Changing Work Organisations and Implications for Decent Work: a Case Study of India’s Information Technology Industry

Abstract

Workplaces of several industries in the twenty-first century are ergonomically and hierarchically different from those of the earlier days. Information technology industry is a classic example of one such industry in a developing country India. Unlike the workplaces in the manufacturing sector or the fields in the agriculture sector, information technology industry’s workplaces are sophisticated. This paper examines the nature and organisation of work in India’s information technology (IT) industry and its implications on the decent work status of the employees. Choice of IT industry has an underlying logic. Technically qualified youth as well as the general public perceive employment in IT industry as highly remunerative, productive, stable and safe and as a key to secure future. It also represents a typical formal sector employment. The research methodology consists of both quantitative and qualitative methods of research. Snowball sampling technique has been used to collect data on a sample of 272 IT employees in the geographical clusters of Delhi–NCR, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad region. Techniques of index construction and range equalisation method have been used to develop decent work index and decent workplace index. Besides, correspondence analysis, cluster analysis, multinomial logistic regression, phi correlation coefficient and Chi-square test have also been used to further analyse the results on the basis of various socio-demographic factors. The findings of the study have contradicted the general myth of work in formal sector jobs as only a small fraction of the sample was found to be availing decent work as per the various parameters of decent work. The deficit in decent work is due to nature of work in the IT industry. The research has developed tools and techniques of measuring and evaluating decent work at micro- and meso-level. Overall, the study is a pilot attempt to quantitatively measure decent work and its variations due to the nature of work organisation in an industry.