Testing Times for Tata Group’s Chairman

Professor Sougata Ray, Senior Advisor, Professor, and Executive Director of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at ISB, was quoted in Bloomberg News in the story titled “Tata Group's Outsider Chairman Faces Litmus Test After Bad Year.”

 Sharing insights on the heightened scrutiny faced by N. Chandrasekaran as he works to steer the Tata Group through a difficult phase, Professor Ray observed that non-family leaders in legacy business groups operate under constant pressure to prove their strategic credibility. He noted that “every Air India setback, tariff hit or cyber glitch risks being interpreted as strategic misjudgment rather than external bad luck,” underscoring how an outsider CEO’s position can intensify expectations and sharpen internal fault lines within long-established business groups.