Case (Study) for Heroism

Why did employees at the Taj hotel choose to stay back during the terror attack, a Harvard study explores

A new Harvard Business School case study, ‘Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership’, delves into the reasons why the hotel’s employees chose to stay and assist customers over their own personal safety. The study seeks to understand whether the conditions that spawned a workforce with a deep sense of responsibility can be replicated. The primary author of the case study says that senior management could not explain their employees’ behaviour, but Karambir Singh Kang, the hotel’s general manager, told the author that it was about “a sense of loyalty to the hotel, a sense of responsibility to the guests”. When students of HBS were asked why they thought the hotel’s staff stuck to their posts, they pointed to the parent group’s charitable nature.