Leadership Behaviour and Employee Morale: A Study of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) of Shipbuilding Industry

The current study mainly focussed on the Indian shipbuilding industry, proven to have various benefits such as a large coastline along, cheap labour, and Government subsidy for shipbuilding yards. These facts have gone a long way to develop the shipbuilding industry in India. Most prominent shipping yards or shipbuilding yards in India included HSL - Vizag, MDL -Mumbai, CSL - Kochi, GRSE - Kolkota, GSL- Goa from Public sector and L&T - Chennai RNEL- Pipavav, MODEST- Bhavnagar, ALCOCK- Bhavnagar& ABG-Surat were prominent names in the private sector. MSMEs have been the backbone of Indian economy with respect to generation of employment & improving economic growth rate and shipbuilding industry is no exception. Moreover, the literature found that the MSMEs in Indian shipbuilding industry had the potential to generate 2.5 million jobs in core shipbuilding and supporting industry sectors. However, the Indian shipbuilding industry lacked in both cases of performance and productivity. The Indian shipping industry has been controlled and monitored by the Ministry of Shipping. However, it lacked efficiency and performance. Moreover, the under performance of the Indian shipbuilding industry was linked to the problem of leadership style and qualities. Literatures proved that the leadership style and employees morale were very important aspects that modulated any industry let alone shipbuilding industry. Therefore, the research aimed to determine the reasons behind the under-performance of shipbuilding industry with respect to productivity, so as to contribute to the national wealth from the human resources point of view.