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Wipro Technologies, one of India's largest IT solutions providers, restructured its organization in its bid to compete globally with giants like IBM and Accenture. This restructuring aimed to improve customer orientation and operational efficiency, critical to Wipro's ambition of becoming a global technology leader.

The company transitioned from a centralized management system to a decentralized structure, dividing its operations into several self-sufficient subsidiaries focused on specific product lines, such as telecommunications, engineering, and financial services. Each subsidiary operates independently, managing its personnel, accounting, and administrative functions. This decentralization empowered business leaders to take greater responsibility for growth and eliminated an entire layer of executives to streamline operations.

Azim Premji, Wipro's then-chairman, emphasized the importance of this shift, noting that it gave leaders more autonomy and enhanced decision-making at the operational level. This organizational change helped Wipro achieve specialization and allowed better alignment of resources with customer needs.

Despite the advantages of decentralization, including flexibility, faster decision-making, and enhanced accountability, it also posed challenges, such as coordination among subsidiaries and maintaining consistency in strategic objectives. Wipro addressed these challenges by clearly defining roles and responsibilities across its new structure.

What significant organizational change did Wipro make during restructuring?

Solution

✅ Correct Option: 2

Option 1 -> This contradicts effective restructuring principles as launching subsidiaries without leadership would create management gaps rather than improve organizational efficiency.

Option 2 -> Wipro flattened its organizational hierarchy by eliminating a layer of executives, which directly empowered business unit leaders with greater autonomy and faster decision-making capabilities.

Option 3 -> Centralizing decisions would be counterproductive to empowerment; Wipro actually decentralized authority by giving more power to individual leaders.

Option 4 -> While technology adoption may have occurred, the significant organizational change specifically referred to structural and leadership modifications, not technological implementations.


Hence, Option 2: Empowered leaders by removing a layer of executives -> Wipro's restructuring focused on organizational delayering, removing middle management tiers to create a flatter structure that gave business unit leaders direct authority and accountability, enabling faster responses to market demands and customer needs -> correct

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