Skip to main content

Emerging Technologies and Emergent Workplaces: Findings from an Ethnographic Study at an Indian IT Organization

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Re-imagining Diffusion and Adoption of Information Technology and Systems: A Continuing Conversation (TDIT 2020)

Part of the book series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology ((IFIPAICT,volume 617))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 2687 Accesses

Abstract

Over the past four decades, Indian Information Technology (IT) industry has been delivering traditional software and BPM (Business Process Management) services to its clients across the globe. Providing cost-optimized, yet high-quality services following standard process methodologies has made it an attractive destination to clients across industry verticals. Today, the challenge before this industry is to provide emerging technology solutions to clients in their digital transformation drive. Situated at this pivotal juncture in its journey, the ‘work from home’ (WFH) norm during to the recent COVID-19 pandemic posits challenges of a new kind for this sector. We explore these challenges based on our four-month ethnographic study (Jan-May, 2020) in a service-based IT organization situated in Bengaluru, which over the past five years has been developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions to its clients.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Arora, A., Arunachalam, V.S., Asundi, J., Fernandes, R.: The Indian software services industry. Res. Policy 30(8), 1267–1287 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Dossani, R., Kenney, M.: The next wave of globalization: relocating service provision to India. World Dev. 35(5), 772–791 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Jalote, P., Natarajan, P.: The growth and evolution of India’s software industry. Commun. ACM 62(11), 64–69 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Amershi, S., et al.: Software engineering for machine learning: a case study. In: 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP), pp. 291–300 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Zaharia, M., et al.: Accelerating the machine learning lifecycle with MLflow. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 41(4), 39–45 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  6. News18: Work from home: if the experiment works, it can continue when the world is better again, 09 Apr 2020

    Google Scholar 

  7. Economic Times: Covid-19 impact: IT firms seek client waivers so staff can work from home, 16 Mar 2020

    Google Scholar 

  8. Barley, S.R., Kunda, G.: Bringing work back in. Organ. Sci. 12(1), 76–95 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Barley, S.R.: Technicians in the workplace: ethnographic evidence for bringing work into organizational studies. Adm. Sci. Quart. 41(3), 404–441 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. NASSCOM: IT-BPM strategic review. Nat. Assoc. Softw. Serv. Comp. (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Naidu, B.V.: India: emerging knowledge base of the 21st century. STPI: Delhi, vol. 72 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Abbasi, A., Sarker, S., Chiang, R.H.: Big data research in information systems: toward an inclusive research agenda. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 17(2), 3 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Buytendijk, F.: Hype cycle for big data. Gartner (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Constantiou, I.D., Kallinikos, J.: New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy. J. Inf. Technol. 30(1), 44–57 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Chen, H., Chiang, R.H., Storey, V.C.: Business intelligence and analytics: from big data to big impact. MIS Quart. 36(4), 1165–1188 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Wang, G., Gunasekaran, A., Ngai, E.W., Papadopoulos, T.: Big data analytics in logistics and supply chain management: certain investigations for research and applications. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 176, 98–110 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Liu, Y.: Big data and predictive business analytics. J. Bus. Forecast. 33(4), 40 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ransbotham, S., Kiron, D.: Analytics as a source of business innovation. MIT Sloan Manage. Rev. 58(3) (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Fersht, P., Snowdon, J.: Making the leap from strategic to effective BPM. Nat. Assoc. Softw. Serv. Comp. (2016). Accessed 16 Apr 2020. https://www.nasscom.in/knowledge-center/publications/making-leap-effective-strategic-bpm

  20. NASSCOM: Uncovering the True value of AI, executive AI playbook for enterprises. Nat. Assoc. Softw. Serv. Comp. (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  21. De, R., Pandey, N., Pal, A.: The tech effects of Covid-19, and offices of the future, 02 Aug 2020

    Google Scholar 

  22. Dittes, S., Richter, S., Richter, A., Smolnik, S.: Toward the workplace of the future: how organizations can facilitate digital work. Bus. Horiz. 62(5), 649–661 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Jarrahi, M.H., Crowston, K., Bondar, K., Katzy, B.: A pragmatic approach to managing enterprise IT infrastructures in the era of consumerization and individualization of IT. Int. J. Inf. Manage. 37(6), 566–575 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Ayyagari, R., Grover, V., Purvis, R.: Technostress: technological antecedents and implications. MIS Quart. 35(4), 831–858 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Mazmanian, M., Orlikowski, W.J., Yates, J.: The autonomy paradox: the implications of mobile email devices for knowledge professionals. Organ. Sci. 24(5), 1337–1357 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Richter, A.: Locked-down digital work. Int. J. Inf. Manage. 55, 102157 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Sculley, D., et al.: Hidden technical debt in machine learning systems. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, pp. 2503–2511 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  28. de Souza, C.R., Redmiles, D., Cheng, L.-T., Millen, D., Patterson, J.: Sometimes you need to see through walls: a field study of application programming interfaces. In: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 63–71 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H., Roth, R.M.: Systems Analysis and Design. Wiley (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Esbensen, M., Bjørn, P.: Routine and standardization in global software development. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Supporting Group Work, pp. 12–23 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Yilmaz, M., O’Connor, R.V., Clarke, P.: A systematic approach to the comparison of roles in the software development processes. In: International Conference on Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination, pp. 198–209 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vinay Reddy Venumuddala .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Venumuddala, V.R., Kamath, R. (2020). Emerging Technologies and Emergent Workplaces: Findings from an Ethnographic Study at an Indian IT Organization. In: Sharma, S.K., Dwivedi, Y.K., Metri, B., Rana, N.P. (eds) Re-imagining Diffusion and Adoption of Information Technology and Systems: A Continuing Conversation. TDIT 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 617. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64849-7_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64849-7_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-64848-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-64849-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics