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The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj

• Rohit Deshpande
• Anjali Raina

How an Indian hotel chain’s organizational culture nurtured employees who were willing to risk their lives to save their guests

Reprint: R1112J

When terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, employees of the Taj Mumbai hotel displayed uncommon valor. They placed the safety of guests over their own well-being, thereby risking—and, in some cases, sacrificing—their lives. Deshpandé, of Harvard Business School, and Raina, of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai, demonstrate that this behavior was not merely a crisis response. It was instead a manifestation of the Taj Group’s deeply rooted customer-centric culture that, the authors argue, other companies can emulate, both in extreme circumstances and during periods of normalcy.

The key ingredients of this Taj-style customer centricity include:

• a values-driven recruitment system that emphasizes integrity and duty over talent and skills;
• training of customer ambassadors who serve the guest first and the company second; and
• a recognition-as-reward system that values well-earned plaudits—from customers, colleagues, and immediate supervisors—over money and advancement.

Each of the three elements has important features and nuances, which the authors explore in detail so that your company can take its cues.

On November 26, 2008, Harish Manwani, chairman, and Nitin Paranjpe, CEO, of Hindustan Unilever hosted a dinner at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai (Taj Mumbai, for short). Unilever’s directors, senior executives, and their spouses were bidding farewell to Patrick Cescau, the CEO, and welcoming Paul Polman, the CEO-elect. About 35 Taj Mumbai employees, led by a 24-year-old banquet manager, Mallika Jagad, were assigned to manage the event in a second-floor banquet room. Around 9:30, as they served the main course, they heard what they thought were fireworks at a nearby wedding. In reality, these were the first gunshots from terrorists who were storming the Taj.

• RD Rohit Deshpande is Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at the Harvard Business School.
• AR Anjali Raina is the executive director of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai.

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Heroes Of The Taj Hotel: Why They Risked Their Lives

Alix Spiegel

Indian firefighters attempt to put out a fire as smoke billows out of the historic Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, which was stormed by armed gunmen in November 2008. Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Indian firefighters attempt to put out a fire as smoke billows out of the historic Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, which was stormed by armed gunmen in November 2008.

On Nov. 26, 2008, terrorists simultaneously attacked about a dozen locations in Mumbai, India, including one of the most iconic buildings in the city, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

For two nights and three days, the Taj was under siege, held by men with automatic weapons who took some people hostage, killed others and set fire to the famous dome of the hotel.

The siege of the Taj quickly became an international story. Lots of people covered it, including CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who grew up in Mumbai. In a report that aired the day after the attacks, Zakaria spoke eloquently about the horror of what had happened in Mumbai, and then pointed to a silver lining: the behavior of the employees at the Taj.

Apparently, something extraordinary had happened during the siege. According to hotel managers, none of the Taj employees had fled the scene to protect themselves during the attack: They all stayed at the hotel to help the guests.

"I was told many stories of Taj hotel employees who made sure that every guest they could find was safely ferreted out of the hotel, at grave risk to their own lives," Zakaria said on his program.

There was the story of the kitchen employees who formed a human shield to assist guests who were evacuating, and lost their lives as a result. Of the telephone operators who, after being evacuated, chose to return to the hotel so they could call guests and tell them what to do. Of Karambir Singh Kang, the general manager of the Taj, who worked to save people even after his wife and two sons, who lived on the sixth floor of the hotel, died in the fire set by the terrorists.

Often during a crisis, a single hero or small group of heroes who take action and risk their lives will emerge. But what happened at the Taj was much broader.

During the crisis, dozens of workers — waiters and busboys, and room cleaners who knew back exits and paths through the hotel — chose to stay in a building under siege until their customers were safe. They were the very model of ethical, selfless behavior.

What could possibly explain it?

Getting To The Bottom Of It

Earlier this month, a study in the Harvard Business Review proposed an answer to that question.

The study was done by Rohit Deshpande, a Harvard business professor who researches both business ethics and global branding.

About nine months after the attacks on the Taj, Deshpande was in India interviewing senior management of the hotel on a completely different topic, but found that the people he was talking to kept steering the conversation back to the terrorist attacks.

"What was interesting about all those interviews with senior management was that they could not explain the behavior of their own employees," he told me. "They simply couldn't explain it."

An NDTV tribute video to the brave staff of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

And so Deshpande decided to do his own investigation of the company to see if he might be able to untangle the cause.

Last year, Deshpande flew to India to review the company's HR policies and also do interviews with the hotel staff, everyone from managers to kitchen workers.

What he published in the Harvard Business Review is his case study of the company.

Now, because this is a case study and not a double-blind research study, it's impossible to draw definitive conclusions. But this is what Deshpande thinks:

"It perhaps has something to do with the kinds of people that they recruit to become employees at the Taj, and then the manner that they train them and reward them," he says.

From A To Z — Recruitment To Reward

First, recruitment. In their search to find maids and bellhops, the Taj avoids big cities and instead turns to small towns and semi-urban areas. There the Taj develops relationships with local schools, asking the leaders of those schools to hand-select people who have the qualifications they want.

"They don't look for students who have the highest grades. They're actually recruiting for personal characteristics," Deshpande says, "most specifically, respect and empathy."

Taj managers explained to Deshpande that they recruited for traits like empathy because that kind of underlying value is hard to teach. This, he says, is also why recruiters avoid hiring managers for the hotel from the top business schools in India. They deliberately go to second-tier business schools, on the theory that the people there will be less motivated by money.

And this strategy, as Deshpande points out, is highly unusual in India.

"Let me put this into a little cultural context for you," he says.

"India is a country where people are almost obsessed about grades. In order to get ahead, you have to have really high grades. But here is an organization that is doing just the opposite — they're recruiting not for grades, they're recruiting for character."

Part of this focus on character is ideological, he says.

The Taj is owned by a corporation called the Tata group, which for the past hundred years has been run by an extremely religious family that's interested in social justice: The company typically channels about two-thirds of its profits into a charitable trust.

But Deshpande says there are also practical reasons for this focus on character. The Taj hotel has made its name on customer service, and they are near maniacal about it, treating it almost like a science.

For example, managers have mapped the number of interactions that happen between customers and hotel employees in a typical 24-hour stay. There are on average 42, often unsupervised, interactions between employees and guests.

Each of these interactions is viewed by the company as an opportunity for employees to delight their customers with their kindness. So everything -- everything — about the training and rewards systems set up by the Taj is designed to encourage kindness.

Deshpande gives one example. "If guests say something or write something very complimentary about an employee, within 48 hours of [the] recording of that compliment, there is some sort of reward that is made."

Rewards range from gifts to job promotions.

This system — of immediately rewarding desired behavior — will likely sound familiar to people interested in psychology.

It's by-the-book conditioning, the same kind of conditioning used by B.F. Skinner to train his pigeons.

And in his study, Deshpande argues that it is this combination of selection and routinized rewards that explains what happened during those terrible three days when the Taj hotel was under siege.

The employees, he argues, were essentially performing the behaviors they were selected and trained to perform. In this case, extreme kindness to customers.

Enabling Ethics

The reception area of the Taj Mahal Hotel reopened on Dec. 22, 2008, less than a month after devastating attacks that rocked India's financial and entertainment capital. Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

The reception area of the Taj Mahal Hotel reopened on Dec. 22, 2008, less than a month after devastating attacks that rocked India's financial and entertainment capital.

And for Deshpande, all of this has much larger implications: For him, what happened at the Taj is proof positive that organizations can create ethical behavior.

"I am absolutely convinced that corporations can enable ethical behavior, and I think what happened at the Taj on [Nov. 26, 2008] is a great example," he says.

But Tom Donaldson, professor of business ethics at the Wharton School, says producing ethics isn't so simple.

"If ethics could be engineered by the organization infallibly, we wouldn't be hearing about so many scandals in church organizations," he says.

It's not that rewards don't matter, Donaldson argues. They profoundly influence behavior, he says. But Donaldson wonders if all the training and conditioning done by the Taj can really be said to have produced truly ethical behavior. What would happen, he wonders, if those employees had confronted a different kind of ethical dilemma, one presented by the customers they'd been conditioned to serve?

"I'd like to know what a Taj employee would do," he says, "for example, if one of the guests ended up striking a homeless person, or one of the guests attempted to sexually assault a hotel worker."

It's hard to condition real ethics, he says.

But for Deshpande, in the example of the Taj and the incredible sacrifices of the employees who work there, there is still a clear, and very compelling, lesson.

"Corporate design is absolutely critical," Deshpande says. "For good, and for evil."

The Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now.

Response by taj employees to 26/11 a case study at harvard.

The study shows how leadership displayed by people in the bottom rank to the top levels in the organisational hierarchy helped in saving lives.

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Watch CBS News

Why Taj Employees Offered Their Lives to Save Guests During Terrorist Attack

By Sean Silverthorne

Updated on: January 25, 2011 / 10:47 AM EST / MoneyWatch

But many didn't flee, instead choosing to help guests escape and then returning to help more. Telephone operators stayed the night, informing guests and telling them to keep their rooms quiet and dark. A dozen employees died in the firefight.

Why did they not leave? Why did they perform above and beyond the call of duty?

A new case study from Harvard Business School, "Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership", finds possible answers both in the traditions of the country as well as in the deep customer-centric culture infused by the operators of the Taj: Indian Hotels and Tata Sons.

According to case author Rohit Deshpandé, a professor at Harvard Business School and a native of India, at least three factors were in play at the Taj:

• The right people . In the case, Indian Hotels CEO Raymond N. Bickson describes how he first looks for "nice people who are not afraid of serving people." He can teach them to be a bellman, a waiter, or a desk clerk, "but I can't teach them to be nice. I can't teach that spirit of ownership."
• Indian culture . "Athidhi devo bhavah," or the "guest is god", is deeply ingrained in Indian culture. In short, the phrase means that honoring guests is equal to honoring god, a message deeply embedded at the Taj.
• Employee-Employer relations . In India there is a strong "paternalistic equation" between employer and employee, an attribute underscored by rewards given by top executives to staffers for long length of service. Done right, relationships in Indian companies can feel more like family than us versus them.

Related Reading

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Sean Silverthorne is the editor of HBS Working Knowledge, which provides a first look at the research and ideas of Harvard Business School faculty. Working Knowledge, which won a Webby award in 2007, currently records 4 million unique visitors a year. He has been with HBS since 2001.

Silverthorne has 28 years experience in print and online journalism. Before arriving at HBS, he was a senior editor at CNET and executive editor of ZDNET News. While at At Ziff-Davis, Silverthorne also worked on the daily technology TV show The Site, and was a senior editor at PC Week Inside, which chronicled the business of the technology industry. He has held several reporting and editing roles on a variety of newspapers, and was Investor Business Daily's first journalist based in Silicon Valley.

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Taj employees’ response to 26/11 now a case study at Harvard

A dozen taj employees died trying to save the lives of the hotel guests during the terror attacks..

The heroic response by employees of Mumbai’s landmark Taj Hotel during the 26/11 terror attacks is now a case study at Harvard Business School that focusses on the staff’s selfless service for its customers and how they went beyond their call of duty to save lives.

The multimedia case study ‘Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership’ by HBS professor Rohit Deshpande documents “the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees” during the attack.

The study mainly focusses on “why did the Taj employees stay at their posts (during the attacks),jeopardising their safety in order to save hotel guests” and how can that level of loyalty and dedication be replicated elsewhere.

A dozen Taj employees died trying to save the lives of the hotel guests during the attacks.

“Not even the senior managers could explain the behaviour of these employees,” Deshpande is quoted as saying in HBS Working Knowledge,a forum on the faculty’s research and ideas.

Deshpande said even though the employees “knew all the back exits” in the hotel and could have easily fled the building,some stayed back to help the guests.

“The natural human instinct would be to flee. These are people who instinctively did the right thing. And in the process,some of them,unfortunately,gave their lives to save guests.”

A documentary-style account of events,the case includes video interviews with hotel staff and footage of the attack.

It shows how leadership displayed by people in the bottom rank to the top levels in the organisational hierarchy helped in saving lives.

It also focusses on the hotel’s history,its approach to recruiting and training employees,the Indian culture’s “guest is God” philosophy and how the hotel would recover after the attacks.

Another key concept of the study is that in India and the developing world,”there is a much more paternalistic equation between employer and employee that creates a kinship.”

Terming it as one of the “hardest cases” he has worked on, Mumbai -native Deshpande said it was hard to see people confront their trauma again.

“We objectify it,keep emotion at a distance,but after 15 minutes of questions with a video camera in a darkened room,there are deeper,more personal reflections of what happened,” he says in the HBS Working Knowledge.

Deshpande said Taj employees felt a sense of loyalty to the hotel as well as a sense of responsibility to the guests.

He cites the example of a general manager who insisted on staying put and help direct a response to the attack even after learning that his wife and sons had died in a fire on the hotel’s top floor.

“Nothing in the employees’ training could have prepared them for such an unprecedented situation,” Deshpande said.

Deshpande has taught the case in the School’s Owner/President Management Executive Education programme.

It can also be taught as an example of managing the post-crisis recovery of a flagship corporate brand,he added.

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Terror at the Taj

On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations—all well-known landmarks—the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the horrific attacks in the world's collective conscience.

“Not even the senior managers could explain the behavior of these employees.”

A new multimedia case by HBS professor Rohit Deshpandé offers a flip side to the nightmarish scenes that unfolded in real time on television screens around the globe. Produced in collaboration with Ruth Page and David Habeeb of the HBS Educational Technology Group, Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership  documents the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees during the siege. 

Video interviews with hotel staff and senior executives, combined with security footage of the attack, create a documentary-like account of events that took place over the course of 59 hours. The case also covers the hotel's history, its approach to training employees, the "guest is God" philosophy inherent in Indian culture, and the question of how the hotel will recover after the attacks.

Underlying this framework is a central conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay at their posts, jeopardizing their safety in order to save hotel guests? And is this level of loyalty and dedication something that can be replicated and scaled elsewhere?

"Not even the senior managers could explain the behavior of these employees," says Deshpandé. "In the interview, the vice chairman of the company says that they knew all the back exits—the natural human instinct would be to flee. These are people who instinctively did the right thing. And in the process, some of them, unfortunately, gave their lives to save guests." A dozen employees died.

Most Difficult Case

Deshpandé, a native of Bombay (now Mumbai), says it took a full week to conduct the interviews. "This is the hardest case I've ever worked on. One reason is that I had no conception of what it would be like to have people confront the trauma again. We objectify it, keep emotion at a distance, but after 15 minutes of questions with a video camera in a darkened room, there are deeper, more personal reflections of what happened. It was really, really hard.

"The other thing is that I grew up there. So the Taj is part of my memories, too. As one of the interview subjects said, the Taj is their Taj, meaning anyone who has ever walked through its doors. It's a place that means many things to many people."

In one interview, Taj general manager Karambir Singh Kang describes his father, a military man, telling him that his job is like being the captain of a ship. "I think that's the way everyone else felt, too," says Kang. "A sense of loyalty to the hotel, a sense of responsibility to the guests." Several hours into the siege, Kang's wife and two young sons died in a fire that swept through their apartment on the hotel's top floor. Even after receiving the news, he insisted on staying at his post to help direct a response to the ongoing attack. (The battle for control at the Taj would continue a full two days after other locations had been secured.)

Nothing in the employees' training could have prepared them for such an unprecedented situation, Deshpandé says. Yet further interviews and text documents from the case provide background on the unique culture of Tata Sons, the Taj's parent company, while also revealing the exacting process for selecting, training, and rewarding Taj employees for their work.

Mandate To Delight

Awards are given for longer terms of service, for example, with Group Chairman Ratan Tata (HBS AMP 71, 1975) personally recognizing those who have served 10 to 35 years and more. Employees who have demonstrated outstanding service are selected for inclusion in the Managing Directors Club and recognized across the organization.

Such incentives aren't so unusual, of course. But interviews with senior management demonstrate how seriously the task of building a customer-centric culture and value system is taken at the Taj and its parent company, Indian Hotels.

"Every time they interact with a guest they should look for an opportunity to delight him," says H.N. Srinivas, senior vice president of human resources. During a 24-hour stay, a guest will have an average of 40 to 42 contacts with employees. "We've mapped it," he explains.

When it comes to selecting employees, Indian Hotels CEO Raymond N. Bickson describes how he first looks for "nice people who are not afraid of serving people." He can teach them to be a bellman, a waiter, or a desk clerk, he continues. "But I can't teach them to be nice. I can't teach that spirit of ownership."

"In India and the developing world, there's a much more paternalistic equation between employer and employee," says Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons. "I think that creates a kinship." Every employee donates a small portion of their salary to a pool that can be drawn on in the event a colleague suffers an accident or other significant personal setback.

To date, Deshpandé has taught the case in the School's Owner/President Management Executive Education program; he expects it to be used more widely, particularly since it can also be taught as an example of managing the postcrisis recovery of a flagship corporate brand.

No Clear Answer

The question of why the Taj employees demonstrated such loyalty elicited a variety of responses from students, Deshpandé says.

"For example, some suggested that it has to do with governance of the Tatas; two-thirds of their profits are donated to charitable causes, so the employees feel that they are working for a higher good." But the IT firm Tata Consultancy Services has had many of the same difficulties with employee retention that other Indian IT firms experience. "In that case, the loyalty might be more to self rather than to the organization," he says.

A definitive answer to the question of why the Taj employees behaved as they did may not be possible; but managers who read and view the case will likely come away with a clearer sense of what it takes to build a particular culture and value system and how to recruit, train, and reward employees in nonmonetary ways.

"It's all of those very specific things that build a customer-centric culture in an organization," Deshpandé says. "This example far exceeds anything I've seen before."

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Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership, Multimedia Case

By: Rohit Deshpande

On November 26, 2008, heavily armed terrorists launched a series of attacks throughout the western-Indian city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). One of the locations attacked was the Taj Mahal Palace and…

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• Publication Date: Dec 7, 2010
• Discipline: Marketing
• Product #: 511703-HTM-ENG

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On November 26, 2008, heavily armed terrorists launched a series of attacks throughout the western-Indian city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). One of the locations attacked was the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, which was occupied by the terrorists for over three days, resulting in the deaths of 34 people and 28 people injured. However, the Taj received praise in the aftermath of the attacks for the selfless actions of the staff in placing the safety of the hotel's guests before their own and working to save the lives of its guests. This case seeks to address how leaders develop a customer-centric organization, as well as how an organization saves its flagship brand after a crisis.

Learning Objectives

The case may be of interest to faculty interested in branding and marketing strategy and the challenges of developing a customer-centric business, as well as faculty interested in crisis management and leadership in the aftermath of a devastating attack on a brand.

Dec 7, 2010

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• Laundry Additional charge
• Fax/photocopying Additional charge
• Meeting/banquet facilities Additional charge
• Fire extinguishers
• CCTV outside property
• CCTV in common areas
• Smoke alarms
• Security alarm
• Key card access
• 24-hour security
• Safety deposit box
• Vending machine (drinks)
• Air conditioning
• Non-smoking throughout
• Wake-up service
• Packed lunches
• Airport shuttle Additional charge
• Wake up service/Alarm clock
• Upper floors accessible by elevator

Property practices

See availability house rules.

Until 12:00

Cancellation/ prepayment

Cancellation and prepayment policies vary according to accommodation type. Please enter the dates of your stay and check the conditions of your required room.

Children and beds

Child policies

Children of any age are welcome.

Children 16 years and above will be charged as adults at this property.

To see correct prices and occupancy information, please add the number of children in your group and their ages to your search.

Cot and extra bed policies

Prices for cots and extra beds are not included in the total price, and will have to be paid for separately during your stay.

The number of extra beds and cots allowed is dependent on the option you choose. Please check your selected option for more information.

All cots and extra beds are subject to availability.

No age restriction

There is no age requirement for check-in

Free! Pets are allowed. No extra charges.

Accepted payment methods

Cash Apelsin Hotel accepts these cards and reserves the right to temporarily hold an amount prior to arrival.

Billing/invoices

Official invoices (for tax/billing purposes) are available at this property for business travellers.

FAQs about Apelsin Hotel

How far is apelsin hotel from the centre of elektrostal'.

Apelsin Hotel is 1.1 miles from the centre of Elektrostal'. All distances are measured in straight lines. Actual travel distances may vary.

What type of room can I book at Apelsin Hotel?

• Twin/Double

How much does it cost to stay at Apelsin Hotel?

The prices at Apelsin Hotel may vary depending on your stay (e.g. dates you select, hotel's policy etc.). See the prices by entering your dates.

What are the check-in and check-out times at Apelsin Hotel?

Check-in at Apelsin Hotel is from 14:00, and check-out is until 12:00.

What is there to do at Apelsin Hotel?

The best of elektrostal'.

• Central Air Force Museum

Save time, save money!

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