Procedimiento para la síntesis y diseño óptimo de plantas discontinuas

Before proceeding to elaborate upon the particulars of my fieldwork and its dilemmas I will describe the three sources of data for this project in brief. I agree with Burgess [1995: 3] that whilst in the field and during the process of fieldwork the ethnographer’s attention should focus on the way in which different people experience, interpret, and structure their lives. My ethnographic experience informs me of that for an ethnographer to experience Burgess’s prescriptions requires forbearance, a friendly disposition, and empathy, with the aim of creating friendships that abide within an extended conversation rather than just finding respondents and fitting them into an interview format. Whilst being methodical and systematic with data collection is

necessary, flexibility needs to be factored into data documentation to make it flexible to accommodate new developments in the field. This, in turn, illuminates aspects of the phenomena that did not occur to the fieldworker’s commencement of fieldwork. Accordingly, Burgess suggests that the methods of investigation that are used be developed in relation to the theoretical perspectives or theoretical orientations, that themselves are structured to provide a better insight into the social world that is structured by the participants.

Burgess describes the usual means by which the ethnographic method gains an insight into the social worlds of the actors it seeks to study as: participant observation; in- depth or unstructured interviews; and documentary evidence so that during the course of their work researchers can discern the meaning of social situations [Burgess, 1995: 3]. I will elaborate on participant observation, interview, and sources of primary and

3.3.1 Participant observation

Among the many definitions of participant observation in methodology texts Tony Watson [Watson, 2010: 207-8] captures the meaning well in saying that participant observation

“is a research practice in which the investigator joins the group, community, or organization being studied, as both a full or partial member, and both participates in and observes activities, asks questions, takes part in conversations, and reads relevant documents. It is a practice in which the researcher engages with the people being studied, shares their life as far as possible, and converses with them on their own terms.” My fieldwork adhered to all the parameters delineated by Watson, including that “the

observation has to occur over a period of time which is sufficient for the researcher to appreciate the range of norms, practices, and values, official and unofficial alike, which characterise that research setting”.

My participant observation included pure observation – for instance, walking for extending periods of time around my case study plant to observe workers within the shops, memorising the plant’s layout, and trying understand its labour process – as well as frequenting the places where managers had lunch, such as the canteen and the eateries where workers drank their tea. I also undertook extensive walks around the town, which was known for its industrial manufacturing firms, and walking around the residential colonies in which CompCo workers and managers lived. Other forms of observation consisted of taking long bus rides after the shift to get a sense of the town when the day was ‘quiet’. On many an occasion I would encounter a group of workers from CompCo and would endeavour to get an idea what workers were talking about, and also in hope of finding potential new informants, I would interject and ask open-ended questions and use

the technique of snowballing. This was in addition to the intense interaction I engaged in within the plant, especially with managers.

As a fieldworker, I used to used to spend at least five days a week lasting for an average of about seven hours or even more in the premises of plant as a part of the GEMBA team, and later on some occasions at Mr. AB’s residence, which was not far away from where I lived. Regular participant observation carried out at the EWS plant premises was also backed up by additional opportunities. I was always ready to rush to Hubli, if a manager or worker was willing to talk to me at his residence, which used to happen every now and then on Sunday afternoons.

3.3.2 Interview data

My ethnographic fieldwork included many informal interviews with senior and middle managers, as well as detailed unstructured interviewing of senior and middle managers and workers. In the course of my participant-observation I interacted frequently with over twenty-three managers, and was often able to ask them questions for at least half an hour, in most cases on several occasions. The senior managers amongst them included the Change Management Head, the Head of Production and staff specialists, such as the Deputy Head of the Change Management Project. Amongst middle

management, my informants ranged from senior middle managers, comprising shop floor heads, to intermediary middle management and line management. Additionally, shortly before leaving the field I had interviews that ranged from one hour to two-and-a-half hours with twelve people out of these twenty-three, I also interviewed six graduate engineering trainees and interacted with two out of the six frequently during my stay in the change management nerve centre of EWS, where I also met a cross section of managers from other plants of CompCo in the training centre. In addition I had three interviews with the General Manager (GM) of EWS, whom I met in person only towards

the end of my fieldwork. I interviewed him three times, once during the main fieldwork period, and twice, for two-and-a-half hours at a time, when I visited on a follow-up trip in 2011. I also visited the home for destitute children run by a middle manager who was of intermediate rank, and had six interviews with him at weekends. I was also invited for dinner to the house of one line manager in the last week of January 2011 and spoke with him for about an hour-and-a-half.

My interactions with workers were less intensive, and my discussions with them started as my exit from the field drew closer. Most of the interviews with workers were arranged either through a particular trade union convener of EWS, Mr. VDVN, or a manager, Mr. RGPN, who had very good rapport with workers because he interacted with them on a daily basis. Mr. SMGN, now a quality inspector who had “crossed over” to the other side of the fence from being a worker himself, also introduced me to

workers to interview. Altogether, I carried out detailed unstructured interviews with sixteen permanent operators, who comprised two union conveners and fourteen

operators who were involved in production, manufacturing and stores-related activities within EWS. These were semiformal interviews with an informal, conversational character, “shaped partly by the interviewer’s pre-existing topic guide and partly by concerns that are emergent in the interview” [Bloor and Wood, 2006: 104]. I would also try to create opportunities for further interaction during the course of my interviews. In addition to these sixteen permanent workers employed in EWS, I interacted with two temporary workers, in the Medium Duty Vehicle Assembly area, who were not yet regularised, one outsourced employee who whose salary for his work within the engine dressing section of EWS was paid by another firm, and one temporary worker from the machine shop. I also interacted with six semi-skilled workers who did peripheral jobs such as cleaning industrial waste such as iron fillings, janitors and those who

maintained CompCo’s facilities. I also spoke with two suspended workers, one of whom I met at Mr. VDVN’s trade union office.

In addition to interviewing managers and workers within CompCo I was able to meet with individuals outside it. This included in particular my uncle, who had retired as a GM at CompCo, whom I spoke to for two hours at weekends in his home in

Bangalore. I also had detailed discussion lasting for over two hours in the Pune plant of a firm called Cummins with one ex-CompCo employee who now worked in Cummins and the Head and Deputy Head of the Cummins Pune plant. The three of them helped in giving me an industry-wide perspective and some insights into CompCo’s

organisational culture. Whenever there was an opportunity I also tried reaching out to management consultants who were particularly well versed with industrial relations aspects of the Indian automotive industry. I had four detailed interactions with management consultants over the weekends for about two hours each in Bangalore, after seeking an appointment with them with a hope of excavating further data garnered from experience and from their contacts with retired and serving managers in EWS and other plants of CompCo. I also visited a trade union leader, Mr. VDVN, at his office outside the plant several times. I also met him again for about an hour-and-a-half on two occasions during my visit to the plant in January 2011.

3.3.4 Primary and secondary documents

I was also able to obtain primary data supplied to me through the inventory change management project in which I became directly involved. This included company magazines directed towards conveying the gospel of change to workers, and enabled me to acquire written versions of the new vocabularies adopted by senior

management to represent what it saw as the new changed reality of the firm’s capacity to “Engineer Tomorrows Together”, graphs and trend charts, regularly published brochures

describing the changes made in production processes, company documents describing present limitations and future states to be attained and photographs portraying

enthusiastic workers and line managers participating in implementing lean innovations. With regard to workers, pamphlets issued by the trade unions, their notice boards and material given to me by union activists were extremely useful, although their

collection was fraught with danger as I risked antagonising management by undermining its change ‘story’. These were published in the local language, Tamil, and later translated for me by a native Tamil speaker.

Other documentary evidence included publications from automotive industry consultants and exhaustive weekly updates delineating an array of indicators and challenges for automotive firms in the commercial vehicle industry in India. I also made a habit of exhaustive perusal of the Indian financial press and the Financial Times.