Fit between Organizational Culture and Business Excellence: A Case Study of Heavy Electrical Equipment Plant, BHEL

The Heavy Electrical Equipment Plant (HEEP) of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) at Hardwar, is the manufacturer and exporter of power generation equipments for hydro, thermal, gas-based and nuclear power plants of the country. HEEP-Hardwar has been engaged in excellence efforts for quite some time, having bagged the ISO certification in 1993. TQM was launched in HEEP in 1995. The plant got OHSAS accreditation in 2002. Along with these quality efforts, HEEP embarked upon its journey to excellence by adopting the European Foundation for Quality in Management (EFQM) model for business excellence. It continuously went for CIIEXIM Bank excellence award evaluation which in turn used the EFQM model for evaluation. In 2006, HEEP was declared as the best manufacturing plant in the country in CII evaluation. While HEEPs results so far have been commendable, it has to go some way before becoming a truly world class organization. And organizational culture has to play an important role in it. This study basically is an attempt to assess whether HEEP has a strong excellenceoriented culture or not. The deciphered strength of culture shall indicate the strong areas as well as the areas which need improvement and thus help HEEP to inculcate a strong excellence oriented culture in its organization. The specific objectives of the study are to: identify a suitable culture for business excellence assess and measure the culture identify the gray areas in BHEL's culture. An exploratory study was done to determine the dimensions of culture required for achieving excellence. After literature survey and discussions with experts from BHEL and academia, Broadfoot and Ashkansays organizational culture profile (OCP) was found to be the best suited culture framework with certain modifications, keeping in mind the scope of the current study. A 16-dimension framework was thus formed, out of which 15 were selected for assessment of HEEPs culture. The dimensional framework was then developed into a questionnaire/inventory and empirically tested. With the help of OC survey and in-depth interviews, HEEPs culture was deciphered along the selected dimensional framework. The value of total OC was found to be just strong indicating scope of improvement in several areas.