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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Statement of the problem
Job burnout is a gradual erosion of a person’s resources and energy that leads to exhaustion, cynicism, and low professional efficacy at the workplace. It is an unpleasant state of mind about work. It has reached a critical level in today’s workforce (Leiter & Maslach, 2001). The consequences of job burnout include (a) decrease in job performance, (b) low organizational commitment, (c) interpersonal conflict (Schwab et al., 1986), and (d) increase in physical, mental, and behavioral symptoms (Cords & Dougherty, 1993). Burnout is extensively studied in stressful professions of doctors, nurses, educators, social workers, and lawyers (Maslach, Jakson, & Leiter, 2001). Studies on burnout, however, have received scant attention in the fast-growing Indian software industry where the job is continuously stressful and demanding. While stress results from the inadequacy of the individuals to deal with environmental demands, continuous exposure to stressful situations leads to burnout.
In software industry, the low-end job holders are programmers/developers. They are more susceptible to job burnout because they work in multiple projects at the same time facing hard deadlines, longer working hours, and constantly changing clients’
requirements and expectations. On the other hand, they are subject to repetitive and monotonous assignments, team conflicts, anxiety over peer-competition, burden of high ambition and family expectations, and uncertainties in the job that lead to high job burnout. While extensive literature is available on ‘stress’ in the Western and Indian contexts, investigative reports on job burnout, its antecedents, consequences, and buffers are unavailable for Indian software developers (SDs). By studying the SDs, this investigation attempts to fill the gaps.
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1.2 Indian software industry scenario
India during the 1990s built a reputation as being one of the world’s software hubs, a process that continues till today. Indian software industry has astounded its skeptics and registered exponential growth on the global software front. At the broader level, it has emerged as a key driver for the growth of Indian economy, creating multiplier effects through career opportunities for the youth, reducing trade deficit, and boosting forex reserves. It has also been the largest contributor towards creating a new corporate image of the country. Indian software industry has performed very well compared to other countries because of India’s abundant English-speaking computer- literate workforce. Indian software industry has grown unimpeded from a mere US $ 150 million in 1991-92 to a staggering US $ 5.7 billion (including over $4 billion worth of software exports) in 1999-2000. The annual growth rate of India’s software exports has been consistently over 50% since 1991. About 90% of the Indian software are exported to the USA and Europe. The rest 10% of the Indian software are exported to other countries of the globe. Hence, the biggest client is the USA (Table 1.1). Software and services exports grew by 29% in US dollar to register revenues of US $ 40.4 billion in 2007-2008, up from US $ 31.4 billion in 2006-2007 and aspiring to achieve the target of US $ 60 billion in exports in 2010. The domestic segment grew by 26% in Indian rupees to register revenues of US $ 11.6 billion in 2007-2008 (Fig. 1.1).
Table 1.1: Global export markets
Source: NASSCOM, 2007.
Market FY 2004 FY 2005 FY 2006 FY 2007
USA 69.40% 68.30% 67.18% 61%
Europe 22.60% 23.10% 25.13% 30.10%
(UK and Continental Europe) Rest of the World 8.00% 8.60% 7.69% 8.50%
(APAC+ROW)
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Fig.1.1: Industry performance Source: NASSCOM, 2008.
This phenomenal growth has been achieved primarily through provision of
‘human capital’ intensive software development projects and software services to overseas clients. In the knowledge-based industries of software, a high intellectual level of capital ensures competitive advantage to software firms. Intellectual capital comprises human capital and intellectual assets. The global nature of this industry and the ‘project-environment’ (as opposed to product environment) has added a new dimension to the work culture of these firms.
SDs work to make customized software products. They bear the burden of all changes and challenges at a fast pace. They are required to work in cutthroat market competition, upgrade and develop skills to meet novel job demands, adjust with changing peer groups and work in office time, overtime, and off time to meet the project deadlines. The structuring of work in the software industries creates a pattern of overwork because of several job demands that is justified by management in terms
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of employees’ high work motivation. Industry spokespersons claim that SDs are strongly motivated to perform because individual team members are assessed on the basis of team performance as well as their own, which leads them to put pressure on one another to complete the project in time. Therefore, one cannot impose fixed working hours on them. These extended working hours are legitimized by the common management practices of ‘flexi-time’, which in theory gives the employee freedom to choose his/her working hours (excluding core hours of work) but which in practice means that they have to work as long as necessary to finish the task at hand.
Although a few companies have tried to limit working hours, it is clear that this pattern of work culture benefits the industry vis-à-vis the society. At the same time, it keeps SDs burning all the time to comply with high job demands.
There is no basis for saying that Indian software companies are money-minded tech-sweatshops. Indian software industries have adopted perhaps the best human resource practices and they take care of their employees really well, besides paying fabulous salaries and other perks. But the inherent nature of the work, wherein project deadlines are sacrosanct, with competition relentlessly breathing down one’s neck, puts too much load on employees, even if they do not mind it. Problems crop up when youthful exuberance of young people wanes with each passing year. Companies are aware of this, but the cutthroat competition in the sector gives them no room to relax.
Companies compete with one another to win an order. Also, they fight against bigger firms that have more resources. Employees eventually get sandwiched between tremendous work pressure and severe shortage of time in order to chase deadlines.
Inevitably they suffer from job burnout.
The worst part of job burnout is the rising incidence of impotence, hormonal disorder, and infertility among SDs. Because spending long hours in front of
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computers make SDs physically weak eventually, they develop sexual and reproductive problems. Many of them do not even have time to sleep and resolve their personal issues with their wives. At times, they also get involved in extra-marital affairs just for the fulfillment of temporary pleasures. It may trigger, in the long run, marital discord and work-family conflicts (Seshu, 2003). This may be one of the reasons of increasing incidence of job burnout among SDs.
1.3 The objective of the thesis
In the backdrop of the challenges faced by the Indian SDs as discussed in the previous section, the objective of the present study is to examine the antecedents, consequences, and buffers of job burnout among SDs using job demands-resources (JDs-Rs) theory. In order to achieve the objective, this study has categorized the consequences into work-(performance, organizational commitment, and interpersonal relationships) and health-related (physical, mental, and behavioral symptoms) outcomes. With a comprehensive review of literature, this study tests a number of hypotheses and answers a couple of research questions.
1.4 Scope of the thesis
The scope of the study is limited to the (a) software hubs in the cities of Bangalore, Pune, and New Delhi (India) and (b) software developers.
1.5 Organization of the thesis
The thesis has 6 chapters. The second chapter, critically examining the literature, derives the hypotheses, and poses research question for investigation. Chapter 3 on methodology describes samples of the study, measurement of constructs, and
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reliability and validity of the constructs. Chapter 4 on results provides the empirical evidence to test the hypotheses and answer the research questions. Chapter 5 on discussion interprets the results obtained from statistical analysis. Interpretation is
made considering the past literature and ground realities. Chapter 6 on epilogue summarizes the findings, includes the implications, contributions, limitations of the study, and develops a theoretical framework. It also suggests problems for future investigation.
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