the reporters:
Question 1: how do you come to know this event is happening and where? Answer: Crime Reporter – “Information regarding any event reaches us through either Police Control Room or people known to us ex: traffic police, paan-wala etc., friends of us existing in every area of the city.” Education Reporter – “Information float thorough us through either students or teachers or Public Relation Officer (PRO) of college or people known to us belonging to education sector.” Public Sector Reporter – “Information reaches us either through public or public sector employees or politicians like ‘Ward-Parshad’ or ‘Mayor of the City’ etc.”
Question 2: how do you decide which news to cover and which not? What is the preference order of covering various topics in your sector? Answer: Crime Reporter – “If any crime is happening, then it becomes the responsibility to cover the news. Various aspects of news is analyzed and based upon our experience and uniqueness of the news, we decide what to cover what to not or how to cover or what to report to chief reporter.” Education Reporter – “I prefer to visit the places where I can get news like, events, college PRO or teachers or Primary Schools etc. and try to find uniqueness in the news which should attract readers.” Public Sector Reporter – “I generally clarify before visiting the scene and if I feel this news will attract the reader or there is some uniqueness in the news, I prefer going there.” Also, reporters, in continuation with any specific news covered, run certain series of news.
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Question 3: While collecting news, what are the details you ask for, how many point of views you look for e.g. public, administration, victim etc.? Answer: Crime Reporter – “I prefer taking view points of public near the place of occurrence, contacting LIU (Local Intelligence Unit), victims, relatives of victims and never forget to take official statement of administration.” Education Reporter – “Apart from taking view points of college administration or school administration, I try to interact with students, organizers of event (if any event is being organized), try to grab as much information as possible so as to point out uniqueness. I do take clarification from responsible authority before publishing the news.” Public Sector Reporter - “I do try to collect the statistics of consequences of events e.g. how many times an accident has taken place at this pit hole etc. through reliable sources, public while getting dip in the news being covered. Apart from this, I do take statements of victims, relatives of victims and official statement of administration.”
Question 5: do you always keep in mind editor point of view while covering news or you cover independently and edit it according to them? Answer: All reporters : “We cover the news autonomously keeping in mind creativity and uniqueness and then after editing it to match editor’s point of view, present it to the editor.”
Also one of us went with a reporter to court regarding coverage of “Jyoti Murder Case”. There, we made efforts to talk to as many people as possible so as to understand various perspectives of news coverage e.g. people present outside court, few advocates etc. and observed continuously the reporter while he was covering the news.
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Functioning of Editorial Team
Editors of I-Next are responsible for taking decisions on selecting the stories and leads for the news based on the sensitivity of the issue and its connection with the target audience. The editors hold two meetings each day with the reporters. In the morning meeting at 10 am, reporters propose a story on which they want to take a lead. The editor approves or rejects the stories based on the relevance of the issue and its contents. Based on the reporter’s work on the story throughout the day, editors and the desk hold joint meeting in the evening at 4 pm to discuss how to pursue with the story and the information gathered by the reporter. The desk personnel are responsible for editing the contents given by the reporter and convert it into the format for the newspaper. In the words of a Senior News Editor – “A story which was supposed to be the cover page news can be stopped and delayed for a few days if an important event takes place during the day. Even if that incidence has not been discussed in the morning meeting, it can become the lead story in the newspaper because of its importance.” This dynamic nature is very common in the media industry and the editorial board plays an important role for working under such dynamic situation. Apart from being reader specific, I-Next can be termed as a ‘sensitive’ newspaper e.g. the issues related to morality, ethics or injustice to any victim are also raised forcefully even if the victims are not the part of their ‘target group’. Editor judges any bias in the reports and filters the news, which is influenced. Thus, I-Next reports disinterested news because of editor’s judgments and doesn’t favor any group in general reporting and publishing of news. I-Next has given high emphasis on the presentation of the story. Unlike other newspapers, which present only facts, I-Next tries to develop deeply engaged stories from the facts. Thus, the editorial board gives specific attention to the stories with photographs as evidences. After gathering initial information, more deep investigations are carried out to present a larger view rather than presenting only facts. Even in the serious criminal cases like murder, I-Next tries to investigate further to present various facts in order to differentiate itself from other newspapers. The personality of the editor is reflected in the newspaper. Aggression or moderate behavior of an editor can be seen in the contents of the newspaper. The image of the editor plays a crucial role in tackling pressures.
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“A strong and obdurate nature of Senior News Editor generally thwarts 80% of the pressure from developing. Rest cases of pressure on the editors are tackled by certain ways of talking and boldly reacting. Handling of pressure varies from person to person.” - Senior News Editor, I-Next, Kanpur
As editors are at the higher authority in the work process of the newspaper, the reputation of I-Next also lies in their hands. Thus, publishing under any pressure, can lead to loss of reputation for the company, which can seriously affect the business. Hence, editors have to act rationally and boldly to avoid any adverse effect on the reputation of the business.
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Example of “Jyoti Murder Case”
Jyoti Murder Case as covered by I-Next 28th July 2014: Jyoti Dasani, a rich housewife was murdered by her husband and 3 contract killers on 27th July 2014. Piyush Shyam Dasani, her husband filed a case in Swaroop Nagar police station against 8 unknown people on Monday, 28th July 2014 including charges of robbery, kidnapping, murder, assault and injury. Shiv Kumar Rathore, Station Officer, Swaroop Nagar police station told that “the investigation is in progress and the clauses can be modified with the upcoming findings”. I-next decided to dig deeper with the help of Carnival restaurant administration and Local Intelligence Unit and reported the FIR filed by Piyush, incident’s timeline and raised some questions which were needed to be answered. The timeline of Events (described by Piyush), published in i-Next : 9:30 pm Jyoti and Piyush leaves the home in their Accord Car. 10:15pm Reaches Carnival Restaurant at Company Bagh. 11:00 pm They have a spat inside. 11:15 pm Jyoti comes outside alone and hides aside Honda showroom. 11:20 pm Piyush followed her and pulled her in the car. 12:30am Piyush’s family calls 100 and informs police control room about the incident, reports the incident to the IG. 2:00 am Dead body of Jyoti is found in centrally locked Accord car behind Panki police station.
Questions Raised(by police): 1-Why did family of Piyush reported the first information of the incident to police an hour after the incident? 2- When Piyush was having his own mobile, why did not he call the police himself? 3- What about the reason behind the spat between Jyoti and Piyush at the restaurant? 4- Whom was Piyush was calling during the spat? 5-Why facebook account of Piyush was deleted by him two days ago? 6- If the killers’ bikes were stuck with car, why were there no marks? 7- For which purpose, three knives were kept in Car? 8- If the robbers were having fight with Piyush, then why he has no injury marks? 9- If the purpose of murder was robbery, then why wasn’t there any robbery?
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10-How was the t-shirt of Piyush got changed from restaurant to police station? 11-Who is supposed to be benefitted from the death of Jyoti? 12-Why the injury marks were found on her face and neck only? 13-Why the only thing robbed was the wedding ring(by cutting the finger)? 14-Whether the family had any information about the dispute between them?
I-next followed up the case, revealing the profile and statement of Piyush with the details of families of Jyoti and Piyush, their business profile and history, their marriage prospects, and personal life. Also later, the proof against Piyush’s false statement and a made up story was revealed.
The revelation by police about the involvement of Piyush startled the people who knew Dasani family closely. Someone similar told that Piyush use to go to Temple daily. I-next enquired about Piyush’s character from people in the locality including the gardener of temple about his daily routine and worships. These people found it difficult to believe that such a ‘religious’ person can execute a heinous crime of murdering his wife. The cremation of Jyoti was done by Piyush’s elder brother Mukesh. The absence of Piyush there raised questions. According to people from Sindhi community, if someone’s wife has died and he want to do another marriage, then he doesn’t take part in any of the cremation activities of her wife. So, there were similar rumors in between the people.
The same day, I-next did a reality check of the incident. The substantial difference in the normal time to reach police station and actual time Piyush took, raised more suspicion in his statement to police. Based on its research, i-Next concluded some possible places of murder which includes CSA and HBTI campus area, Company Bag to Rawatpur link road and Roadways workshop on the way as these are deserted areas after 10 pm.
Additionally, i-Next questioned Piyush and his family with substantive evidence and got a statement from Jyoti’s father who agreed to give evidences against Piyush including his demand for dowry. Eventually, When Piyush was arrested after accepting his crime in police interrogation, i-Next published the whole story on front-page with details about Piyush, his family and the
14 Organization Structure and Behavior business. The love triangle of Piyush and probable reason for murder were also mentioned along with it.
1st of August: i-Next followed up on the case by pointing out the ignorance of Jyoti’s parents who ‘encouraged’ the discriminative behavior of Piyush against her by submitting to his dowry demands. After his appearance before magistrate, Piyush faced the anger of local public and was thrashed by the lawyers.
The biggest question in High Profile murder is still that “Piyush was present or not at the site of Jyoti’s murder”. Police sent Piyush, his lover and other accused to judicial/police custody but I-next continued its investigation to find the truth, meeting the accused in jail. In the informal conversation, they revealed the gaps of the story to I-next. Contract killers who were involved in the murder told I-next that Piyush, the Mastermind was present at site. It also took input from LIU, did reality check and finally reported in detail linking the dots of whole story of conspiracy.
While for other newspapers, it was a news for one day, i-Next followed up against criminals and kept the case in limelight in the fight to get justice to the victim. It published other similar cases of past five years and the progress in those cases, revealed the original plan made by Piyush, how he made it and how it failed because of blood splatters on his T-shirt. IG Ashutosh Pandey has identified his T-shirt but no one noticed the change of Jeans whereas, SSP has refused the T-shirt changing incident, which also raises doubts over intentions of police. i-Next continued publishing reports related to the case even after a month including High profile treatment of Piyush and Manish in jail. It published the detail of meeting of Jyoti’s father with Home minister to demand justice for his daughter on 5th October, the request by police and Jyoti’s father to central government to get the data like whatsapp messages with help of Interpol.
I-next is currently covering the legal proceedings of the case which is still awaiting the verdict The details of confiscations of passports of Piyush and Manisha, the ongoing enquiry about their foreign visits, the question on local police’s involvement on tampering with Piyush’s blood sample and the proceedings are regularly getting the significant space on i-Next’s main edition.
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Inferences from the “Jyoti- Murder Case”
Following the complete coverage, one can infer the fact how they converted a normal murder case into trending topic of the town. They created curiosity among those people who were least interested and tried to give a message to the society that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law whether being poor or rich. Even after so many external contingencies, I-Next stood against the criminals and in some sense, it spread hatred against them. The paper stood with its morality and ethics to counter extreme pressure from powerful people and kept covering even other newspapers remain silent. By doing rigorous coverage, they kept people interested and updated such that the case remains in limelight and administrative people do not misuse their powers to save the criminals. Presenting itself as the fourth pillar of democracy, it plays important role in standing for the justice of the victim. On the other hand, to attract more and more readers and to create buzz among readers, they did not care about the personal life of criminals and presented them as the worst people of the society even though criminals are also human beings. They cared more about making profit on the cost of criminals that is externalizing cost by interfering with the personal lives of criminals.
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Conflicts of Interest
An organization has various stakeholders like the government , the parent organization, the departments, the employees etc. and each of them have their individual interests and visions for the organization. Over a period of time conflicts start appearing between various stakeholders. Our study also brought to forefront such conflicts within the organization.
1) Usually the marketing department and the editorial department go hand in hand and understand each other’s requirement regarding the use of space in newspaper, but there are times when the marketing department needs more space to cover the specific add in order to support the firm financially and that implies in shortening of space for editorial work, this generates conflicts in the organization
2) Usually the news reported by the reporter is formatted by Desk in charge and editor and printed as it is in the newspaper. But sometimes they change the perspective/angle of the news just to make it more attractive to readers rather than letting it be more informative. This leads to downfall in the confidence of reporter to report news in his own style rather than following editor’s point of view.
3) Even though I-Next is the venture of Jagran Prakashan Ltd. Reporters from both of the newspaper always makes efforts to hide news from each other and even if news sharing is done on the basis of friendship between two reporters, the latter of them won’t publish the same news in his respective newspaper.
Referring to Diena Case, if the central reporting system of I-Next, and the Jagran Collaborates for the general (national and international) news, which they buy from news agencies. In that case, they can improve the effectiveness of news as well as reduce the transactional cost and thus improve their quality as suggested by Williamson.
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Contingencies
Reporter: Paid News: People, politicians try to influence reporters by offering payment for news coverage etc. These things are either supposed to dealt by reporter by refusing them or otherwise identification of paid and biased news by editor and filtering/modifying them. Threats/Pressure: Reporter (mainly crime reporters) often get threats by criminals, powerful people. Many of them are hoax. As the reporter remains in constant in constant touch with police and administration, Most of these are automatically solved. Police and administration also rarely try to do so as it might be dangerous for their job going against fourth pillar of democracy. Using multiple phones, ignoring threats and sometimes-personal precautions are taken to make sure that such contingencies are taken care of. Fake News: In of absence of news in a specific sector or to complete the agenda of the day or to get competitive advantage reporters sometimes create fake news. This is the job of editor to ensure that such errors do not see the likes of the newspaper.
Editor/SNE: These things are dealt mainly by personality of editor. Rest are dealt by negotiating etc. He has the responsibility to maintain the reputation of paper. He has the most important and difficult task of maintaining the truthfulness of the news. He has to look after biased news and modify or remove them to have an unbiased look in order to maintain his own as well as the Paper’s reputation.
Desk In-charge: The desk has responsibility to fit the news content in the remaining space provided after advertisement. Hence, he has to summarize the news sometimes, or modify the content and may have to drop some important news.
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Strategy of Differentiation
1. Being a tabloid and TG oriented regional paper, its main focus remains on local news and issues and thus, by focusing more on local news it differentiates itself. 2. I-Next starts exploring news where other newspapers stop. It doesn't stop only by publishing facts like other newspapers. It tries to find out the details, the reasons and hence digs deeper. It links the event with similar events in history. For example someone clicked a photo of policemen urinating at the wall of Jail where “clean Kanpur, Green Kanpur” message was painted. It did not simply publish the news. Instead it did a detailed survey of ongoing Prime Minister’s cleanliness campaign by sending reporters to various administrative offices, colleges, posh areas of Kanpur to study their status of cleanliness and unhygienic condition and finally came with a front page story on the same with the same picture as its lead photo on front page. Ironically, it led to suspension of two govt. officials as picture of their dirty offices was too published. 3. Maximum use of images by the paper as photographs communicate story better than words. Generally, story is not presented without pictures. 4. Supporting morality and cause for Justice instead of being always neutral. In Jyoti case, it is aggressively working for her justice. 5. By organizing events like Bikeathon and Health-Meter, I- next brings forwards it’s image as youth supportive paper by attracting its readers in the most unique of ways. Through Health-Meter, Inext ties up with schools and gives the children basic health check-up in the schools.
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Organizational Culture
While not always easy to capture or define, culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. Made up of its member’s shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors. Culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. In case of I-Next, we found out that the organization has very supporting culture, people enjoy working together and the atmosphere in the office is very light but at the same time they respect each other’s work, they inherit the culture that leads to values and norms to motivate and inspire the employee in order to bring the best out of them or in other words, this can be compared to the culture we have seen in Open Source. The best term to describe this kind of organization is bureaucracy, which puts an emphasis on precision, clarity, regularity, reliability, division of tasks, hierarchical supervision and detailed rules and regulations. We found out that the employees had all the access to the information, and also that the innovation and independent thinking were encouraged in this organization.
This kind of organization can easily be described performing job of a machine. Precision and patience is highly demanded in this job. So there are certain requirements and procedures which must be followed in order to process what is expected. Therefore, the first and most important requirement for employees is to learn all the specified rules about news printing and then apply them in every situation respectively. In general, rules are highly important to ensure reliability in an organization. We inferred that the management can be sure that the predetermined procedures will be followed and wished actions performed only if rules are followed. Mr. Manoj talks about how they have to complete the story before 9 pm unless the news is important in this case deadline extends to 11 pm for the news, it would not see the likes of newspaper the next day. However, emphasis on the rules and unpredictable nature of employee behavior are things which results in best output of employees. Even if there is a lack of personalized relationships, the extent to which goals are perceived as common is increased. Thus having common goals, interests and character makes members of an organization to defend each other from the outside pressures. Clearly enough this strengthens the rigidity of behavior even more.
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Organizational Politics
Wikipedia states that “Organizational politics is the use of power and social networking within an organization to achieve changes that benefit the organization or individuals within it. Influence by individuals may serve personal interests without regard to their effect on the organization itself. Some of the personal advantages may include access to tangible assets, or intangible benefits such as status or pseudo-authority that influences the behavior of others. On the other hand, organizational politics can increase efficiency, form interpersonal relationships, expedite change, and profit the organization and its members simultaneously. Politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources.”
When we win on an issue, we call it leadership; when we lose, we call it politics. In many organizations, politics is a taboo subject, which makes it difficult for individuals to deal with this crucially important aspect of organizational reality. As Pericles wrote over 2500 years ago, "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
Mr. Mridul Tyagi working in media industry, for past almost 15 years now, quotes “I-Next is free from all sorts of internal politics and people respect the work of their co-worker.” However while talking with the various reporters we found that they all have their own departments to worry about but they manage their leaves in accordance with one another’s comfort and requirements so that while they are gone one of their colleagues will file the report. Also suppose if someone is reporting for a crime scene and found news in public sector then he will cover that news as well, thus showing the supportive environment of the organization. We also came to know that if the news that will have a huge impact on the public comes into light then everyone forget all the differences among them to cover all the aspects of that news to draft it in the best possible way.
While talking to crime reporter Mr. Kushagra Pandey we came to know that being the venture of Jagran Prakashan ltd. they do not share any kind of news with them nor do they take any help from other ventures of JPL. They work as an autonomous organization and treat all the other ventures of JPL as their Rivals.
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Learning from the Organization
Organizational Environment and Change: Independence to work- Authority and freedom to reporters and desk-editors to take decision accordingly and appropriately. Similar to SEMCO, the Senior News Editor listens to the employees’ suggestions and grievances and addresses them in time to keep them motivated to work towards the organization’s unified goal.
Organizational Values: The standards and values of organization, to provide a fair, relevant and timely news and stories, guide the actions and decisions of employees. Mutual working of desk- editors and reporters to produce the newspaper in its optimized form indicates the collaborative and supportive working culture and willingness to co-operate with co-employees to work outside their assigned boundaries.
Organization Structure: The structure of Organization is functional. Distinct functional subunits operate in every regional center. Kanpur center has Marketing, Editorial, Distribution sub-units, which operate independently, and only integrates with each other on functional purposes.
Handling Contingencies by management: Senior News Editors/News Editors heading the regional centers hold the responsibility of organization’s behavior to any kind of contingency faced. Kanpur Subunit headed by Senior News Editor, Umang Mishra have gone along the courageous and righteous way to follow the Organization’s values whenever encountered a contingency. Following the “formalized” company policy, he asserts the importance of pursuing company’s values by quoting: “The personality of the editor is reflected in the newspaper. Aggression or moderate behavior of an editor can be seen in the contents of the newspaper. The image of the editor plays a crucial role in tackling pressures from outside and he has to take bold and rational decisions in such situations and shouldn’t succumb under the pressure to protect I-Next’s organizational goal and mission”.
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Annexures
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