Premilla D’Cruz

Being Professional Organizational Control in Indian Call Centers

The relationship between technocratic and socioideological control in organizations is contested among scholars. In an attempt to understand this complex interlinkage, the present study examined organizational control processes in inbound and outbound call centers in Bangalore, India. Relying on qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, the study demonstrated how organizations invoke the concept of professionalism in their employees. Organizational efforts in this direction result not only in employee compliance but also internalization of professionalism such that agents’ sense of self changes to embrace employer-defined professionalism. Socioideological control thus sets the stage for the acceptance and effectiveness of technocratic control. Rather than viewing organizational identities and organizational cultures as additional or separate extensions of the substantive, structural, material dimensions of control, the findings of the study highlight that socioideological and technocratic forms of control build on and feed each other. Nonetheless, the managerial notion of control espoused through the appeal to professional identity continues to be contested.

Bullying in the Indian workplace: A study of the ITES-BPO sector:

This article reports on an empirical enquiry undertaken in India’s ITES-BPO (offshoring-outsourcing) sector to ascertain the presence of workplace bullying, the influence of sociocultural factors, the nature of bullying categories and the availability and use of extra-organizational redressal options. Survey data, gathered through structured interviews incorporating the Work Harassment Scale, conducted with 1036 respondents located in six cities, showed that 44.3% of the sample experienced bullying, with 19.7% reporting moderate and severe levels. In keeping with India’s hierarchical society, superiors emerged as the predominant source of bullying, displaying task-focused behaviours. Yet, the presence of ‘cross-level co-bullying’ where a personal focus was emphasized points to the role of identity-based affiliations intrinsic to India’s ethos. Key informant data, gathered through unstructured interviews with lawyers/legal activists, labour commissioners and trade unionists/labour activists and thematically analysed, underscored the influence of professional self-identity, career interests and a dysfunctional judicial system in targets’ choice of extra-organizational options.

Ambivalence : Employee responses to depersonalized bullying at work

The present article furthers our understanding of the nascent concept of depersonalized bullying by exploring employee responses to the phenomenon. Through a qualitative enquiry of international-facing call centre agents in India, the major theme of ‘bounded benefits’ captured employees’ response of ambivalence. Valuing their professional identity and material returns while ruing the depersonalized bullying of their oppressive work environment, participants recognized that their gains were limited by but inextricably linked to workplace demands. Perceiving no alternative to the continuity of their benefits, participants emphasized positive aspects of their experiences to reduce their misgivings. In contrast to interpersonal bullying where targets are victimized and undergo severe strain such that they usually exit the employer organization, depersonalized bullying entails a dualistic response where well-being and strain coexist and where approach dimensions compensate for avoidance dimensions such that compromise and trade-off facilitate coping.

Employee Dilemmas in the Indian ITES—BPO Sector

Offshoring and outsourcing are not recent by-products of the emergence of the new economy in services. The first wave of offshoring and outsourcing, encompassing the manufacturing sector, began in the mid-1980s, motivated by low costs, the availability of skilled labour, the promotion of a business-friendly environment and the existence of production and supply networks in places such as China, Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan (Bardhan and Kroll, 2003). At that time, it was predicted that developed nations, nurtured by giant multinational corporations (MNCs), would evolve into service-based economies (Dossani and Kenney, 2003), requiring buyers and sellers to be frequently available in the same geographic location (Henley, 2006). This implied that while manufacturing jobs would move to other areas of the globe, service jobs would remain in the West.

Achieving Downsizing Managerial Perspectives

The restructuring of organizations through downsizing is a significant phenomenon in the contemporary global business scenario. But academic research on the subject has focused limited attention on important stakeholder group, namely, the managers implementing the programmes. The article reports a qualitative study of managers in an Indian firm. Thematic analyses of narratives pointed out that managers’ experiences comprise three core themes which included the objective aspect of the experience (events, processes, tasks, outcomes), the subject component (opinions, perceptions, feelings) and coping. Linkages among these themes and their sub-themes provide a conceptual basis for further research.

Organizational Governance: A Promising Solution for Varieties of Workplace Bullying

Abstract Purpose The chapter elaborates how organizational governance can optimally address workplace bullying, a synergy possible because organizational governance seeks to promote ethical functioning while workplace bullying is considered an unethical behavior. Through its suggestions, the chapter aims at furthering employee dignity and well-being, cohering with international calls for human rights at work. Methodology/approach A review of two literatures was conducted: (a) workplace bullying differentiated on the basis of its situatedness and level into internal bullying – of an interpersonal and depersonalized nature – and external bullying; and (b) organizational governance including its theoretical perspectives, especially the societal lens, and international, national, and firm codes. Findings Several organizational governance measures at institutional level – both international and national in scope – and at firm level are proposed to deal with varieties of workplace bullying encompassing primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Accordingly, a shift in organizational effectiveness from goal-based models to process-oriented frameworks so that economic and non-economic objectives are balanced, following the stakeholder approach, is advocated. The political dynamics involved in such an initiative are alluded to. Practical implications Application, drawing on secondary rather than primary data, is the essential thrust of the chapter, with recommendations anchored in organizational governance, particularly its societal perspective, conceptualized to address workplace bullying in a holistic manner. Originality/value First, despite the clear relevance of organizational governance to workplace bullying, the prospect of interventions from this standpoint has never been previously explored. Second, the term “varieties of workplace bullying” is propounded to capture the different types of emotional abuse at work known so far.

Cyberbullying at Work: Experiences of Indian Employees

Online bullying of workers is a widespread problem and is expected to increase considerably in the near future, yet it is not well understood. Drawing on available studies of Indian software, back office and call centre employees. D’Cruz analyses cyberbullying by managers and colleagues (internal cyberbullying) and customers (external cyberbullying). Cyberbullying is marked by boundarylessness, and the digital capturing of bullying episodes means that these can be replayed and widely broadcast. It is often anonymous and invisible, and in offshore services, usually tolerated as a customer’s prerogative. The growing use of digital media at work and the global economics of offshoring are likely to exacerbate the problem.

Domestic Labour — The Experience of Work in India’s Other Call Centre Industry

In the film Slumdog Millionaire, the central character Jamal Malik gains employment in a Mumbai call centre as a chai wallah. Scenes from this workplace, particularly the one in which Jamal stands in for a customer service representative and mishandles a call from a Scottish customer, resonate with the multiple images and perceptions popularly associated with the Indian call centre: cultural and linguistic difference and misunderstanding, crowded and fast-paced workplaces, the youth of its upwardly mobile workforce, technological domination, the concealment of the centres’ locations and the ambiguous identities of employees. Although myths persist, such as that presented in the film of management giving agents daily updates of UK soap operas so that they can better empathize with customers (Taylor and Bain 2005), these representations do reflect a material reality, the relocation of interactive service work from the English-speaking developed economies (principally the United States and the United Kingdom) to the developing countries (notably India) (Dossani and Kenney 2003; Taylor 2009).

Partially Empowering but not Decent? The Contradictions of Online Labour Markets

Online labour markets (OLMs) are new global workplaces that represent the latest wave of offshoring. Indians have a strong presence on OLMs, being freelancers on both international and national platforms, adding to the country’s large and growing informal workforce. Through a critical hermeneutic phenomenological approach, this chapter examines the experiences of Indian freelancers on Upwork using the lens of decent work. The findings underscore that though full-time freelancers report some sense of empowerment in terms of income, quality of life, long-term investments and upward mobility, career development, work-life balance, link with the West and platform checks and facilities, there are decent work deficits across the four hallmarks of full and productive employment, rights at work ensuring human dignity, social protection and social dialogue. Effective pursuit of the decent work agenda on OLMs calls for counterhegemonic initiatives through global social movement unionism that reconciles labour differences across the North-South divide.

Customer Cyberbullying: The Experiences of India’s International-Facing Call Centre Agents

As boundary-spanners performing emotional labour via virtual mode in India’s international-facing call centres, agents often face abuse from their overseas customers. Such misbehaviour goes beyond aversive racism to include economic, dispositional, situational and sexual dimensions. Not only do employer organizations and clients, in pursuit of competitive advantage, adopt service level agreements that constrain employee agency in responding to customer aggression but socioideological controls, performance measures and customer feedback also pose significant limits. Agents are defenceless against these three powerful stakeholders, particularly because of the North-South dynamics within which global production networks operate. Adopting emotion-focused coping strategies to deal with their experiences, agents make pragmatic choices that further their long-term interests while maintaining their value systems. In addition to extending the workplace bullying literature through a focus on extra-organizational/external bullying, employer-driven interventions promoting ethical workplaces are suggested as means to address the issue.