Personality of a person contains his behavior, attitude, value system; his mentality and his

decision making process. Mr. Murthy’s personality is enclosing all the essentials contents to

become successful. We analyzed his personality according to The Big Five Model and tried to

find out how his personality helped him to become successful in life. We will try to broadly

analyze his personality in five traits as are given by the Big Five model.

.

A brief definition would be that personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of

thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises

from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life. Personality is the figure

overall of ways by which a human being respond and intermingle with others. A person’s

personality is inspired by his surroundings and social environment given by person’s parents,

relatives and friends and by a person’s emotional experiences.

Narayana Murthy’s Infosys technology limited was an IT company established in 1981.

After the liberalization process (1991-92) in Indian economy; I.T. industry developed at an

extraordinary and incomparable growth rate of over 50% till 1998.

Mr. Narayana Murthy

Mr. Murthy was born in Karnataka on 20 August 1946. He has 8 brothers and sister and

he was from an average middle class family

Murthy has completed his B.E. from University of Mysore in 1967 and M. Tech from IIT

Kanpur in 1969. He selected computers and IT as a career prospect and worked in computer

departments of IIM Ahmadabad, SESA in Paris. After getting work experience in European

country he moved back to India in 1974. In India he worked with Patni Computer System in

Pune

In 1981 he with six others decided to start Infosys Tech, Ltd. Mr. Murthy with his hard

work took Infosys in the list of successful IT companies of India. In 1995 Infosys bring its IPO;

in 1996 it started its first office in Europe at Milton Keynes, UK. It was the first Indian company

Nitin Lahoti

to become listed in NASDAQ; it was the milestone in the way of Infosys’s success story. In the

2002 Infosys was selected as the “The India’s Most Respected Company” by The Business

World’s survey. In 2006 Murthy resigned as chairman of Infosys.

ANALYSIS

According to the Big Five model-

Excerpts from a recent interview with Mr Murthy helps us to conclude that he has the

following qualitites

1. EXTRAVERSION – As the name suggests extravert is a person whose energy is

outward, towards people and things. They get their motivation from other people. They are

understandable and accessible and often want to change the world rather than think about it.

All this is true as he always raises his voice for social issues in India such as election,

poverty, unemployment etc. He is also a part of various education institutes of India as

well as of foreign countries.

2. AGREEABLENESS –Murthy is a person who is good natured and cooperative. This can

be concluded since he gave up his career and admission to IIT due to economics

constraints of his family and gave in to his fathers request to instead join a local

engineering college.

3. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS - It is an aspect of what has traditionally been called character.

Narayana Murthy is a person who already set his targets, goals and worked with other in

organized and accurate way to get his destination. He is honest because he handles to

work in a group for a long time without any controversy. Being brought up in a lower

middle class family in a district headquarters in the ’60s was a major factor for him being a

conscientious person. in his own words,”My father used to tell us about the importance of

putting public good before private good; mother would talk about sacrifice and truth.” , this

shows why he has been so succesful and organized.

Page | 2

Nitin Lahoti

4. EMOTIONAL STABILITY – He is emotionally very stable person and do not show

his emotions to others. An example of this quality of his can bee seen when Infosys was

going through a rough patch and in 1990’s there came a time when they were floundering

and had offers to buy their company which his colleagues thought they should consider since

they weren’t making too much headway. In that discussion he could feel the sense of

despondency, So he pulled a fast one. He said, ”guys don’t worry, I’ll buy you out. I know it’s

going to be tough in this country but I have no doubt that we’ll see light.” In minutes, they all

agreed with him and said, “From now onwards we will never discuss the issue of closing down,

getting tired or giving up. This marathon will be restarted.”

5. OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE – Narayana Murthy has always been on lookout

towards new experiences and learnings this can also bee seen from his graduation days

when he was at IIT, Kanpur graduating in Control Theory. At breakfast on a bright Sunday

morning in 1968, he had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-

known US university. His 15 min interaction with him completely changed his outlook. In his own words

“when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the

future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an

unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.”

Attitude of a person’s can be identified by evaluating his performance, job satisfaction and

job involvement. Murthy’s attitude was like he had both job involvement and satisfaction. We

can understand his job involvement that in 1990 five of the founders of Infosys decided to sell

Infosys but Murthy refused and offered them that he will buy Infosys (Life lessons from

Narayana Murthy, 2007). Working in same organization for more than 25 years implies your job

satisfaction.

A person’s Values shape that person’s behavior and attitude. We know that the attitude of

Mr. Murthy was decent so his values should be also high. Narayana Murthy was a hard worker,

honest, socially aware, visionary, loyalty to organization kind of person who believes in his

growth in company’s growth (Murthy, A Better India:A Better World, 2009).

Page | 3

Nitin Lahoti

CONCLUSION:-

After analyzing Narayana Murthy’s personality, values and attitude I came to know that a

person can became successful only if he has good personality, value and attitude. Narayana

Murthy is a person who took risk, did hard work, being patient for results, and cooperative; these

qualities of his personality made him successful.

Page | 4