15-10-2016, 12:01 PM
INDIVIDUAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO PEOPLE STABILITY IN IT & ITES SECTOR IN POST GLOBALIZED ERA
1459179618-ijrcm1IJRCM1vol52014issue03.pdf (Size: 3.89 MB / Downloads: 22)
ABSTRACT
The study was conducted to explore what the best of IT and ITES organizations in India were doing to ensure people stability in the IT and ITES sectors in India in
the post globalized era. The study followed the grounded theory and the case study methodology wherein the raw qualitative data was chunked under the one
critical antecedent dimension i.e the individual factors. The sampled organizations; Genpact, Infosys and Google were finalized through incidental sampling
within theoretical sampling. The qualitative data was collected through 95 long interviews, participant observation and secondary data .The software, Atlas. ti
was used to content analyze the data . The main findings of the qualitative study showed that creating people stable organizations was an interesting
juxtaposition of individual factors and organizational people practices in the backdrop of overall organizational strategic factors. However in the present study
only individual factors contributing to people stability have been explored and discussed in detail. These are 1) Initiator & Contributor 2) We person 3) Long Term
Perspective 4) Innovative 5) Analytical & Technical Skills 6) Learning Orientation 7) Positive Demeanor. Thus it has been recommended that people stability can
be ensured through enhancing employability and providing seamless growth opportunities, hiring people with Initiator Contributor and We persons profile,
mentoring supervisors, preventing negativity, giving opportunities to solve real problems and last but not the least building a rigorous and vigorous HR
department.
INTRODUCTION
lobalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents
and greatest ideas.”
Jack Welch
The Indian IT & ITES industry has been facing immense volatility since the last 8 to 10 years. The first phase was marked by massive growths and hence
humongous need for talent; and the second phase showing a steep fall in the global demand leading to a lot of existing talent becoming redundant. In the first
phase, the issues of ‘People Stability’ were emanating from a severe shortage of employable manpower and hence the high mobility of the talented people. In
the second phase, the same organizations within India are scanning their flab under sever crunch. The current “Melt Down” is actually the epitome of volatility
and would prove to be the acid test for the organizations’ People Stability.
With the constantly changing mosaic of the Indian industry, particularly that of the IT & ITES Sector after liberalization and Globalization, there is substantial
movement of the talent pool voluntary or involuntary. It is also important to understand the context of IT & ITES sectors as obvious to the business model all the
production that happens in these companies happens due to the people only. The current research aims at finding out the individual factors that can contribute
to stable organizations in today’s post globalized Indian economy.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
The literature has been reviewed for people stability and individual factors.
People Stability has been seen as different from job satisfaction defined by Hoppock (1935) as indicated by all the feelings of an employee; mental, emotional &
physical, in response to a work situation. The concept of job satisfaction, however, has different shades of meaning & and focus. Vroom (1964) defined job
satisfaction as a feeling of ease on a continuum in the context of role & responsibility. Smith et al. (1969), described Job satisfaction as a worker’s emotional
response to various job related factors. Porter & Lawler (1968) added a dimension that satisfaction can be derived from the difference between the actual gain a
worker gets at work & what he should gain from one’s own point of view. Lock (1969) defined job satisfaction as “The pleasurable emotional state resulting from
the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values.” Walker e al. (1977) differentiated the intrinsic & extrinsic factors
leading to job satisfaction.
People Stability is also different from employee commitment. Employee Commitment can then be referred to as a state or as a process of employeeorganization
attachment, the importance of organizational commitment is shown in terms of employees’ willingness to remain with and promote and act in the
interests of the organizations (Meyer Allen, 1997; Postmes et al., 2001; Tourish and Hargie, 2004). Employees emotional attachment to and identification with
the organization and its values (referred to as affective commitment) or on their fear of the costs of leaving (referred to as continuance or calculative
commitment) (Depickere, 1999); (Postmes et al., 2001) or indeed a combination of both (Allen and Meyer, 1990).Considering the above definitions it seems
quite clear that Job Satisfaction is a pre- requisite to organizational commitment. According to Fletcher and Williams, (1996); Yavas and Bidur, (1999) job
satisfaction has a positive correlation with organizational commitment. Employees who are satisfied with their jobs have greater organizational commitment
than those who are not.
Finally people stability is also different from engagement. Engagement as envisaged by Kahn (1990, 1992) an employee is engaged when he is psychologically
present when occupying and performing an organizational role. This psychological presence has been qualified by two critical components: attention &
absorption, or energy, efficacy, vigor, dedication & absorption. (Maschlash, 2001; Rothbard, 2001; Schaufeli et al., 2002). Most of the definitions pertain to
emotional & intellectual commitment to the organization (Baumruk, 2004; Shaw, 2005; Richman, 2006) or they relate to some additional effort beyond call of
duty exhibited by employees in their jobs. (Frank et al. 2004). Saks (2006) provides a very interesting view of where engagement falls in relationship to other
similar constructs like satisfaction, commitment, OCB and intention to quit. According to Saks employee’s engagement is a mediator and exhibits the earlier
discussed constructs. However, in his research engagement only partially explains the consequences. Hence the researcher understood the construct as an
independent one in the ladder of Stability and not as a mediator.
EXTANT LITERATURE FOR INDIVIDUAL FACTORS
Though most of the research available is on working conditions or job characteristics as a major cause for job satisfaction, some researchers propose the role of
personality variables leading to job satisfaction or commitment. Some of the earlier studies on dispositional factors on satisfaction were conducted by Schneider
and Dachler (1978) and Staw and Ross (1985) and concluded that much of the variance in job satisfaction was accounted for by dispositional factors or genetic
factors, Arvey, Bouchard, Segal, and Abraham (1989).
Personality traits such as orientation toward work, degree of ascendancy, and degree and quality of interpersonal orientation (Day & Silverman, 1989); or
agreeableness and conscientiousness (Organ, Lingl, 1995); or overall positive demeanor (Cote & Morgan, 2002; Diener, Nickerson, Lukas & Sandvik, 2002)
have been studied as affecting satisfaction. The big five personality factors have also been studied by researchers and found to be influencing well being or
satisfaction, commitment (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen & Barrick, 1999; Dijkstra, Dierendonck, Evers & De Dreu, 2005; Silva, 2006; Chang & Lee, 2006).
Some researchers have also found demographic characteristics like age, gender also to be influencing satisfaction & commitment. E.g. Okpara (2006) found that
higher the age higher the level of satisfaction exhibited. Similarly, Labatmediene, Endrulaitiene & Gustainiene (2007) also found a significant relationship
among organizational commitment, age, and the level of education.
Certain other personality factors which could be highly relevant or related to initiator & contributor profile like locus of control (Patten , 2005) have been
studied and seen that though there is very little difference between the two groups of external & internal locus of control, if the context had high structure and
external LOC person showed more dissatisfaction. This study brought forth the inter- dependence of individual factors & organizational practices and also
correlated with unique organizational designs within different business organizations.
The above selected research studies show that the behavioral competency initiator contributor can be related to multiple psychological constructs like,
psychological ownership, internal locus of control, pro active, conscientious etc. We person equates with constructs like agreeableness, cooperative. In addition,
there were some other constructs in the literature like positive personality traits & cheerfulness both of which have also come out to be important in the current
research.
The existing literature also shows that some of these individual factors significantly impact individual performance, satisfaction or commitment and even directly
impact the intention to quit. Thus this clearly validates the need to study the critical individual factors as contributors to individual stability.
3. NEED & SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The main reason for undertaking this research was that ‘Organizational People Stability’ is of utmost importance to all organizations, especially those in the
knowledge domain. More importantly, Stability as a concept, akin to the term ‘Culture’ seemed to include anything and everything in an organization. Though it
was a much talked about issue in the Indian business environment, the research in this area was limited to smaller parts like ‘satisfaction, commitment,
retention strategies etc. At this juncture it could not be said whether all of these joined up to enhance stability or there was more to it. Hence, after defining
People Stability, such companies were systematically identified that indicated the same and using Case Study & Grounded Theory methodology, individual
factors contributing to people stability were culled out.
The absence of any previous research on ‘People Stability’ and the individual factors responsible for stability as a comprehensive collection of antecedents
makes this research all the more significant.
4. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The established fact is that there in volatility in the current phase in the Indian IT & ITES sectors. This volatility or turbulence emanates from the globalized Indian
economy where the changes in the global economic environment directly impact the Indian businesses. While this impact is seen far and wide across industry
segments, it is particularly visible in the IT & ITES, because of the sheer business model of more than 70% of revenue coming from exports. As the production in
these segments is done solely and solely by people (and not machinery), the impact is experienced most by the people. The organizations have a choice of
increasing and decreasing the human resource as per the business demand.
Hence, this research would find out the role of individual factors in creating stable organizations and ensure mutual trust between organizations & people.
5. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
To find out the individual factors contributing to people stability and Creating a People Stable Organization in the Context of IT & ITES Sector in the post
Globalized India.
6. RESEARCH DESIGN
The present research is basically exploratory in nature. The method of Grounded Theory & Case Study was chosen due to the nature of topic under study.
People Stability, as a comprehensive construct had not been studied empirically in any existing literature. In this study of Grounded Theory Evolution, a broad
framework was used with no hypothesis to facilitate chunking of raw qualitative data on Individual Factors.Besides the above, qualitative data was also collected
in two more forms, 10 days of ‘participant observation’ and ‘document analysis’.
POPULATION & SAMPLE
Theoretical sampling method was employed. The sample was selected at two levels:
• Organization Sample
• Employee Sample
The organizations had to be in IT and ITES sectors in India, the researcher chose the best known organizations operating in India. Infosys Technologies, Google
India and Genpact.
To understand the individual factors leading to stability, interviews were conducted with an incidental sample of vintage employees within these organizations
i.e. those who had spent more than four years in the same organization. To understand the HR policies & practices an incidental sample from the HR team was
interviewed. Finally to understand the leadership perspective and role to create stability, an incidental sample of the leadership team were interviewed.
PROCEDURE ADOPTED FOR DATA COLLECTION
Participant observation notes and other documents handed over by the HR & Corporate communications department were collected. Individual one hour
interviews were scheduled by HR with vintage employees across locations like Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Bangalore and Jaipur. Data was collected in the
form of digital audio files from interviews, and all the other data was collected again in digital word or PDF files.
TOOLS USED FOR DATA ANALYSIS
The qualitative data was analyzed by using ‘content analysis software’: Atlas.ti. This facilitated in analysis from the constant comparison of events.
Stage one was to use free codes, then these were clubbed together to form categories, and concepts. These concepts were then put together as construct
families. Each construct was accompanied with a groundedness score and a density score. Only the highly grounded ones were included in the theoretical
model.