Flexible Organizational Culture: Perception of IT Managers

Sharma, Anuradha

Various types of flexibility are function, financial temporal, numerical, legal, skills, job, location, work pattern and wage cost flexibility

Introduction

The new millennium heralds an age of total flux and a scenario of intense competition. Everyday brings forth new challenges, skill sets, information and technologies. To survive the winds of intense competition, organizations need to acquire the right approach. There is an appreciation and adoption of new managerial strategies like strategic management, flexible work culture, job redesign, organizational reengineering etc.

This paper focuses on one of the most popular organizational experiments today, that of flexibility in work schedules in organizations. This study gives the perception of flexibility as a job design paradigm, by IT managers of a famous American IT organization and the perceived problems related to it. It is a study on the correlates of the perception of flexibility by the employee.

Flexibility in management can be of various types, such as functional flexibility, financial flexibility(Atkinson,1984;Nollen and Gannon 1996) temporal flexibility (Blyton and Morris 1992) numerical flexibility, legal flexibility, skills flexibility, job flexibility, location flexibility, work pattern flexibility, and wage cost flexibility. There are multiple connotations attached to the concept of flexibility. According to Sushil (1997) it implies openness in thinking adaptiveness, to the environment, responsibleness to change, necessarily of action contingency, non rigidity, variability of parameters and specifications, multiplicity of process setting freedom, liberalization, informal attitude adjustment, compromise autonomy of function, agility in action, resilience in system, elasticity, looseness ,customized or tailor made solutions, and broadening of mind.

The success of flexibility is dependent on attitude of employees, positive attitude for flexibility and approach needed for its success

Success of flexibility practice in the organization is dependent to an extent on the attitudes of the employees towards it. Bernard (1938) expressed the view that a major part of an organization's success depended on obtaining cooperation from it's personnel.

The criticism however is that there is a lack of effort in gaining the employees commitment. There needs to be support and positive attitude for the flexibility approach to bear fruits. Flexibility is an excellent example of making human resource planning work for an organization (Ingram, 1998)

Corporate is character/zed by short-term contract culture

Prof. Gary. L. Cooper refers to flexibility in the organization as "Americanization of Work." He says that the corporate world today is characterized by short-term contract culture with outsourcing, downsizing and long working hours. According to him the Americanized scenario has (a) Leaner organizations (b) intrinsic job insecurity and (c) long working hours. This has adverse effect on employer attitude and behavior. The problem of long working hours can be managed by using flexi -time but other problems associated with contractual work culture persist. So now the important question is "Can human being cope with permanent job insecurity without the security of organizational structure?" (This culture had an important role in providing training and development to the employee.)

Flexible work culture leads to increased job insecurity, low morale, demotivation and erosion of loyalty

A lot of work is being done to see the relation of flexibility with behavioral variables like organizational commitment, loyalty, motivation, work satisfaction etc. According to Brian Towers (1998), antecedents of commitment include perceptions of fairness, met expectations and an opportunity to exercise responsibility. The insecurity of the present work environment leads to a transgression of the traditional psychological contract. Guest and Dewey (1991) have reported in their work in the electronics industry in the U.K., that the typical trend is a low employee commitment in a flexible work culture. Morris et al (1993) give a more optimistic picture when they suggest that the right HRM policy and practice can help reduce this trend and increase commitment. For this either the corporate culture needs to be changed or employee involvement needs to be increased.

Flexible work culture leads to increase in profitability and productivity

Anitto Kasvio at the University Of Tampere is working on the changing work culture and development of flexible work arrangements in Finnish companies.

A cohort of 5000 British Managers (2001) were taken in a quality of working life survey. It was seen that flexible work culture led to increase in job insecurity, lowered morale, erosion of motivation, and most important erosion of loyalty, though it did lead to increase in profitability and productivity.

The flexible (contractual) culture as in individualistic work culture neither expects protection nor owe loyalty

If we consider Hofstede's framework of value we can say that countries which are high on collectivism are characterized by a tight social framework in which people expect others to look after them and protect them when they are in trouble. In exchange of this security they feel they owe absolute loyalty to the group. The people of a country high on collectivism (i.e. India, Japan) are predisposed towards such a collectivistic culture and exposure to a different work culture produces inherent contradictions. The individualistic work culture as in flexible (contractual) culture lacks this psychological contract and people neither expects protection nor owe loyalty. These young professionals do not trust the welfare state (example retirement benefits) as the older generation did. Therefore they try to guarantee their professional career and try taking care of personal finances. Impact on social and emotional aspects suggest that these people may develop a certain narcissism in their attitudes which may develop to the "Corrosion of Character" (Richard Sennet 1998). A new category of net slaves may develop (Lesser and Baldwin 1999). When people have developed a strong emotional dependence to their work and work based social relationships they have very little to build upon if they lose them.

Flexibility arouses anxiety as it represents challenge to personal identity

Flexibility arouses anxiety not just because it stands on the precipice of the unknown ,but more because it represents a challenge to personal identity. It challenges identity as human beings are integrated whole beings and the short term contractual nature of work goes contrary to a stable identity.

The worker is more of a consultant. If one is not skilled in the art of consultancy or selling one's labor repeatedly on short-term contract and of living on contract-to-contract, then there are real questions about the hybrid. These new age employees see their career as consisting of short-term projects. They do not seem to be inclined to contribute to the organization development or long-term goals. This does not contribute to the growth and expansion of the organization.

Flexi-time allows everybody to follow his or her own timetable and goals at one's own pace. For example work of 5 different people is to be coordinated and brought together, and achieving this becomes a perpetual problem. In an individualistic culture as in flexible work culture, people are focused on their own goals ,which might not necessarily need co-ordination with others. As a result people are more self oriented and less team and socially oriented. The advantages of working in a team example-creative inputs, speed, lesser burden etc are thereby lost.

Flexible work culture lacks phycholog/cal contract

People who have been brought up in a very rigid authoritarian family set up, tend to seek authority and feel lost and anxious in a flexible situation. They perform well when they are told what to do and are given feedback from time to time. Flexible work culture assumes a certain level of maturity and sense of responsibility that might not be necessarily there in the whole population.

Flexible work culture assumes a certain level of maturity and sense of responsibility

In contractual work culture the involvement of the employees with the organization is limited only to their personal work and personal goals. The more a person is involved with an organization greater is the identification with that organization. Since the people are not involved in other extracurricular activities of the organization their identity is tied only with their own work. This bears on their loyalty towards their organization and growth of the organization. The larger ramifications of this kind of culture are that it contributes to the decline of community because it's through the community that we address and attempt to solve many social ills. Without community networks problem solving will be much more difficult.

Hexi-time leads to communication problem

More direct interactions help develop interpersonal ties breaking mental blocks and preconceived notions

In a flexible work culture where a person is setting his own goals, or seeking projects as per his own requirements, he may actually reduce individual capacity to earn a wage. All may not be motivated enough to perform at their best and due to lack of high standards the total output of the community gets lowered.

Flexi-time leads to communication problem due to unavailability of group members rather than lack of understanding. Most of the communication is done through phones or other search modes. Studies have shown that message content is affected, when the communication is not direct or on a one to one basis. A person may be just "to the point" while communicating through! the electrical mode. But in a more direct interaction, people tend to discuss more, which helps in thawing of relations, developing interpersonal ties, breaking mental blocks and preconceived notions. The flexible work culture may foster individualistic culture which alienates people from each other. Decision making is seen to be much slower and a number of work hours are wasted due to late decisions (UMIST 2000). Adjustments to new technology, home environment and cost are some related factors. The flexible work culture banks on new technology to a great extent. Computers, cellular phones, pagers, telecommuting etc. are important elements of this culture. What is important is that the employee must feel comfortable with the technology in terms of its suitability to work habits and style, and should be adequate and cost effective for the work to be performed at/from home.

Decision-making is much slower

According to Dr. John Gundry, through the last decade, the response of the organizations to the need for speed, flexibility, globalization and change is for people to work remotely, in distributed, virtual teams. In an article on m-Commerce, he predicted some key characteristics of the new work culture. (1) Goodbye office-whereby the traditional face to face office will speed up, and physical proximity would be less important than connectivity (Gundry 2001).(2) The second characteristic he predicted was goodbye friends whereby the opportunity for relationships would diminish. (3) Goodbye relaxation, where the 'attention economy' would require the person to be available 24x7 hours of the week. Work is fragmented, frenetic, electronic, and anonymous. Flexi-time allows a person to operate from home assuming that it is more convenient. Surveys have shown that at home, people have even lesser time for work as compared to the 8-9 hours spent on work in the office. Resultingly they try to finish work in a lesser amount of time .This may result in cutting corners, reduced efficiency and lowered standards of performance. The costs in a flexible work culture are high, the costs of technology are exorbitant. The organization needs much more of human resource management staff than ever before. The attrition rate is seen to be very high in this culture. Every time an employee leaves, there are innumerable costs incurred-recruitment costs, training costs, outsourcing costs etc.

New technology, such as computers, cellular phones, telecommuting are key elements of flexible work culture

In an European Survey of 400 companies in 17 countries by ISR (published in 1995), the results showed a substantial decline from 1985-1995 in perceived job security with Britain showing the worst decline in perceived job security dropping from 70% in 1985 to 48% in 1995.

In another survey done by Institute of Management (UMIST England) it was seen that contractual work culture lowered morale and resulted in erosion of motivation. 86% people reported damage in relationships with children, 79% reported damage in relationship with spouse and 68% reported reduced productivity.

The costs in a flexible work culture are high

Flexibility arouses anxiety as people do not know what risks will pay off and which paths to pursue. The employers in a contractual work culture do not feel responsible towards the growth and personal welfare of the employees. The employee too sees the job only as one of a series of more or less temporary jobs and feels less loyal towards it. The anxiety provoking flexible culture poses a threat to the health of the employee. Anxiety leads to stress which may lead to stress induced heart ailments, diabetes, chronic ulcers, headaches, skin disorders, high blood pressure and even total burn-out of the system. To avoid work insecurities, people workharder which may develop into work holism and burnout at a fairly young age (Lardner 1999).

The anxiety provoking flexible culture pose a threat to health of employee

Different cultures are high on collectivism and power distance (Hofstede 1980). According to Hofstede some cultures are high on collectivism and power distance and thus are predisposed towards some particular kind of authority structure. Total flexible culture goes contradictory to such dispositions and may not be facilitative. With increased cultural diversity at the workplace, the management needs to consider the different cultural dispositions and have orientation programs focusing on this subject. Based on the aforesaid factors the design of the present case study has been developed.

This study is focused on IT organization

Methodology

Design of the Study

A structured, open interview was conducted on employees of a leading information technology organization based in Delhi and case studies were developed. The reason for conducting interviews was that we attempted to get some rich qualitative data on the subject which would lend insights for an in-depth psychological analysis.

Sample, Rationale and Feld of Study

An attempt was made to develop case studies based on structured interviews of ten managers of an information technology organization. The study focused on IT organization as different types of flexibility are practiced in the IT sector all over the world. In the IT sector, projects may require a high degree of coordination but flexi time practices seem to be counter-productive at this point. Therefore, flexible culture when analyzed from a work design perspective needs to consider many factors. Focus needs to be put also on individual differences in perception of effects of this new trend of flexibility from the point of view of the employees on whom it is being practiced.

Questions were asked on different issues like-coordination, loyalty, identity, perception, work climate etc.

Interview Schedule

The interview schedule is based on review of literature (presented earlier in the paper). Eleven questions related to the different issues like coordination, loyalty, identity, perception, work climate etc were included in the schedule.

A content analysis of the data was done. In the discussion part, a section analysis is presented.

Ten open ended questions (given in appendix I) were asked related to employee perception of flexible culture.

Majority responded positively towards flexibility in their organizations

Discussion

Analysis of Results

The results show that in all the cases studied, the managers agree to the positive aspect of flexibility. Going through the contents of the qualitative data it can be said that by and large people have a positive response towards flexibility in their organizations, but they did have some reservations. To gauge whether the positive response is a deeply entrenched attitude towards the practice of flexibility or just a tendency of flowing with the trend, an attempt was made in this paper to do an in depth study of the perceptions of the employees

In this new work culture, the employees owe loyalty first to his work then to the organization

All the managers were aware of flextime and some even mentioned about flexibility in the nature of work, for example, freedom to set one's own goals, follow one's own ways and pace to achieve them. One respondent even mentioned about dress code flexibility.

4 out of the 10 case studies of the managers considered themselves as both, a professional and a member of an organization. But 6 out of 10 case studies considered themselves as professionals. Studies have shown that flexible work culture may lead to increase productivity and profitability but it also leads to erosion of loyalty (UMIST 2001).

New age worker is rarely bothered about long-term goals and development of the organization

The traditional bureaucratic organization is yielding its place to the new order. The original psychological contract of the traditional systems was a multifaceted relationship where the employee owed utmost loyalty to the organization and the organization provided it with security. An in depth content analysis of the qualitative responses of the managers pointed to the fact that in the new culture the employee owes loyalty first to his work then the organization. A 'symbiotic' relationship does exist but on no uncertain terms.

The new breed worker is focused in his priorities and goals .The responses reflect a certain level of calculation on the part of the employee that is, if the organizational goals would help him achieve his personal goals. The case studies do depict a sad state of the present scenariono of this breed of pedigreed new age worker who is rarely bothered about the long-term goals and development of the organization.

Coordination is major hand/cap in this culture

Seven out of the 10 case studies agreed to it that coordination is a major handicap of this culture. People have different time tables and getting together may be a Herculean task. The organization did not have a core time when all the employees could be present. People came and went as and when it suited them. A major issue seems to be emerging out of these findings, that this culture does not foster team spirit.

This culture does not foster team spirit

Relationships amongst the managers were not very strong. In 8 out of the 10 cases studied, managers reported that their relationships were not that strong with their colleagues in this culture. Two of them strongly felt that they missed the strong friendships. One of the respondent reported that she missed the smiling faces early in the morning. She said an empty office robs a bit of the verve and excitement. People do not have strong relationships with their colleagues and this can be due to the lesser degree of contact in the new work cultures. This factor can be strongly related to team spirit in an organization. People in the Indian set up are more predisposed towards collectivistic culture and they look for those close knitted relationships in their work settings as well.

No strong releationship with colleagues

The question 8 (see Appendix I) is strongly related to the psychological factor of involvement and identity with the organization. Only 2 out of 10 managers reported that they were enthusiastic about extracurricular events in their organization. Such events reflect the degree of involvement and identity of the employee with the organization. It is really sad to see the old family ties of the organizations breaking down and a certain alienation of the individualistic culture setting in. To foster team spirit organizations need to make extra efforts to get people together from time to time.

The organizations give people the choice to work at home because it could be less stressful as performance would be better, but the million dollar question is 1Is performance better in home surroundings and do people want to work at home because it is better or due to some other reason?"

People prefer to work from home due to ills of commuting rather than benefits of working at home

It was an interesting finding to see 5 out of 10 people considers home more distracting and 2 felt working at home more comfortable. One of the respondents had even hired a room near her house as home was very distracting and office was too far away to be reached everyday. People reported that commuting was the major drawback of working at the office. When given a choice if they stay back it is more because of the ills of commuting than benefits of working at home. One of them even suggested that the organization either hires small branch offices in various areas of the city or pays for the rooms hired by people. The results point towards an interesting facet of flexi-time.

Most of the people found the concept as, 'trendy' and 'with the times'. If we do a psychological analysis we can say that people are generally accepting about a concept-it is only when you prod and go deeper do you find various under currents.

On outer observation people seem to be accepting this culture but there are reservations which is seen when deep analysis is done

Most people found coordinating difficult and the management needs to look into it or else people feel cheated, when they see themselves as more committed and regular. Some even suggested that the management helps them hire small offices near their residence to work to avoid commuting. One of the employees even found the idea of absence of a dress code very disturbing-this can be linked with our link with our colonial past.

These interviews were conducted to collect rich qualitative data as not much research has been done on the demerits of this new culture. People seem to be pleased by the perceived benefits of this culture. It gives them a sense of autonomy which is very satisfying (Herzberg 1969). But the flipside is the marked decrease in security. The psychological contract is very weak and people are working for personal gains and goals. It would be very presumptuous on the part of the organizations to believe that this calculative worker would bother about the growth of the organization or even stay with the organization in the face of better options. They see themselves as professionals selling their expertise to the highest bidder. There is a total corrosion of character. They develop strong dependency on their work alone (Sennet, 1998).

This culture is turning people into great worker less of human qualities

People find coordinating with the teammates in this alienated culture very difficult. The Indian worker seems to be missing the family culture. He is trying to adopt the new culture without complaining of his personal yearnings for close human relationships. It would not be an overstatement to say that this contractual work culture is gradually churning out humanoids who are great workers but they lack the human qualities of loyalty, altruism, belongingness and commitment.

People reported to be very satisfied with the practice of flexi-time. None of the organizations had a very organized system of flexi-time. There were no clock cards or core time. People could come and go anytime that they wanted and could take an off whenever they wished. The organization seem to be crediting the employees with a very high level of maturity and personal management. One of the respondents confessed that she finds time management very difficult. When given a choice she tends to take time granted and stretches the work along a longer time continuum. Another of the respondents was very expressive about his reservations. According to him the Indian worker should not be credited with the amount of maturity with which the western worker is, and should not be given so much freedom as it tends to be exploited! This can be linked to the legacy of the colonial past of the country and the tendency is to be governed and monitored. According to Brian Towers (1998) at the managerial level ideas about a new psychological contract become more widespread and individuals are expected to be more self reliant in managing heir careers rather than rely upon the company to provide the traditional career path. In this context the workers who are belong to the old school of thought and expect a paternalistic role exhibited by the organization would feel lost and out of place. Where as workers who are more resilient, would feel more comfortable but their commitment would be more to their work than the organization. If the organization provides newer development opportunities with challenging work, and have greater career marketability, then the employee commitment to the organization may be increased.

It requires long-term actions and well planned human resource management policies which have a reciprocal nature of commitment, for trust and employee commitment to crystallize into a more permanent feature of the organization (Towers, 1998).

This kind of culture is turning individual into a self centered isolated machine

Conclusion

As Senett (1989) comments, "without a bureaucratie system to channel wealth gains throughout a hierarchy, rewards gravitate to the most powerful. In an unfettered situation, those in a position to grab do so. Flexible work force is goaded onward by those who seek power".

Employees not satisfied with social aspect of life in this work culture

Anthropologist Stud Turklin in his book Working' says, "work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor in short for a sort of life, rather than a Monday to Friday sort of dying." In this millenium the employers should reflect on where they are going, what that would mean for the employee and society in the future (Corrosion of Character-Senett 1989) and try to action their often espoused but rarely implemented belief "our most valuable resource is our human index'. The individualistic culture is turning the individual into a self centered isolated machine.

This study had attempted to gauge the perceptions of the employees as regard the flexible work culture. The employee seem to be satisfied with the aspect of, flexibility of time but are not very satisfied with the social aspect of their work life. Most of the people do not see themselves as members of their organization and do not see their membership as an extension of their identity. This has serious psychological ramifications which the organization needs to think about.

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Anuradha Sharma and Mahima Singh Thakur

Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, I.I.T. Delhi

Copyright Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management (GIFT) Jan-Jun 2003
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