American liaison offices are going through tough times… In a recent development, 10 senior management staff of the India liaison office of JCPenney situated at Noida, including Regional Head Adil Raza, was asked to leave with some reportedly given just a few minutes to clear their personal belongings. Though the current Country Manager, Mridul Dasgupta who reported to Adil has been retained, industry sources are indicating that an American would takeover as Regional Head under a new strategy to have tighter control of operations in this region.
Though the company is tight lipped about the development… the incident has raised many questions on the creditability of liaison offices and the growing number of Indian heads moving out of American companies. Many believe that Adil was close to the previous CEO at JCPenney, which resulted in the long stint of about 17 years as Country Head. However, with changes at the headquarters in Dallas, the equation changed. Ron Johnson, the new CEO of JCPenney is credited for building the strong retail business for Apple and in his Annual Report Statement for 2011 he clearly indicated ‘change’ along the supply chain from how sourcing would happen to how the stores would sell their products.
Though there are many versions of ‘why’ doing the round, Apparel Online would not like to indulge in speculation. Reasons could be any or many but surely this is an alarm bell for those who fancy to work with multinational companies, and precisely American companies, who do not hesitate to ‘remove’ even top management at short or no notice…
Also Read: Now JCPenney lays off 9 per cent employees at its HQ
