Experiencing Depersonalised bullying: a study of Indian call-centre agents - Essay Example

? Experiencing Depersonalised bullying: a study of Indian call-centre agents BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Experiencing Depersonalised bullying: a study of Indian call-centre agents TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 Introduction..................................................................................................... 2.0 Depersonalised bullying: A case study of Indian call-centre agents.......... 3.0 Analysis of case study..................................................................................... 4.0 Conclusion....................................................................................................... References Experiencing Depersonalised bullying: a study of Indian call-centre agents 1.0 Introduction There are fundamental contradictions in contemporary management that conflict utilisation of management theory as compared to actual management practice in the organisation. Traditional and ideological models of management tend to paint a portrait that management is a statistical responsibility, whereby analyses and role function occur under functionalist perspectives or systems perspectives. Ideological theorists view management under traditionalist lenses, following such advices as those provided by Milton Friedman or Adam Smith in which the main responsibility of the corporation is to secure profitability and enhance market position (Friedman 2003). Such views have the role of management in the organisation as a relatively simplistic alignment of human capital to effective resource utilisation to maximize strategic gains for improving business position. The difficulty under traditional management models, however, is that there are fundamental complications to taking the aforementioned hard approach to human resource management that conflict achievement of a streamlined management model which would easily allow human capital to be aligned to meet business needs. In today’s organisations, social systems, human interactions, cultural concerns and even demands from external stakeholders continue to apply pressure on the organisation. Such pressures include demands for expressing corporate social responsibility, sustaining the environment, or maintaining an ethical and moral business climate that is transparent to stakeholders and shareholders. Critical theory makes agreement with such theorists as Karl Marx and Jurgen Habermas where “one must become conscious of how an ideology distorts reality” (MacIssac 1996, p.1). Thus, it should be highlighted that there are mitigating circumstances occurring within today’s organisations that absolutely conflict utilisation of some theoretical models of management to achieve profitability or market position gains. Critical management studies assist in deconstructing the real-time corporation, exposing the intangibles of business environment that require managerial acknowledgement of the influence of social systems in promoting business success. “CMS believes by reflecting and questioning existing management practices, it is possible to generate better norms, policies, ideas and management values” (Akella 2008, p. 102). This is why critical management studies are tightly linked to critical theory, as critical theory recognises the substantial importance of sociological factors that strongly influence managerial decision-making and employee willingness to accept change and meet performance targets. Critical theory provides a pragmatic model by which to deconstruct the legitimate corporate environment to identify opportunities to improve managerial function whilst taking into consideration more than simply traditionalist, ideological management models available. As identified by Max Weber and Focault, “between sociology as an empirical science and sociology as a philosophy, the dividing lines are quite clear” (Szackolczai 2001, p. 10). Critical management studies, as linked with critical theory, give business researchers and general society a new tool by which to understand the complexities of inter-dependent corporate systems and the role of human engagement and behaviour in conflicting or enhancing managerial decision-making. 2.0 Depersonalised bullying: A case study of Indian call-centre agents Nowhere are the fundamentals of critical management studies more important than when attempting to understand conceptions of human resource management, as HRM entails taking a humanistic approach to improving business performance through human capital development by appealing to the psycho-social characteristics of employees. Neo-Marxist theories of management, as one example, tend to acknowledge the necessity of sociological systems vital to securing the utility of employees and external stakeholders and to achieve market gains. Marxist values, as only one relevant example, tend to argue against the traditionalist capitalism model, suggesting that it is an amalgamation of different corporate and environmental conceptions that will ultimately allow a business to achieve important gains in efficiency, productivity and competitive prowess and not simply utilising hard models of HR and functionalist management models. “In achieving dominance, the commercial corporation has eclipsed the state, family, residential community and moral community. This shadowing has hidden or suppressed important historical conflicts among competing institutional demands. Corporate practices pervade modern life” (Alvesson and Willmott 1999, p.4). The aforementioned authors recognise that the corporation, today, has transcended the boundaries of business environment and thus engrains influence (and is influenced by) culture, human attitude and behaviour, and conceptions stemming from stakeholders about the acceptability of certain moral and ethical behaviours. Critical management studies allow for a deconstruction, using a pragmatic lens, of the real-world corporate environment to illustrate the contemporary issues that directly impact management role and responsibility from more than a functionalist perspective or hard HRM approach. A recent study of Indian call-centre environments illustrated the complexities of social systems and relative moral/ethical constructs that pervade the corporate environment. Utilising a blended methodology of qualitative interviews and thematic analyses, a sample of 59 call centre agents from Mumbai and Bangalore indicated a phenomenon occurring at the call centre facilities referred to as depersonalised bullying. Best defined, depersonalised bullying is where the corporate structure, itself, serves as the bullying entity by which employees are forced to comply with demands that might be unrealistic and also immoral to certain stakeholder groups (D’Cruz and Noronha 2009). In the call centre environment, one that services and supports mostly clients from Western countries, employees are forced to change their identities to avoid negative stakeholder sentiment from those who would likely believe that Indian call centre agents lack the fundamental competencies necessary to service and satisfy foreign consumers. At the same time, employees at the call centre are forced into subordinate roles associated with promises of materialism that are founded by potential threats of job loss for non-compliance to many questionable (although relative) moral values and principles established and sanctioned by the management teams at the call centres. Therefore, the structure of the corporation and the willingness of management to impose potentially unethical demands on employees serve as the foundation for bullying by which call centre employees are forced to comply under ambiguous threats to materialism. Subordination, in this fashion, is reinforced by the financialisation of the capitalistic system by which maximising shareholder utility becomes the priority over that of establishing utility for employees (Lazonick 2006; Froud et al. 2006). Therefore, there is a significant disconnect in the call centre industry in India between satisfying the needs of external stakeholders and achieving positive motivational outcomes through the utilisation of human-centric HR models that recognise the sociological and psychological needs of employees. Because the corporate structure is creating a depersonalised bullying by which compliance is guaranteed, the case study of the Indian call centre environment illustrates the importance of critical management studies as it allows for deconstruction of the ideological view of business success to examine the more intangible factors of human relationships and behaviours that influence managerial decision-making. Even if the utility of employees at the call centre is not considered as the management team seeks maximisation of shareholder and external stakeholder needs, it cannot be negated that inherent employees values, relative views on ethics and morality, and their psychologically-motivated concerns about their job role importance are critical factors that will determine whether call centre agents embrace change and are motivated to perform to expectations. 3.0 Analysis of case study The case study involving Indian call centre agents illustrated significant bullying in a variety of forms, with each issue causing stress or anxiety with call centre workers stemming from managerial imperatives to satisfy the consumer and maximise business position. Workers, in the case study, were refused adequate leave during periods of illness, were exposed to strenuous monitoring systems, and even verbally assaulted when low performance was perceived by management (D’Cruz and Noronha 2008). As previously identified, when employees raised concerns about these systems and one-sided relationships between employees and managers, they were terminated or threatened with potential job loss. The corporate structure and lack of approach using humanistic HR models to gain commitment and support makes it impossible for call centre employees to gain control within an organisational context. Akella (2008) reminds the business world that CMS is designed to expose discrimination in the corporation and to assist in liberating employees from these iniquities through the creation of more pragmatic and relevant policies, corporate norms, and procedures. The problem in the call centre case study is that bullying does not seem to be a direct product of managerial egoism, but simply by prescribing to the notion that it is the consumer and shareholder that requires moral and ethical consideration whilst negating the needs of call centre employees who are easily controlled within the organisational structure. The corporation and its focus on meeting external stakeholder needs is a prescription of teleological thinking, the notion that moral behaviour allows for achievement of a desired ethical consequence without much consideration over the means by which this consequence is reached (Craig 1998). “Right conduct in teleology is defined as that which promotes the best consequences or identifiable good” (Craig 1998, p.27). To the call centre organisations and management in these organisations, right conduct (the moral consequence) is serving consumers and shareholders. To the call centre employees, this teleological approach to management is unsatisfactory and immoral. There is a phenomenon in society and business referred to as moral relativism, the fundamental belief that there is no singular model by which to judge an acceptable or improper moral or ethical action (Blackford 2010; Swoyer 2003). Those who prescribe to moral relativist philosophy believe that since there is no universal construct of acceptable versus unacceptable ethical behaviour, society and business should simply accept others’ behaviours even if they conflict with our own personal values associated with moral and ethical behaviour (Blackford 2010; Hall 1997). Herein lays the difficulty in the case study of bullied call centre employees: employees have extremely relative views of acceptable moral behaviour stemming from managers whilst the corporate culture of shareholder and consumer dedication forbids utilising a more culturally-relevant HR model of humanism to gain commitment and motivation from the employee population. Critical management studies and its intention of deconstructing actual management models to provide better social justice outcomes in the organisation is important in fully understanding how such depersonalised bullying could be founded and sustained over the long-term. Fairholm (2009) identifies that in order to develop a more mutually-rewarding organisational culture that gains commitment, transformational management design should be utilised. This includes coaching, mentoring, opening lines of active communication between management and employee groups, and imparting mission and vision values to gain cultural support for new business objectives (Fairholm 2009). The case study clearly indicates a disconnect between employee values and managerial focus whereby the corporate culture of servitude to the external market supersedes and oppresses employee needs. Because there are no identified negative consequences to the management team for facilitating a one-sided corporate culture, managers continue with this practice even though motivation and performance are impacted in the long-term. Utilising strictly authoritarian management styles to ensure compliance to strategic expectations for external market servitude illustrates a pertinent example of why traditional capitalistic-based models of management are not necessarily effective in all foreign cultures. There requires a stronger focus on establishment of mutually-beneficial managerial philosophies at the call centre facilities in the case study if the business hopes to gain legitimised commitment and dedication to corporate objectives for external market servitude. Grieves (2010), a theorist in humanistic models of human relations, strongly enforces that change must be negotiated between managers and employees in order to gain organisational commitment. Concurrently, organisational theory teaches us that different foreign cultures maintain radically unique conceptions about what constitutes effective management and leadership. Some cultures view authoritarian leadership as acceptable due to the cultural propensity to accept high levels of power distance (Hofstede et al. 2010; Hofstede 2001). In another culture, inherent social values demand that managers illustrate sensitivity and empathy in order to build trust and organisational commitment. Critical management theory allows for analyses of hard management models to identify opportunities to emancipate workers from bullying regimes or those that prescribe to ineffective models of authoritarian leadership in traditional management models. CMS takes into consideration the complexities of social attitudes and human emotional needs (as only two examples) to help us to identify with the modern corporation and the multitude of differing influences of many diverse stakeholder groups. This is why recognition that call centre employees continue to maintain disgruntled and frustrated motivational levels stemming from culturally-insensitive management styles is so critical to supporting CMS methodology. As illustrated by the case study, call centre employees have many inherent cultural and emotional needs that are forbade by unsympathetic management teams that are openly sacrificed in favour of satisfying more classical models of business such as those provided by Friedman or Fayol. In the Indian culture, a highly collectivist nation, loss of face (reputation) is a critical dimension that can cause frustration or de-motivated performance (Cheung et al. 2008). The case study illustrated marked insensitivity to these important, well-engrained culturally-driven needs by utilising verbal humiliation tactics in front of important colleagues to attempt to drive better performance and adherence to external stakeholder servitude. Managers charged with sustaining the employee population at the call centre facilities in the case study maintain radically different, relative views on moral and ethical behaviour that strongly conflicts with pre-established cultural, collectivist values of the call centre agents. Under most models of human resource or humanistic managerial philosophies, such behaviour would drive reverse compliance, create opportunities for unacceptable employee turnover, and conflict team values and organisational methodology. This, again, reinforces the importance of critical management studies to understanding why classical management models founded in pre-contemporary business are ineffective for the state of the modern corporation and the growing influence of shareholders and external stakeholders in driving operational philosophy in the business world. Individuals in the organisation are, today, becoming recognised as important human capital advantages, that is, so long as they are properly developed, motivated, and team-focused to achieve desired business outcomes. This cannot be accomplished effectively without recognising psycho-social characteristics to fulfil employee needs that are more akin to neo-Marxist philosophy that supports socialism as the most viable replacement to classical capitalistic models of management. Deming (2002) clearly iterates that nearly 85 percent of all problems occurring in business are a direct cause of management oversight or lack of competency. The case study clearly illustrates a significant disconnect between managerial recognition of sustaining the emotional needs of call centre employees, negating the importance of social culture in what is driving employees to be de-motivated and frustrated. Markey (1999) however disagrees, suggesting that it is very difficult for managers to use appeals related to balance of power to gain commitment. As previously identified, the Indian culture is very collectivist, one where power distance between ranking officials and subordinates is acceptable and expected (Hofstede 2001). This confliction again explains the importance of understanding critical management studies, as there is no proverbial stone unturned about corporate culture, human behavioural needs and actions, and the social systems driving colleague/management relationships that must be taken into consideration when establishing an effective and relevant model of management that will inspire or motivate. CMS gives society and business researchers a very clear window into the dynamics of the modern corporation that includes more than simply operational concerns and strategic imperatives, instead addressing humanism needs, social belonging, self-esteem development, and many intangible human capital requirements. Ideological management models that seem to suppose simplicity in aligning human capital to tangible resources to gain competitive advantage would, theoretically, be insignificant and unsubstantial for achieving any legitimate and sustainable advantages in business without first identifying what drives employee enthusiasm and would express a perception of valuing human rights through management philosophy and action. This particular case study about the Indian call centre agents and their depersonalised bullying also seems to illustrate that the dynamics of what drives such maltreatment and discrimination are substantial. They start at the highest levels of corporate governance and are disseminated in a very rigid and top-down hierarchy supported by sanctioned corporate culture that satisfies, first, the consumer and external shareholder groups. Managers, as identified in the case study, have little or no concern over the ethical and moral conceptions of these behaviours, thus there is little evidence that the call centre facilities will attain any legitimate advantages or benefits related to human capital without adjusting this mentality. Therefore, it could be iterated that critical management studies provide the foundation by which managers can assess the legitimate market and internal organisational culture to identify deficiencies and improve the quality of relationships between managers and the frustrated employee population. CMS is a tool by which to deconstruct an existing management model, including a new abundance of human-centric needs and social influences that will ultimately determine the level of cooperation and compliance guaranteed by employees who are being verbally and ambiguously threatened for low performance. 4.0 Conclusion The case study of the Indian call centre agents absolutely illustrates the dangers of managerial oversight into important dimensions of contemporary business practice that conflict establishment of a fair, ethical and mutually-rewarding model of organisational culture. Managers that believe in the classical approach to management whereby rigid control systems are established as a means of ensuring compliance are clearly present in the case study, where little concern is provided for securing the needs (however complex and varied) of employees suffering from perceived or tangible bullying practices. This case study provided an excellent basket of support for critical management studies using a contemporary lens, providing a sensible and realistic model of potential managerial improvement by examining much more than simply firm-level dynamics to determine the most effective managerial model. Even though, based on the case study, there is likely little opportunity for this bullying to be eliminated, as the highly-engrained corporate culture and rather laissez-faire attitude of managers continue to sanction organisational politics and worker oppression that is considered satisfactory for achieving, first and foremost, business and market advantages. Whether the call centre scenario changes is not necessarily relevant, however the case study illustrates that no acceptable managerial model can be adopted without providing consideration to employees psycho-socially. 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