Sustaining Growth at Saraswaty Press

Abstract

Saraswaty Press is among one of the most significant turnaround stories of West Bengal Public Enterprises. It has consistently made profits for over a decade now, and has embarked upon a path of strong growth and business expansion. It has been growing at over 20% year on year in the last few years. This has brought Saraswaty Press face to face with several challenges from the competitive environment, and placed demands on the organization to revamp and restructure its internal operations and processes to facilitate such growth. The case shows the managerial challenges facing a public sector organization, and how that impacts the design of the organization. It also points out the challenges for design that result from the interplay of quick growth, public ownership of the organization, diverse and complex product portfolio, and complex environment. It is dealing with perceived inequities in work load across the organization, loss of credibility of performance assessment systems, retirement of the entire top management, institutionalization of informal culture that has made the organization flexible in spite of being a public enterprise bureaucracy, and working with outsourcing vendors.