Perspectives on Indian Offshoring Globalisation and Transformation of Identity

and seminars in all four sites as opportunities for further data collection.

As noted, our Mumbai study was conducted in two stages. In the first phase, we conducted most of the interviews and undertook the most extensive observation. A year later we went back for a seminar which we jointly ran with the organisation. Academics from Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and the UK attended and participated, and presentations were also made by two of the organisation’s senior managers. The response to this seminar depended on close collaboration with contacts in the organisation. This process, together with the seminar itself, was an opportunity for us to engage in participant observation, providing insights into organisational processes and practices that otherwise might not have been available. Fieldnotes were compiled throughout the observations and later transcribed.

In the sections that follow we examine how British and Indian employees “constructed” themselves and one another in their accounts. We explore these issues through a consideration of three themes emerging in respondents’ transcripts: accounts of the migration to Mumbai, “cultural difference”, and notions of competence.

Migration to Mumbai

In their accounts, respondents from all four sites spoke at length about the move to Mumbai. Permeating the UK data, however, was a sense of ambivalence, and descriptions of resentment by respondents towards new Indian colleagues at the time of the migration. In some cases this was very personal – people explained how it had led to job cuts in their sites. In other instances, though, India was described as posing a more general “threat” to British life and society. The following extracts illustrate both:

At the outset, customers were likewise very antagonistic and respondents spoke at length about their refusal to speak to Indian representatives, an issue which has been well documented in the UK and Indian press. Acutely aware of this antipathy, Indian respondents spoke of the tension they experienced at the time, as they attempted to assuage their colleagues and deal with customers wariness and animosity. The striking thing about this data is the level of empathy expressed in these accounts, Indian respondents’ denial that these attitudes were racist, and a view that dealing with this emotional fallout was part of their job:

Throughout the UK and Indian data there was the sense, reminiscent of the conditioning effects highlighted by Gopal and his colleagues (2003), that the UK employees had a right to behave this way, that it was utterly understandable for them to treat their Indian colleagues badly and that the Indians had to understand, and accept it.

Significantly, there was a consensus that things had improved greatly in the three years since the Mumbai site had opened, as people from the two countries worked together and developed relationships:

A lot of people have had opportunities to work out there and that has been the biggest benefit … actually seeing that the officesin our Mumbai operation are very similar to the offices here. They’re not in little shacks, you know! It’s like real high tech … I think they’re a lot more western than people think.

In her article, McMillan (2006) highlights the importance of interconnectivity, and we see this as a case in point. Through regular secondments, excellent communications and similar working environments, respondents said that the distance between the UK and India had diminished, and spoke of a growing collegiality and identification. It is significant though, that in spite of these developing relationships, the onus was nevertheless on Indian colleagues to “blend in”. In this sense, these employees could be seen as a contemporary example of a Macaulay’s “translators” noted earlier. Also, while respondents noted that employees and most policyholder customers had largely accepted the situation, at the time of the fieldwork, independent financial advisors were still refusing to speak to Indian agents, and it was the organisation’s policy to transfer these calls back to the UK. We will return to this point below.

Accounts of ‘Cultural Difference’

Permeating respondents’ descriptions of their organisation and one another were references to “cultural difference”. Looking closely at the data, it became apparent that respondents were using this term to explain, and sometimes to legitimise attitudes towards work and in particular organisational arrangements. For example, there was a consensus across the dataset that Indian and British employees embraced very different work ethics. As a respondent from Scotland explained:

I think the whole work ethic is fantastic in India. I think if I need something done, someone in India will do it. In the UK you’ve got to jump through hoops sometimes to get people to accept changes to processes, changes to procedures. They can see it as a bit of a hassle whereas in India they’re enthusiastic about itbecause it’s something different and they’re so willing to demonstrate that they can do things well… I know we can get all the training material all done, roll it out in India, great, they’ll really embrace it and think “this is great” and get on with it. In the UK, we’ll have to negotiate with them, they’ll push back the timescales.

This idea is echoed in the following quote in which the speaker, also from the Scottish site, describes the very different role that work plays in her Indian colleagues’ life than in her own:

But I think it’s a whole different culture over there. The whole work ethic from Mumbai is completely different. They love their work. They take their whole families into work… They’re there all night because they love going to work.

This belief that Indian and UK employees held very different attitudes to work was likewise endorsed by the majority of Indian respondents. For example, several respondents noted that while their UK counterparts worked to strict timings, Indian employees regularly (and indeed willingly) stay late and work until the job is done:

Work-wise there’s a very rigid timing they follow (in the UK). It’s 9 to 5. “I’m not going to sit a minute above 5 o’clock”, which is not the case over here. If you look at anyone over here, people happily stretch the hours they have, happily knowing they’re not going toget anything out of it. In spite of that, they’re happily doing this.

In our data it was seen as unproblematic that because of the Indians’ “different” work ethic it was appropriate for them to take on activities and work to schedules that were deemed unacceptable to their British colleagues. From another perspective, of course, it could be argued that this cultural explanation was being used as a justification for exploitation. This is a vivid illustration of Gopal et al’s (2003) point about the conditioning effects of colonial practices noted above, whereby certain sets of arrangements come to be experienced as commonsense. However, it must be noted that not all the Indian employees simply accepted such practices as natural or inevitable. On the contrary, many felt that they had something real to gain in working harder and demonstrating greater commitment than their UK colleagues. Permeating the Indian data was the feeling that respondents saw themselves as part of a rapidly changing Indian economy, an economy that brought with it significant opportunities and rewards for those who actively pursued them.

Notably, Indian respondents were much keener to identify similarities with their UK counterparts than differences. Many highlighted the extensive training they received which enabled them to “come up to the expectations of counterparts and colleagues in the UK” in order to “bridge the credibility gap” which seemingly was inevitable in the offshoring process. Indeed, many respondents talked enthusiastically about how the language and cultural training helped them to blend in, how it made them seem “less Indian”. Although not expected to deny that they are Indian, a sure sign of success is when customers do not recognise agents as such, and employees are willing to undergo extra training to achieve this. As an English employee with a responsibility for training and development explained:

When we were doing this originally Mumbai wanted particular things, protocols, around accent and nuance and so on. Now Ididn’t want that because really why should we be auditing the Mumbai guys on a different level from us. You know, we’ve got accents, and they do in Scotland and they can be bloody difficult to understand, but this was something that Mumbai particularly wanted. They wanted it big time. They still do, yeah.

What is fascinating here is that it is not the UK operation imposing this imperative on the Mumbai site, but something that is being driven by Mumbai itself. Here we have an example of both the invisibility and conditioning effects identified by Gopal and his colleagues (2003) as a characteristic of colonialism. Through extensive training, the hope is that Mumbai employees can make their foreignness disappear, a goal which in this context is seen as normal and appropriate – yet another example of customer service workers as “cultural interpreters”, translating between Indian and British contexts and rendering themselves invisible in the process. Here it is important to look at these comments not simply as conforming to the expectations of this western organisation, but in the wider Indian educational and social context, where speaking excellent English continues to be a potent status symbol.

As noted, attributions of “cultural difference” were made much more frequently by UK than by Indian respondents. Looking closely at the UK data, it became clear that such attributions frequently had little if anything to do with culture. Rather, “cultural difference” appeared to be used as a short-hand for something else. For example, in the following quote a Scottish customer service representative was talking about the problems of cultural difference in relation to language:

It’s just the language barrier that’s the problem. …it wasn’t just

the language barrier. It was, these people are taking our jobs.

Here it appears that the “language barrier” was at first used as an excuse – it wasn’t the cultural difference or the language barrier that was the problem, but the perception that jobs were being lost to India. It could be that while expressing resentment about this was not seen as legitimate, complaining about the “language barrier” was. In another interview, a respondent was talking about the challenges of offshoring which again were at first attributed to “cultural difference”:

There was recognition amongst some UK managers and many Indian respondents that this was indeed the case and that, more insidiously, the Indian operation was often used as a scapegoat. This was illustrated vividly during one of our visits to the Mumbai site. Preparing for the seminar described above, we arrived at the office one day to find the senior managers in a state of anxiety because the entire telephone system in the Mumbai site had gone down, with all calls being diverted to the UK. This was causing tension, anger and confusion amongst their British colleagues who had to manage the huge increase in call volume at the end of their shift. Although the problem was the introduction of a new telephone system in the UK, India was being blamed – it was seen as yet another example of Indian incompetence. The managing director of the Indian operation did not appear to be at all surprised by this response, and knew that India would be held accountable for the telephone failure. This, he said, was quite simply a feature of the “outsourcing space” that the Indians had to accept. In his eyes, all they could do was to work even harder and even better to prove their added value.

this with a Scottish manager: Do they actually do (the work) well? I would say probably ninetimes out of 10 yes, but the one time out of 10 gets exposed rightacross the organisation type thing, you know, and I think that’swhere it gets hard.

In the feedback workshop held with Scottish managers later we discussed this issue further. Participants talked about how India was often blamed for whatever went wrong, and used words like “safety valve” and “emotional release” to describe this function. They spoke of how right across the organisation India was seen as a legitimate target, whereas it would not have been appropriate to complain about their Northern Irish or English colleagues, it was perfectly acceptable to criticise Mumbai. Earlier we suggested that “cultural difference” was used as a justification for seemingly unfair working arrangements. Likewise, using Mumbai as a safety value appeared to reduce tension amongst the UK employees, and make them feel more positive about their own abilities and status.

Importantly, with regard to this issue of competence, the majority of Indian respondents did not accept the charge that they were in any way less able than their British colleagues. On the contrary, they discussed at some length the ways in which their own performance often far exceeded that of their UK counterparts:

respondent explained how they frequently had to disguise this if it was seen to undermine UK colleagues. In particular, he resented the way in which Indian managers ingratiated themselves with their UK counterparts, and recast UK failings as developmental opportunities for Indian staff:

We disagree at times and we put forward our disagreements in front of them, but most of the time they don’t listen. (He goeson to describe a complex process which ultimately falls to a senior manager to resolve.) I have told my team leader and even my operations manager to, you know, fight these kind of things. Why do we take it ourselves? I don’t know why. It beats me hollow as to why we have to take this on. But they say, you know, they say why don’t we derive learning from it, and why don’t we sharpenour processes… That’s something which I asked them to fight for which unfortunately – they don’t fight.

With respect to the concept of conditioning effects, these are interesting, contradictory data. On one hand, in their accounts Indian respondents are standing up to the criticisms levelled against them, and thus do not appear to be conditioned in the way Gopal and his colleagues describe. They believe that they are competent, and in terms of their educational backgrounds and the quality of service they provide, see themselves as outpacing their British colleagues. However, when it comes to defending their positions in public, the data suggest far more reticence. Rather than insisting on what they think is right, this respondent suggests that Indian managers recommend what we have seen elsewhere in the data – that employees use the experience as an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment, effort and good will.

This feeling that Indian employees had to be very careful when questioning the work of their British colleagues is in stark contrast to the barrage of criticisms regularly and freely levelled against Mumbai – from UK employees at every level. Underpinning this data, then, is a sense of the UK being in charge, with Mumbai depicted as a bright and friendly, yet somewhat muddled and childlike subordinate, in need of close monitoring and on-going control.

In this paper we have examined the ways in which UK and Indian employees working in customer service centres in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Mumbai account for themselves, and one another. The aim was to deepen existing understandings of individuals’ lived experiences of these newly emergent forms of organisation. Our findings lead to two broad contributions.

Our first contribution concerns the interplay between material circumstances and cultural explanations throughout our dataset, and the implications of this ongoing dialogue for people’s lived experience of work in this organisation. As discussed, notions of India as threatening cultural difference and Indian incompetence permeated our UK data, and appeared to be mobilised to explain or justify particular organisational arrangements, or patterns of behaviour. With respect to the former, we showed how the opening of the Mumbai site was constructed as a challenge to the British way of life. Regarding cultural difference, our data depicted how this attribution, specifically relating to the Indians’ superior work ethic, was used to provide a rationale for why Indian employees habitually worked overtime while the British did not, to justify giving Indian staff extra work, or to explain why the Mumbai site was frequently selected to pilot new training materials. On the other hand, the idea of Indians as incompetent was used as a justification for additional monitoring of Indian representatives, for limiting their discretion and more insidiously for legitimating their use as a scapegoat when things went wrong.

In some ways, these polarities: us/them, competent/incompetent, adult/child could be seen as examples of Edward Said’s (1978) concept of Orientalism, central to which is the notion of East and West as cultural rather than material artefacts, and of the East as a construction of the West. In Said’s words:

Since the middle of the 18th century there had been two principalelements in the relation between East and West. … The essential relationship, on political, cultural, and even religious grounds wasseen – in the West, which is what concerns us here – to be one between a strong and a weak partner.Many terms were used to express the relation… The Oriental isirrational, depraved, (fallen), childlike, “different”, thus theEuropean is rational, virtuous, mature, “normal”… Yet what gavethe Oriental’s world its intelligibility and identity was not the resultof his own efforts but rather the whole complex series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by theWest (1978, pp 39-40).

Certainly there are elements, even in this short quotation, which appear to be echoed in our dataset: references to India as exotic, at once childlike and dangerous; and of the UK as powerful and in charge, though also frightened. While highly influential, Orientalism has been extensively criticised [Jasanoff 2006], in part for what is seen as its reductive, dualistic perspective. While we accept this criticism and acknowledge the problems of dualistic analyses, we would argue that binary opposites remain a powerful framework through which individuals make sense of and account for their experiences [Duberley, Cohen and Mallon 2006], as evidenced in our respondents’ accounts. Both McMillan (2006) and Ramesh (2004) argue that the introduction of the BPO sector in India, though its imposition of western norms and values, is serving to destabilise Indian identities. Thus, central to both their analyses is a strong sense of East and West, of “us” and “them”. The case we are making here is different. Our data does not reveal this kind of cultural takeover. Rather, we are highlighting the use of these cultural ascriptions not as a window into respondents’ feelings about cultural identity, but as rhetorical devices used to justify certain patterns of thought and behaviour. We found that attributing aspects of organisational life to cultural fact served to naturalise these patterns of thought and action such that they assumed a kind of inevitability, and thus were accepted without question as “how things are”. In this sense they worked, as Barthes “cultural mythologies” (1975), to sustain existing arrangements, foreclosing discussion that could potentially disturb this (precarious) status quo.

Here a few interesting issues arise. First, we noted that whilst these explanations were most widely used in the UK data, Indian employees nevertheless colluded in them. In this sense, the latter respondents could be seen as participating in the kind of invisibility and conditioning effects Gopal and his colleagues (2003) described as part and parcel of the process of colonialism (and its most recent expression in globalisation). Why they might do this is a vexing question which we can only answer in a speculative way. It could be that the Indian respondents genuinely believe that these processes are fair and appropriate. Indeed, several did suggest that as the newest recruits in an established UK company, their role was to fit in, do the job well, and not rock the boat. On the other hand, as suggested by other employees, it could be that people feel that they ultimately have something to gain by appearing acquiescent at this stage. As noted, there was a strong sense amongst Indian respondents at all levels that the Indian employees had to prove themselves to their UK counterparts, and that once they did so, they could begin to create opportunities for themselves. In this sense, conforming at this stage could be a strategy that Indians were deploying so as to reap greater career rewards in the future.

For our purposes, the important points here are Bhabha’s emphasis on the precariousness of order, the need for repetition, and the possibility of resistance. In the section on competence we discussed the Scottish manager’s view that Indian representatives needed to be constantly reminded of the right way to do things. In Bhabha’s terms, such ongoing reminders might also serve to fix this idea of Indian incompetence in the minds of staff. Indeed, throughout the data we have examples of such reminders, all of which could be seen as illustrating the fragility of the existing order, and the continual repetition of certain cultural rituals (like forbidding Indian representatives from speaking to independent financial advisors, Indian managers not allowing their subordinates to question UK judgment, etc) to keep it intact.

Regarding resistance, the data on language and the Indian respondents’ desire to perfect their language skills provide some interesting food for thought. As noted in that section, it could be of course that this ambition to speak perfect English is something which is embedded in the educational system that staff members had participated in for many years, and is likewise expressed in wider cultural artefacts such as the prolific English language media and India’s huge English language publishing industry. In this sense, it is an aspiration that employees bring to the organisation from outside, and is fuelled by the organisation’s performance criteria. On the other hand, it could also be related to the widespread feeling amongst Indian staff that they had to perform at the highest possible levels to achieve credibility and recognition in this UK dominated organisational environment. However, taking account of Bhabha’s work on mimicry, an alternative interpretation is that there is a certain irony, and with it a certain sense of resistance, implicit in this desire to “blend in”. Bhabha suggests that:

Indeed, several of our UK respondents expressed their unease not only with what they saw as some of their Indian colleagues’ excessive desire to perfect their English, but with the results of these efforts, described by some as “strange” and “artificial”. There are likewise examples of Indian staff taking on aspects of the cultural training, in particular with regard to their handling some of the company’s older customers, in ways that their UK colleagues find odd. UK staff spoke of these behaviours as disturbing because they were at once very familiar, and at the same time exotic and different. Most intriguing about these instances was that UK respondents could not pinpoint the problem. All they could really talk about was their sense of discomfort. For their part, when discussing aspects of their work, Indian respondents talked above all about following the rules, conforming to company expectations, and performing to the best of their ability. Whilst there is no scope within this paper to further develop ideas about irony, mimicry and resistance, we feel that it is an area which merits further investigation.

Focusing on the ways in which UK and Indian respondents in this financial services organisation construct themselves and one another, our analysis reveals above all paradoxes and ambivalences. On one hand, it demonstrates respondents’ use of binary understandings: the Indians and the British; their work ethic and ours; competence and incompetence, to justify particular patterns of thinking and acting, and ultimately to legitimate the persistence of existing arrangements. However, at the same time it highlights a deep sense of contradiction and doubt that underpins these dichotomies: expressed as inconsistencies within these prescriptions, as rules and patterns of thought and behaviour which are reiterated on a daily basis, and as ironic conformity. We would argue that this ambivalence can be seen to elucidate the fragility of the existing order, the possibility of resistance and potentially of change.

EPW

Email: l.cohen@lboro.ac.uk

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