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Work organisation and employee experiences in the
Indian offshoring industryby Ernesto Noronha and Premilla
D‘CruzIndian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad
Aggregate revenue for the Indian IT-BPO sector is USD 100 billion.
Exports accounted for USD 69 billion India’s share in global sourcing is 58 percent in
2011 India accounts for about 60-70 percent of the
offshore delivery capacities Industry directly employs 2.77 million
professionals (NASSCOM, 2012) Middle class and well-educated
Indian IT-ITES industry
Bodyshopping Mid-1990s offshoring model emerged Offshore development centres Similar models in ITES and KPO (LPO)
Models of work organisation
Software development process moves from concept, through design, implementation, testing, installation, troubleshooting and operation and maintenance
Early phases require sophisticated skills while latter phases are routine and are outsourced
Each phase of development proceeds in strict order, without overlaps or iterative steps (Nath and Hazra, 2002)
Labour process in the software industry
Low-level design, coding and maintenance services (Arora and Asundi, 1999; Arora et al, 2001; Heeks, 1996; Rothboeck et al 2001)
Do not participate in conceptualization and high-level design
Did not develop software products Some argue changes in favour of high-end skills
(Basant and Rani, 2004; Miller, 2000) but others state that a large part of the work is still legacy and maintenance work (Agarwal et al, 2012; Upadhya, 2009)
NIDL (Lakha, 1994)
Nature of work
Obsession with quality certifications such as ISO, CMM and six sigma
Signaling quality to customers because of better documentation of processes (Arora et al, 2001)
Invisible de-skilling - Reduces labour intensity, protection from high attrition breaking the individual employees monopoly and shifts control back to management
Modular programming - Tayloristic in nature - quality is not measured in terms of improvements to end-user but in terms of cost efficiencies (Prasad, 1998)
Use of time sheets, weekly reports on quality, idle time, efficiency, response time, customer feedback
Team based system but individual performance should always be monitored (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)
Labour process in the software industry
Long hours of work – 10-12 hours, sometimes 14 hours Work overnight to meet project deadlines or answer client
calls Tight project estimates Peer pressure and presenteeism (D’Mello and Erickson,
2010) Time slaves –shore up their productivity ratings (Upadhya,
2009) Work-life balance Suicides, diabetes, high blood pressure, divorces, heart
ailments and mental depression (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)
Consequences of work organisation
Techno-bureaucratic models of control
Call centres are described as `electronic sweatshops' (Fernie & Metcalfe, 1998)
‘Assembly lines in the head’ - Factory-like division of labour (Taylor & Bain, 1999)
Batt and Moynihan (2002) - continuum professional service model to mass-production model with the mass-customisation model being a hybrid of the two.
Call centre agents are stated to be mouthpieces who follow scripted dialogues and detailed instructions
Jobs are being characterized as dead-end, low complexity, low control, repetitious and routine (Knights & McCabe, 1998; Taylor & Bain, 1999).
Indian context
Nature of job Performance targets Work intensification - back to back calls Speed work can be continuously measured - AHT Monotony
Electronic monitoring and surveillance Remote monitoring by clients Call by Clients disguised as customers Call barging Call recording
Close supervision Job insecurity Night shifts – Health, Irritability and fatigue and
tiredness (Noronha and D’Cruz, 2009)
The primacy of the customer
Pamper, empathise and apologise to customers Treat them like children or family members Put up with racial abuse Last call had to be as good as the first Perform emotional labour (D’Cruz and Noronha,
2008) Location masking (Mirchandani, 2004) Pseudonyms Language neutralisation Standardisation- use of scripts (Noronha and
D’Cruz, 2009)
LPO- Constructing a client savvy organisation
Back ground check of LPO Familiar with American professional responsibility Employ lawyers trained in the US Contract small amounts of work Contract to multiple suppliers SLAs Communication and co-ordination Employed only lawyers GLP exam Corporate culture Application of Six sigma techniques Data security (Noronha and D’Cruz, 2011)
Trappings of the LPO web
Persisting skill deficits Limited client access Being neither nor there (Noronha and
D’Cruz, 2011)
Role of HCM
The mass-customisation model, encompassed the use of sophisticated human commitment management (HCM) practices
Benefits – reduces stress and pressure (see Clark 2007; Harney and Jordan 2008; Malhotra, Budhwar and Prowse 2007; Schalk and van Rijckevorsel 2007)
.
Workplace ambience
state-of-the-art infrastructure and facilities To and fro pick ups and drops
Recreational facilities Carrom boards Table tennis Gyms Team outings
Many organisations had tie-ups with educational institutions usually fully or partially fund employees
Non-hierarchical structures
It was common practice to one’s superiors by first name
Employees were reprimanded for using prefixes such as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ when interacting with their superiors.
Periodic employee satisfaction surveys and skip-level meetings
Open door policies
Career advancement
Internal job postings (IJPs) Equal employment opportunity (EEO) compliant
organisations Merit and objectivity – performance appraisals
(D’Cruz and Noronha, 2012) Meritocratic organisations where caste did not
matter (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010) Movement from junior level supervisory position
occurred within a year (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2012) Travel abroad (D’Mello and Erickson, 2010)
Cultural Ideological control
Targets values, ideas, beliefs, emotions and identification of employees (Alvesson, 2001).
Increasingly uses Identity regulation Identity is seen as an object of management
control and regulation Induction, training and promotion procedures
are developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of employees identity.
Relationship between technocratic and socio-ideological forms of
control
The relationship between is complex. Not necessarily independent but can map
over one another (Fournier, 1999). Socio-ideological and technocratic forms of
control build upon and feed each other (Alvesson and Karreman, 2004).
Who is a professional?
Desire to satisfy customers Put aside personal problems Concentrated on service Accepted stringent monitoring Accepted shift timings Withstand strains and pressure Was not deterred by another identity Customer and organisational interest (D’Cruz
and Noronha, 2006)
Professional identity
Agents identity is fused with organisation identity
Other forms of control meet with little resistance
Losing a sense of discernment, autonomy and agency (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2006)
Professionalism not all encompassing
Is covert rather than collectivist and unionised Redirect calls Bypass calls Simply hang up on customers Jeer at customers High attrition (Noronha and D’Cruz 2006) Resistance through negotiation (Upadhya, 2009) Lawyers strive for control (Noronha and D’Cruz,
2011)
Low-end work dominates outsourcing Taylorism dominates work organisation Reinforced by socio-ideological controls Controls are not totalising
Conclusion