Who Am I? An Ethnographic Study Exploring the Construction of Organizational and Individual Self among Indian IT Employees

Abstract

The self is both a sociological and a psychological construct. It is investigated in this paper from the perspectives of sociology of work, critical management studies and employment relations. Accordingly, drawing upon ethnographic research, this article seeks to unravel how an employee defines herself or himself in two realms—the organizational and the personal—respectively against the background of changing Indian IT industry marked by uncertainty and rising job insecurity. It examines how these two realms converge to bring about an individual’s sense of ‘dasein’ or being. The self is entwined in the value chain of the Indian IT labour process and, within it, soft HRM discursive practices seek to constitute and mould the ‘disciplined confessional self’ who is supposed to be not only autonomous but a proactive and proactive team player. This article identifies the sources from which the self finds definitions and validation in the liquid modern context of the ‘gig economy’. It seeks to reflect upon the ramifications arising out of the interplay between Western and Indian managerial repertoires and, finally, the interplay of caste and class against changing Indian societal norms and expectations. In doing so, it looks at the micro and macro means through which the self seeks to obviate its incoherence and find resonance and fullness. Given the volatile political economy of the Indian IT industry labour process, much of the work is repetitive and fragmented, and individuals feel alienated and burnt out after the initial excitement of experiencing the Sapient or Cisco way of life. They adopt various coping mechanisms reminiscent of Burawoy’s (1985) respondents to fight job insecurity and to secure their peer group’s acceptance. Thus, the onus of negotiating inherent dualities for finding meaning in the organizational realm, and yet leaving room for a transcendental individual coherent self whose larger ‘internal conversation’ transcends the existential concern of the structured antagonism of the wage–employment relationship, lies upon the individual rather than the organization.

Keywords

Identity culture power political economy labour process self alienation and meaning

Introduction

This ethnographic research draws upon in-depth interviews of 43 IT professionals, spanning over eighteen months, in Bangalore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Vijayawada. The amalgamation of Western, particularly American, managerial templates with soft HRM practices operate in the context of automation threats and job insecurity in the Indian IT industry. These emergent managerial repertories operate along with Indian managerial mind set characterised by obsequiousness, paternalism and hierarchal deference. Cumulatively, this nebulous interplay of managerial templates results in insecurity, alienation, fragmentation and anxiety in the conception of the individual self among many Indian IT employees. The findings of the study indicate that material and symbolically significant social milestones are important constitutents in the process of identity construction of an IT worker rather than pursuance of meaningful accomplishments and wholeness.

At the organizational level, the efficacy of Western management ethos in a quasi-collectivistic and hierarchical society (see Dumont, 1980) like in India has been debated in the literature, with Indians’ ability to exercise ‘dualistic social values’ (Sinha, 2000). American and European managerial repertories that encompass organizational definitions of individualised professionalism are integrated with the localised language games of MNCs in the fieldwork sites. An instance of this, wherein the unified intermingling meaning of global and local organizational culture is projected outwards is our observation of a female IT professional working on her laptop in Starbucks Bangalore, communicating virtually with her team lead in 8th avenue New York and sporting a black T-shirt that prominenty announced, ‘I am Cisco’ (Starbucks, 9 June 2018).

Our data demonstrates that these dual visualizations of the individual, so far dichotomous and reasonably continuous, get significantly muddled while operating within the hybridized managerial templates within and across the organizational structures in subsidiary countries such as India attesting to Elger and Smiths’ (2006) findings. These managerial repertoires are likely to impact employment relations varyingly, the experience of work and the ways through which employees construct identities of themselves in the context of the political economy of the Indian IT labour process¹ with much of the Indian IT industry cantering around fulfilling the outsourced services requirements of the West. As the locus and outcome of these claims is the knowledge worker, it becomes imperative to explore how the worker constitutes the definition of herself or himself and fortifies her/his long-term purpose and thereby her/his identity. Although prevalent literature has explored the subjectivity of an Indian IT employee (Nadeem, 2009a; Nadeem, 2009b; Upadhya, 2016; Upadhya & Vasavi, 2008), the critical analysis of the reflexive self, within the Indian IT landscape, remains an unexplored arena.

Given the transnational and Indian organizational and societal context, a central claim of this paper is that in India, evolving and changing organizational repertories in conjunction with visible and invisible cultural changes, have cumulatively moulded an Indian IT employees’ identity in an idiosyncratic manner. A majority of the respondents are trying to find a self-defining, independent, self-sustaining identity that is larger, independent and probably even at odds with organizational norms and societal class and caste expectations.

There are three parts to this article. The first section comprises a literature review and the related questions the research raises. It is followed by the second section, which is on the methodology adopted for research. The third section states the findings from field, elaborating upon various sources, antecedents and mechanisms of identity construction among IT employees within the broader landscape of Indian IT industry and links them to the research questions. The concluding section discusses the data and the findings, and provides a summary.

Literature Review

The paper addresses the following research questions (RQs) and structures the literature review around these RQs.

RQ1: Whether the IT industry in India has facilitated and helped in chiselling a holistic identity or has instead resulted in its dissonance?

Self and Identity: Evolving Perspectives and the Changing Context

An individual’s identity is constituted through an incessant dynamic ‘internal conversation’ that is undergirded by past images, feelings and memories, connecting one’s past and projected future. These kaleidoscope of impressions and roles cumulatively etch an individual’s identity (see Archer, 2003, p. 5). People reflect upon themselves through multiple lenses and across time. Their sense of ‘self’ is constituted by multiple facets of ‘me’, each one of which can be considered as structuring ‘self-concepts’ (Rae, 2010). Some self-concepts provide effective self-regulation while others leave individuals vulnerable to premature goal disengagement and low self-worth (Rae, 2010). As multiple self-concepts are available in individual memory, accessibility and hence the use of a specific structure to define the self in a specific context is contingent upon the individual’s propensity to recall these memory structures and situational cues (Leary & Tangeny, 2012).

Individuals require a clear sense of ‘who they are’ in their organizational environment. Therefore, contextual identity enactments are suitablty crafted and negotiated by individuals. An individual’s identity is fortified by the social approval of her/his enactments and narratives (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016), which are ‘dramaturgically’ (Goffman, 1983) moulded to constitute the self within the interaction order she or he operates. Identity is therefore unstable, indexical, fragmented, contested, emergent and organizationally conditioned by the ‘strategic exchange process’ (see Watson, 1994).

The morphongenetic self of the Indian IT employee is a bricolage of the autonomous individual and the organizational citizen. This amalgamative self is encouraged and nurtured by HRM practices in Indian IT industry and yet is under constant threat in the context of transient employment relations characterized by heightened insecurity and vulnerability. Globally, traditional anchors of meaning that drew sustenance from relatively stable jobs, consistent and intimate relations and familiar neighbourhoods have corroded. Rapid technological advancements and globalization render choices available to human beings ‘to be’ limitless in this world. However, such material and life choices and the burden of deciding on them make us anxious, insecure and unsure in the contemporary liquid modern times (Bauman, 2000). This constant fluctuating momentum in either employment or personal relationships has triggered an identity crisis where the search for alternative forms of attachment and belonging in a hyperreal world is exacerbated (Collinson, 2003; Sennett, 1998). India is no exception to these developments.

RQ2: How do HRM practices exercise insidious capillary power and veiled communication to mould both individual subjectivity and identity from a CMS lens?

The critical management studies (CMS) framework provides the means through which the darker aspects of organizational life might be revealed and questioned by focusing upon social and cultural roots of individual sufferings and explicating how life choices are subtly foreclosed and premediated by organizational power dynamics and self-sustenance (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008). Accordingly, CMS consider identity as an epicentre of organizational processes and outcomes, and examine it through the ‘forms and the dynamic interconnections between (a) identity regulation at work; (b) resistant and resisting identities; and (c) the crafting of identities in contexts of power/knowledge’ (Thomas, 2009, 167).

The question ‘who am I?’ or ‘who are we?’ calls for a response for some dominant or defining organizationally defined individual identity that is imbibed within the panopticon of contemporary soft HRM practices, leading to the one’s wilful subordination and willing rationalization.

As Shenhav (2002) in his classic scholarship on sociology of managerial knowledge comments:

Individuals in organizational systems are not left to their faculties and devices nor do they search for the best means to attain a certain end. Everybody’s rationality is bounded and prescribed in the abstract blue print of systems.

In the work context, the answer may be found formally in professional or occupational affiliations and organizational positions. Informally, the subjective attributes of specific organizational value(s) added by an employee may become an important signifier to her/his identity (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Jackall, 1988).

Concomitantly, within contemporary organizations, the fundamental tenant of HRM practices is to provide the panoptic means by which the individual and her/his activities become knowable and governable. These practices do not reflect reality; they actively order and create it (Foucault, 2012, p. 8). The interior of an organization is ‘disciplined by organizing time, space and movement and by categorizing and measuring tasks, behaviour and interactions’ (Townley, 1994). These disciplinary technologies work to chisel an individual’s notion of self in alignment with the organization’s values and goals in such a manner that an individual engages in self-disciplining herself/himself, thus participating in her or his subjugation, eliding the possibility for resistance on the process (Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992). Institutionalized patterns of knowing and being are reflexively ordered narratives that are shaped social interactions (see Thomas, 2009). Unsurprisingly, the linguistic turn in HRM becomes important because HRM is all about the management and alignment of organizational meaning with an individual’s identity.

Organizations are as much about structures as they are about discourses (Keenoy, Oswick & Grant, 1997) with either aspect taking precedence over the other depending upon the situational, organizational context. Organizational discourses seduce employees in calibrating their sense of self with the restricted catalogue of corporate-approved identities (Alvesson et al., 2008; Reed, 1998), which employees may either embrace or resist wholly or partly. In the quest for professional success, such predefined identities and feedback may be helpful, even reassuring to an IT employee. However, in doing so, the corporate regulation of the self may also be visualized as an invisible identity cage that the individual inhabits (see Bergstorm et al., 2009; Karreman and Alvesson, 2004; Knights & McCabe, 2003).

The new economy and the emancipated worker are salient narratives of changing work–employment relations (Nolan, 2004). To consultants and management gurus, they present new opportunities for job enrichment and selffulfilment. In reality, new concepts of flexibility, flexi-time, teamwork and altering working conditions reinforce new forms of oppression (Sennet, 1998). Being valued in the eyes of other men and being professionally successful are key components critical to one’s masculinity (Craib, 1998). Janssens and Steyaert (1999) talk about emerging identity dualities as a consequence to new forms of employment. In today’s liquid modern world, organizations are ‘semi-autonomous horizontally interlinked and mutually dependent value chains’. Formal matrix organizational designs coexist with implied but dynamic fealty and loyalty structures (Jackall, 1988).

Consequently, organizations can be visualized as networked structures in which relational interactional processes are in a flux. Organizationally crafted identities that spill out of the workplace as the ‘Sapient way of life’ as a way of organizing one’s whole existence. Within such processes, paternalistic Indian relationships coexist with closed personal bonds forged out of prolonged teamwork. Coincidentally, personal dualities include emotional antimonies comprising of trust–mistrust, autonomous–relational, dependence–independence (at a personal level) in an environment where relationships are characterised by their superficiality and temporal nature within and across teams and cultures. As boundaries of the self as a unity have become blurred and the pulls of family and work have to be balanced, individual personal dualities require to be managed in such a manner that one engages in multiple relationships without losing sense of individual autonomy. These relationships can coexist or change from being emotionally interdependent reservoirs of individual identity to a detached contractual impersonal employment relationship that draws on a certain facets of an individual’s emotional and mental labour. Such individual dualities both within and outside the workplace are not watertight by any means and are jumbled into each other.

The unpredictable globalized gig-economy workplace offers employees little by way of an anchored narrative. Escape strategies, such as ‘mall therapy’, used by employees could provide temporary respite but they also entangle further the individual in a vicious cycle of consumption in an interactional environment of anomie (Durkheim, 2018). Consequently, employees become insecure and develop inconsonant identities. Their incoherent sense of self encounters bouts of profound moral predicament (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Developing countries like India, which are an integral service-providing part in the political economy of the IT service and IT product value chain, are no exception to this identity dissonance.

The individual is construed as a transferable and saleable commodity who must be marketable and monetizable, and therefore any organizational emotional language game must endeavour to percolate linguistically and symbolically into an employee’s subconscious mind for immediate or long-term organizational gain (Alvesson et al., 2008). These emotioally laden situational, organizational moments and encounters create self-doubt in the individual whose mind is wrapped in their manufactured reality transporting them to a surreal world of the IT industry filled with its ever-transient challenges and complexities. The individual experience of liquid modern organizational reality is characterized by specific events and emergent transitions caused at the workplace. These developments could result in emotional stress and strain and accordingly recalibrate and reconstruct an employee’s envisaged identity (Brown, 2015).

RQ3: What is the cumulative impact of Indian and Western managerial repertoires in broadly shaping organizational culture and thereby impacting individual identity and agency? How do they cope with the presence or lack of agency and job enrichment in their work?

The Indian Mind Set and the Western Management Practices: Implications on Individual Identity

India lags behind several countries in both basic and cutting-edge research in many areas despite having a large pool of well-qualified and talented technicians, scientists and professionals. The cyclical fatalism of India (Balagangadhara, Bloch, & Roover, 2008) idiosyncratically intermingles with the linear Judaic percolation of target-driven impersonal managerialism. In the US, people are more likely to have an internal control deportment, taking individual accountability for their goals rather than blaming any significant other. Indian companies’ relatively immediate strategic orientation may partially be attributed to cultural traits and societal reinforcements, which may limit prioritizing individual entrepreneurship and innovation (Malkar, 2018).

The worldview of the current generation is shifting to ‘here and now’ approach with a focus on individual self-interest and advancement (Chatterjee, 1995). In India, there has been a marked shift of career choices from the previous genrartions’ preference for prestigious public sector jobs to corporate professions in the provate sector. This transformation in shifting career choices may be attributed to (a) the perceived monetary and status gap between the remuneration of public and private sector professions (Lawler, Mohrman & Ledford, 1995), and (b) the changing aspirations of the so-called ‘great Indian middle class’ dovetailed with rising conspicuous consumption (Fernandes, 2000, 2009).

Understanding differences in values and value dimensions are important for an effective cross-cultural management (Heuer, 2006, p. 30), both for the organization and the impact it has on the self. Value dimensions such as individualism relate to a variety of constructs such as security and self-actualization needs and are crucial in explaining the differences in cross-cultural management (Chandra & Neelankavil, 2006). Gopalan & Rivera (1997) contend that Indian managers are socialized by their culture and tend to develop beliefs, values, behaviours and practices which are compatible with their culture. There is the emphasis on the high degree of collective dependence and power distance in India, and hence Indian employees respond favourably to tighter control and supervision (Sinha, 1984).

Bosses are expected to demonstrate ‘powerful and authoritative personalities and clear and direct orders are preferred’ (Tan & Khoo, 2002). ‘Lack of clear descriptions and expectations, fluid time frames or ambiguity in job objectives negatively affect the work behaviour of an Indian employee’ (Sinha & Kanungo, 1997). Indian workers greatly value good relationships between superiors and subordinates and subordinates show deference towards the superiors, expecting protection, concern and support from their superiors in return (Sinha & Kanungo, 1997). Interestingly the ‘democratic management styles’ adopted by Western managers and their architypes of charismatic leadership are considered to be a sign of managerial weakness and incompetence’ (Gopalan & Rivera, 1997).

Corporate initiatives, which are created at the headquarters in the USA and promoted worldwide and whose end is the individual sovereign employee, get reinterpreted and localized. Nevertheless, these managerial policies find denouement in a muddled manner despite exposure to Western milestone driven management. Individual identity in the Indian context cannot be neatly dichotomized into neat dual organizational and individual boundaries. Correspondingly, the Indian IT employee’s identity is itinerant, emergent and is in a dynamic flux. The individual’s self-perception is an incessant journey in which her/his internal conversation is rooted in her/his contextual, cultural habitus. There are multiple overlapping individual aspirations and motives for an IT employee in operation that are concurrently different and distinct but are nonetheless mutually interdependent.

Indian IT employees continually want to attest to themselves having arrived and being upwardly mobile. However, they episodically suffer from bouts of burn out and alienation. These resultant unsettling bouts of anxiety lead to distinctive individual and collective coping mechanisms. The latter are manifestations of silent and passive resistance measures of ‘empty labour’ (Paulsen, 2015, p. 174), ‘displacement strategies’, ‘making out’ and ‘game playing’ akin to that of Burawoy’s (1985) respondents.

Methodology

Ethnographic fieldwork comprising of multiple extensive open-ended informal phenomenological interviews with 43 respondents from July 2017 to December 2018 is the source of all data (see Appendix 1). The interviews were inspired by extended case study method (Burawoy, 1998) and were held in NCR, Gurgaon and Bangalore. Later four more interviews were held in Hyderabad and one in Vijayawada. The sites were selected in order to explore the anomalies, if any, in the employee experience of work across different geographical and cultural contexts, yet within the Indian IT domain. The respondents came from four product-based (three MNCs and one Indian) seven service-based (two MNCs and five Indian) organizations, four start-ups (all Indian). There also was one veteran IT consultant on an assignment in Vijayawada.

Fieldwork was carried out through snowball sampling and personal and employee networks. The interactions were inductive and hermeneutic. The objective was to have a dialogue and understand employees’ sense-making within their dynamic and transitional social and work milieu. The names of the respondents and companies are annonymsed in acccordance with the BSA ethical guidelines. The transcripts and field notes were coded manually drawing upon deep recollection, bracketing and grounded theory.

Empirical Data Addressing the Three Respective Research Questions

With the literature reviewed and methodology explained above serving as our intellectual foundation, we thereupon present our research findings here.

Individual Career Trajectories and Identity Narratives

IT Industry has facilitated an upward social mobility for numerous graduates in India in a relatively short period even if it meant going against one’s educational inclination. Following are some excerpts.

Ankur (Delhi, 18th December 2017) from Jabalpur:

I always had interest in Mathematics. I wanted to study M.Sc. mathematics, but my parents did not allow me to pursue that. I wanted a mathematics related job.

Amit (Bangalore, 5th May 2018) from Kanpur:

I wanted to be a civil engineer. My father wanted me to become a computer engineer. My inclination was a post-graduation in statistics. My father was very clear that he neither will pay my fees nor could I pursue that MSc.

The robust growth of Indian companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys has created a transnational client base located in the USA and Europe whose basis was the labour arbitrage paradigm. The boom years, especially during the Y2K phase, offered high compensation and the promise of offshore/onsite assignments in various places. The recent tapering down of H1B visas and IT expenditure restructuring by overseas clients are causing MNCs and Indian companies to recalibrate their offshoring strategy and thereby dimming down the halo around an IT job. Nonetheless, an IT job provides an identity that young people can relate to monetarily. It also provides some measure of notional as well as real liberation from the perceived physical and mental arduousness of traditional manufacturing employment.

Neha (Delhi, 29th January 2018), an entry-level test analyst in an MNC premised her career choice on these considerations:

I thought of becoming an aeronautical engineer in class six but eventually found out that it was an unviable pathway. My relative was an engineer. I could see him get respect, money. When I opened my eyes, I realised that jobs are hard to come by. My elder sister…said that work–life balance is good…and I followed in her footsteps.

Normatively inconsistent social identity sources accentuate the individual social validation to pay, conspicuous consumption and immediate gratification.

Amit (Bangalore, 5rd May 2018), an IIT graduate working with Dell, confirms:

The criteria of work include having a cafeteria, a well-equipped campus with all amenities, a metro city… I decided from the salary that this is a good company. If the offer is 20–25 lakhs, then it will be the best company of all to pursue further, although nobody would have heard about that company before.

The degree of autonomy one feels entitled to exercise in making choices including one’s career is contingent to her or his economic status and educational background. Respondents who rated themselves lower, either on educational background or economic class, tended to be more forthcoming in their acceptance of organizationlly crafted discursive practices and sought congruence of their aspirations within these discourses and trending peer preferences.

Vishesh (Delhi, 5th August 2017), team lead in one of the top product companies, takes pride in the corporate ‘differentiator’ discourse, which employees are expected to possess and exhibit:

…SAP employees have deep knowledge of their area… If you talk to an SAP employee regarding his area then he will have a detailed knowledge of his product; there are people in the market who do everything, but they do not have deep knowledge of anything.

However, corporate identity scripts offered by Indian IT companies and co-opted by the employees are a means to counter the embedded boredom and invisibility of the impact of the work.

Rajesh (Bangalore, 3rd January 2018), HR Head of Hexagon Software, Bangalore, explains:

As many IT companies are primarily engaged in grooming engineers to become backend process management clerks to replace their more expensive counterparts in America, the cetification of organizational and employee competence depended upon valuation by the client.

Suhasini (Bangalore, 11^th May 2018), manager with one of the top investment banks says:

I suddenly found myself on the bench for seven long months. When the client comes, they speciously deploy people on the bench to inflate numbers and bill him. We are to be comfortably numb, and herein I saw the culture of grooming sheep.

Workspaces mirroring their counterparts in the US created psychological benchmarks for Indian IT employees who identified working in the former as a stepping stone in their aspirational modernity journey.

Mohini (Bangalore; 5th January 2018) disillusioned by the twelve years of ‘monotonous and unfulfilling’ work eventually exited the lucrative IT sector to follow her calling in the development sector. She recalls her impression of the first day in the job:

Wipro had resplendent cubicles; a multicuisine cafeteria that made it so addictive. I thought this was the world I wanted to be in and never go home. The aspiration was to get into the job and have a great lifestyle. Initially, it was wonderful to work with the client. In hindsight, it is fascinating to see how I was getting married to my work.

A mid-career IT employee, Devas’s (Bangalore, 3rd May 2018) jubilation highlights the significance of financial independence an IT job has been instrumental in providing to many others like him:

When I received my first salary, I withdrew much of it from the ATM …I had not seen such an amount in my life so far.

Shipra (Bangalore, 10th May 2018) lost her father when she was a child, battled financial crisis to get education and somehow managed to get a job in a start-up with a paltry starting salary of INR 3000. After just three years of IT experience, she now heads the testing function in the same company with four subordinates and draws a considerable salary of INR 60,000 a month. The economic freedom and liberation accorded means a lot to Shipra. She regularly scans for cues from significant superiors in her organization to decipher their expectations. Her act of feeding the poor as expression of gratitude towards God was a way of paying back for favours received.

I spent some of my first salary on feeding poor people in a local temple and thanked God for my job and my current social status.

Mr Patel (Bangalore, 2^nd January 2018), a senior manager in AT&T, says:

Ninety-five per cent of people would have some inspiration, which they are unable to actualize. Most of the people who wanted to do different things continue to be confined to excel sheets and doing similar work for eight hours continuously, repeatedly every day, all month and every year.

Kartik (Bangalore, 7^th May 2018) with vast IT experience and now heading his geriatric healthcare organization, asserts:

Initially it is challenging to get accustomed to the IT work environment. After few years into the grind, pursuing alternate careers becomes non-viable due to financial implications often burdened with educational loans to be repaid, soaring family expectations and social compulsions that are extrinsic yet closely connected to the job role.

He adds:

Accumulating experience, being both relevant and current in the market and adopting a ‘spiralist’ career path are key prerequisites to an individual’s growth. Organizations in the past have leveraged on their high margins to recruit a ‘ready to go’ trained workforce from other organizations by offering higher compensation ruffling the market and thereby nurturing transactional employment relations.

Premanand (Hyderabad, 24^th May 2018) a psychiatrist counselling burnt out Indian employees opines:

As a culture, Indians appreciate value of money. With an increment in the salary, an entry level IT employee’s aspiration progresses from a small car to a sedan and then eventually for some land in a village and a flat in a metro. The purpose of accumulation of assets is not always its utility; rather the subliminal desire is rooted in the resource starved condition of the earlier generation. In absence of real anchors of meaning, such tangible goals and achievements are rationalized and become a proxy for achievement.

The years of employment and associated compensation are directly proportional to the benchmarks of success calibrated to money and material possessions. Key benchmarks are a progression from a small car to a sedan, number of flats booked, family vacations abroad, the school to which the children go, etc. Patel (Bangalore, 2^nd January 2018) reminisces:

When I moved to Bangalore, I booked a flat in Pune so that I can go and work there in future… I booked a flat in Bangalore as well. That was the time I felt a sense of achievement that after starting for a scratch… Seeing me drive a luxury car makes my wife and child happy and makes me feel actualized. Women have expectations from their husbands, you see?

Devas (Bangalore, 3^rd May 2018), a senior analyst in a top MNC, is from financially weaker family background. He moved to an international assignment in Kuwait, primarily to bridge the gap between his current financial status and his aspirations. Experiencing income disparity compelled him to be upward mobile and hence conditioned his future goals:

I am single right now, but in two months, I am getting married. I want a better lifestyle as I come from a lower middle-class background; just a better life quality. e.g., we live in a better apartment, buying an LCD TV, buying a car (I have not bought a car but a bike as of now). We are getting there.

The West has induced managerialism in all walks of life. Social status and interpersonal relationships are now measurable, comparable both in terms of emotional deliverables and symbolic expectations and are attributed value to by individuals.

The culture of key performance indicator (KPI) and deliverables has ‘triggered a rat race where one is competing in all walks of life’, says Mahender (Hyderabad, 23rd May 2018), an HR professional with IT sector, since 2004. He adds:

They would say I want to be a module lead and program manager; it is not about getting promotions; it is about how fast you get it. It is the speed of the rise and the allure and nomenclature of the designations that matters. Success is all about speed.

Not meeting the KPI benchmark brings emotional distress and the feeling of worthlessness. Srikant (Vijayawada, 25^th May 2018) feels that the preoccupation of employees with the company is typical of Indian IT managers:

[M]]anager, senior manager, group manager… to retain people…. In the US, they don’t care about titles…it is more of a free market capitalistic society…. People here will feel and behave with you very differently if they knew that you say you are a group project manager…rather than just saying, ‘I am in software’.

Employee Subjectivity and its Management

Our respondents felt that nobody can predict when an employee lay-off could be coming, either due to global headwinds or abruptly being found as organizationally irrelevant. Accommodation is limited to a few at the top of the pyramid:

Employees are obligatorily upgrading themselves to shield themselves from market vagaries through mandatory soft- and technical training, either on their accord or through organizational training, which is most likely a reactive quotidian corporate afterthought. Upgradation is critical to quell the anxiety of job insecurity and redundancy (Mohini, Bangalore, 5th January 2018).

Mayank (Gurgaon, 18th December 2017), a mid-career IT professional working with a multinational IT consultancy firm as a manager, opines:

I am at the middle management stage; I have to study and have to upgrade my coding knowledge. I usually study till 2 a.m. I am all but bald, and I have shooting pain in my knees, and I now feel very tired and lonely. I wonder how many more days this will continue. Wouldn’t I break down before that? For you to touch the zenith, you have to move at a very high pace. Inevitably, you then pay the price of getting burnt out.

Respondents report that emotional estrangement and alienation are a gradual surreptitious manifestation. They become overwhelming at a mid-career stage when one occupies an integrative role in the Indian IT software ecosystem because they stem from a sense of cognitive powerlessness and a denial of individual agency. Raghav (Delhi, 24^th December 2017), a manager in TCS with about fifteen years of experience, presently on an offshore assignment in Ohio, USA, expresses his helplessness:

…we are so distracted by what is happening around; I am not aware, like a horse with blinkers. I have realised this. Lately, there is nothing in life, except work. You don’t exercise, you don’t walk, and then you get all kinds of acute muscular and neck pain. I have a problem with my knees.

Despite the detrimental effect of work on health and mental well-being and desire to get out of the rut, one feels entrapped in the grind with the underlying anxiety of not being able to sustain the newly acquired lifestyle, which implies exclusion from the new distinct emergent class of the happening ‘neo bourgeoisie. Kartik (7^th May 2018 Bangalore), a veteran analyst from the IT Industry does not envisage any economic utility in an IT professional breaking this vicious cycle of self-entrapment.

Kartik illustrates this underlying reluctance of an IT employee:

My life is f*** up because I have EMI on my house… on my car…. My daughter goes to a school where I am paying 2 Lakh for fees. So, I am stuck with my job. All you know I come from the lower middle class, now living the big life. I plan holidays abroad and can afford to go and watch an IPL match paying ₹10000 for ticket. Why will I compromise on my lifestyle?

Mohini (Bangalore, 5^th January 2018) feels that

The Indian IT industry is unforgiving and misogynistic. Indian managers send emails at 2:00 AM and call women team members after office hours despite knowing well she would be busy with infant care. They take decisions, sugar coat it, and make it appear to be an outcome of consensus rather than an imposed decision.

Indian IT Industry Alienation and Burnout

The economic logic of growth of the Indian IT Industry centres around supplanting American workers to undertake task-based, process-oriented low value IT work, which could be broken down into separate modules. They could then be independently accomplished and integrated by less expensive workers within and across different geographies, which little motivates the employees who work on isolated modules oblivious of the relevance of their work. This leads to alienation and lack of fulfilment. Therefore, employees seek various means to escape burnout and grab more resilient identity anchors outside their workplace. In the process, as discussed here, they endeavour to resist work intensification and alienation passively. Suhasini (Bangalore, 11th May 2018) says:

Indian companies competed with one another by leveraging upon the appetite of Indian middle class to bag an IT job and making them put in long hours and stretching work to inhumanly long hours.

She continues:

…You had all your big -captives…dumping things…,which they didn’t want to do……like maintenance, windows updates…….onto Indian companies who would pick it then run people through the mill working for 12 hours…….you work in shifts that is your life…

Shyam (Bangalore, 10th May 2018), head of a fashion related IT start-up, claims:

Organizations are unremitting on cutting cost wherein a project warranting ten people is executed with seven people, claims.

Surender (Gurgaon, 5th August 2017), director of Indian software company—a mid-sized company—highlights the long working hours and the expectations of the client from an Indian techie:

What is happiness after working for 18 hours when we are mentally and physically dead? My work starts at 3 p.m. I have to be in front of the system. I can barely get 5–6 hours of sleep: even then if a call comes, you have to take it. I can’t tell you how stressful it is. Have to be ready for it even while bathing.

There is little time even for biological sustenance activities such as sex for an IT couple in India, whose shifts are rarely aligned. And we techies have to keep our phones always on; even during these times because a call from the client can come anytime. This logic does not apply to our overseas client when we try to call them on a weekend. This usually gets us into trouble (Kamal, Bangalore 4th May 2018).

Stressful long working hours hamper work–life balance and obscure the boundaries between work and personal lives. The work–life balance entitlement relevant for the advanced countries of Europe goes for a toss in subaltern India (Surender, Delhi 25th December 2018).

Many respondents displayed an excessive neurotic orientation to eschew their daily routines. Their carving of an alternative identity narrative seemed to reflect their passive resistance to their organizational labour process. They simultaneously seek compliance with and difference from Indian societal norms.

Premanand (Hyderabad, 24th May 2018), a senior psychiatrist dealing with IT professionals and organizations, explains:

The craze to pursue hobbies among ‘Indian techies’ are not to pursue individual interests but rather to ape others to solicit inclusion and companionship, and combat exclusion. To come out of this (vulnerability)…they match their habits to those of others…. These people become ‘entrapped’ into ‘false companionships’. Belatedly, they recognize their loneliness. It manifests into different kinds of hobbies; some will go to a gym, some for cycling, some for running, and so on. There is no converging strategy. Emotional disconnect has worsened after Facebook, cheaper mobile packages. No conversations are happening now….

An organization cannot chisel an individual’s identity nor can it actualize her or his creative abilities other than providing a conducive work environment. It must provide a mutually beneficial clear and integrated pathway of individual learning and development rather than just following market requirements piecemeal. Some individuals have sought sustainable self-definitions beyond their workplace and career calculus by seeking self-validation through realms beyond their immediate professional vocation.

Mohini, who rose to the level of a senior technology engineer despite overwhelming odds, has seen it all. She is now working in the developmental sector where she genuinely feels happy and is not preoccupied with stressful thoughts while retiring to sleep. She and her techie husband plan to flee Bangalore and yet not be far from it; emulating her friends by practising a sustainable organic lifestyle. These actions helped her pursue acceptance from her peers and thereby find meaning for her existence.

Concluding Discussion

Western repertories of management in leading large- and midsized MNC’s such as Capgemini or Dell and Indian IT firms such as Wipro, Infosys or Hexagon Software may appear superficially Western. However, in reality they are hybrids whose organizational cultures are an outcome of the contextual geographical cultural values arising out of the caste and class of their employees. The organizational culture of the IT firm Cognizant, USA, is quite different from that of Cognizant India. The templates emulated in Indian IT industry propagate an individualistic ‘self-centric sovereignty’ that coexist with the paternalistic and hierarchical behavioural disposition of Indian employees, drawing from their collectivistic Indian social habitus. Much as caste and class signify external identity, these are a collective behavioural construct that mould the Indian IT employee’s aspirations, concurring with E. P. Thompson’s (Preface, 2000, p. 11) definition of class. Notwithstanding employees’ agency in choosing career pathways and efforts to reconcile personal and organizational goals, their aspirations remain muddled and interdependent on many considerations extraneous to their job role and impinge on their identity as being contingent on favourable perception of their choices by their significant others

Respondents irrespective of their hierarchal position in the IT industry identified traits of nepotism, acquiescence, sycophancy and fealty and loyalty structures with Indian team leaders and project managers more than with American managers and team leaders. These identified managerial traits of Indian superiors operated in tandem with Western soft HRM practices that promoted ‘an informal flat nurturing fun culture’ and at the same time encouraged selfmanaging Biblical ‘confessional self’.

Although some degree of trust and affectionate bonds could form among Indian software project teams, they are time-bound and contingent upon organizational goals remaining common. Employees engage with their organization reflexively, with expectations from the organization and their understanding of what they can contribute. The data also suggests that despite mainstream corporate discursive practices envisaging Indian IT organizations as creative hubs of interesting activity with a strong team camaraderie, organizational relationships in them continue to be characterized as being transactional, calculative and instrumental. The consistency of relationships as a source of identity becomes fragmented and tenuous. In the absence of a physical community one grew up with, and large displacement from the respective native communities, work affiliations remain the only sources of relationship building through one’s team-members. These constant reassessments of relationships play into respondents’ insecurities and self-doubt.

The increasing disposable income from IT employment has given the Indian IT employees a coming out of her or his campus, consumer sovereignty at sites of consumption such as malls, which are capable of stimulating freedom, excitement, pleasure and a sense of greater control. Activities such as shopping in a mall provides psychological avenues to ‘break free’ and therefore could secure plausible temporal psychological comfort, wholeness and satisfaction. The respondents’ primary motivators were to live their lives here and now, accumulate some wealth to a measure and to increase cultural capital by being outwardly more Westernized. The organization, the team, the product or service, social media and remaining family time apportion individual self-perception unevenly leading to emotional instability. Hence, the aspirational Indian IT employees have intertwined to their job different checklists, such as foreign travel, money, asset creation, challenging assignments with commensurate titles and learning and innovation, which will motivate Indian IT employees as long as they benefit their careers and offer an instrumental means to attain their goals. Some junctural creative self-actualization may be an added advantage in the process rather than self-abnegating to be the next Jobs or Wittgenstein of the industry.

Any Indian IT organization always has the employer’s prerogative to provide long term genuine and nurturing cultural and emotional resource templates and also handhold the development of an assertive and sustainable employee’s independent workplace identity. However, the ‘structured antagonism’² of the capitalist wage–labour relationship will remain relatively unvarying irrespective of the sanguine proclamations of management gurus and coaches from Senge (see Senge, 2006 for his learning organization hypothesis) onwards. Thereupon an organization’s job is to employ the recruited people and deploy their skills, knowledge and abilities to add value to their products and services as a means to remain competitive and profitable.

The respondents in this study adopt a wide array of coping mechanisms after their initial enthusiastic embrace of the corporate rhetoric. They sought their expression through adoption of mimetic organic lifestyles, active pursuit of fitness regimes, following of football clubs and so on to countervail their initial life choices while also being contemporaneous to their family obligations. Eventually, they comprehended that the organizational discourse as a means to self-identity should not be so self-consuming to elide other identities within work and beyond.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Appendix

S.N.	Name	Organization	Nature of Organization	Designation
1	Ankur	Sapient Consulting, Gurgaon	Services	Software Architect
2	Amit	Dell Analytics	Analytics	Team Lead
3	Neha	Aon Hewitt Consulting Services	Product and Services	Test Analyst - II
4	Vishesh	SAP, Gurgaon	Product	Team Lead
5	Rajesh	Cap Gemini	Services	Head - HR
6	Suhasini	Goldman Sachs	Investment Bank and Financial Services	Manager
7	Vikas Sharma	Toshiba	Products and Services	VP - Marketing
8	Ashok	Huawei	Product	Team Lead
9	Mohini	Ex Wipro (now in development sector)	Services	Senior Technological Engineer
10	Murugan	Dell Analytics	Analytics	Senior Analyst
11	Shipra	Slicer	Start up	Testing Head
12	Patel	AT & T	Product	Lead Manager
13	Kartik	Sukino Healthcare	Geriatric Healthcare	CEO
14	Premanand	IT related Psychiatrist and Counsellor	NA	Freelance
15	Devas	Dell Analytics	Analytics	Analyst
16	Mahender	Paro Software	Software Development	Manager
17	Srikant	Government Sponsored Project	Telecommunications Software Architect	Freelance Consultant
18	Valash	Ex Dell India		HR Head
19	Reha	HSBC	Banking	Team Lead
20	Surender	Dhristi Software	Product	Director
21	Kamal	Cap Gemini	Services	Team Lead
22	Mayank	Aon Hewitt Consulting Services	Product and Services	Technical Consultant
23	Raghav	TCS	Services	IT Analyst
24	Mridul	Incessant Technologies	Services	Senior Manager
25	Raj	PayuMoney	Digital Wallet Software	Director

Notes

References

Alvesson

, Ashcraft

K. L.

, & Thomas

(2008). Identity matters: Reflection on construction of identity scholarships in organisational studies. Organisation, 15(1), 5–28.

Alvesson

, & Willmott

(2002). Identity regulation as organisational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39(5), 619–644.

Archer

M. S.

(2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ashforth

, & Schinoff

(2016). Identity under construction: How individuals come to define themselves in the organisation. The Annual Review of Organisational Psychology and Organisational Behaviour, 3, 11–137.

Balagangadhara

S. N.

, Bloch

, & De Roover

(2008). Rethinking colonialism and colonial consciousness: The case of modern India. Retrieved January 14, 2019 from www.cslc.in/files/publications/Rethinking_Colonialism.pdf

Bauman

(2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Brown

A. D.

(2015) Identities and identity work in organisations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, 20–40.

BSA Ethical Guidelines regarding informed consent, anonymity and other ethical aspects of qualitative research. Retrieved 21 January 2019 from www.britsoc.co.uk/media/24310/bsa_statement_of_ethical_practice.pdf

Burawoy

(1985). The politics of production: Factory regimes under capitalism and socialism. London: Verso Books.

10.

Burawoy

(1998). The extended case method. Sociological Theory, 16(1), 4–33.

11.

Chandra

, & Neelankavil

J. P.

. (2006). Strategic and management tools for innovation. Improving Quality of Stakeholder Engagement, 5(1), 13–19.

12.

Chatterjee

(1995). Values in the Indian ethos: An overview. Journal of Human Values, 1(1), 3–12.

13.

Collinson

D. L.

(2003). Identities and insecurities: Selves at work. Organisation, 10(3), 527–547.

14.

Craib

(1998). Experiencing identity. London: SAGE Publishing.

15.

Dumont

(1980). Homo hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

16.

Durkheim

(2005). Suicide: A study in sociology ( Spaulding

& Simpson

, Trans.). London: Routledge

17.

Elger

, & Smith

(2006). Theorising the role of the international subsidiary: Transplants, hybrids and branch-plants revisited. In Ferner

, Quintanilla

, & Runde

C. S.

. (Eds.) Multinationals, institutions and the construction of transnational practices (pp. 53-85). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

18.

Fernandes

, (2000). Nationalising the global: Media images, cultural politics and the middle class in India. Media, Culture & Society, 22(5), 611–628.

19.

Fernandes

(2009). The political economy of lifestyle: Consumption, India’s new middle class and state-led development. In Lange

& Meier

(Eds.), The new middle classes: Globalizing lifestyles, consumerism and environmental concern (pp. 219–236). Dordrecht: Springer.

20.

Foucault

(2012). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

21.

Goffman

(1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17.

22.

Gopalan

, & Rivera

J. B.

(1997). Gaining a perspective on Indian value orientations: Implications for expatriate managers. The International Journal of Organisational Analysis, 5(2), 156–179.

23.

Heuer

(2006). The influence of Indian national culture on organizations. In Davis

, Chatterjee

& Heuer

(Eds.), Management in India (pp. 28–43). New Delhi: SAGE.

24.

Jackall

(1988). Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

25.

Janssens

, & Steyaert

(1999). The world in two or third way out? The concept of duality in organisation theory and practice. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 15, 121–129.

26.

Keenoy

, Oswick

, & Grant

(1997). Organisational discourses: Text and context. Organisation, 4(2), 147–157.

27.

Knights

, & McCabe

(2002). A road less travelled: Beyond managerialist, critical and processual approaches to total quality management. Journal of Organisational Change Management, 15(3), 235–254.

28.

Lawler

E. E.

, Mohrman

S. A.

, & Ledford

G.E.

(1995). Creating high performance organisations: Impact of employee involvement and total quality management. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

29.

Leary

M. R.

, & Tangney

J. P.

(2012). Self, self-concept and identity. In Leary

M. R.

, & Tangney

J. P.

(Eds.). Handbook of self and identity. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

30.

Malkar

(2018, April 3). India’s lack of entrepreneurship is due to its culture. Retrieved 12 April 2018, from https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/04/03/indias-lack-of-entrepreneurship-is-due-to-its-culture/

31.

Nadeem

(2009a). Macaulay’s (cyber) children: The cultural politics of outsourcing in India. Cultural Sociology, 3(1), 101–122

32.

Nadeem

(2009b). The uses and abuses of time: Globalisation and time arbitrage in India’s outsourcing industries. Global Networks, 9(1), 20–40

33.

Nolan

(2004). The changing world of work. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 9(1), 3–9.

34.

Paulsen

, (2015). Empty labour: Idleness and workplace resistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

35.

Rae

(2010). Alienation, authenticity and the self. History of the Human Sciences, 23(4), 21–36.

36.

Reed

(1998). Organisational analysis as discourse analysis: A critique in discourse and organisation (pp. 193–213). London: Sage.

37.

Senge

Peter

(2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation. New York, NY: Random House Business Books.

38.

Sennett

(1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequence of work in the new capitalism. New York, NY: W.W.Norton.

39.

Sewell

, & Wilkinson

(1992). ‘Someone to watch over me’: Surveillance, discipline and the just-in-time labour process. Sociology, 26(2), 271–289.

40.

Sinha

J. B. P.

(1984). A model of effective leadership styles in India. International Studies of Management & Organisation, 14(2–3), 86–98.

41.

Sinha

J. B. P.

, & Kanungo

R. N.

(1997). Context sensitivity and balancing in Indian organisational behaviour. International journal of psychology, 32(2), 93–105.

42.

Sinha

J. B.

(2000). Integrative indigenous management in India: Practices and prospects. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 35(4), 439–460.

43.

Sisson

(2009). Putting the records straight. Industrial relations and the employment relationship. Warwick papers in Industrial Relations No. 88 (pp. 44–46). Coventry: Industrial Relations Research Unit University of Warwick.

44.

Shenhav

Y. A.

(2002). Manufacturing rationality: The engineering foundations of the managerial revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

45.

Tan

K. C.

, & Khoo

H. H.

(2002). Indian society, total quality and the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award. Journal of Management Development, 21(6), 417–426.

46.

Thomas

(2009). Critical management studies on identity: Mapping the terrain. In Alvesson

, Bridgman

, & Willmott

. (Eds.). Oxford handbook of critical management studies (pp. 165–185). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

47.

Townley

(1994). Reframing human resource management: Power ethics and the subject at work. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

48.

Thompson

(2000). The essential E.P. Thompson. New York, NY: The New Press.

49.

Upadhya

(2016). Reengineering India: Work capital, class in the offshore economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

50.

Upadhya

, & Vasavi

A. R.

(2008). Outposts of the global information economy: Work and workers in India’s outsourcing industry. In Upadhya

& Vasavi

A.R.

(Eds.), In an outpost of the global economy: Work and workers in India’s information technology industry (pp. 9–49). New Delhi: Routledge.

51.

Watson

T. J.

(1994). Management “flavours of the month”: Their role in managers’ lives. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 5(4), 893–909.