Exploring Work Intensification: A Case of Telehomework in the Information Technology Sector in India

Abstract

Most scholars who empirically examined the link between work intensification and telehomework consider work intensification as an outcome of telehomework. However, a few others suggest that work intensification engenders the need for flexible work arrangements such as telehomework, although they did not undertake any systematic empirical examination. The former stream of studies, which is dominant, uses the logic of control-autonomy paradox to explain how work intensification is an outcome of telehomework. Work intensification is explained as an outcome of unobtrusive organizational controls that hide under the cloak of autonomy. However, studies on organizational control show that control produces resistance to it, and that they are mutually implicative. Therefore, to understand organizational controls, we also need to explore resistance to these controls. However, the extant telehomework literature has paid only scant attention to resistance. Filling these gaps in the telehomework literature, this study addresses the two related issues: 1) Systematic empirical examination of the link between telehomework and work intensification and 2) resistance to control in telehomework, in relation to work intensification. The empirical context of this study is telehomework in the Information Technology sector in India. We adopted an interpretive approach, and used mainly in-depth interviews to create the data. Interview data was supplemented with data from other sources, which include unplanned observations and secondary data. We analyzed the interview data using constructivist grounded theory method and used the other data mainly as background information and for identifying potential sources of tensions and contradictions. In our analysis, shared understanding among employees—managerial and non-managerial—about intensified work in office space, specifically odd and long work hours, emerged as the main theme. This shared understanding include interpretations of telehomework as (1) a work facilitator—means to cope with intensified work and (2) an employee benefit that is granted at the discretion of managers. In addition to this shared understanding, managers were also cognizant of the potential for opposition to the intensified work. To reduce this potential, managers used the shared understanding implicitly as a resource to negotiate with non-managerial employees. Underlying the negotiation is a sense of trade-off between the ‘costs’ involved in intensified work and the ‘benefits’ of telehomework. Through this negotiated exchange, work that was already intensified in the office space was transferred to the home space. Work intensification, thus, functions as an antecedent that triggers telehomework, since the need to cope with intensified work and the managerial challenge to reduce the opposition to it engendered a need for telehomework. Thus, we build on the suggestion in the extant literature that work intensification engenders the need for telehomework, and identify how dominant interpretations of telehomework serve as management resources to reduce the potential for opposition to intensified work. Further, we identify that the transfer of work from office space to home space also involved a transfer of organizational controls—technocratic and socio-ideological. In addition, telehomework brought in new socio-ideological controls. These controls together with the existing technocratic and socio-ideological controls formed a tight network of controls. This, in turn led to further intensification of work in the home space, which can be considered as an outcome of telehomework. Thus, this study synthesizes the two streams of studies on work intensification in telehomework literature: the dominant one, which argues that work intensification is an outcome of telehomework, and the alternative, which suggests that work intensification is an antecedent of telehomework. Although there was a tight network of controls, its effect was not complete, as the literature on organizational control would argue. We found a few pockets of resistance to controls in the home space, wherein some employees creatively postured virtual visibility by manipulating the electronic surveillance mechanisms used by managers. They also appropriated the norms that were one of the sources of organizational control. They used them as resources to justify such manipulation, and to confront manager’s close monitoring. Thus, we identify the manifestations of employee resistance in telehomework, which is underexplored in the extant literature. We also identify how conflict between technocratic and socio-ideological controls could provide potential for such resistance. At a broader level, the study points to a potential contradiction in the extant literature that considers flexible working arrangements such as telehomework as work-life balance facilitators. Policy makers across the world are encouraging flexible working arrangements such as telehomework. As this study points out, if such policies that are claimed to benefit employees are not created carefully, they could become managerial resources to push intensified work into the home space, invalidating such claims.