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IIM Indore

Purpose This paper aims to develop conceptual arguments questioning the efficacy of administration by the transaction cost economics (TCE) approach in an organization undergoing a major change.Design/methodology/approach The focus is on three distinct dimensions of organizational life where, as per prior research, TCE is likely to be inadequate: interdependence across transactions, high reliance on managerial foresight and inseparability of administrative decisions made at different points in time.Findings The climate of coercion and surveillance engendered by administration based on TCE approaches – that punishes deviation from goals, even when they are framed on inadequate knowledge – forestalls creative problem-solving that is necessary to address unforeseen developments that arise during change implementation. Fiat accomplishes within-group compliance in the change project sub-teams, but between-group interdependencies tend to be neglected, hampering organizational effectiveness. Moreover, attempts to create independent spheres of accountability for concurrent fiats regarding pre-existing and new commitments breed inefficiency and wastage.Research limitations/implications The malevolent aspects of TCE-based administration contribute to organizational dysfunctions like escalation of commitment and developing of silos in organizations.Practical implications To succeed in effecting a major organizational change, meaningful relaxation of demands for delivering on prior goals is required, along with forbearance of errors made during trial-and-error learning.Originality/value TCE-based administration is deleterious to an organization attempting a major change. Supremacy accorded to resolution of conflicts in distinct hierarchical relationships by the mechanism of fiat fails to address the needs of an organizational reality where multiple groups are engaged in a set of interdependent activities and where multiple, interdependent organizational imperatives need to be concurrently served.

Communication

Strategic Management

World University root node

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International Journal of Organizational Analysis

Administration of an organization undergoing change: Some limitations of the transaction cost economics approach

Indian women at work: Struggling between visibility and invisibility

Over the last two decades, an increasing number of women have joined the Indian workforce, but, as Indian society is still largely patriarchal, they struggle for full membership in the professional ingroup. Drawing on Lewis and Simpson’s ‘(In)visibility Vortex’ (2012), we investigate from a discursive angle how these concepts are talked into being in interviews with female Indian professionals. Zooming in on one interview, we found that the interviewee’s stories demonstrate a general tendency towards ‘invisibility’, but they also uncover gender-based boundaries within the male dominated workplace. Finally, we also discuss how the interviewee’s transgression of such boundaries clashes with Indian cultural norms of acceptable female behavior, and instead of leading to inclusion in the workplace, it actually leads to ‘visibility’ and an emphasis on the interviewee’sothernessin identity terms.

Identity Struggles: Evidence from workplaces around the world

Indian women at work

In research interviews, interviewees are usually well aware of why they were selected, and in their narratives they often construct ‘default identities’ in line with the interviewers’ expectations. Furthermore, narrators draw on shared cultural knowledge and master narratives that tend to form an implicit backdrop of their stories. Yet in this article we focus on how some of these master narratives may be mobilized explicitly when default identities are at stake. In particular, we investigate interviews with successful female professionals from diverse geographical contexts. We found that the interviewees deal with challenges to their ‘successful professional’ identities by drawing on categorical narratives or categorical statements. As such, the interviewees talk into being a morally ordered gendered worldview, thus making explicit gendered master narratives about their societies and workplaces. In general, this article shows that categorical narratives and statements can bring (the typically rather elusive) master narratives to the surface and that these can thus contribute to the narrators’ identity work.

Discourse & Communication

Mobilizing master narratives through categorical narratives and categorical statements when default identities are at stake

Existing research on women’s construction of professional identities and, more specifically, on leader identities in the workplace, has traditionally focused mainly on western contexts. This article aims to extend this focus by investigating the position of women in the workplace in India. We do this by discursively analyzing audio-taped semi-structured interviews with women who are working in the corporate sector in India. The aim of these analyses is to present a number of case studies about the unique challenges that women face at the workplace in the urban Indian context, especially when they take up leadership positions. The issues they grapple with are the collision of the traditional dominant discourses on appropriate female behavior and the new professional identities that these women wish to embrace. The paper discusses how these female professionals mainly construct two quite diverging identities: either as nurturing mentors or as aggressive professionals who are involved in activities traditionally viewed as “a man’s domain”. Conclusions are then drawn regarding how these professional identities acquiesce to, counter, or — as is the case in one interview — carefully mould, hegemonic discourses of femininity in India.

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

Negotiating professional and leader identities in interviews with female Indian professionals

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enable innovative ways of carrying on routine organizational tasks via
the power of virtual work environment. Piggy-backing on the success of E-commerce systems, organizations are
increasingly making use of Web-based Human Resource Management (e-HR) systems. These systems offer organizations
the promise of huge performance improvement as well as of overhauling the entire HR function itself. This latter possibility
is expected to offer competitive advantage to organizations. However, it is not known (a) at what level of sophistication
should organizations pitch their e-HR systems and (b) what contextual factors moderate the relationship between e-HR
systems implementation and their benefits. In this research-in-progress paper we offer a conceptual framework and a
research plan to develop a theory of e-HR systems implementation.

14th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2008

E-HR systems implementation: A conceptual framework

This research focuses on the similari ties and differences in the cognitive moral develop ment of business professionals and graduate business students in two countries, India and the United States. Factors that potentially influence cognitive moral development, namely, culture, education, sex and gender are analyzed and discussed. Implications for ethics education in graduate business schools and professional associations are considered. Future research on the cognitive moral development of graduate business students and business professionals is recommended.

Journal of Business Ethics

Factors Related to the Cognitive Moral Development of Business Students and Business Professionals in India and the United States: Nationality, Education, Sex and Gender

This research focuses on the similarities and differences in the cognitive moral development of business professionals and graduate business students in two countries, India and the United States. Factors that potentially influence cognitive moral development, namely, culture, education, sex and gender are analyzed and discussed. Implications for ethics education in graduate business schools and professional associations are considered. Future research on the cognitive moral development of graduate business students and business professionals is recommended

Beverly Kracher Abha Chatterjee Arlene R. Lundquist

This article aims at providing a case study for teaching engineering ethics. It is based on a play by Rabindranath Tagore and was used in a technological institute in India with students of science and engineering. As a case study it can be used with students of other disciplines as well.