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The Qualitative Report 2020 Volume 25, Number 5, Article 11, 1341-1360
Embodying Change at Work:
An Autoethnography in the Indian Public Sector
Saikat Chakraborty
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India
Beyond the macro picture of change in the Indian public sector triggered by
economic deregulation and restructuration, the variegated experiences of
employees exposed to organizational changes remain hidden and masked.
Through a reflexive inquiry about my experience of participating in a
managerial implementation of a performance management system in an Indian
public sector organization, I write this autoethnography to bring forward a
personal narrative of embodying change at work. I do this by revealing how my
cultural, social, and political experiences during that episode of change were
manifestations of being and constituting organizationally intended as well as
non-intended changes. The writing process involved in bringing out the
personal narrative unravels the contours of my relationship with organizational
actors such as the employees, the union, and the management, to eventually
understand their impact on my experience of change. The narrative analysis of
the ethnographic memoir has helped me consider my insider knowledge,
realization, and reflection as opportunities to retell the macro (view of change)
in terms of the interconnected individual subjectivities. Thus the
autoethnographic effort is directed to tease out the associated meanings of
embodying change at work by thinking with the narrative, rather than using the
narrative to think. The broader goal of this inquiry is to draw ethnographic
implications for working lives exposed to organizational changes. Keywords:
Autoethnography, Change, Work, Public Sector, India, Narrative Analysis,
Personal Narrative, Ethnographic Memoir, Qualitative Methodologies
Why am I compelled to write this autoethnography? Perhaps it is true that
autoethnography is “a response to an existential crisis – a desire to do meaningful work and
lead a meaningful life” (Bochner, 2015, p. 53). Meaning is what we seek and draw from our
past and present experiences and remain naturally attuned to this process through self-reflection
and interaction with others (Bochner, 2012; Custer, 2014). Thus, autoethnographic initiatives
begin with personal experiences that require a more in-depth and meaningful understanding
(Adams, Ellis, & Jones, 2017). Prioritizing the experience before theory in research can reveal
meaning without committing the error of defining it (Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Bochner, 2006). Thus,
a well-written autoethnography allows both the author and his/her readers to “experience an
experience” (Ellis, 1993, p.711), and in addition to knowing the experience, allows for
conscious reflection to inform praxis (Spry, 2001). Autoethnography, as an approach to
research and writing, also adds contentiousness to the meaning-making process and brings my
(author’s) subjectivity in conversation with others’ (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011; Hayano,
1979). Thus writing an autoethnography is not just for my learning but also to share how doing
this work offers the possibility of changing my (and your) attitudes through our experiences
(Ellis, 2017). Being an arts-based research practice, the myriad evocative, political,
consciousness-raising, and emancipatory tales (Chenail, 2008) thus become valuable resources
for co-constructing meanings (Chakraborty, 2017). In the same vein, this autoethnography is
an effort to create a segment of my past working life as the “looking glass space” (Brand, 2015,
1342 The Qualitative Report 2020
p. 516) to draw sociological implications for stimulating interest toward co-constructing
meanings associated with the narrative.
This autoethnography pertains to a public sector organization in India. The narrative is
associated with how a performance management system (PMS), one among several other
neoliberal policies and practices, was implemented and brought into existence in the working
lives of employees. My personal questions originate from and overarch the problem of change
at work triggered for and by the PMS implementation. I ask how organizational-level changes
engender intended as well as non-intended experiences and actions of change at the individual
level? How is the perception of being an employee impacted by this? How the changing
positions of organizational actors such as the management and the union with respect to an
employee during an intended change event effect the employee’s experience of change? If
change is macroscopically portrayed and implemented to be in the organization’s interest, what
employee interests are met through the change? These questions stimulated my interest to
reflectively analyze a period of perceptible change triggered by the PMS implementation. The
autoethnographic perspective allowed me to bring forward my reflections as an organizational
insider on being and constituting change at work (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). The narrative
analysis revealed how change at work manifested through my (and likewise other employees’)
understanding about reproducing and transforming intended, as well as non-intended actions
associated with the PMS implementation. The auto perspective also allowed to understand the
changing representation of employee interests, which, in addition to being socially and
culturally derived, is shaped by economic and political constraints too. Therefore, through this
autoethnography, I attempt to nudge the reader to see the embodied nature of change at work,
prioritizing the micro and insider experiential narratives over the essentialist notions of change
for understanding the implications for working lives exposed to organizational changes.
I locate this autoethnography by briefly discussing public sector employment in India
and the macro view of change at work. Next, I discuss the methodology and declare the ethical
considerations for writing this paper, followed by the organizational context. After that, the
ethnographic memoir is presented as a reflexive narration of events followed by discussing the
ethnographic implications for stimulating further inquiries in this field.
Background
Being a Public Sector Employee in India
Public sector organizations in India were mainly set up in the post-independence era to
strengthen the economic and social development of the country. Under the influence of the
government’s protective policies to retain control over the strategic sectors of the economy,
public sectors expanded and generated employment in the country (c.f. Bagchi, 1990;
Bhattacharjee, 2001; Tulpule, 1976). The state played a key role in setting the character of
managerial and employment relations in the public sector organizations. Every large public
sector organization with country-wide divisions called units carried a similar public-sector
image due to government regulation, industry-level collective bargaining, and the absence of
market dynamism (Tulpule, 1976).
Public sector employment was valued for several reasons. In addition to the state
governed industrial relations, collective determination of wages and working conditions by
political and institutional mechanisms benefitted the growing unionized workforce
(Bhattacharjee, 2001; Hill, 2009). Due to the policy of trade union recognition and collective
bargaining for wages, employees were often paid higher than the minimum notified wages. Job
security and social benefits such as government-provided post-retirement pension and welfare
facilities such as free housing, medical aid, and education for children, made these jobs ideal
Saikat Chakraborty 1343
for any job-seeker (Tulpule, 1976). Based on a pluralist Human Resource Management (HRM)
ideology, organizational practices and procedures were aimed at sustaining an environment of
balanced labour-management relations by adhering to labour laws and framing worker-centric
personnel policies (Bhattacharjee & Ackers, 2010). Therefore, public sector employers were
often called the torchbearers of dignified employment in India (Breman, 2013).
However, getting employed in the public sector remained an unfulfilled dream for a
large proportion of the country’s workforce. Despite the growth of the sector, the number of
jobs was far less compared to the enormous labour market, resulting in the creation of a
disproportionately large informally employed workforce left to struggle in precarious
livelihoods (Breman, 1999a). The difference in the quality of life led by public sector
employees compared to those employed elsewhere accorded a status of the privileged and
protected enclave to public sector employees (Breman, 1999b; Sanyal & Bhattacharyya, 2009).
Being aware of their privileged and protected status, public sector employees embraced their
so-called “government jobs” as gifts of fortune.
Moreover, securing a public sector job meant enduring painful struggles of squirming
out from a vast labour market of limited employment opportunities and overcoming barriers
posed by nepotism, caste-ism, and bribe-ism (c.f. Kraay & Van Rijckeghem, 1995;
Madheswaran & Attewell, 2007; Thorat & Newman, 2007). Thus employee resignations were
negligible, and recruitments only happened at the entry-level (Budhwar & Boyne, 2004).
People joined, progressed in their careers, and even superannuated in batches. Notwithstanding
the geographical and organizational variation, employee recruitments at large public sector
organizations were constitutionally conducted and audited by internal and external vigilance
systems (Budhwar & Boyne, 2004). The elaborate procedures resulted in instilling bureaucratic
strictness amid networks of personal influence (Kanungo, Sadavarti, & Srinivas, 2001).
Further, employee transfers in these enterprises were resisted, often through trade unions
(Roychowdhury, 2003).
Thus with unchanging faces and roles, every public sector unit owned and protected its
stable yet transient identity, established in terms of task-based structures, the meaning of
authority, belongingness to the system, and issues of exclusion and inclusion (Garg & Parikh,
1986). Consequently, these units developed their strong histories, workplace structures, and
cultures, which had a lasting impact on the employment policies and practices (Budhwar &
Boyne, 2004; Kanungo et al. 2001).
Change at Work—Macro View
However, since economic deregulation and restructuration associated with the
economic reforms of 1991, a perceptible turmoil has been witnessed in the policies and
practices of public sector employment. In a move to spur industrial growth, accelerate jobs,
and reduce poverty, public sector policies were changed to prioritize free-market competition
over state-mandated industrial relations and welfare (Datt, 1994; Maiti, 2013). In 1994, the
Department of Public Enterprises (DPE hereafter), which is the apex regulatory body of central
public sector enterprises under the Government of India, issued guidelines for decentralized
bargaining. A mandate put forward was that the principle of parity, the original hallmark of
public sector organizations, would be replaced by the principle of disparity to let market
conditions decide each unit's capacity to pay its employees. Thus every public sector unit
started bearing the direct pressure of marketable performance and thus getting differentiated
from other units in terms of reacting to the imposed changes (Khanna, 2015). As deregulation
and de-licensing was opening the door for privatization, market conditions for Indian public
sector organizations went highly competitive due to both domestic and foreign private
competitors (Remesh, 2007). For invigorating competitiveness, public sector organizations
1344 The Qualitative Report 2020
were asked to improve their efficiency of human resources, which subsequently laid out the
road for implementing personnel policies such as voluntary retirement schemes, golden
handshakes, and performance-related pay (PRP; Budhwar & Boyne, 2004).
Amidst these structural transformations, trade unions and trade union activism was also
changing. The power of collective bargaining (one of the most critical activities of trade unions
until then) was obscured due to decentralization policies (Bhattacharjee, 2001). Trade unions
at the unit-level started focussing on the unit-level issues such as those pertaining to personnel
management policies and practices (Kanungo et al., 2001). In response to the management’s
invariable attempt to refurbish human resources to engender a proactive response to the
dynamic business environment (Budhwar & Boyne, 2004; Shrivastava & Purang, 2011), trade
unions leveraging on unit culture, history, and socio-structural factors, were trying to defend
employee interests that were being harmed, neglected, and seconded in favour of organizational
prerogatives (Roychowdhury, 2003). The managerial control over work and employees, and
unions struggle to remain legitimate employee representatives, made this dialectical and
decentralized union-management relationship a roadblock for any top-down implementation
(planned by the top-level management for implementation across units). For instance, Kanungo
et al. (2001) noted that the change from manual operation to computerization was resisted for
15 years by the employees’ union in the State Bank of India.
However, decentralized unionism could not derail most of the management-driven
changes. Unions were also acquiescing and supporting the management on several initiatives.
For instance, support for labour rationalization arguments led to externalization policies (e.g.,
outsourcing) at the unit-level. Consequently, large-scale contracting-out was responsible for
permanent jobs not being created in enough numbers in the public sector organizations
(Remesh, 2017; Roychowdhury, 2003). Co-optation of unions in the methods of participation
in the unit-level management, such as shop and plant councils, also led to alter the role trade
unions originally played or were expected to play for employees. All of these obfuscated the
approach and outlook of unions towards employees, markets, institutions, and internal policies
of public sector organizations (Noronha, 2003).
Nonetheless, ripples of the macro-level changes happening at the public sector
management and union levels were passing down to the employees who were grappling to
accommodate these changes individually in their culture, history, and dominant social
structures. The fragmented nature of this interaction at the employee level sustained due to the
bureaucratic, supportive, and antagonistic cultures carried by and through people and processes
relevant to each unit (Kanungo et al., 2011). In fact, the implementation of top-down reforms,
demanding large-scale changes in a short period of time, took place gradually (Ahluwalia,
2002), and often in ways different from what was envisaged. This was because, beyond the
macro picture of change, the variegated experiences of employees exposed to organizational
changes often remain hidden and masked. Indeed, the top-down implementation of any policy,
bringing changes in the way management and unions perform, also leads the employees to
encounter several changes in their working lives, impacting their experiences about knowing
and understanding the changes related to them being employees. Moreover, employee
experience is related to his/her response, of course, under the management and the union
influence, but also dynamically in personal ways to reproduce, transform, accommodate and
become the change carrier in his/her working life. Therefore, prioritizing the personal
experience of being an employee in the past, I reminisce and reflect on the changes encountered
in my identity as an employee during my participation in a PMS managerial implementation to
bring forward a personal narrative of embodying change at work. Before going further, I will
explain the methodology first.
Saikat Chakraborty 1345
Methodology
Autoethnography, both as a process and product of research, is yet to find extensive
usage in the social science academy (Boyle & Parry, 2007). Notwithstanding its criticism (see
the section “critiques and responses” in Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011), autoethnography
draws its strength from the fact that (a) social and cultural phenomenon is multifaceted; (b)
articulating insider knowledge holds value; (c) the author can capture moments of experience
that cannot be captured by traditional research methods, and which are essential for (d)
contributing to a convoluted topic that requires alternatives to the dominant discourse, and (e)
the text remains accessible to a larger audience (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). All of these indicate
that research methodology becomes crucial for writing a compelling autoethnography.
Autoethnographic research in higher education organizations, previous/other life
organizations, and those conducted as a complete member in other organizations, argues to
have an insider membership for writing organizational autoethnographies (Doloriert &
Sambrook, 2012). Herrmann (2018) added that insider membership in not always required to
write autoethnographies, implying that more than membership, the personal experience must
be prioritized for the researcher’s self to become the researched (Burnier, 2006). For instance,
Blenkinsopp (2007) stated that problems or troubles faced in organizational settings are widely
experienced, and resorting to autoethnography helps autobiographical experiences to become
data, and with reflexivity, insights can be added about the wider social patterns and power
relations. Thus authors must focus on the familiar but unsettling experiences (King &
Learmonth, 2015; Learmonth & Humphreys, 2012), and look to critique the established
metaphors and explore conceptualizations to prosper the field (Cohen, Duberley, & Musson,
2009). In the same vein, I retrospectively interrogate my past organizational membership and
work experience to find answers to unsettling questions regarding change at work. The writing
endeavour began during a self-change reflection report written as part of my PhD coursework.
I chose to describe this experience, and soon after, I gained some interest in rewriting the whole
narration as a personal memoir. Finally, after coming across autoethnography, both as a
methodology and a perspective towards research and life, I gained interest in developing it
along the lines of an ethnographic memoir (Ellis, 2004).
An ethnographic memoir takes us back to a corner of the author’s life that was unusually
vivid, full of affect, and encompasses unique events (Tedlock, 1991). Within autoethnographic
research practice, an ethnographic memoir undertakes the remembering self plus the reflexive
and researching self (Scott, 2014). However, the benefit of writing memories of self-lived
experiences as an ethnographic memoir within autoethnographic research practice is that it
reveals as much about myself as it does about others (Scott, 2014). It is thus quite helpful for
research that wants to deal equally with personal revelations and relationships. Thus the
ethnographic memoir in my autoethnography helps narrate and reflect about self and others, at
times even blurring the boundary between them. Therefore due to the inclusion of others, it is
equally imperative to declare the ethical standpoints for writing this autoethnography.
Ethical Standpoints
Ethical considerations are murky waters in autoethnographic research practices. Since
the event had occurred before the author seeks to reflect on it, it is impossible to get the
informed consent of participants included in the research (Lee, 2018). Gaining retrospective
consent is not only difficult, but, in most cases, develop a conflict of interest, which can
potentially impact the outcome of the research (Tolich, 2010). Still, the author needs to remain
aware that self-revelations always involve revelations about the participants. Although there
are no set rules for ensuring ethicality in autoethnographic studies (Ellis, 2007), a range of
1346 The Qualitative Report 2020
guidelines to reduce the implications of autoethnographic research for participants exist (Sikes,
2015). However, it is better to move beyond procedural ethics of adopting certain tools for
ethics in practice, and rather declare foundational ethical considerations for writing an
autoethnography (Tolich, 2010). By doing this, the author can continuously focus on ethically
writing the autoethnography. Thus, following Tolich (2010), I think it is crucial to design and
declare research-specific ethical standpoints before writing any autoethnography, which takes
care of the common good and well-being of both the participants and the author (Ellis, 2007;
Lee, 2018). Since my ethnographic memoir involves an organization, its policies and practices,
and organizational actors such as employees, unions, and management, I have designed and
followed the following standpoints for ethically writing this autoethnography:
• Renaming the various administrative/employee positions/titles in the
organization so that they are not identifiable.
• Not revealing any sensitive and confidential organizational data.
• Refraining from disclosing the organizational policies and practices that are
not directly related with the narrative, and thus not extremely relevant for
this autoethnography.
• Partially referring to the organizational foundations and nomenclatures
corresponding to the events described in the ethnographic memoir, and
inclining more towards the personal perspective while doing so.
I have used Chenail’s (2014) 9 P’s of autoethnography (person, populace, position,
problem, purpose, perspective, plan, product, and praxis) to cover the epistemology and
methodology of my autoethnographic inquiry, and also present the ethnographic memoir and
implications. For a continuous and sequential narrative, purpose, perspective, and plan are
discussed in this (methodology) section. Following the organizational context, the
ethnographic memoir has been presented where person, populace, position, and problem are
discussed, and by renaming product as proceedings the events have been narrated. The praxis
has been covered in the proceedings and implications section, and developed by (a) focusing
on the social and cultural aspects of my work experience, (b) looking inward to read the
contradictions within my working relationships, and (c) trying to dialectically reveal nuances
about the social science concepts (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, 2006).
Purpose and Perspective
Purpose is the author’s reason, while perspective is the author’s lens used to write the
autoethnography. My purpose is to write the personal experience through which I strive to
transcend beyond the local environment (Denzin, 1990). This means not just connecting the
local to the macro, but keeping the personal equally involved in retelling the macro by voicing
the interconnected individual subjectivities (Chakraborty, 2017). Thus for the same purpose,
different perspectives might possibly yield different autoethnographic accounts, which also
reveals from the conversation in—Ellis and Bochner’s (2000) “evocative autoethnography,”
Anderson’s (2006a) “analytic autoethnography,” Charmaz’s (2006) brief elicitation of
Anderson’s approach, Ellis and Bochner’s (2006) and Denzin’s (2006) reply to Anderson’s
approach, Anderson’s (2006b) counter reply, and Burnier’s (2006) assessment of the two
approaches—that why autoethnography, both as a process and product, depends significantly
on its perspective to meet the purpose. As my experiences are narrated from a subjective
position, my perspective is subjectivist. I give weight and importance to my experiences to
become the receptacle of multiple, plural, collaborative, and contrasting voices, which need to
be brought together to illuminate the unknown. Thus purpose and perspective are interlinked,
Saikat Chakraborty 1347
and requires the author to reveal the consequent voice of his/her autoethnography. Sharing the
voice of the research is required to authenticate and value the inquiry (Chenail, 2008). Indeed,
it is the voice of the author, be it evocative, political, or emancipatory, through which readers
ascertain the author’s choice and establish verisimilitude (Ellis & Bochner, 2006). Personal
narratives provide space to express author’s voice through his/her subjectivity and reflexivity
helps to infer, inform, and write about the social and cultural patterns (Chakraborty, 2017).
Therefore, developing conscious interlinkage between author subjectivity about his/her inner
struggle to negotiate an emergent identity and the personal embodiment of the historical, social,
and cultural patterns, is imperative for writing an autoethnography (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner,
2011; Jones, 2009; Rambo, 2005). By keeping the subjectivities alive, I aim to meet the broader
goal of this inquiry, which is to stimulate interest in co-constructing resolutions, and not gain
a few generalized solutions about working lives. The validity of this work thus depends on
readers who might have experienced similar changes and possibly relate to even a bit of this
narrative.
Plan
The plan to write the narrative involves revealing change in my constraints, struggles,
and interests, experienced as a public sector employee, and thereby create the window through
which the pulls of the contextual change can be viewed. My experience was constituted through
interactions with organizational actors such as employees, unions, and management.
Converting myself as the research subject meant inquiring about my relationships, realizations,
and emotions associated with the organizational milieu, and reminiscing the memories of
events and people involved. This process was recursive as a continual reflection on particular
events, instances, and conversations were required. Recursive reflection, however, is both a
strength and a weakness. A strength as it helped me gain nuances I could have overlooked in
the present. And weakness as one cannot decide on the level of recursion. The only strategy
was to shed the present neutrality and seasoned indifference and think like I was back there
into that time. Thus I have written the narrative from memory by resurfacing my insider
knowledge, personal realization, and reflection about my working life, but also analyzing it
simultaneously and not as a whole. Therefore, for narrative analysis, the effort has been to tease
out the associated meanings of change by thinking with the narrative, rather than using the
narrative to think. It meant reflecting along with the messiness (dilemmas, tensions, and
confusions) of the narrative, and not submerge the messiness in the totality of the narrative to
sanitize the reflection. It also involved recapitulating the numerous controllers, motivations,
and strategies of the self, devised to navigate the messiness caused due to the unsettlement,
trepidation, and temporariness of the situation. I also tried to question my self’s temporary
assessment of the then logical and rational, which was the only speculation for the future.
Conscientiously reflecting with the narrative helped to situate my experiences within the
structural and cultural influences, and thereby reveal nuances of the micro-macro linkage. I
also do not deny that my present affiliation and research interests have influenced this
retrospective process. Nonetheless, thinking with the narrative has helped to keep the “I” in the
text, and retain personal reflection without muting the self-subjectivities (Ellis, 2004).
The Organizational Context
The public sector company had several strategic business units spread across the
country. The headquarters of the company where the top management maintained their offices,
served as the central location for deciding strategic policies and planning unit-wise
implementations. All the units reported to the headquarters. The company had three cadres of
1348 The Qualitative Report 2020
employees—managers, workers, and an intermediate cadre called supervisors. After
dismantling the collective bargaining system, compensation policies in public sector
organizations were formulated through the DPE (explained before). Since the early 2000s, DPE
started the policy of performance-based bonus under the compensation policy, which was first
made applicable for managers. Thus the company had designed and implemented a PMS for
managers, which ranked them on their performances and based on their ranks, and company
and unit performances, decided their bonus. Thus, the PMS was meant to jolt the poor
performers and award the better ones by creating a ranking-based work environment and
building a workplace philosophy entirely new for the company.
However, after the PMS implementation, problems related to its operation and
acceptance had started emerging in the company. The ranks could not be kept confidential as
every manager informally came to know the bonus drawn by others, and accordingly estimated
their departmental and unit-level ranks. This performance-based inequality, resulting from
PMS, could not fit in the organizational climate of equality for which public sector
organizations stood for. For instance, salaries (basic pay, benefits linked to basic pay, and
allowances) were equal within levels, as were equal participation and freedom of speech, equal
right to contest against wrong judgement such as matters of anomaly, constitutional drafting of
policies and rules to upkeep the notion of equality and justice, and so on. Equality was even
palpable through a single uniform, common canteen, office provisions such as computers,
furniture, and stationery items to be used on a daily basis. Everything embodying the company
bred the notion of equality and non-differentiation. On the contrary, the PMS was contradicting
the equality-based social structure and workplace culture by instilling a ranking-based,
performance-driven work environment of differentiation. A general perception about PMS
doing more harm than good had started to form in the company.
When I joined the company, PMS had become an object of detestation among the
managers. During the ranking phase, reports of in-fighting of managers increased. Young
managers were always unhappy with their appraisals, while the seniors were of the opinion that
the young ones were the least affected. Despite the lingering problems of PMS, the top
management had been unable to find any solution, perhaps because the grievance was in-house
(i.e., both the aggrieved and the resolving parties belonged to the management cadre). Thus
ironically, problems of managers were not problems for the top-management. Although
managers had a collective body, its roles were obfuscated and powers highly limited when it
came to represent issues of managers to the top management.
I also came to know that according to the DPE, the company was planning to extend
the PMS for supervisors also. However, implementing PMS for supervisors was a different
ball-game. Unlike managers, supervisors were tightly organized and staunchly backed up by
their union which worked in collaboration with the union of workers, and both the unions had
a stronghold in all the units. These unions had typical ways to settle matters with the
management. The unit-level unions leveraged their strength on the unit’s history, culture, and
social structure to protect their members’ interests. When the unions deemed any managerial
action unsuitable, they responded with power. Nothing stopped the office bearers of the unions
from freely barging into the offices of HR managers, shouting slogans, using abusive language,
and disrupting work. A common strategy was to conduct milder forms of gherao
1
which made
the HR managers feel vulnerable to even come to work. All the HR functions such as
1
Gherao generally means the form of keeping the management or the managerial staff of industrial and other
establishments in wrongful confinement, thus depriving them of their personal and other liberties. A technique
adopted by militant trade unions—ambush key HR and top management personnel, surround them and restrict
their movement for hours altogether while simultaneously pressuring them to meet their demands. See De (1970)
for more detailed analysis.
Saikat Chakraborty 1349
recruitment, promotions, transfers, welfare, administration, and so on, stood affected. Thus
when unions turned militant, the whole unit in some way or the other was disrupted, and this
upheaval took days to settle down. On a bigger scale, the possibility of a company-wide
disturbance also increased. In fact for these matters, the top management always blamed the
unit-level HR managers for having failed to maintain cordial industrial relations. The top
management also wanted the unit HR managers to pre-empt such circumstances and act early
to seek union acquiescence (passively assent or agree without protest) in the first place.
The top management being aware about the problems of managers regarding PMS,
knew that supervisor union would oppose the implementation of PMS for supervisors
vehemently. Thus before the problem surfaced, the top management wanted that union
acquiescence should somehow be taken for the implementation. Possibly due to this, unit-level
teams comprising of unit-level HR managers were formed and guided to deal with the
resistance in a fragmented way (i.e., nipping the resistance in the bud). The unit-level teams
were instructed to conduct meetings with their unit-level union representatives, and without
confronting them on the matter of PMS implementation, seek their feedback and suggestions
to improve the PMS. Indeed, the top management’s perception that unions could be acquiesced,
shaped their assumption that union participation could be taken in the PMS implementation.
The Ethnographic Memoir
Person, Populace, Problem, and Position
It was at the above juncture that I joined the company at one of its units in the HR
department. Despite lacking previous experience working in the HR function, I was somewhat
sure about the politics that I was required to work with and learn. My perception about the HR
manager, someone with acrobatic balancing skills working tirelessly as the on-ground
management, left me less celebratory despite bagging a public sector job. It was not difficult
to guess that with active unions, HR managers’ task of contemplating how the opposing
interests of the management and the union could be reconciled, was difficult. Maybe due to
this reason, the job offer was pushing me to assume of myself as an extremely skilful person
who can suppress uncertainties about having the ability to deal with conflicting situations more
often than anyone. Forgoing public sector employment was simply imprudent. Thus I accepted
the job offer in an irreconcilable state of mind, basking in pride, but equally apprehensive about
sustaining that pride for long.
The formation of unit-level teams of two to three HR managers was going on when I
was posted at one of the units. Since I was new and yet to be assigned to any HR function, I
was included in my unit-level team for the PMS implementation. I think the declination of
others to join this unusual team also worked. I remember getting cautioned by a few seniors in
my department, but I was rather curious to decipher the unconventional. I also felt that the
small team size which made the members more inter-dependent was suitable for a newcomer
like me.
Nonetheless, being a newcomer, I was abnormally confused, less by the newness of the
place, but more by the kind of direction given to us by the top management for conducting the
PMS implementation. Supervisors were pictured as incapable personalities, lacking the
knowledge about their best interests, as well as incompatible, for taking in confidence due to
their stupidity to produce friction under the influence of their unions. Thus it felt as if the top
management was devaluing the supervisors and their unions. It was also clear that the top
management was assuming and portraying the whole PMS implementation process as an us
versus them battle; us being the management, and them being the supervisors and their unions.
Being a part of the unit-level team meant to identify with that notion of us and act on behalf of
1350 The Qualitative Report 2020
the top management against them. It seemed that for a manager, although there were not many
options for disobeying the top management, working to get used as agents of the top
management and do their bidding was certainly obnoxious. The instructions given to us at the
headquarters including the orders, for example, “start executing for the management!” were
indeed instances of this hierarchical control. I was left thinking, does becoming a manager also
means that one has to be compliant enough not to raise a voice against the top management’s
apparent biases?
My position further muddled after realizing that the top management’s hierarchical
power was structurally rooted. For instance, negotiation with unit-level unions was left to the
unit-level HR, but the latter never had the true freedom to negotiate. Keeping the headquarters
informed was the protocol, thus snatching away the unit-level HR’s ability to grow a spine.
Therefore, the practice of regular consulting the headquarters, even when it was not required
was structural. It indicated that despite the argument of decentralization propounded by the
macro perspective, centralized command and control of the top management clearly dominated
in the public sector. I remember mulling over two options: resist the top management which
meant declining to be a part of the implementation team and probably even risk my job or agree
to play the managerial role of becoming agents of the top management.
However, a third option was also evolving before me. After sharing my thoughts with
some of my team members, who although did not seem to understand my confusion entirely,
shared their experiences and knowledge about how supervisors and their unions might respond
in our unit, and then what our team could do. I sensed that although the top management was
dictating the managerial processes, according to their us versus them paradigm, the real
scenario of implementation was going to be something else. I could sense that organizational
processes did not happen exactly the way top-management perceived and guided. I also
realized that there were spaces called deviations from the standard operating procedures. In no
time, my interest in conducting the exercise was back, and I was keen to observe the middle
path between resistance and compliance unfold. Thus in my populace, apart from the top
management, supervisors, and their unions, another actor entered–my unit-level team.
Therefore, despite developing an initial antipathy for the top management, I appeared
compliant on the outside to follow their instructions and not pull out from the implementation
exercise. However, I was also not very forthcoming about owning my team after understanding
their lack of strength to confront the top management despite them helping me to retain my
interests. Perceptibly, my preconception of HR managers was changing. I was beginning to
realize that the skill HR managers needed was to adapt and change according to situations. But
I was unsure about how the internal conflict emanating due to accommodating changes could
be managed. So I had to wait for the events related to the PMS implementation to begin at my
unit.
Proceedings
Although the top management instructed the unit-level HR teams to focus only on the
supervisors’ unions, our team planned to involve the supervisors too. An awareness workshop
about PMS involving all the supervisors and meetings with union representatives were planned.
Adding to the change, a few nominated managers were also involved for conducting the
workshops as trainers. After the workshops began, I started realizing the importance of meeting
the supervisors individually. I realized that the workshops were meant not only to impart the
knowledge of PMS, but also to prepare each of them for the forthcoming change. The role of
nominated managers was also critical. They could have potentially impacted the change
process by derailing the implementation by unloading their problems of PMS on the
supervisors. So we improvised the situation slightly in our favour. We assured the managers
Saikat Chakraborty 1351
that their complaints regarding the PMS system would also be included in the feedback
supposed to be collected only from union representatives for sending to the headquarters.
The one-to-one meetings with all the supervisors and the nominated managers
introduced me to the thickness of change triggered for the PMS implementation. Maybe for the
first time in my life, I was meeting so many new people, and surprisingly, conversations were
not limited to the PMS issues, even if I would have tried that initially. I understood that the
working lives of people in organizations were about informal relationships that characterize
the formal looking structures and practices. I started realizing that change involves people as
much as their countable actions. Thereby, their numerous adjustments and interactions, and
their emerging preparedness to accept a changing workplace matter significantly for the actual
change. Being part of that organizational milieu, even I was undergoing several changes. Still,
the changes happening within each of us were different, despite driven by relationships
nurturing over our conversations about PMS.
In the meetings with union representatives, we aimed to systematically prepare a
repository of their grievances, complaints, objections, and suggestions regarding the PMS. I
felt that union representatives were initially sceptical as they did not cooperate to provide their
actual feedback despite marking their participation in the meetings. They were overtly wary
about the top management’s intention to forcefully implement the PMS, and kept arguing that
public sector organizations never run on rat-race ecosystems. Their intent to participate and
open up gradually in the meetings started increasing after several of our attempts expressing
optimism to improve the PMS.
However, the change I noticed with union representatives was not the same as it was
with supervisors. A direct conflict of interest between our team and the union was never there.
The union was opposing the PMS because it was unpopular among managers, while our team
was trying to seek their help to improve that situation. Perhaps both of us wanted a change.
Thus in the process of meeting them time and again, their opposition for PMS gradually got
replaced with their suggestions and feedback to improve the PMS. Nonetheless, unlike
conversations with supervisors, meetings with union representatives were more formal in
nature. Both the parties (our team and their representatives) never wanted to leave their
respective fronts undefended. I started realizing the impact of one-to-one informal
conversations on change, compared to cold discussions in formal meetings. I remember that
during those closed-room meetings, the constant realization that the words we spoke were
received, both by them and us, as part of a planned agenda, never ceased to exist. In other
words, I was not being myself in those meetings. I was instead someone or something I was
representing, and apparently, meetings happened over agendas more than among people.
After completing the whole exercise, a list of modifications required in the PMS was
sent to the company headquarters. I was glad to see that I was not a newcomer anymore in the
unit. Through the elaborate process of meeting people, I had made more friends than many
others in the department. I started realizing that employee viewpoints about organizational
issues were extremely subjective, staying beneath the veil of organizational structures and
practices to appear somewhat objective when seen for a distance. So I was unsure how
subjective issues could be tackled by addressing few objective details pertaining to the PMS
implementation. Nonetheless, I was content that my work had been fruitful, and our team
efforts were going to bring some change in the company. My initial assumptions about
employees exposed to change at work had altered. With every passing day, identities of
employees as individuals in themselves were becoming more vital and vivid to me, compared
to the cadre they represented. Thus, contrary to the picture of us versus them painted by the top
management, I was beginning to see the supervisors as people with whom the change was
progressing in myriad ways.
1352 The Qualitative Report 2020
My assumption that the top management wanted to work on the unit suggestions to
improve the PMS system was short-lived. Most of our recommendations were disapproved of
as they appeared biased towards employees and unions, and were called ignorant of the
management rationale. The headquarters also said that standardization of recommendations
received from all the units would be undertaken to shortlist the actionable points of PMS. I was
shocked and taken aback. I failed to understand the meaning of the whole exercise. Units would
always differ in their suggestions, so why standardize? What was the purpose behind creating
dedicated unit-level teams for conducting such an elaborate exercise when standardization was
eventually the motive? What exactly were these teams supposed to do? Did we do something
wrong? Perhaps we did not act as the agents of the top-management. Although I failed to find
the answers for these questions, it was clear that our work was judged and declared valueless.
Thus from being content about having made a recognizable contribution to the company, I
started understanding that most of the work people do in public sector organizations get
reduced to mere dirt. Moreover, due to this culture of public sector organizations, employees
often shirk taking up new work, and eventually their efficiency gets questioned. Nonetheless,
this was again a new change that I was encountering. I felt that similar to putting on the uniform
daily before going to work, a cloak of ignorance and suspicion must also be applied to prohibit
oneself from accepting any new activity and getting attached to it emotionally.
A detailed response from our side was sent, but to no avail. However, the skin-saving
conversation on emails and phone calls continued for some time. More than the headquarters’
ignorance, I was troubled to see that everything was hunky dory in my team and department,
as if this was yet another routine affair. Although I was new and yet to accommodate to the
culture, getting stunned at the lifeless reaction of our head HR was normal. Some colleagues
disclosed that the head HR feared going against the headquarters, and that if he supported our
team, he might end up offending the top management. My bewilderment kept growing at the
workplace culture more by observing my team members for whom, for instance, the timely
clearance of their mobile phone bills by the accounts department seemed a more pressing issue.
I was wondering how I would be able to see my own identity at work get smothered by this
mysterious aloofness about work that would increase gradually with each passing day in that
organization.
The new PMS was released with bare minimum changes. Most of our suggestions
drawn based on the feedback of union representatives had been ignored. In other words, we
were made betrayers in the eyes of the union and the supervisors. After informing supervisors
to begin their appraisal activities in the PMS, there was complete silence for a day or two,
similar to the calm before the storm. Gradually the noise started picking up as union
representatives began to notice that none of their recommendations had been implemented in
the PMS system. I had made up my mind that I would disclose the actual situation to them, but
I was not aware that there would be no such opportunity given to me. The union representatives
spread the news among supervisors like wildfire that our team collaborated with the top
management to conduct this exercise for manufacturing union acquiescence for the PMS
implementation. Indeed, that was enough for supervisors to lose their cool. They started
gushing into our offices, like tidal waves on a full moon and led by vocal ones who would start
yelling even before reaching our desks, with others joining the bandwagon. A few of them
wanted to create a ruckus as they came back with a new group of supervisors every time to
repeat the episodes.
More than being frightened by their threats and intimidations, I was helplessly
discontent about the breakage of social bonds and the resulting disquiet that I was struggling
with. The relationships built during the workshops seemed non-existent. I felt that a gulf of
distrust had suddenly emerged around me, and I could say nothing that could reach them, let
alone trust me on anything that I was saying. After a point in time, there was nothing new to
Saikat Chakraborty 1353
listen in their abuses, but their strange and disconcerted faces screaming at our infidelity,
hypocrisy, and impotence, did not seem to fade away. It was getting difficult to keep going to
the office every day as it meant enduring another horrifying day without any visible restoration.
But I thought to make myself available to them was perhaps the only way out of this; in fact, I
was dealing with it on my own. There was no team to share the pains with, and no
communication in the department to forge solidarity. However, I was not the only one suffering
there, and sadly this was the only solace left to keep myself sitting on that chair for days
altogether. Yes, all HR persons inside that office were involved in fighting their own battles,
undergoing personal struggles at their desks with their files and papers, and accommodating
themselves in their working lives by surviving and waiting for another hour and another day to
pass.
Soon we heard that the supervisors’ union was planning to boycott the PMS by calling
a strike against the bonus policy and getting covert support from the workers’ union. The
mention of labour strike does something unusual in the public sector. Initially, in desperation
and after that in a planned way, our team started communicating with other units and came to
know that circumstances were more or less the same everywhere. Subsequently, our team and
similar others at different units decided to represent against the top management collectively
because individual persuasion had not helped. An exciting change also started becoming visible
in the unit. A small number of supervisors, perhaps pressured to complete their appraisal by
the due date, had begun to open their PMS accounts and initiate their self-appraisal tasks. With
each passing day, this number began to increase. To my great relief, I saw that their angst
against us, the HR managers, was also depleting. The social familiarity created during the
workshops seemed to be coming back. They started approaching our offices again, but their
abusive demeanour had surprisingly vanished, and a seeking-out and requesting-for help-like
face had appeared. Even their empathy with our situation seemed to increase as they came to
know about our collective stand with other units.
Although it was a pleasant change, I was yet to get over from the past. So unlike the
previous socialization during the workshops, I felt more restrained in opening-up. I began
sounding like other HR colleagues, but when it became evident to me, I became obnoxious
from my own presence. My HR colleagues seemed to like this change in me and said that I had
become mature. Undoubtedly, the so-called maturity was reflecting everywhere. Even the
language in my emails was changing and read like impersonal official statements. It might
seem funny, but I must mention that my appearance was changing too, which I came to know
during the annual photo-shoot for employee identity cards. I did not like any of these changes,
but I was unable to shift back strangely enough. More importantly, I seemed to lack the will
and strength to get emotionally attached to people at the workplace. I started developing a
distanced outlook towards my work. Was I getting detached from myself? Well, maybe
altogether not, as somewhere inside, I still wanted to change and become what I was.
In the meantime, the joint-unit representation against the top management became more
durable for sustaining the reputation of unit-level HR departments in front of their respective
unions. I was, however, puzzled to see supervisors’ acceptance of PMS. Why did they change?
Was it due to our effort to collaborate with other units, through which they came to know about
our right intentions, or was it something else that made them turn into compliant employees?
Contrastingly, there was hardly any change visible in their union’s approach. The union
representatives kept hurling at the head HR office and their loud voices, and the occasional
sighs of the head HR remained audible inside the office premises for the next couple of months.
However, as days passed by, the threat of the strike seemed to fizzle out, giving way to several
new stories. Some of our colleagues started praising the HR head, others said that workers’
union had withdrawn their support, while some opined that the supervisors’ union had an
internal breakdown. I never came to know the real reason why the strike did not happen, but I
1354 The Qualitative Report 2020
could certainly notice a gap that had created between the supervisors and their union. A gap
that was not built in a day, but the effect had come out very suddenly.
PMS operated without any modification that year. In the following years, the
headquarters started showing some level of tolerance towards improving the PMS based on
suggestions and recommendations from the units, perhaps because the real threat from
supervisors’ union to oppose the implementation had faded out. The supervisors, on the other
hand, seemed to learn to settle down with the PMS and its style of working life. I never got the
opportunity to delve again into knowing how many of their problems were solved, but I could
see that the supervisors did not mind living with it. Leadership also changed, almost at all
levels, and by the time I had decided to leave the company, new problem areas had emerged,
which took the time and energy of people in power. This old but once a critical subject of
dispute was finding a place for itself in the organization’s history.
Ethnographic Implications
For drawing implications from the narrative, I shall again think with the narrative rather
than use the narrative to think. However, here I shall try to abstract meanings from the memoir
to inform praxis. Thus abstracting from the reflective account of personal, situated, and
dynamic change, the ethnographic implications aim to highlight the sociological underpinnings
of embodying change at work.
Neoliberal market forces wanted the organization’s work culture to change and become
competitive, profit, and performance-oriented. However, the collective orientation of equality
at work was resisting this change. Through the PMS, the top management wanted self-driven
individual preparedness of employees to become individual change carriers in their working
lives. The DPC’s guideline of performance-based bonus under the compensation policy, top
management’s governance and control, and a similar PMS already in place for managers,
altogether strengthened the ideology working behind the PMS implementation. Thus, during
my initial days in the organization, my assumptions made me see change as being driven.
Therefore, I saw the top management as the driver of change, trying to push down a policy to
the employees through the unit-level teams. Thus I was led to think about the whole exercise
as us versus them battle between the top management and the supervisors’ union. The
difference between these two social groups was also made prominent through the whole
exercise, wherein the unit-level HR teams were instructed to work on behalf of the top
management. The guidelines and task structures further prepared us as the change-drivers and
instilled the belief that change needs to be seen as an outcome rather than a process. The
imposition certainly had hegemonic and psychic prison effects (Brown & Humphreys, 2003).
However, I was facing an intense dilemma too. Perhaps, it was the sign that change
emerges within us. The natural urge to understand what we see and feel, though not always
critically due to historical conceptions, socialization, and personal traits, makes us the meaning-
making beings (Bochner, 2012; Custer, 2014). In this realm of meanings and values, we think
and interact as poets and storytellers, and not as human scientists (Bochner & Ellis, 2006). Thus
to resolve my dilemma, when I interacted with my unit-level team, I was exposed to a thick
context of change, which provided the sense of multiple actors and a context upon which the
change process gets constituted (Doolin, 2003). It increased my awareness about the much
messier, emergent, and gripping reality, almost like a plot, and provided a glimpse of the thick,
engaged, and situated perspective of change. Therefore, the first implication is that change
cannot be simplified to an outcome or an indicator to declare whether the change has happened
or not. Instead, change is political and depends on people’s action which reproduces and
transform place and time-dependent structural specifics on a processual basis. Thus it is
simplistic to extend and project a macro perspective of change to be applied conservatively
Saikat Chakraborty 1355
over any particular work context. A naive acceptance or a planned trajectory eventually never
appears in the narratives of those who experience the change.
During the unit-level exercise, I realized that people involved in change need to shed
their pre-imposed identities and ideologies for making conversations happen. It allows
interaction between actors to sustain and their listening abilities to improve. Thus,
communication after a certain point of time occurs in the context of change rather than to bring
change (Ford & Ford, 1995), and conversations take forward the change co-constructively
(Brown, Gabriel, & Gherardi, 2009). Therefore, the second implication is that change is
cultural, as it is co-constructively taken forward through conversations and personal
embodiments. The communication in the cultural milieu happens in the context of change
rather than to bring change.
However, after experiencing the setback when the headquarters ignored and refused to
accept our suggestions, I realized that co-constructed change needs further illumination.
Although the lesson depicted the temporality of the change process, I needed to understand it
better by reading it in the context of the public sector organization. Upon further reflection, it
became clear that co-constructed change does not imply a free-flowing, unrestrained, and
weightless trajectory of change involving people and their actions. The possibility of being
influenced by political and economic interests, defended through people, processes, and
cultures that replicate these influences always remain (Sayer, 2000, 2001). However, the
headquarters’ control over accepting and rejecting suggestions related to the PMS showed that
these economic and political forces could also be external to the organizational milieu
changing. Similarly, the change in my conception of being an HR manager in a public sector
organization was also changing due to the workplace culture and macro-structural realities of
the public sector. Therefore, this tells about the third implication that co-constructive cultural
change is not unrestrained as relatively durable macro-structural influences shape it.
Nevertheless, people defend their existing positions based on cultural, social, and
political claims (Pettigrew, 1985). The context of public sector employment made equality and
freedom at work values that employees derived and practiced as citizens. These were the
constitutional bases upon which the unit’s history, culture, and social structure were built. The
right to ask questions provided the impetus to supervisors and their union to raise questions
when their suggestions were declined, while the same ethic made us silently receive their anger
as we could not honour their rights. After finding their rights dishonoured, the supervisors’
union threatened to boycott the PMS. The union’s threat to call the labour strike engendered
our effort to gain a collective power at the unit-level and confront the headquarters, which was
again a constitutional protest against governmental imposition and a counterbalance of power,
both characteristics of the public sector. In other words, countering the hierarchical control of
the top management after getting disillusioned of perceptions that the organization is larger
than its employees (Humphreys & Brown, 2002) was thus another stream of change. Therefore,
the fourth implication is that for triggering the intentional change, several forms of non-
intentional, non-classified, and non-characteristic changes, deriving their legitimacy from the
socio-political texture of the workplace, also emerge.
The turning point in the story was when supervisors initiated their self-appraisal
activities in the PMS despite their union’s notice to boycott the system. The union’s interests
behind boycotting the PMS by calling a strike did not match with the supervisors’ interests.
Here the picture of change got more complicated. Through my interaction with the supervisors,
I felt that their willingness for the workshops and accepting the PMS derived from their need
for individual empowerment manifesting through one-to-one conversations, interactions
beyond the point of interest, and social relationships. It was, however, non-conventional for a
public-sector, wherein unions mostly deliberate between management and employees. Thus it
was a change for supervisors, who perhaps wanted to unshackle their individual-level voice
1356 The Qualitative Report 2020
from getting eclipsed in collective representations and union-led practices. Moreover,
supervisors’ support for their union and obeying the latter for boycotting the PMS weakened
due to the DPC’s mandate to implement a performance-based bonus, top management’s plan
to implement the PMS, and the prior existence of PMS for managers. Indeed there were reasons
behind supervisors showing empathy towards us for putting the efforts to build the joint-unit
representation. In that situation, supervisors had to either support the unit-HR or show
solidarity with their union. In other words, they had to either reject the PMS to show collective
solidarity with their union or individually accept the PMS, the philosophy of which each of
them had somewhat accepted by participating in the workshops. Choosing the PMS meant
supporting the unit-level HR to contest on their behalf for attaining system modifications. They
individually chose PMS and sided with the unit-level HR as it perhaps fulfilled their longing
for individual empowerment and an interactional culture wherein individuality receives
recognition from the unit management. Thus, supervisors could not delegitimize the PMS on
an individual basis, and consequently embodied the economic and political change, but at the
same time, exercised their constitutional rights to collectively withdraw their support from
union activity. This probably explains why the supervisors’ union could not go on a strike.
Therefore, the fifth implication is that change, as experienced by the individual, involves
decisions to be made under socio-political and cultural influences. There are resources as well
that provide individuals the agency to make choices based on their existing, relative, and
desired positions in the organizational field. Therefore, change at work qualifies as the
embodied truth of each and every individual in the organization, and reaffirms the need to
highlight personal insights of change pertaining to working lives.
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Author Note
Saikat Chakraborty is a PhD candidate in the organizational behaviour area at Indian
Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. His research interests include dignity at work,
labour process, employment relations and organizational issues associated with informal
workers, with methodological interest in qualitative research. Correspondence regarding this
article can be addressed directly to: saikatc@iima.ac.in.
Acknowledgement: I thankfully acknowledge the doctoral programme funding and
library support provided by Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad for providing the
scope and opportunity to write this paper. I also thank Sally St. George and Ronald Chenail for
taking an interest in this paper and providing valuable direction towards developing it.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests. The author declares no conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Copyright 2020: Saikat Chakraborty and Nova Southeastern University.
Article Citation
Chakraborty, S. (2020). Embodying change at work: An autoethnography in the Indian public
sector. The Qualitative Report, 25(5), 1341-1360.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol25/iss5/12
