Human Resource Management – Case – PROMOTING THE PROTÉGÉ 

 

Case 1: PROMOTING THE PROTÉGÉ 

The die was cast.  Prem Nath Divan, executive chairman of Vertigo, the country’s largest engineering project organization, decided to switch tracks for a career in academics.  Divan was still six years short of the company’s retirement age of 65.  His premature exit was bound to create a flutter at the Vertigo board.  Having joined Vertigo as a management trainee soon after college, he had gradually risen through the hierarchy to take a board position as the marketing director of the firm at 32.  He had become the president five years later and the youngest chairman of the company at 45.  But, by the time he was 50, the whizkid had acquired a larger than life image of a role model for younger managers and a statesman who symbolized the best and brightest face of Indian management.

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