Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres: The Notion of Professionalism

Ernesto Noronha · Premilla D'Cruz

Jun 2009 · SAGE Publications India

About this ebook

Based on a series of qualitative inquiries exploring employee experiences of work in international facing call centres in Mumbai and Bangalore, India, this book presents the lived experience of call centre agents, coupled with managers’ perspectives and trade unionists’ viewpoints. The book underscores how employee identity is defined by the notion of professionalism. Inculcated in agents by employer organizations, professional identity is invoked as a means of gaining employee commitment to the realization of organizational goals in a bid to ensure competitive advantage. While professional identity is associated with a host of privileges, it not only results in agents justifying and complying with organizational requirements and absorbing job-related strain but also precludes agents’ engagement with collectivist endeavours aimed at representing and protecting their interests, causing the nascent trade union movement in this sector to reinvent itself. While employer organizations thus rely on the notion of professionalism to achieve organizational ends, they admit to discrepancies in the enactment of professionalism, indicating the presence of rhetoric.

Providing new and holistic insights gained via rigorous academic research, this book is of value to HR and OB professionals and scholars, industrial relations experts, sociologists, psychologists and trade unionists, as well as readers interested in India’s ITES-BPO sector.

About the author

Ernesto Noronha is Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour (OB) at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, where he teaches Macro OB and Research Methodology. Dr Noronha’s research interests include diversity at work, industrial relations, organizational change, organizational control, and ICTs and organizations. A PhD in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Dr Noronha has held faculty positions at XLRI (Xavier Labour Relations Institute) Jamshedpur, IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kanpur and IIM (Indian Institute of Management) Kozhikode. He has previously published Ethnicity in Industrial Organisations (2005), apart from several international academic papers and presentations.

Premilla D’Cruz is Associate Professor of OB at IIM Ahmedabad. A PhD in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Dr D’Cruz’s research areas are emotions in organizations, self and identity, organizational control, and ICTs and organizations. She has published Thinking Creatively at Work: A Sourcebook (2008), Family Care in HIV/AIDS: Exploring Lived Experience (2004) and In Sickness and in Health: The Family Experience of HIV/AIDS in India (2003), in addition to numerous international papers and presentations. Dr D’Cruz has earlier held faculty appointments at IIT Kanpur and IIM Kozhikode. At IIM Ahmedabad, she teaches Micro OB and Creativity.