Validación a través de plan piloto

It is crucial to recognise the “...work situation as a social construct whose structure depends on the social processes that shape the work domain...” (Geertz 1973, pg. 25). This indicates that the way in which an organisation functions depends heavily on the way people behave and interact in the workplace. In relation to this, the culture of the workers has a direct impact on the way in which they interact within the workplace.

There is a large amount of literature referring to the impact of culture on the ability of multinational companies to function successfully in their varied locations. Culture can be described as a “collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another” (Hofstede 1980, pg. 25) which indicates that people who share a culture will share certain values and expectations from their way of life. Forster reinforces this by explaining that, “A person’s perceptions, attitudes, motivations, values, learning experience and personality are all, to a very large extent, shaped by culture” (2000, pg.63).

It is often acknowledged that HRM practices must sometimes be adapted to accommodate the national cultural context within which a certain company is operating (Haier Case Study, 2004). The same must apply to seafarers, as although they are a global workforce, they are still very much grounded in their own national

24

context. Their country of origin, in most cases, determines their education and subsequent training at sea and as a result, their attitudes, behaviour and expectations from the job. This is reflected in Gahan and Abeysekera’s work (2009), which brings together the cultural conditioning of the individual as well as the individual’s self-construal and links these to the work values an individual has. They also point out the relationship between work values and values held in other domains of life which appears to suggest that culture, combined with national context, plays a key role in determining expectations from life as a seafarer.

India was a state-regulated economy from achieving independence in 1947 until 1990. In June 1991, after the Gulf War, oil prices rose dramatically and India fell into economic crisis as the foreign exchange reserves plunged to $1.2 billion which was “barely sufficient to pay for two weeks imports” (Ahluwalia, 1994: 7). Inflation peaked at 17% in August 1991 and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund offered to rescue India provided that India shifted from its policy of high regulation to a ‘free market economy’ (Bhatnagar 2009). The changes that resulted led to the liberalisation of foreign investment, which in turn introduced a drastic rise in foreign competition for Indian firms (Budhwar 2003). Indian organisations have come to recognise that in order to be able to compete with foreign firms, they will need to adopt new technology, improve their products and reduce costs of production by investing in the development of their human resources (Budhwar 2003). This led to companies having to rethink their business strategy and HRM rose to greater importance. Sparrow and Budhwar elaborate that “They must cope with new problems of de-skilling, re-skilling and multi-skilling, work force reduction policies, retention and career development issues” (1997, pg. 228). In order to cope with the seismic shift in the type of demands placed upon companies, “this requires considerable change in the attitudes, working systems and human resource skills of Indian organizations” (Sparrow and Budhwar 1997, pg. 228).

The reason the Indian context is so important here is because Indian organisations were suddenly put upon to change their methods of working in order to compete with the influx of foreign firms (Venkata Ratnam 1995). Although HR systems already existed in India before the advent of MNCs, their arrival increased the pace of development and change in the field of HRM in India. This suggests that instead of having the opportunity to organically grow their own HRM systems, it is possible that they imported HR paradigms that existed elsewhere, as many Indian managers have been trained in the West and the Indian management institutes have adopted a

25

Western approach themselves (Budhwar 2003, pg. 134). This ‘cut and paste’ method could have resulted in HRM existing only as a ghost function – there in name but not in substance. This is exacerbated by the lack of implementation of labour law in India (Venkata Ratnam 2009) Another potential problem with HRM systems in India is that when they are imported by multi-national firms into local offices, there is no guarantee that these were tailored to the local environment as they should be which can lead to problems with implementation of the HR practices and policies, particularly with recruitment and training methods (Budhwar, Björkman and Singh 2009). Indeed, this resonates with fears that the HR function is being used as a tool of managerial control. This idea is further explored in relation to ill-treatment in the workplace in the next section.

At this point, it is important to consider some of the socio-cultural aspects of Indian society which make it unique so as to better understand the challenges of an Indian workplace, particularly in relation to the existence of ill-treatment. “Indian society is relational, with social affiliations providing belongingness and support” (D’Cruz 2012, pg. 9). What this means is that it is a culture in which nepotism and favouritism are rife, and personal interaction and affiliation are guided by a range of influences, including class, caste, ethnicity, occupation, religion, region and kinship. People belong to different social groups based on the factors mentioned above, and personal and economic interaction is often directed by their networking within these groups.

All of these socio-cultural characteristics point to a highly complex and constantly shifting work environment, dependent as it is on various forms of hierarchy. Accordingly, ingratiation is considered to be an acceptable means of improving one’s situation, provided that the supervisor has the flexibility to make that decision (Pandey and Bohra, 1984). Ingratiation has been defined as “a class of strategic behaviours illicitly designed to influence a particular other person concerning the attractiveness of one’s personal qualities” (Jones 1964 in Pandey and Bohra 1984, p. 381). Pandey and Rastogi (1979) found that people were more likely to employ ingratiation in competitive circumstances. It is a feature of workplace politics and can be built upon the networking groups based on common social features which were discussed above.

In terms of ill-treatment, people’s involvement in the same social group is a major factor because these social groups are based on the characteristics of Indian culture

26

mentioned earlier. If they are, then it is possible to reach a resolution informally as they are more likely to avoid conflict and more concessions will be made on either side. However, if they are not in the same social group, it is likely that the one higher in the hierarchy will be able to exploit the other’s position, or the two will need to split and be apart from each other completely, unable to come to any resolution (D’Cruz 2012).

Budhwar (2000) has identified Indian workplaces as similar to a feudalistic set-up, which allow “favouritism, discrimination, manipulative behaviours and corruption to exist” (in D’Cruz 2012, pp. 16-17). This, combined with the points explored above, paints a vivid picture of the type of work environment one can expect in India and raises questions on two counts – firstly, how these characteristics manifest themselves in a workplace that attempts to socialise national characteristics out of its workers, and secondly, what role they play in contributing to the work environment in a way which may or may not encourage ill-treatment.

2.4: Organisational Control through the Work Environment

The existence of ill-treatment in the workplace is contingent on the work environment, which is composed of many facets. The most important of those interrelated features that can provide employers greater control over their employees are explored in this section.