Emerging Partnerships of SDGs and HRM Practices During the Pandemic: A Study of the Indian IT Industry

Abstract

Post-pandemic, the world of work has changed, and the pandemic has accelerated the responsible business agenda, representing a huge opportunity for the human-centric approach to HRM to transform the world of work. The drive towards responsible and sustainable business demands a new way of thinking, and the old conventional thinking approach addressing piece-meal solutions is an approach of the past. The human resource management (HRM) practices of multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries in India in the IT sector are studied within an institutional theory framework to look at how MNCs operating in India are incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Applying the tenets of DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) work, we understand that an MNC subsidiary located in India will be influenced by both potentially contradictory pulls from institutional factors in the local environment and international isomorphic processes. With a qualitative approach and primary data collected via in-depth interviews with 52 HR professionals (including host and subsidiaries) from 8 MNCs, our findings indicate that the subsidiaries based in India are mostly adopting the pattern exhibited by larger organizations in their environment that are viewed as successful (mimetic isomorphism) in implementing the SDGs. There is still a huge scope for improvement in these subsidiaries in terms of investing in people’s capabilities for future sustainable work. The research contributes to the bourgeoning literature on HRM practices and how MNC subsidiaries operate in different contexts and cultural settings in the IT sector.