The paper is titled, ‘Work systems in the Indian Information Technology (IT) industry delivering Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and the challenges of Work from Home’
02 February, 2022, Bengaluru: A paper titled, ‘Work systems in the Indian Information Technology (IT) industry delivering Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and the challenges of Work from Home’, co-authored by Vinay Reddy Venumuddala, doctoral student at IIM Bangalore, and Professor Rajalaxmi Kamath of the Public Policy area of the institute, has been accepted for publication in the journal, Information Systems Frontiers.
The study is based on a workplace ethnography conducted between January and May 2020 in an AI research lab of an Indian service-based IT organization, whose operations shifted from co-located work to work from home (WFH) owing to the recent pandemic. The field notes of the ethnographer, working as a full-time intern in a running AI project within this lab, is the basis for the qualitative data for this study. The researchers discuss the socio-technical aspects and the specific challenges of distributed team-working due to the WFH norms facing such emerging research units, which are rapidly diffusing across the IT industry in the offshoring context, particularly in India. They rely on work system theory as a map to bring out key findings from our ethnographic observations. The findings point to the importance of having workflows compatible with the specific work roles in such emerging work systems – particularly for the beginner roles in the AI space. The study contributes to the IS literature by depicting the challenges of distributed teams in a relatively novel setting emerging in offshoring contexts like the Indian IT sector, and suggests implications for managers handling AI projects and tackling employee-focused Human Resource practices in such settings.
Professor Haritha Saranga, Chairperson, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), IIMB and faculty in the Production & Operations Management area, said, “I am glad to see current doctoral students publishing in international journals of repute, and I look forward to seeing more such publications from research work.”
The journal Information Systems Frontiers examines new research and development at the interface of Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT) from analytical, behavioral and technological perspectives, and aims to provide a common forum for both frontline industrial developments as well as pioneering academic research.