Indian IT Organizations Research Articles

Should I stay or move on—examining the roles of knowledge sharing system, job crafting, and meaningfulness in work in influencing employees' intention to stay

PurposeBased on the affective events and self-concept theories, this study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization.Design/methodology/approachIn the present study, the authors conducted a time-lagged survey for analyzing the association between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization. The study sample comprises 358 Generation Y employees working in Indian IT organizations. Results were analyzed using Process and Hayes macro process.FindingsThe study findings suggest significant relationships between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Moreover, the results demonstrated that knowledge sharing system, directly and indirectly, impacts employees' intention to stay via sequential mediation of job crafting and meaningfulness in work.Practical implicationsIn today's era of hyper-competition and “war for talent,” retaining talented professionals has become the topmost priority for organizations. This becomes even more challenging with new generations, Gen Y and Z, entering the workforce driven by entirely different needs compared to earlier generations. Thus, the present study offers an integrated framework that organizational practitioners could utilize to enhance the retention of their young talented professionals.Originality/valueDespite the emerging interest in the concept of knowledge sharing, few studies investigated the association between knowledge sharing system and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Also, research still lacks in examining the underlying mechanism of how knowledge sharing system may enhance job crafting and meaningfulness in work, which could fuel Gen Y employees' intention to stay with the organization.

Analyzing the Concatenation Between Ethics and Knowledge Culture in Indian IT Sector

In this globally competitive environment, ethics has become the major area of concern for organizations to eliminate the issues that arise in knowledge sharing. Knowledge is considered to provide a competitive edge to individuals and organizations. This is especially true for industries engaged in the Information and Technology sector. In accordance with the above notion, the current study aims at assessing the role of ethics as a catalyst in affecting knowledge sharing in Indian IT organizations. For this purpose, the study adopted a self-developed questionnaire that was addressed to employees engaged in the IT sector of India. The study utilized SPSS and AMOS to outline the relationship between Ethics and Knowledge Sharing. The findings of the study revealed that the PRIMES model has a direct impact on knowledge creation culture, knowledge-sharing culture, and knowledge storage and knowledge application culture. Moreover, it was also revealed that ethical issues have a negative impact on the three constructs of knowledge sharing that is, knowledge creation culture; knowledge sharing culture; and knowledge storage and knowledge application culture. Personality traits and other constructs of the PRIMES model cannot be controlled by the organization. However, ethical issues can be curbed to enhance the knowledge sharing culture. Prior research has not empirically tested the role of PRIMES model and ethics on knowledge sharing culture.

Linking Career Adaptability and Psychological Well-Being: A Test of Moderated Mediation Model Among Indian Employees

The present study attempts to investigate how career adaptability predicts psychological well-being (PWB) among employees based on career construction theory (CCT). Precisely, the study examined the role of career sustainability as a mediator and sustainable career climate (SCC) as a moderator establishing the relationship between career adaptability and psychological well-being. Data collected from 550 Indian employees in the Indian banking and IT organizations indicate that career adaptability has a significant effect on career sustainability that eventually predicts PWB. In addition, the findings on the interaction effect of career adaptability and SCC on PWB via career sustainability highlighted the significance of unison between individual and contextual factors in realizing important employee outcomes. The results revealed that the indirect effect of career adaptability on PWB through career sustainability is stronger among employees who perceived their organizational career climate to be sustainable.

Adoption of Human Resource Analytics in Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services Industry in India

This research paper strives to examine the acceptance of HR analytics in Indian IT and ITES organizations. The primary objective of the paper is to find out the factors of change impacting the acceptance of change on an individual level in employees with reference to adoption of Human Resource Analytics. The factors are identified and compared with level of acceptance of change in the organisation. This paper further sets many grounds for future research in the field of human resource analytics.

Perceived organizational support as mediator between digital social media influence on technological innovation

Aim: The study focuses on perceived organizational support as a mediator between digital social media influence on technological innovation of knowledge workers working in IT companies in India. Methodology: A survey online of 415 knowledge employees in Indian IT organizations was used to analyze the results.Findings: The findings demonstrate that perceived organizational support is positively impacted by digital learning. The research findings also connected social media sites, digital learning, and technology innovation.Implications/Novel Contribution: The results of this study have extensive implications for Indian knowledge workers and administration, who may broaden the perceived organizational support as a mediator between digital social media influence on technological innovation of knowledge workers working in IT companies in India.

Is Organizational Socialization Moving Towards Digital Socialization? - A Perspective

In an Organizational context, sharing knowledge builds innovation sparked through socialization. It is a necessity in a VUCA world, supported by the availability of digital technology aids; individual networks to socialize and gain visibility/acceptance in organizations. More so in project-based organizations, the concern for most organizations is to capture the learning of individuals/teams, stay competitive, and codify knowledge in a digital format. Socialization content is thus individually focused but concentrates on what is learned during socialization. Chao et al. (1994) proposed six key learning dimensions that characterize the socialization process. The socialization literature has been criticized for being primarily descriptive; lacking empirical testing; methodologically weak and inadequate; theoretically and conceptually fragmented to the point that it is poorly understood (Feldman, 1976; Fisher, 1986) having the least amount of research (Wanous & Colella, 1989) and socialization for the knowledge society (Karpov, 2016). The pandemic, however, has brought the issue to the center stage of organizations, with both the organizations and the employees across the world experimenting with ideas to continue the socialization efforts through digital means. India and Indian IT organizations is no exception to this fact. This study is an attempt to examine knowledge acquisition and organizational socialization in the Indian IT Industry. Six organizational socialization content areas proposed by Chao et al. (1994) were studied among 393 employees in 6 metro cities, which are IT hubs in India. Employees believed in continuous learning using digital means, were career savvy and profession-oriented. Organizations demonstrated their willingness to encourage and support their socialization, knowledge acquisition, and sharing, thus paving the way for digital socialization. Digital socialization is seen as an emerging phenomenon in organizational socialization. Similarly, the six socialization content areas correlated positively with language followed by organizational goals and values for socialization in the Indian context, thus leading to the concept of digital socialization where new digital content, new digital processes, and tools emerge out of the digital interactions.

Relationship Between Flexible Work Arrangements, Well-Being, and Performance of Employees During the COVID -19 Pandemic

The primary purpose of the present research paper was to investigate the influence of flexible work arrangements on personal and family well-being and performance of employees. The study also examined the moderating role of managerial support on the relationship between flexible work arrangements and well-being & performance. The target respondents were the teleworkers employed with Indian IT organizations located in North India. Data were gathered from 412 teleworkers to study the hypotheses, and Smart PLS 2.0 was employed to analyze the data. The results revealed a significant relationship between flexible work arrangements, personal and family well-being, and employee performance. The study further confirmed the significant and moderating effect of managerial support on the relationship between flexible work arrangements and performance. During the work-from-home policies at the workplace, the employees perceived that receiving support from the managers helped them perform well. As the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the economies globally, the present study’s findings would be essential for the managers to support their employees during such crises.

Unbundling employer branding, job satisfaction, organizational identification and employee retention: a sequential mediation analysis

PurposeThis paper aims to extend employer branding research by investigating the role of job satisfaction and organizational identification as predictors of employee retention, and their mediating role between employer branding and employee retention.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional survey is utilized to gather data from 352 employees working in top Indian IT organizations. Hypotheses were tested and analyzed utilizing SPSS PROCESS Macro.FindingsThe results reveal that employer branding is positively related to job satisfaction, organizational identification and employee retention. The analysis provides support for the mediating effects on employee retention of employer branding through job satisfaction and organizational identification. In addition, results also provide support for the serial mediation model, where employer branding was found to influence employee retention via job satisfaction and organizational identification in a sequential manner. The findings connote that the enhanced positive identity of satisfied employees suppresses the intention to leave among IT professionals.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that an employer branding strategy with a unique set of attributes can provide a competitive advantage to employers in terms of high retention levels. The findings also highlight the fact that the importance of employer branding strategy should not be merely confined to the issue of retention as it can also play a vital role in enhancing job satisfaction and employees' identification level. Hence, managers are required to devise an employer branding strategy with a long-term intent that focuses on gaining a competitive advantage and aiming to improve relationships with employees.Originality/valueThe researchers have enriched social identity and social exchange theory as a theoretical paradigm, examining antecedents of employee retention. The study has extended the foregoing direct or simple mediation models by integrating social identity theory and job satisfaction in a sequential mediation model.

Antecedents of Brand Strength and Its Impact on Global Branding of Indian IT Organizations

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to discover the antecedents of brand strength and analyze its impact on global branding. The present research examines the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual framework of antecedents and outcomes of brand strength by testing, refining, and extending the existing theory of Interbrand’s brand strength. The survey was conducted with a sample size of 275 IT customers of major IT organizations. The analysis provides insights as to how the predicted outcomes of brand strength can lead to global branding. Other Asian developing countries can learn lessons from India’s experience and can develop IT capabilities.

Qualitative study of challenges and strategies of Indian IT organizations toward global branding

PurposeThere is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations.FindingsResults show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital.Practical implicationsThis research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations.Social implicationsIT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian’s economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands.Originality/valueThe originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.

Effect of abusive supervision on employee’s intention to quit and the neutralizing role of meaningful work in Indian IT organizations

PurposeSeveral studies have investigated the harmful effects of abusive supervision on subordinates’ behaviour and performance, including their intention to quit. However, there is a conspicuous dearth of empirical studies testing the deleterious interpersonal relationship, especially in Indian organizations. The purpose of this study is to explore the moderating role of meaningful work as a neutralizer in mitigating the pernicious effect of abusive supervision on subordinates’ turnover intention.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from software professionals working in several Indian IT companies through self-report questionnaires (n = 227), using a time-lagged design on two occasions (span between T1 and T2 was three to four weeks).FindingsThe result confirms that abusive supervision is strongly related to subordinates’ intention to quit. Also, the study finds meaningful work to have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between abusive supervision and intention to quit.Originality/valueThe number of empirical studies exploring the pernicious effect of abusive supervision in Indian organizational context is almost negligible. In addition, the current study is among the few studies that have investigated the moderating effect of meaningful work on the relationship between abusive supervision and intention to quit.

Employee Engagement Practices in IT Sector Vis-à-Vis Other Sectors in India

Employee engagement is an important notion built around the concepts of job satisfaction, employee commitment, retention of talent, that impacts organizational performance. The disengaged employees lead to loss of productivity, procedural imbalances, and decreased efficacy. Organizations are addressing the work force and their job performance, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, productivity, discretionary effort, effective commitment, and continuance commitment. Engaged employees are emotionally connected with their organization, and are enthusiastic about their job and success of the organization. The employment engagement practices are soulfully needed to understand the employee, give them healthier environment to work, let them grow professionally, award them, and keep them happy, irrespective of the business sector. This study intends to explore the employee engagement practices in Indian IT Sector and compare them with the engagement practices in other leading sectors in India. The study also assesses various engagement attributes in Indian IT organizations.

Role of HR Professionals in the Indian Information Technology Sector

(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)IntroductionHuman Resource Management (HRM) is an important support function to main business. The type of support it provides is well addressed in studies that investigate Human Resource (HR) activities (Harel and Tzafrir, 1999; Huselid and Becker, 1997; Ulrich, 1998; Jackson et al., 2004; Budhwar and Boyne, 2004; Budhwar et al., 2006a; Budhwar et al., 2006b; Lambooij et al., 2006; Jain et al., 2009). The profiles of organizations in multiple sectors vary and so do HR activities. There is however a firm belief irrespective of sector that HRM must play a more strategic role in supporting business. This implies that it must rise above just being a support function. Looking across literature it is seen that activities of HR professionals within a sector are much less addressed. A sector that needs close attention is the growing flagship sector of Information Technology in India. This paper communicates the activities that HR professionals play in organizations of the Indian IT sector. We describe their roles and activities with a specific reference to where the role played is strategic.The Indian IT industryThe success story of Indian IT industry is well described (Sheshabalaya, 2005). Most of this business is characterized as IT outsourcing and software code development. The industry is growing rapidly, and in the year 2008 it registered a growth of about 34%. The growing success of the Indian IT companies has brought with it a great surge of recruitment activities from the HR perspective. The top three Indian IT organizations namely TCS, Infosys and Wipro employ over 240,000 professionals.Table 1 shows the status of large IT companies in India. The top ten companies compete to be in the top ten ranks. The companies have varying growth percentages and revenues. The fully owned IT companies such as HCL, Cognizant and Wipro have very high growth percentages. Implying that they are fast growth companies needing care and nurture where the HR function is concerned. The companies at the over all lead revenue-wise are TCS, Wipro and Infosys. These have been in the lead for over a decade.HRM in the growing IT sectorGoals such as beating competition, meeting demanding customer's deadlines, managing fluctuating currency and the urge for speed, precipitate volatility. Volatility in the IT economy makes the role of HR professionals more complicated. HR professionals have a tight rope to walk in order to help drive performance and productivity in software development and out sourcing. The industry has challenges that HR professionals encounter on a daily basis. HR professionals spend time identifying ways to recruit, retain and right size manpower, pay competitive salaries on time, and maintain a work life balance; else employees leave and quit jobs.Developing reward (tangible and intangible) packages in IT organizations under such conditions is a challenge. Retaining the knowledge worker when attrition rates in IT organizations range from 10-40% annually is yet another challenge. Attrition rates of the knowledge worker are high in most organizations, with reasons for leaving being: study abroad, job abroad, new job in India, or study in India (Sontakke, 2000). In development teams that are close in terms of geographic proximity, or even far away as in virtual teams, the maintenance of a spirit of win-win and collaboration keeps the HR professional busy with conflict management techniques to resolve interpersonal conflicts. Whilst such managers give themselves for the organization, lobbying for their own image in the organization can become an energy consuming issue. The CEO's philosophy towards people influences the CEO's dependency on the HR function. In turn HR professionals need to educate themselves in the technical business of the organization.Often, today the line manager works with the HR professional to make business results happen. …

A Study on Work Stress Coping Strategies Adopted by Software Professionals with Special Reference to Tamilnadu

As the Indian IT organizations are growing in all perspectives and are going international, it has to confront many challenges within and outside their environment. In addition to the technological growth and innovation, there is also an increasing need to be focused more on the welfare of their employees. The IT organisations are expected to come out with better policies and procedures that augment welfare of its professionals’. This study has analyzed the stress management policies and implementation by software organisations and has examined the effective coping strategies adopted by the software professionals to battle up with their work stress and has also analysed the demographic and job related variables and level of adoption of stress coping strategies.

The role of Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning in Indian IT organizations

Knowledge and learning improve performance and development of economy. The academic literature in organization learning and knowledge management has progressed over the last decade and has demonstrated increasing diversity and specialization. To understand the role of knowledge management and organization learning in knowledge management, research was conducted in Indian IT industry. The findings with respect to the knowledge management strategies, the organization learning and the effect of technological innovation was obtained. The findings show that the ever changing technologies is compelling companies to put more effort on improvising on tools. Further, employees do believe that knowledge management leads to technological innovation, but that is not the sole factor.

Factors Affecting the Work Attitudes of Indian Re-entry Women in the IT Sector

India has witnessed increased participation of women in all sectors of the labour market. However, the career path of Indian women is not a continuous one. Despite the overflowing career prospects, women continue to quit their jobs. Some re-enter after taking a break, while others are forever lost to the labour markets. Those women, who re-enter the workforce find difficulty in gaining back their career momentum because of the demands they face at work and home. Organizations are increasingly valuing these re-entry women's talent and are therefore taking initiatives to bring them back to workforce and retain them by providing several workplace support systems such as flexible timings and work-from-home options. Consequently, a number of studies have empirically examined the relationships between such organizational supports and job attitudes of employees. But, there are very few studies that have analysed the moderating role of perceived work and family demands in these relationships particularly for re-entry women. Although there are a few studies on re-entry women in other socio-cultural contexts, hardly any study is found in the Indian context. Barely anything is known about the main reasons for career exit and career re-entry and the factors, challenges, barriers, and opportunities at the individual, family, and organizational levels for women who decide to join back employment after a career break. Further, lack of qualitative research prevents the emergence of new ideas regarding re-entry women. Studies on examining the jobrelated attitudes of re-entry women are also limited. The current study aims at examining the effect of organizational factors like policy support, diversity climate, work-family culture, and organizational justice on the attitudes of re-entry women like career satisfaction, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career commitment. Responses were collected from the re-entry women in Indian IT organizations through a survey questionnaire. Findings indicate that the career outcomes and attitudes of Indian re-entry women are directly related to organizational factors. Organizations are therefore suggested to provide the right kind of support to these women by revising their policies and making the workplace environment and culture more supportive and inclusive for women returners.

A study of integrated KM in IT support services companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate a good knowledge management (KM) framework for IT services companies to provide an integrated approach to IT services for efficient knowledge management.Design/methodology/approachThe framework is evaluated at three Indian IT organizations providing global IT services with successful KM programs dedicated to services. Expert interviews were conducted with senior management involved in the KM programs. Information collected was used for studying the KM framework implemented by each organization for services and then content analyzed and evaluated.FindingsThe paper provides evidence of various strategic, technological critical factors influencing the success of KM programs in IT services companies. Organizations with successful KM programs typically adapt attrition control measures, rewards and recognitions. Application of key enabler tools of KM help in robust knowledge management, reducing cost to client, helping companies to excel better.Research limitations/implicationsInterviews are limited to three large companies in the Bangalore region. Future in‐depth studies across regions, with a mix of medium/large organizations would benefit from a larger and more diverse sample.Practical implicationsIt is suggested that IT services organizations develop specific capabilities to create knowledge management system (KMS) for productivity benefits and increased profitability. To provide clear benchmarks for developing these capabilities, mainly from the outsourcing point of view, a KM framework for IT services is provided.Originality/valueIntegrated KMS is discussed from a unique perspective of IT services by integrating knowledge management and IT services. The paper also reviews customers' expectations from IT service providers. The paper conducts preliminary evaluation of the KM framework for IT services and provides a broader view for future research opportunities.

Role of Knowledge Management Initiatives in Organizational Innovativeness: Empirical Findings from the IT Industry

This paper addresses the relationship between knowledge management initiatives in Indian IT organizations and their innovativeness at the organization level by using the survey research methodology. Knowledge management initiatives were measured in the context of cultural, structural, and technological interventions. Innovation was measured in terms of organizational behaviour related to sensitivity, learning, newness, trialability, communicability, risk-readiness, and absorption. A conceptual model was developed to assess the relationship between knowledge management initiatives and innovativeness. A hypothesis that knowledge management initiatives (KMI) influence the innovativeness of the organization was propounded. The questionnaire developed to assess knowledge management initiatives had 60 items, while an already available questionnaire consisting of 65 items was used to measure innovativeness. Eventually, the number of items in the knowledge management initiatives and innovativeness questionnaires was bought down to 45 and 34 respectively. Items were measured on a fivepoint Likert type rating scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The reliability of the questionnaires was checked using Cronbach Alpha. The study was carried out on 84 professionals from 20 Bangalore-based IT organizations that had implemented knowledge management initiatives and had SEI CMM level 5. Means and standard deviations of the variables were computed. The variables were subjected to correlation analysis and factor analysis. A multiple regression analysis was done to identify the influence of knowledge management initiatives on organizational innovativeness. An organizational innovativeness score, was used as the dependent variable and the variables of knowledge management initiatives were used as the independent variables. The results of data analysis showed that the initiatives taken by companies to enhance their knowledge assets fall into the culture, structure, and technology subsystems and that all the three are highly correlated: Technology and culture are more strongly associated with each other, as compared to their association with structure. All the three KMI variables strongly influence organizational innovativeness, with ‘culture’ being the most important. ‘Learning climate,’ a variable of culture, is found to be the most significant of the variables to influence innovativeness. Hence, organizations that lay emphasis on learning and provide excellent training facilities can foster a more innovative environment. Interestingly, ‘risk readiness‘ is not a factor contributing to innovativeness and is not significantly associated with the other variables. The variables like leadership, networking, reward and recognition, structure and technology do not significantly influence innovativeness.