The Boards oversight is through processes for the Board as a whole. Tata Steel has a non Executive Chairman and oversight is also exercised through Board Committees like Audit Committee, Ethics & Compliance Committee, Remuneration Committee, Committee of the Board, and Shareholders Committee & Committee of the Directors. Details of composition and role of these committees has been provided in Section 3.1. There is, however no separate committee of the Board for Sustainability issues. However, MD, DMD (S) & DMD (CS) are responsible to the Board for sustainability performance. Dr. J J Irani, Director, on the Board of Directors of Tata Steel is a Director on GRI Board.

Tata Steel’s leadership system is a visionary leadership force driving the company’s performance excellence effort in all areas related to its products, services and activities. Leadership of Tata Steel is both hierarchical and contextual. (Quality Circle Leaders, Continuous Improvement Project Leaders, Task Force Leaders, Business Excellence Facilitators, JDC Chairmen and Leaders at many management-union forums and several more). The senior leadership team includes Managing Director, DMDs, VPs, EIC/GMs and Chiefs/Heads of the Business Divisions (Figure2.1). Leaders at all levels live by Tata Steel values, fashion the organization’s passion for excellence and stakeholder focus, and cascade that synergy throughout the organization. The Vision of the company and its core values are the integrating bonds ensuring a common message across the organization.

The leadership team establishes, communicates and deploys values, ST/LT direction, and performance expectations through Tata Steel’s Leadership System. Tata Steel’s leadership systems have two dimensions – the “Visionary” dimension and the “Architectural” dimension. The visionary dimension enables people to envision the future, to empower them and to energize them to achieve superior performance. The architectural dimension is an enabler and includes designing and creating structure, processes, policies, systems, strategies, and measures that support and enhance superior performance. These two characteristics are on occasions at conflict with each other, but a good leadership system like Tata Steel’s has to combine and strike a balance. At the heart of our leadership system are Stakeholder expectations. These stakeholders’ requirements drive all leadership actions. The leadership team defines the Mission, Vision, Values, and Group Purpose. The process adopted to set and deploy organizational values, ST/LT directions & performance expectations are given in (Figure 1.3 of Section-1).

The top management shares the vision with all employees of the organization through channels such as dialogues, Union Management meetings and Joint Departmental Councils (JDC) and other forums. The leadership system at Tata Steel is organized in Apex Teams (Quality Councils, Committees on HRD, IT, R&D and others). It is led by the Apex Quality Council and the strategic directions set by it are translated into actionable drivers and cascaded down to the operational levels through the Quality Councils / Quality Sub Councils / Departments. The leadership system is deployed through constant review of organizational performance (Score Cards) and by initiating corrective action and/or setting stretch targets with a focus on achieving business objectives. Management goals and objectives are summarised in MD’s Balance Score Card (Figure-3.7). This is arrived at based on issues discussed in Sections 3.7, 3.11, 3.12, business results and various charters signed by the organization.

The objectives and targets of the organization related to sustainability issues reflect in the top management commitment. The MD’s Balanced Score Card serves as a framework within which the top management commitments are cascaded down to the level of Dy. Managing Director, Vice Presidents, Divisional Heads and Departmental Heads. The Balanced Score Card prepared at each level is implemented by concerned agencies and reviewed under Tata Business Excellence Model by Senior Management. MD’s balance scorecard, which is in line with the strategic goals and objectives of the organization, delineates the targets and measures for strategic objectives.

The leadership system is itself amenable to improvement {(Figure-3.5 (a) & (b)}. This is based on the feedback received from employees (Employee Satisfaction Index), Customer (Customer Satisfaction Index), TBEM assessment, CII-EXIM assessment, PM’s Trophy assessment, etc. The feedback from the 360-degree appraisal process is also used to improve the leadership style.

A key element of Tata Steel’s review mechanism of the implementation systems is an extensive framework of audits, which encompass all three elements of sustainability. These include internal and external financial audits, which are reported to the Audit Committee of the Board, internal and external EMS audits, TBEM assurance, social audits and OHSAS audits (proposed). While the internal and external audit reports are reviewed by the Audit Committee of the Board, the EMS, OHSAS or Social Audit reports are reviewed by the Management Representative and Senior Management.

The key individuals responsible for audit of different aspects of sustainability management systems are

• Internal Financial Audits by Chief Corporate Audit
• Internal TBEM Audit by Group of Trained TBEM Auditors under the guidance of Chief Business Excellence.
• Internal Audit for ISO-14001 EMS by Audit In-charge EMS & Chief, Environment & Occupational Health.
• Internal Audit for OHSAS-18001 by Audit In-charge EHS & Chief, Environment & Occupational Health.
• External Financial Audits by M/s. A F Farguson and Billimoria and Company.
• External EMS Audit ISO-14001 by M/s. IRQS.
• External OHSAS-18001 Audit by M/s. IRQS (Pre-certification completed).
• External TBEM Audit by TQMS
• External Social Audit by a group of experts comprising a retired judge of High Court or Supreme Court, a Social Worker of repute and a Technocrat or representative of large business house.
• External SA-8000 audit by DNV.