Paper titled: ‘Complementary work in the hospital: How infection preventionists perceive opportunities for cooperation with higher status physicians’ involved interviews with 193 healthcare workers whose job is to work with higher status physicians to monitor and suppress healthcare-acquired infections to assess how workers outside of existing hierarchies can integrate their work
24 July, 2019, Bengaluru: A paper by Professor Shibashis Mukherjee, IIMB faculty from the Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management area, titled: ‘Complementary work in the hospital: How infection preventionists perceive opportunities for cooperation with higher status physicians’, has been accepted by the Journal of Professions and Organization (JPO). Moreover, the paper has been shortlisted for the 2018-19 JPO Best Paper Award.
Abstract of the paper: Social scientists and management scholars have tended to see workplace interaction through the lens of hierarchy. However, modern workplaces include many people who do not fit neatly into such hierarchies because their work is designed to assess, support, sanction, or monitor other workers who already have well-established positions. Motivated by this observation, interviews were conducted with 193 infection preventionists – healthcare workers whose job is to work with higher status physicians to monitor and suppress healthcare-acquired infections – to assess how workers outside of existing hierarchies can integrate their work. Inductive analyses of these interviews suggest three strategies: deference; relying on bureaucracy’s routines and practices; and recruiting higher status confederates, which was termed side-channeling. From these analyses, the concept of complementary work was introduced to describe labor that seeks to supplement existing workplace hierarchies.
The research interest of Prof. Shibashis Mukherjee, Young Faculty Research Chair at IIMB, is studying healthcare problems using social psychological tools. Currently, he is working on the following projects: role of emotions in negotiation between doctors and patients and its influence on treatment decisions; how infection preventionists (healthcare workers whose job is to monitor and suppress healthcare-acquired infections) perform complimentary work with higher status physicians in improving hospitals' performance, and how employees with hidden disabilities resolve identity conflicts in their workplace and work towards identity harmonization.
Prof. Mukherjee has advanced training and experience in a wide range of qualitative methods such as ethnography, interviews, and textual analysis. He also uses quantitative methods such as surveys and simulations in tandem.
His teaching areas are: Introduction to Social Psychology and Research Methods in Social Science.
His awards include Gerald D. Suttles Fellowship in Doctoral Ethnographic Research (recognizes excellence in the use of ethnographic methods in doctoral research) and Preparing Future Faculty Certificate in College Pedagogy.