Case Assignment of NTT Data

Increasing Diversity in Recruitment and Selection: A Case Assignment of NTT Data

Vajrathan Indiralingam

(S13005505)

1. INTRODUCTION:

1.1. Introductory Overview:

One of the important human capital measures in an organization is to analyze and measure the extent of diversity in the organization. The HR function is said to maintain ethical standards in terms of equality and diversity if they involve in recruitment and selection of employees with different diverse factors like sex, age, religion, race, sexual orientation, language, etc., and promote equal opportunities for employees in a safer work environment Armstrong (2010). Companies in today’s world compete with each other in hiring employees with unique talents which would ultimately benefit the organization in terms of brand image and capital revenue. There are increasing trends in recruitment and selection processes adopted by various organizations in order to attract talented employees (The Economic Times, 2013).

Apart from analyzing the benefits and the importance of recruiting and selecting employees with diverse factors, this study also critically analyzes the issues and barriers in managing diversity in work environments and the challenges faced by functional teams in recruitment and selection processes.

• Diversity- Organizational Culture:

Although diversity has been introduced in organizations through legislative actions and in the aim of increasing profits of the organizations, there is an increasing change in the diversity trend in today’s world, as organizations promote diversity for better performance of the organization to compete its competitors and in the view of hiring unique talented employees who would bring innovative and creative ideas and work outcomes (Richards and Armstrong, 2011).

There are several legislations and inclusion & equality initiatives worldwide that encourage diverse workplace culture in organizations and those that protect against discrimination by promoting equality and inclusion in the work environments. According to Torrington (2014), Equality & inclusion initiatives are considered to be a liberal approach handled by a group of people who believe in eliminating the barriers that the minority groups like women, LGBT and disabled people face in organizations and other work environments. Another approach is to change the preconceptions and outlooks about these minority groups, which is personified in the managing diversity approaches. The third approach, which is a radical approach to eliminate discrimination, is to emphasize on legislations. This approach promotes reverse or positive discrimination in order to maintain workplace diversity, and it is said to change the attitudes and outlooks on minority groups naturally.

• Recruitment and Selection of Diverse Workforce:

In order to promote diversity in an organization, the first step is to hire candidates with diverse factors and unique talents. Diversity training and equality initiatives are followed post-recruitment and selection processes.

Organizations compete with each other by adopting new trends in recruitment and selection of talented employees for their diverse workgroups (XpertHR, 2015). In order to stay live in today’s market and in order to create innovative & creative workgroups, recruitment and selection processes should be carried out in an effective and efficient way, most importantly in a rapid way.

The HR function and the line managers play a key role in recruitment and selection process. Although there are positive views on recruitment of diverse employees (Torrington, 2014; Armstrong, 2010), few issues do exist in recruiting diverse employees which create indirect discrimination according to few authors (Avery and Mckay, 2006; Johnson et al., 2014).

1.2. Background:

1.2.1. Company Overview:

This study adopts a case study research of the world’s one of the emerging IT services company NTT Data located in the city of Bangalore in India. NTT Data is a multi-national IT services organization headquartered in the city of Tokyo in Japan and the organization has its roots since 1967 with the establishment of Data Communications Bureau within NTT Corporation (Nttdata, 2015b). It has its operations and presence in more than 40 countries around the world. Consulting, outsourcing, system development are the main services delivered by NTT Data (Nttdata, 2015a).

1.2.2. Recent History:

In 2010, NTT Data ranked 10^th in the top global IT services company list. But with the acquisition of nearly six companies in the period 2010-2012 including the acquisitions of Intelligroup and Keane companies in India and with the emergence of its business operations, NTT Data managed to rank sixth among the top IT services company globally, in 2012 (Shivapriya, 2012). NTT Data uses the information technology with its customers to achieve its goal of becoming a Global Innovator in IT. In 2014, NTT Data established a joint R&D venture with the Institute of Software in China (Nttdata, 2015b). The company acquired management consulting of German IT service company GISA GmbH, Denmark and Spain based everis group consulting companies (Nttdata, 2015b). This shows that the company is in the process of expanding itself globally to increase its business operations and the total number of NTT employees.

According to Nttdata (2015a), NTT data employs more than 60,000 employees globally. Having a vast number of employees worldwide, it is very important for an organization like NTT Data to promote diversity and inclusion in the organization. Accordingly, NTT Data had established the Diversity promotion office in 2009, and later in 2013, NTT Data aimed at encouraging women by setting-up a system of in-house childcare facilities within the workplace (Nttdata, 2014). NTT Data’s another important initiative in 2014 was to hire, promote and nurture employees with unique skills and talents. The Case Report of NTT Data in 2014 adds that in addition to maintaining and promoting diversity in workplace in terms of inclusion of employees with diverse factors, NTT Data is continuously taking measures to involve diverse ways of working in the organization, by introducing restricted work-hour systems, educating employees through level-based training and co-ordinate support with overseas companies (Nttdata, 2014).

Objectives of the Research:

The main objectives of this research are:

• To examine the diversity factors that IT organizations inherit in their management practices and thereby to measure the extent these diversity factors influence diversity management at NTT data.
• To examine the recent trends in recruitment and selection adopted by IT organizations in recruiting and selecting diverse workgroups and thereby to measure the extent these trends influence recruitment and selection at NTT Data.

Research Questions:

RQ1 – Does NTT Data encourage diversity and equality in its employment?

RQ2 – Does NTT Data practise challenging recruitment and selection strategies?

Justification of the Assignment:

Route Map for the Assignment:

Summary and Link to Next Chapter:

2. PRELIMINARY LITERATURE REVIEW:

2.1. Introduction to Literature Review:

A literature review is part of a thesis, which is actually an argument for the research questions and/or the hypotheses of the research (Tharenou et al., 2007). It is an on-going activity from the initial reading till the final draft of the thesis or dissertation, as the researcher’s opinions should be supported by evidences from the literature, throughout his/her research. According to Saunders et al. (2012), two approaches serve the purpose of writing a literature review. They are: deductive and inductive approach. A deductive approach helps in finding the ideas and theories using literature and to test those using data, whereas an inductive approach uses data to develop theories. This research would use the deductive approach to test the data collected from the participants using the general literature ideas and theories on the research topic.

2.2. Review of the Literature:

2.2.1. Diverse workforce:

Gaine (2010) describes diverse workforce as differences to people’s life in terms of nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, language and disability. When defining workforce diversity, many authors don’t consider the secondary factors of diversity such as, spoken language, marital status, personal skills and social class. This ties with the previous discussion in which Wyatt-Nichol and Antwi-Boasiako (2012) argued that in addition to the basic primary diverse factors, the secondary diverse factors like marital status, educational background, and parental status could also be considered while identifying diverse workforces. As said, one’s personal skills i.e., the level of talent and knowledge they have got when compared to others in the organisation and social class might also be considered as important diverse factors in future IT organisations. An individual’s social class is still considered as a diverse factor in many places in today’s world and in many sectors, especially while allocating seats in the universities and schools, and while recruiting new entry job applicants (Apa, 2015).

According to Torrington (2014), the following definitions are made on the different diverse people: disabled people are those who have long-term health problems and have impacts on their day-to-day activities, employees who are over 45 or 50 are generally considered to be older workers and those who are younger than that age group and who are active and energetic are termed as ‘youngsters’. The sexual-orientation diverse factor refers to the LGBT community (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender) and the gender diversity is categorized into men and women.

Cultural, linguistic diversity and inherent demographic diversity factors like age and gender are the most common diversity factors that an IT company in today’s world would focus on, to improve the overall performance of the company and to promote the company image, as discussed by Lauring and Selmer (2013). Hence this paper would focus on the inherent demographic diversity: age and gender diversity and explain the strategies that the chosen IT company follow in recruiting and selecting the specific diverse employees, as in India, people might hesitate to disclose their sexual orientation and religion (Gabler, 2012).

2.2.2. Embedded Views of Organization’s Practice of Diversity:

There might be embedded views on the importance of having diverse workgroups in organisations. Tipper (2004) claims that most organizations practise diversity for bringing competitive advantage in the market. Evans (2012) adds that organizations have started to realize the business benefits of diversity within an organisation, especially in the global economy. These are naive comments from the authors, as organizations do not always have diverse workgroups in an intention to create their brand image, as discussed by Parnell (2005). Diverse workgroups in an organization might be a result of recruiting talented people with specific talented skills required for performing specific tasks. There might be same view about a business question from a team of employees with same background, but if the same business question is put forward to a team of diverse employees, then there would be different views about the business question and thus it would result in a more innovative solution (SHRM, 2010). Evans (2012) indicates that high competitions in the IT sector for scarce talented employees have increased the need for diversity in organizations of today’s world. Thus it can be said that having diverse workforce in an organisation, might lead to enhanced competitive advantage of an organisation or its overall performance, which is similar to the discussion made by Parnell (2005). The conclusion drawn by Parnell (2005) that performance can be influenced by diversity and not that diversity can be influenced by performance, can be seen as a good notion for an individual’s perspective of the importance of having diverse workforce in an organization. Ewijk (2011) questions the idea that whether the aim of diversity management in organisations is to support the equal opportunities of individuals or to support the collective differences and talents produced by the collective diverse employees. One might say that most organisations tend to support the latter view pointed by the author, as organizations in today’s world especially in IT sector look for skilled labours with unique talents, apart from the fact that having diverse workforce would result in increased revenue and increased net profit, and Parnell (2005) supports this opinion.

2.2.3. Effects of having a diverse workforce:

Although notions of the advantages and disadvantages of having diverse workforce could be debated, each individual or organisation could have different views about having a diverse workforce. Gender diversity is one of the key diverse factors to be considered by any organization when it comes to managing diversity. Men use a straight-forward approach to solve problems whereas women use an integrated approach for problem solving (Gaine, 2010). These combinations of approaches are very useful in improving the performance of an IT organisation, especially in projects or assignments which require extensive skills of problem solving and creativity. It is also to be noted that women require an informal and friendly culture, which would help the team in an organisation in enhancing team work, which is found to be a key advantage of having diverse workforce (Freeman, 2003).Organisations which deal with outsourcing and consultancy services would require the soft skills and high-touch client experience which women are tend to display naturally. This view is supported by Glover and Guerrier (2010, cited by Evans, 2012). The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a survey for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in which more than 500 senior executives including CEOs, senior vice presidents and CFOs participated, and the results showed that women in Africa and Asia have more access to leadership positions in the workplace when compared to English speaking western countries (SHRM, 2010). The survey results also showed that although the participation of women in the workplace in countries like India and China is increasing, social elitism and minority issues are significant problems in these countries.

The second inherent demographic diversity factor that this paper analyzes is the age diversity. The experienced knowledge of the older professionals combined with the creative knowledge of the younger professionals could add creativity and innovation to the company.An age-diverse workgroup would increase the chances of mentoring, training and knowledge sharing (CIPD, 2014). Older men display leader-fostering behaviours to occupy higher-positions in the organisations. Ruggs et al. (2014) supports this notion. For organizations which require high degree of technological knowledge, younger men and women might be preferred to older people. Another research to test the productivity issues of older people was conducted recently (Turek and Perek-Bialas, 2013). The research showed that there was a small difference in the productivity of older workers when compared to that of younger workers. This is a result of older people possessing soft skills which could be seen as positive factors in the public and services sectors, than in industries. On the other hand younger energetic workers possess hard skills which could be favourable to work in high technological-driven companies. A survey to explore the age diversity in the workplace of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and large organisations was conducted by the CIPD by surveying senior decision makers across UK (CIPD, 2015d). The result of the survey showed that the percentage of organizations that currently employ young people aged 16-24, increased from 73% last year to 79% this year (CIPD, 2015d). Organizations use variety of programmes like apprenticeships, work experience placements, etc., to engage with young people (CIPD, 2015a). This indicates that the trend of having age diverse workforce is still continuing in most organizations of today’s world.

From the above discussions, the following hypothesis could be created:

The null hypothesis for the above hypothesis H1 is as below:

Nationality on the other hand is a diverse factor applied by organizations working across national boundaries to support their strategy of internationalization, which can also bring innovation and creativity to an organization’s tasks (Farndale et al., 2015). Torrington (2014) says that the rate of economic activity of disabled people is 53% and that of the non-disabled people is 84%. Disabled people do the same tasks performed by non-disabled people, especially in IT organizations, but they still face few barriers in the workplace (Torrington, 2014). There are many policies and legislation acts around the world for promoting equal opportunities at workplace for people with disabilities such as The UK Equality Act of 2006 to eliminate discrimination of disabled people, The Americans with Disabilities Act that requires the employers in the US to recruit disabled people and give equal employee opportunities, Canadian Employment Equity Legislation which requires to keep track of recruitment, retention and pay scale of disabled employees, the European Union Legislation which supports people with disabilities considering them as a protected group (Konrad et al., 2012) and the Indian Legislation Bill ‘The Right of Persons with Disabilities’ of 2014 which replaces the Persons with disabilities Act of 1995 (Prsindia, 2015). The Convention on the Rights of persons with Disabilities (2006), Equality of Treatment (Social Security) Convention (1962) and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) are few among the International equality and anti-discrimination acts which many countries including India follow to prevent discrimination (Wikipedia, 2015). Although these legislations exist, Konrad et al., (2012) questions whether competitive work programmes and supportive workplace environment exists for people with disabilities.

Business culture in Asian countries differs from the Western countries. Cultural preferences like communication, competition, individualism and collectivism affect the way people execute the management and professional tasks required (Browaeys and Price, 2011).

The above discussions lead to two research questions as follows:

The above two research questions could lead to a main research question for this study as follows:

In contrary to the above discussions, diversity can bring negative effects at specific situations, for example, making decisions on specific actions can effect in cultural clatters which could create work problems for women and minorities. Also, few societies could consider diversity in organizations to affect the culture of a society or nation and thus it has been a critical issue in globalisation and diversity recruitment. Communication could be seen as the major issue in diversity. There would be lesser communication between young employees and older employees, employees of same region and employees coming from culturally different regions (Torrington, 2014). Lack of communication among the team members would result in bad team work, which in turn would result in poor productivity and innovation. Resistance to change is another major issue in workplace diversity. For example, a team of non-diverse employees may not accept the idea of having a change in the team of having new diverse employees. This is more common in small organizations. In small organizations where the team size is relatively small, the employees hesitate to have culturally diverse employees in their team (Richards and Armstrong, 2011). Moreover, recruiting talented employees globally would lessen the employment opportunities of the local citizens in a country. For example, in the NHS in UK, there were issues about the morality of recruiting international employees (Hussein et al., 2008). Few organizations find difficulty in sponsoring visas and work permits for recruiting global talented employees (CIPD, 2014a). Organizations spend time in checking the visa statuses of employees to avoid illegal working in a country by the overseas employees (Natlaw, 2015). In western countries like UK, References play important role in an employee’s CV and thus organizations contact the Referred members to know whether the information provided by the candidate is valid or not (CIPD, 2015a). Although (Farndale et al., 2015) supports the idea that having employees with different nationality would bring innovation and creativity, the author undermines the idea that it might sometimes cause inefficient business processes due to language and cross-cultural issues. When it comes to organizations employing disabled people, Torrington (2014) claims that organizations face challenges like alteration to company premises and infrastructure, standards of attendance, health and safety measures, pension schemes, etc.,. According to Richards and Armstrong (2011), few people have their own religious beliefs in the context of same-sex relationships. That might lead to lack of communication and thus there would be increased chances of discrimination of same-sex employees. However, one’s religious belief about homo sexuality should not cause any distress to young people at the workplace. Richards and Armstrong (2011) adds that some young LGBT employees consider themselves as ‘unique’ and might hesitate to integrate with others in the team. But there are many LGBT programmes in today’s workplace environments to support LGBT and to make them feel they are one among the work team.

Few organizations or teams in an organization face problems having women in their diverse work team (Ruggs et al., 2014). There are views that women do not perform well in technical areas of IT sector, as discussed in (GirlTalk, 2008). Ruggs et al. (2014) claims that line managers and team members hesitate to have women in their team, as most of the female employees are not willing to explore new IT skills and to take excessive steps for innovation and creativity, and it’s difficult to make them involve in team outings and extra-curricular activities that empower diversity and team-building. However (GirlTalk, 2008) argues that a survey in Microsoft 2007 has showed that women in Microsoft use Web 2.0 applications more than men. This shows that women are capable of doing IT work, and it’s that they are not aware of the career options in IT.

Although issues like these exist, the benefits of having diverse workforce in organizations would pave way for increased diversity management in the future, especially in IT companies which require talented and creative technological-driven candidates.

2.2.4. Diverse Workforce and Diversity Practices in India:

Although India ranks 114 out of 142 countries in the overall Gender Gap Index (weforum, 2014), the share of women employed in the non-agricultural sector increased by one percent in 2014, that is, 19% in 2014 (weforum, 2014) when compared to 18% in 2013 (weforum, 2013). This trend is predicted to continue. This shows that there are greater opportunities for women in India to be employed in multi-national corporations. Women of earlier generations strived for recognition, but in today’s work environment with equal opportunities, there would be an increase in the capability of women to climb to positions of enterprise leadership in the near future.

NASSCOM, the IT-BPM industry association in India, encourages and credits India’s IT and BPO organisations that promote diversity. The annual 'NASSCOM Corporate Awards for Excellence in Gender Inclusivity” encourages many IT organisations to share their skills, practices and schemes in enabling Diversity (Nasscom, 2015). NASSCOM promotes diversity by categorizing the awards into Excellence for Gender Inclusivity and Excellence of inclusivity for persons with disabilities under both IT and BPO organisation category (Nasscom, 2015). Many IT organisations in India have started introducing various diversity programs to attract diverse candidates with unique talent and also to create competitive advantage. For example, Infosys, an outsourcing and consulting IT company, introduced flagship programs in the year period 2013-2014, like IGLU program to support the LGBT community in the workplace, Infyability program for inclusivity of disabled employees, and IWIN program that focuses on training women employees to attain leadership positions and retaining the women candidates (Infosys, 2015). It could be noted that the diversity programme names of Infosys are named by combining the company name ‘Infosys’, which is one of the ways for promoting the company. Another example would be the culturally-diverse programme of the Indian headquartered IT company TCS called ‘Culture Meter’ to integrate culturally diverse employees over its intranet (Tata, 2015). IBM, world’s leading IT service company has got numerous awards such as the Shell-NCPEDP Helen Keller Award 2009 and National Award by the Government of India for promoting equal employment opportunities for disabled employees (IBM, 2015). Such diversity programmes in IT organisations increases the brand image of the organization and thus more candidates would be attracted to the job vacancies in the company.

2.2.5. Strategies towards Recruitment and Selection of Diverse Workforces:

Recruitment aims at attracting the most suitable persons in the most cost-effective way and Selection aims at assessing each individual applicant and to choose the best job seekers to match the job requirements (Foot and Hook, 2011). Recruitment might be internal and external according to Stredwick (2005). External recruitment is more common in most organizations and it might happen due to position vacancy or expansion of the project. Companies go for internal vacancies when they want to recruit their own employees for a different project or for performing different tasks, inside the same organization. Sales & Marketing department, Research and Development department and HR managers play a vital role in recruitment and selection. Use of technology in managing the application process is increasing day to day, for example, automatic email response system is used for generating responses to applications and it is initiated by storing the CVs and applications in the organization’s database (CIPD, 2013). Including structured interviews, exploring a portfolio of work samples, wisely using reasoning tests and evaluating teamwork and cooperative interactivity could be some of the notable strategies an organization could follow during selection process. Creative advertising agencies also play a very vital role in recruitment processes of organizations. The ambient advertising skill of the creative ad agencies is what makes an organization’s brand image unique (Stredwick, 2005). Torrington (2014) claims there are different types of selection methods that could be used for selecting the required candidates for a job opening. The selection methods may vary according to different organizations and sectors. For example, schools requiring an IT support analyst might just need a filled-in application form for the selection process and then proceed with a face-to-face interview. Whereas an IT organization requiring an IT support analyst, might need a professional CV and then go for Peer-assessment and self-assessment tests and/or telephone interviewing for the selection process (Torrington, 2014). Thus selection process is not a set-in-stone process and it varies across different organizations.

Torrington (2014) adds that an interview should do the following for interacting and hiring the talented candidates:

• Reply fast to job applications, as in today’s world, recruitment and selection is a two-way process where apart from recruiters selecting the right candidates, few candidates select their organizations as per their choice. So candidates do not want to wait for longer time for getting an offer. They would tend to choose the offers that come as early as possible.
• Carry out correspondence according to what the candidates want to know, like whether claiming of travel expenses and accommodation could be done for interview.
• Proper training should be taken by the interviewers to carry out an effective interaction with the candidates.

From the above discussions, the following hypothesis could be created:

The null hypothesis for the above hypothesis H2 is as below:

The factors that sum up to the increased involvement in talent management such as recruitment and selection processes, are a mix of internal organisational and external demands such as competitive markets, demographic trends , demand for skills, business strategy and corporate governance and (CIPD, 2015a).

Torrington (2014) and Armstrong (2010) both show that recruitment of diverse workforce can be made efficient by the sensible use of language and imagery in the Job advertisements in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, such as pictorial representation of organizational diversity in recruitment sources and marketing in ethnic language media. In addition to the above notions, an organization could have a selection committee compromising of diverse senior managers who allow the job applicants to answer questions to the best of their talent and knowledge, so that it would be useful in knowing whether the candidate is an exact match to the job requirement. The interviewing or recruiting strategy varies according to the hierarchy level in an organization, that is, companies follow different recruitment strategies for different employee vacancy positions. For example, Torrington (2014) highlights that candidates applying for senior positions would be contacted individually for an interview, over the telephone or via email, rather than expecting them to respond to advertised vacancies in the media.

There are new trends in recruitment and selection processes in today’s world, and most of the organizations don’t really follow the older trend of recruiting candidates through its website careers page, although few organizations still do it but only after considering the applications for over a longer period of time. According to (Xperthr, 2015), today’s recruitment agencies and companies attract the candidates via the media like Youtube and Facebook. Several companies have their own Facebook page for advertising their recruitment vacancies. This seems to be one of the growing trends in today’s recruitment strategy. Organizations tend to search for candidates online, as it is inexpensive way of advertising their jobs and it saves more time. For example, the law firm Reed Smith, targets to create innovation in recruitment by inviting graduate students to communicate with senior employees of organizations using the media like Facebook and Youtube, and thus helps the recruiters in knowing the work potential of the candidates and to choose the right candidates for their vacancies (Xperthr, 2015). According to The Economic Times (2013), today’s IT companies in India have more collaboration with job agencies and other IT outsourcing companies, which could provide employees on contract basis. If the IT companies have projects which would last only for a shorter period of time, they would need employees only for that particular project period. In this case companies go for contracted employees from IT outsourcing companies. It is to be noted that India ranks third after US and China, in recruiting passive employees through outsourcing and contracting (The Economic Times, 2013). Another trend in today’s recruitment strategy is the employee referral programmes. When an employee in an organization refers a candidate to match the job requirement and if the candidate becomes successful in the interview and selection, then the employee who referred the candidate would be given some employee benefits like bonus, etc.,. In this way employee referral is motivated in the IT organizations. Over thirty-one percent of the IT recruitments in India come through employee referral programme (The Economic Times, 2013). The survey shows that the number of employees working through consultancies and agencies in big multinational IT companies through Contracts is increasing, as there are many candidates looking for IT jobs in India.

Another growing trend in recruitment and selection is apprenticeship and volunteer jobs. The candidates might be experienced overseas candidates or college or university leavers. Usually, the candidates who take these jobs won’t be paid by the company (Crumpton, 2013). However, it is to be noted that even employees in apprentice jobs are getting paid in few places and in few organisations. According to the new employment law in UK, the minimum wage for apprentices should be 2.68 GBP (CIPD, 2015b). The main aim is to get work experience. As unemployment is becoming a big issue, apprenticeships and volunteer jobs have become a successful transition for many employees to find their routes into work (Deitmer, 2013). Few candidates get a permanent paid work position on successful working with good performance levels (Deitmer, 2013). Organisations find it really useful, as the candidates don’t have to be paid until they get selected as permanent employees or until they stop working for them. Internship, more similar to apprenticeships is taken by college or university students on successful completion of their Assignment for work experience or during the final year of studies for their research purpose. Internships target young talented people who want to work in the areas they are good at. Few companies pay for internships and few don’t. Most organisations go for internship jobs as they wouldn’t have to invest in training. These kinds of recruitment trends are more common in the Western countries than Asian countries (Nyhan, 2009). In India, the Apprentices Act 1961 enables controlling the training programme of apprentices in India (Business, 2015). Amendments to this act were made through the Apprentices (Amendment) Act 2014 (Indiacode, 2015). In India, organizations largely depend on campus-recruitment, both on-campus and off-campus recruitments, as there are increased number of colleges and universities in India.

Recently there was an unexpected reason for recruiting female cabin crew candidates for the Indian airline GoAir (Monaghan, 2013). The report says that female candidates are lighter in weight when compared to male workers, and so the airline would recruit only female candidates for being in their cabin crew team, as they could reduce their fuel cost by reducing the total weight capacity of the airplanes. The final HR interview in organizations seem to be difficult sometimes for the candidates, as the interviewer puts forward questions related to the specific region or norms and silly questions like brain-teasers which really do not evaluate how well the candidate would perform the given tasks. In future, organizations might do behavioural-based interviews to check the problem solving skills of the candidates (Honey, 2013).

A recent research (Hughes and Rog, 2008) claims that it identifies factors for improving the strategies towards employee recruitment, but fails to discuss in detail the strategies to improve recruitment and selection, by relying more on empirical data rather than personal opinions. A research by Evans (2012) by interviewing twenty-six senior managers in a total of eighteen IT sector companies has aimed at identifying strategies to recruit and select talented women employees. Evans’ point seems that re-structuring the job requirement to attract women applicants and use of competency frameworks might be seen as good strategies towards recruitment and selection of skilled women in IT organizations. Though this study suggests few important strategies towards recruitment, it could be questioned as the research interviewed a smaller sample (twenty six senior managers).

The above discussions lead to two research questions as follows:

The above two research questions could lead to a main research question for this study as follows:

On contrary, few researchers have argued that recruitment of diverse employees sometimes create negative image for an organization. For example, Avery and Mckay (2006) have said that recruitment advertisements targeting minorities can be considered as a reverse discrimination. One could agree to this opinion at some cases where the vacancy for diverse employees creates discrimination in the minds of some people. For example, ‘Beautiful woman with good communication skills required for a Receptionist role’ is a job advertisement to attract beautiful women, which would be seen as a discriminating factor rather than as a diverse factor. Thus, job advertisements to attract diverse candidates should be made sensibly, in a way that it should not be creating a bad image for the organization. Also, another major issue in the recruitment strategy of hiring employees on contract basis is that immediate ending up of contracted employees’ employment. This has become as a serious issue in the organizational ethics (Johnson et al., 2014).

2.2.6. Challenges in Recruitment and Selection:

In earlier days, decisions in recruitment and selection were completely made by the recruiters. But in today’s world, employees select the employers which they want to work for, having more than one job offer in their hands. This means that the competitions for IT and related organizations have grown over the years with the advancement of business and technologies. This has become a major issue for organizations to attract employees, especially in attracting employees with unique talented skills. When it comes to selection process, apart from HR and recruiter agents, the final decision sometimes lie in the hands of the managers. Managers at most scenarios fail to make the right selection and thus it leads to employee turnover. Thus before interviewing candidates, the interview should be planned well. Most organizations fail in creating the best job description. Proper care should be taken in creating the job description to explain the exact requirements of the job tasks that the candidate would perform, and a clear application form to gather all the details about the candidate, should be created (Honey, 2013). The author adds that job analysis, job description, personal specifications form the important initial recruitment processes which would result in successful recruitment of the right candidates. Sometimes, few organizations use a Competency profile to know the criteria against which the candidates should be selected, instead of using a Personal specification or sometimes in addition to it. Torrington (2014) says that competency profiles are useful in finding the skilled and unique characteristics of a candidate such as personal traits and skills, awareness and knowledge, objectives, personal behaviour and personality. The benefit of competency profiles is that they are the success factors for increased employee performance and company performance and they are used in selection, appraisal and reward processes, and even assessment could take place from the behavioural indicators that they produce. During selection process, it is best to gather as much information as possible from the candidates, so that it would be easier to know whether they would really fit in the team. This opinion is supported by both Armstrong (2010) and (Foot and Hook, 2011). Above all, the organizations have to spend its time in undergoing the process of pre-employment checks like checking and validating the qualification details, visa details, previous work details, etc.,. They become vital part of pre-selection process as this might affect the company business, if the employee is found to have any illegal experiences or qualifications (CIPD, 2014b). Also, few organizations offer the candidates to claim the travel and related expenses for appearing at the interview spot for the final rounds of interviews. These kind of offers are mostly done by organizations seeking for a vacancy to be filled by an experienced candidate (say more than 3 years of experience). All these types of costs go under Recruitment process of an organization (Torrington, 2014).

In the view of Ruggs et al. (2014), few organisations have concerns in recruiting women, as most of the women permanently opt out of their employment cycle when they become pregnant (Gilbert, 2014). One might argue on this notion, as most organizations these days have improved their maternal leave policy and there are increased numbers of women who are comfortable working during the time of pregnancy. Few IT organizations are concerned about recruiting older people, as there are increased turnover rates of older people due to retirement. However it is to be noted that older people tend to stay over a longer period in a company in most cases, as the organizations provide more features and benefits to older people at senior positions when compared to younger sub-ordinates (Torrington, 2014). In contrast, few organizations don’t want to waste their time in recruiting fresh young candidates, as they have to spend ample of time and money on training them (Turek and Perek-Bialas, 2013). However, it is to be noted that young employees perform the tasks faster and are more creative and innovative in their work nature, and thus IT organizations would reap the benefits of training the young candidates once they start their work after proper training (Ruggs et al., 2014). On the other hand, if companies recruit only English-speaking employees, it might hinder global expansion, and not having a diverse workforce with multi-lingual employees might decrease future chances of the company getting projects which might require multi-lingual communicator in the project team (Johnson et al., 2014).

According to Johnson et al., (2014), while companies recruit employees on contract basis through agencies and consultancies, sometimes they tend to pay higher amount to those consultancies as they provide employees on temporary basis and immediately whenever required. However the company should spend its cost and time for interviewing the candidates provided by the agencies, even if they have been shortlisted by the agencies through a preliminary round of interview. Most companies do these, so that they make sure whether they get the right people for their work team. Johnson et al., (2014) adds that outsourcing recruitment can result in reduction of quality and there might be knowledge transfer outside the company. Also, line managers as customers for the outsourcing recruiters face few customer satisfaction issues, the main issue being the responsibilities of the contracted employees for the project they work for. For example, the contracted employees might take unpaid leaves whenever they wanted and it might affect the business of the Line manager’s project team (Johnson et al., 2014). It is important to measure to what extent the company profits on basis of cost reduction, time reduction, innovation and creativity enhancement (CIPD, 2015c).

This is where the EVP (Employer Value Proposition) concept of Minchington (2010, cited by Rideout, 2014) should be addressed. The concept of EVP is that an organization which receives the unique skills, talents and vast experiences from the diverse employees, would offer a salary-friendly work environment and promote career growth. The author adds that EVP communication takes place in two levels- above the line and below the line levels. Above the line level denotes the online communications such as the organization’s social media pages, e-news, forums and posts, online recruitment sections, etc.,. and below the line level denotes the surveying of employee in the organization for improvement of work place environment and career development and then approaching its new strategy to external candidates through branding. One such example is the US website called www.glassdoor.com which helps in employer branding (Rideout, 2014). Organizations could use strategies like this, for facing the challenges in recruitment and selection.

Recruitment and selection strategies in India are something which is quite different to those in the Western countries. Though India is rapidly emerging economically, it faces different challenges in recruitment. The possible growth rate in India is 30 percent and this would result in high demand of people required jobs. In that case, recruiters would have to face challenges in recruiting and selecting the right people with the right skills (Churchard, 2010). Another major issue that would affect recruitment in any country is Recession. Recession could happen in any country’s economy and it would lead to unemployment, loss of jobs and thus it would affect recruitment process of organizations (Churchard, 2010).

Apart from issues like setting up of job description, job advertising, short listing the candidates for the interviews and interviewing the candidates, the Line Managers and the HR employees of an organization come across several challenges in induction training, giving training to the selected candidates about the real time work, and allocation of the work for the candidates, which come under the post-selection processes (Foot and Hook, 2011). Recruitment and selection of talented employees is a big challenge for the Managers and the HR departments.

2.3. Conclusion to the Literature Review:

While literature says that team performance and progress is affected by conflicts and communication issues among diverse workgroups (Torrington, 2014), by bringing a broader range of viewpoints to problem-solving, diverse workforce nurtures speed, creativity and innovation and produce significantly higher quality solutions over entire growth cycles. Few organizations and industries recruit women only to fill quotas. Women should be rather hired in the views of receiving unique talents for the organizations. Also, managers should hold responsible for creating and maintaining workplace diversity (Armstrong, 2010). Having said that, managers should not only involve in creating diverse workplace, but also involve in creating chances for employee engagement, and that would lead to less discrimination and increased communication among employees from different diverse backgrounds. Thus, organizations should make sure that equal opportunities are given to all employees in the companies in the real work life and whether the organization adheres to the diversity policies and programmes. To overcome issues of gender and same-sex discrimination, the line managers could issue a statement of diversity to each and every employee of his team, stating that seminars and trainings would be conducted on the importance of diversity. Problems in age diversity could be handled by introducing mentor programmes in the organizations, where the younger generation employees get mentoring sessions from the older people on the ways to improve their technical and functional skills, through the experiences they have. Women employees of IT companies could do Diversity and Career programmes in schools to encourage women to opt IT as their career options.

Anti-discrimination acts and related legislations cause indirect discrimination at some cases where a policy could adversely affect the members of disabled, sex or race (Stredwick, 2005). So organizations should re-think about giving more importance to managing diversity than to equal opportunities approach.

Third parties and external agencies are widely used in the recruitment process of an organization, because of their expertise in creativity and the market knowledge they possess. Although, there are difficulties that could not be overcome, there is increased use of technology in the assistance of recruitment process, especially through internet. Stredwick (2005) says that traditional interviews are becoming unreliable and structured interviews use many techniques to develop the process of recruitment and selection. Automatic screening and telephonic interviews are becoming more common in today’s world, and in future media might play a big role in recruitment and selection process.

The following chapter presents the methodological issues related to this study, which explains the various methodological choices, strategies and data collection and analysis methods and later justifies the selected methodological choice, research strategy and the data collection method.

3. Methodology:

According to Saunders et al. (2012), it is very important for business researchers to explain through which means the researcher has made decisions to use a particular data collection method and data analysis. A ‘research onion’ consists of the outer layers: research philosophy and research approach and the next three inner layers namely Methodological Choice, Research Strategy and Time horizon, and the inner most central-point being the Data collection and data analysis (Saunders et al., 2012). While arriving at the inner-most layer of the research onion, researchers would be able to justify the issues that accelerated them to choose the desired data collection method (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1: The Research Onion (Saunders et al., 2012)

3.1. Research Philosophy:

Examining research philosophy would help the researchers to build their own views about the knowledge that’s acceptable and the process by which this knowledge could be developed (Saunders et al., 2012). Thus understanding the philosophical positions help researchers in the development of knowledge, for instance, finding solutions for specific problems in an industry or organization could also be considered to be knowledge development.

There are three ways of approaches to research philosophy: epistemology, ontology and axiology. Ontology refers to the nature of reality. Objectivism and Subjectivism are the two aspects of Ontology. Objectivism refers to the existence of the social entities independent to the social actors. An organisation’s management is one of the good examples of objectivism, as the management hierarchy or structure of an organisation might differ from other organizations, but the overall function of the management is almost the same in all the organisations. The second aspect of ontology is subjectivism, which holds the idea that a phenomenon is created through the actions and insights of the social actors. This aspect means that the social phenomena undergoes continual change and is subject to continuous revision depending upon the interpretations or views about the situations (Saunders et al., 2012).

On the other hand, Epistemology refers to the consideration of acceptable knowledge in a research study. Positivism, Realism and Interpretivism are the three aspects of epistemology. According to positivist view, a particular research is conducted by developing hypotheses which will be tested and used for further theory development, through quantifiable observations. It requires large number of random sampling through statistical analysis to develop law-like generalisations such as those created by scientists (Saunders et al., 2012). In the positivist aspect, a value-free research is conducted. However, the researcher cannot avoid his/her own values- for instance, the choice of data collection method and the choice of research objectives are researchers’ own values (Saunders et al., 2012). The second aspect is Realism, which is quite similar to positivism that is opposed to idealism. It refers to the existence of entities independent to the human mind. It emphasizes data collection and understanding of the collected data. Direct realism and indirect realism are the two types of Realism: direct realism means the acceptable knowledge is considered to be those which are grasped by our senses, whereas critical realism refers to the knowledge that we experience through our sensations (Saunders et al., 2012). The third aspect called Interpretivism refers to the combination of both the observed knowledge and the researcher’s interpretations of the socially constructed knowledge.

The third philosophical domain Axiology refers to the researchers’ value-based judgement about the conducted research. Demonstration of the researchers’ values is done at all the stages in the research process.

A researcher could choose more than one philosophical domains. This aspect is termed as ‘Pragmatism’. This aspect means that one view wouldn’t be sufficient to explain all the research questions. Each research question may have different philosophical domain.

The purpose of the study is to build hypotheses to test the increasing practice of diversity management in IT organizations especially in India. This is in line with the Positivist approach of the Epistemology research philosophy, which requires collection of data that leads to data analysis and testing the existing theory and literature.

3.2. Research Approach:

The design of the research project depends on the clear understanding of the theory associated with the field of study. This is where the following three approaches come into effect: deduction, induction and abduction (Saunders et al., 2012).

A deductive approach refers to the generalisation from the general theories to the specific conclusion. Here the data collection is used to test the hypotheses related to existing theories and literature. The main purpose of this approach is to falsify or verify existing theories using data sampling and data analysis. This approach mostly uses quantitative data for data collection (Saunders et al., 2012).

According to Blaikie (2010), a deductive approach is carried in a sequence of the following steps:

• Build a premise/hypothesis or a set of premises/hypotheses to form a theory.
• Using existing literature, assume a testable proposition(s).
• Continue to the next step in the process, if there is improvement in understanding after examining the hypotheses and comparing the built logic with existing theories.
• Collect data to test the set of premises/hypotheses and then analyse the data.
• The test fails if the analysis results are not consistent with the tested hypotheses/premises.
• The theory is supported if the analysis results are consistent with the tested hypotheses/premises.

The second research approach is the Inductive reasoning approach. It refers to the generalisation from the specific observations through data collection to the general theory. Here the data collection is used to create a conceptual framework and to explore social phenomena. The main purpose of this approach is to build or generate a new theory. In order to set up different views of social phenomena, this approach mostly uses qualitative data to enable understanding of the means in which humans interpret the social world (Saunders et al., 2012).

On the other hand, abduction is a combination of both deduction and induction reasoning approaches. Management and business researchers use this reasoning approach to test plausible theories. This approach starts by obtaining detailed data and then exploring the phenomena and the themes related to the field of study. It is followed by integration of these explanations to build a new theory and finally test it using existing and new data, which is then revised if required (Saunders et al., 2012).

This study would use a deductive approach as mentioned in section 3.1., as data would be collected from a certain number of employees in the chosen IT organization and the hypotheses would be tested using the results of the data analysis. In addition, theoretical framework consisting of other related theories will be compared with the empirical findings of the research study.

3.3. Research Design:

The next three layers of the research onion namely the methodological choice, research strategy and time horizon helps in focussing on the ways a researcher turns the research question(s) into a research project (Saunders et al., 2012). It will explain the ways in which the researcher would collect data and the ethical issues that the researcher would come across while collecting data for the research project. It also explains the nature of the research design and whether the conducted research is long-term or a short-term.

3.3.1. Methodological Choice:

A researcher could choose a data collection method to fit the purpose of the study> the researcher should also consider the constraints and the ethical issues that are related to various data collection methods. If the purpose of the project is to test the validity of existing data and theory, it is wiser for the researcher to use Quantitative data collection method. Survey research and experimental strategies are the common quantitative research strategies. In a survey research strategy, data collection and analysis is done through the use of structured observations and questionnaires (Saunders et al., 2012). On the other hand, a research with an inductive approach should use the qualitative data collection method, such as ethnography, case study research, narrative inquiry, etc,. However, according to Yin (2014), few qualitative researches commence with a deductive approach. In the view of Hair et al. (2007), deeper understanding of knowledge is provided by qualitative research design and summary information is provided by quantitative research design. Researchers choose qualitative method when a smaller number of samples are to be investigated and quantitative research method when a large number of samples/participants are to be investigated to answer the research questions through data analysis (Saunders et al., 2012).

The methodological choice might be mono method, multi-method or mixed method (Saunders et al., 2012). Mono method quantitative and mono method qualitative being the sub-categories of mono method choice, is adopted by the researchers in a cross-sectional project where the research time is too less and when the researcher wants to use only a single type of data collection method. A researcher could use more than one strategy in his/her data collection method, for instance, the use of structured interview for the senior managers in an ICT company and questionnaire for the sub-ordinate employees in the organization is a multi-method quantitative data collection method. Similarly, the researcher could use multi-method qualitative method for the research design. However, it is restricted to choice of multiple strategies within either a qualitative method or a quantitative research method (Saunders et al., 2012). Alternatively, the researcher could use Mixed-method research design if he/she wishes to combine both qualitative and quantitative research designs.

This research would use mono method quantitative research design to collect data. The main reason for choosing this research design is that it helps in interviewing a large number of employees in the chosen IT organization and the overall time that would be spent for quantitative data collection method is lesser when compared to that for qualitative method, as this research should be designed within a shorter period of time.

3.3.2. Nature of the research design:

The nature of the research project or the way in which the researcher puts forward the research question will determine the nature of the research design to be explanatory, exploratory or descriptive, or a combination of these (Saunders et al., 2012).

An exploratory research design deals with in-depth understanding of knowledge through unstructured individual interviews, experiments and case study research. This type of research is usually carried out for a longer period of time and the purpose of the research can be changed anytime. According to the available new data and new perceptions, an exploratory research is adaptable to new changes (Saunders et al., 2012). This research design approach would help a researcher in building new theories.

Alternatively, an explanatory research aims at explaining the causal relationships that exist between variables, through quantitative data collection and data analysis. The researcher could use qualitative data collection method to carry out a better depth in the research study (Saunders et al., 2012).

Usually researchers use Descriptive study as a precursor or extension to their explanatory or exploratory study. The research wholly conducted using a descriptive study is too descriptive and there would be lack of evaluation and analysis of the study. In management and business researches, the researchers usually use a combination of these research studies.

This research would be a descripto-explanatory study, as the study is a combination of both descriptive and explanatory research. This research starts with a descriptive study as it explains the literature and the existing theories and knowledge of the authors about the field of study. Later, this research extends with an explanatory study, as data sampling and data analysis would be carried out through quantitative data collection method to test the hypotheses/premises to establish a causal relationship between the variables or to answer the research questions.

3.3.3. Research Strategy:

In the view of Denzin and Lincoln (2005, cited by Saunders et al., 2012), a research strategy refers to the link between the research philosophy and the data collection & data analysis methods. Experiment and Survey strategies usually involve quantitative research design, whereas the strategies Ethnography, Narrative Inquiry, Grounded Theory and Action Research involve qualitative research design (Yin, 2014). However, Case Assignment and Archival Research might either involve qualitative or quantitative research design.

This research would involve a Case Assignment research strategy. A research phenomenon that is explored within its context is referred as a Case Assignment (Saunders et al., 2012). The author adds that a Case Assignment can either involve single-case or multiple cases and a holistic case or an embedded case. A single-case study is usually carried by students those are currently or previously employed in the chosen organization (Yin, 2014). On the other hand, multiple-cases are chosen to compare more than one organization. While carrying out a multiple-case study, the researcher should be careful about the replication or similar results of their research findings. Saunders et al. (2012) differentiates a holistic case-study from an embedded case-study, by claiming that a holistic approach is where the organization as a whole is considered as the context for data collection, whereas an embedded approach is applied when the researcher considers a particular department/unit or a group of departments/units within the chosen organization.

This research study would use a Single-Case Holistic Case Assignment as its research strategy. This research would involve collecting data from the employees in the IT organization NTT Data in a particular branch in Bangalore. Data would be collected from employees through questionnaire and the study would use only one organization (NTT Data) for the case study, as it was a previous employer of the researcher.

3.4. Time Horizon:

A particular phenomenon can be studied either at a particular time called cross-sectional or at different points of time called longitudinal (Saunders et al., 2012). The author adds that most academic research projects are time constrained and thus the academic research projects will probably be cross-sectional. However, a longitudinal research could be conducted if the researcher starts his/her research early. The main advantage of a longitudinal research is its ability to make changes and development to the research (Saunders et al., 2012).

This research would be a Cross-Sectional research as the MBA Assignment is time constrained, and as the research aims at collecting data and analysing it at a particular point of time in the IT organization NTT Data.

3.5. Data Collection:

Data can be gathered through questionnaires, in-depth interviews, structured and unstructured interviews, observations, etc, (Saunders et al., 2012). This study uses questionnaire as the mean to collect data. This section explains the sampling method, target population and development of questionnaire.

3.5.1. Target Population and Sampling Procedure:

According to Saunders et al. (2012), a sample is the selected case for data collection and a target population is the set of cases from which a sample is selected. In this study, the population is the IT organizations in India and the selected sample is NTT Data, as it’s the previous employer of the researcher. A researcher could either use probability/representative sampling or non-probability sampling. The probability of each case selected is known in a probability sampling, whereas that of a non-probability sampling is unknown.

As the probability of the selected case i.e., the employees in a particular NTT Data branch in the city of Bangalore in India, is unknown in this study, it is considered that this study uses Non-Probability Sampling technique. The questionnaire will be sent to 80-100 employees in the company with the help of an informant who is a current employer of the organization and the response rate would be calculated accordingly. Therefore this study would use Heterogeneous or maximum-variation sampling as the non-probability sampling technique, as in this sampling technique the respondents with diverse characteristics within an organization are chosen to provide the maximum variation for data collection (Saunders et al., 2012). To make sure that the sample is representative, this study would try to achieve a high response rate. Neumann (2005, cited by Saunders et al., 2012) suggests using the following formula to check the response rate:

Total response rate =

Saunders et al. (2012) claims that an active response rate should be included in the research study:

Total response rate =

This research would use the above two suggested formulae for finding the response rate.

3.5.2. Observation:

The interpretation and analysis of people’s behaviour can be referred as an observation (Saunders et al., 2012). Participant observation and structured observation the types of observation employed in research studies. A research is said to involve participant observation if the researcher participates in the observation either completely or partially. On the other hand, a research is said to employ structured observation if the observation is more about fact-finding (Saunders et al., 2012).

As this research involves data collection within the researcher’s previous organization, it is said to employ Participant Observation. As this study uses an informant in the organization for data collection, the observation is more of Observer-as-participant observation, as the researcher wouldn’t have physical presence in the selected sampling frame during data collection period. As considerable distances exist between the researcher and the informant/respondents, this type of participant-observation will be carried out for this study.

3.6. Data Analysis:

Data analysis if the collected data could be carried based on the research questions and objectives (Saunders et al., 2012). As this study uses questionnaires for collecting data from the employees in the selected sampling frame, it would use statistical software called SPSS for analyzing data.

3.6.1. Validity and Reliability:

Informant error, observer error and time error could be the issues concerned with validity and reliability of data analysis (Saunders et al., 2012). If a suitable informant(s) is not chosen then this might lead to poor communication and observation which might in turn lead to unreliable data. As the researcher has chosen one of the current employees of NTT Data as the informant to collect data from other employees, it is less likely to cause Informant error. Time error is caused usually while undertaking interviews with the respondents or participants (Saunders et al., 2012). But as this study involves questionnaire survey, it is likely to cause Time error, as sufficient time would be given to the respondents to have the questionnaires answered.

3.7. Ethical Considerations:

A request was made to the researcher’s Reporting Manager to grant permission to collect data from the employees of NTT Data with the use of an informant, who is a current employer and previous colleague of the researcher. The request was made through e-mail to the official e-mail address of the Reporting manager. The email request by the researcher and the granted permission from the Reporting manager can be seen in the appendices (Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 respectively). The Reporting Manager was made aware that the data collection results of the organization will be used in the research findings.

3.8. Conclusion:

This study used a quantitative research design for data collection by the means of questionnaire. Single-case holistic case study is the research strategy for this study. The next chapter deals with the analyzing of collected data in detail using data analysis techniques.

4. Research Findings:

4.1. Introductory Overview:

This chapter discusses the reliability of the collected data followed by explaining the type of data collected. Later the data collected is grouped accordingly to answer the research questions and to test the hypotheses (Saunders et al., 2012).

4.2. Reliability of the Gathered Data:

To test the reliability of the questions in the questionnaire, it always best to Pilot-test the questionnaire (Saunders et al., 2012). The questionnaire was sent for a pilot test to a group consisting of 8 members who are a part of the project team of the researcher during the work period of the researcher in the company. During the pilot study, the following were found out: the clarity of the questions in the questionnaire, total time taken for the questionnaire to be completed, any opinions and additional comments for improvement, as suggested by Bell (2010, cited by Saunders et al., 2012). It took approximately 10-12 minutes for each participant to complete the questionnaire and the participants were happy with the questions being straight-forward and clear to be understood easily. As the questionnaire covered major topics required to answer the research questions and to test the hypotheses, the participants expressed their opinions about the set up of the questionnaire in a positive way, which showed that the data that would be gathered through the final questionnaire will be highly reliable as it is specific about the Organization that the participants work for.

4.3. Total Response Rate:

The final questionnaire was distributed to 80 employees through official email address of NTT employees through an informant. The total response rate was calculated as mentioned in the section 3.5.1.

Total response rate =

Therefore, the total response rate for this study is:

Total response rate =

Thus, the

4.4. Operationalization of the Instrument:

In this questionnaire, ‘Increasing Diversity’ construct in relation to the chosen organization was measured with the questions 1-15, whereas questions 16-22 are used to measure the construct related with the Recruitment and Selection of diverse workgroups in the chosen company. Ultimately, questions 23-35 are used to measure the respondents’ work information and their opinions and answers to measure the extent their organization follows/adopts diversity in recruitment and other diversity initiatives (Table-4.1).

Table-4.1. Operationalization of the questionnaire

4.5. Primary Data Presentation:

This section provides the statistics of the collected data using frequencies and percentages of the responses. The statistical evidences are derived using IBM’s SPSS Statistics tool.

4.5.1. To Measure the Diversity Workforce Construct:

As mentioned in the section 4.4, questions 1-15 are meant to measure the construct ‘diversity workgroups of the selected company’. A scale of 1-5 was used where 1= Strongly Agree, 2= Agree, 3= I Don’t Know, 4= Disagree and 5= Strongly Disagree.

4.5.1.1. Respondents’ Awareness about Diversity:

Question 1- I am not aware of diversity and inclusion

This question checks whether the respondent is aware of what diversity and inclusion are. The response showed that all the participants are aware of what they are. It is not meaningful to proceed with/consider a questionnaire response of respondents who are not aware of the main topic of the questionnaire.

Question 2- I do not know the importance of diversity in increasing the profit of my business and my organisation

This question checks the awareness of the participant in knowing the importance of diversity in delivering profit to the organization and its business. Table 4.3., shows that 32% of the respondents agreed that they are aware of it and 68% of the participants strongly agreed they are aware of the same.

4.5.1.2. Effects of Diversity:

Questions 3, 4 and 5 are used to measure the respondents’ views on the effects that diversity have on the organization.

Question 3 & 4:

60% of the respondents agreed that having diverse workgroups increases the team performance and 54% of the respondents agreed that diversity delivers creativity & innovation in work. Meanwhile, 40% and 46% of the participants strongly agreed them respectively. There was no respondent who disagreed with the statement/question about the mentioned two important outcomes of diversity related to team performance and innovation in work. These were measured using questions 3 and 4.

Question 5:

This question was set up to measure the respondents’ opinions on diversity in increasing the brand image of the organization. Unlike the responses to the above mentioned questions, one respondent has neither agreed nor disagreed to this statement/question. i.e., the respondent has shown his /her ignorance on this question whether diversity increases brand image of the organization. The remaining respondents either agreed or strongly agreed to this question/statement, which means that they agree the fact that diversity increases brand image of the organization.

4.5.1.3. Organization’s Equal Opportunities Awareness:

Questions 7, 8 and 10 were set up to measure the equal opportunity adherence and initiatives taken by the organization.

Question 7- My Company does not take disciplinary actions against harassment and bullying

This question measures the employee safety that the organization follows in regards to harassment and bullying. Among the 50 respondents, 38% of the respondents strongly agreed and the remaining agreed to the question/statement that their organization takes disciplinary actions against harassment and bullying.

Question 8- My Company trains employees on equal opportunities awareness

Among 50 respondents, 48 respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their company trains employees on equal opportunities awareness. However, the remaining 2 respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement/question.

Question 10- My Company is aware of the changes to the Equality legislation

4 among the 50 respondents chose ‘3’ in the option scale, which means that they do not know whether their company is aware of the changes to the Equality Legislation.

4.5.1.4. Equality in the Organization:

Questions 11-14 in the questionnaire measures to what extent equality and inclusion exists in the selected organization NTT Data.

Question 11- Equal importance is given to men and women in my organisation

This question was set up to check whether the organization involves in inclusion of both the genders- male and female. All the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed to this statement/question regarding gender-based equality.

Question 12- I could hardly find female employees in the technical department of my organisation

66% of the respondents disagreed and 34% of the respondents strongly disagreed to the fact that they could hardly find female employees in the technical department when compared to those in functional department.

Question 13- Older employees form an important diverse factor in my organisation

Although 94% of the respondents agreed/strongly agreed that older employees are an important diversity factor, 6% of the respondents (3 respondents) neither agreed nor disagreed to this statement/question. However, none of the respondents disagreed that older employees are an important diversity factor in NTT Data.

Question 14- Equal employment opportunities are given to disabled employees in my organisation

All the responses were in agreement with the fact that NTT data gives equal employment opportunities to disabled employees in the organization.

4.5.1.5. Importance and Existence of Diverse Workgroups:

Questions 6, 9 and 15 are used to measure the extent to which NTT Data gives importance to diversity and the existence of diverse workgroups. The responses showed that diverse workgroups naturally exists in NTT Data organization and employees of different ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, age group can be seen in NTT Data. Also, 98% of the respondents believe that NTT data gives importance to diversity in its workplace, whereas 2% (one respondent) neither agreed nor disagreed it.

4.5.2. To Measure the Construct of Recruitment & Selection of Diverse Workforce:

As mentioned in the section 4.4, questions 16-22 are meant to measure the construct ‘Recruitment & Selection of Diverse Workforce’. Again a scale of 1-5 was used to get the most desired answer from the respondents. The questions were set to answer and test the literature views mentioned in the section 2.2.5., regarding strategies towards recruitment & selection of diverse workforces and the challenges in recruitment and selection.

4.5.2.1. Trends in Recruitment and Selection:

Questions 17, 18, 19 and 20 are set to measure the trends in recruitment and selection methods followed by NTT Data and the extent to which they are followed in hiring employees with diverse factors.

All the respondents agreed that NTT Data uses current trends in its recruitment and selection processes, in which 64% of the respondents agreed to it and the remaining 36% showed their strong agreement towards it. Although all the respondents agreed that current trends are being followed in recruitment and selection, when asked whether NTT data uses selection and recruitment methods to test the unique skills of the candidates, 2% of the respondents (i.e., one respondent) has not agreed to the fact that new methods for testing the unique talents and skills are followed at NTT Data. However, 98% of the respondents support this fact. To better understand about the practice of current trends in recruitment and selection methods, the respondents were asked with the following question: “My Company does not attract candidates through social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., for its recruitment”. The response from the respondents can be understood from the below pie-chart (Figure-4.1).

Figure-4.1. Pie-Chart for Current Trends in Recruitment and Selection through Social Media Advertising

From figure-4.1, it could be understood that majority of the respondents are aware of the job advertising through social media and they agreed to the statement that NTT Data attracts diverse workgroups or candidates with unique talents through social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., whereas 4% of the respondents showed their innocence regarding the same statement.

Also below was the frequency-response from the respondents when asked about whether the company relies on agencies for its recruitment of diverse workgroups:

4.5.2.2. Recruitment with Inclusion of Diversity Statements:

Questions 16 and 22 in the questionnaire are aimed to measure whether NTT Data uses diversity statements to attract diverse workgroups and the extent to which the respondents feel that their organization encourages recruiting employees with diverse factors. The table (Table-4.5) shows the descriptive statistics based on the responses for the above mentioned two questions. These descriptive statistics give us the mean and deviation statistics according to the responses received.

4.5.3. To Measure the Construct of ‘Respondents’ Work Information and Related Opinions:

To know the respondents’ actual work information in relation to diversity and diversity recruitment, questions 23 to 35 were used in order to capture and measure those values. Also individual opinions about what impacts diversity and diversity related recruitment have brought to the respondents’ organization were also measured using this set of questions.

The first three questions were set to know the gender, age and disability of the respondents. These questions form vital role as these can be used to measure to what extent NTT data employs employees with diverse factors. The below table (Table-4.6) shows the cross tabulation for Gender and Age of the respondents:

From the table (Table-4.6), it can be seen that among the 50 respondents surveyed, 48% of the respondents are under the age category 30-40, 32% under 20-30 category, 12% under 40-50 category and 8% of the respondents are in the ‘Above 50’ age category. It is to be also noted that there were no female employee respondents above the age of 50. However, among the total respondents, 32 were male employees and 18 were female employees, thus female employee respondents still form an important constitute in the survey responses.

It can also be seen that from the sample of respondents, there were four employees who are disabled (Table-4.7), i.e., 8% of the respondents are disabled and these statistics would also help in measuring the extent of diversity and equality adherence in NTT Data.

The questions that followed in this construct were focussed on whether the job role is leadership focussed or not, whether the respondent works in technical department or functional department and to measure whether the respondent considers himself/herself as an innovative & creative person or an experienced mentor. In addition, there were questions in the questionnaire which measured the count of employees who faced harassment and bullying, and who feel that diversity increased their team performance. The results showed that none of the employees faced harassment in the organization and also that all of the respondents excluding one respondent agreed that diversity increased their team performance.

Further the initial job advertisement and the type of job contract of each individual were measured. The results showed that 32 respondents are permanent employees, whereas the remaining 18 employees are contract/temporary employees. This helped in measuring the strategies followed by NTT Data in its recruitment and selection. Ultimately, the respondents were asked with the following questions: whether or not the job advertisement and the job description for their job vacancy consisted of diversity and equality related statement(s), whether or not their recruiters have used new methods to test their skills and talent during recruitment and selection and whether they believe that NTT Data involves in increasing diversity through recruitment and selection. Although all the respondents agreed that NTT Data used diversity statements in job descriptions with new methods to test unique skills, one respondent has expressed that his/her job description didn’t involve diversity related statement.

4.6. Conclusion and Link to Next Chapter:

This chapter dealt with more of facts that were involved in the data collection and analysis stage. It showed the numerical and pictorial statistics of the collected data, by explaining the use of each question in the questionnaire. It has also compared the set up questions in the questionnaire with the literature.

The next chapter would deal with the explanation and discussion of these data collected using various tests and comparison of the tested data with the literature, with the tests of hypotheses and premises used in the literature. It would also answer the research questions that were built in the chapter 1, answering all the sub-research questions as well.

5. Discussion of Data Findings:

5.1. Introduction Overview:

This chapter deals with discussions and comparisons based on the data collected against the hypotheses, research questions, theories in the literature, premises discussed in the literature Saunders et al. (2012). Thus it uses pictorial representations and significance tests to carry out the discussions and comparisons. Ultimately, this chapter would have the research questions and the objectives of this research study answered Saunders et al. (2012).

5.2. Test of Hypotheses:

To test whether the hypotheses are valid or not, a suitable statistical significance test could be carried out. Statistical significance tests could be either Non-parametric or Parametric test Saunders et al. (2012). The author adds that non-parametric test is carried out when the data collected are categorical data. On the other hand, for numerical data a parametric significance test has to be carried out. As this paper mostly deals with categorical data, it would use Non-Parametric statistical significance test for testing the hypotheses and their null hypotheses.

5.2.1. Test of Hypothesis H1:

To test whether two variables are significantly associated with each other, the chi-square test should be carried out (Dancey and Reidy, 2011). If more than twenty-five percent of the cells in the table have <5 as expected values, then the null hypothesis could be rejected and the hypothesis becomes true/accepted.

Below are the H1 hypothesis and its null hypothesis taken from section 2.2.3.:

H1: There is a significant association between the gender of the respondents and the age category of the respondents.

H1o: There is no significant association between the gender of the respondents and the age category of the respondents.

Table 5.1 shows the Chi-Square test result for the statistical data in Table 4.6 of section 4.5.3. Here more than 25 percent of the cells have expected count <5 and thus the null hypothesis H1o could be rejected and the hypothesis H1 could be accepted.

5.2.1.2. Hypothesis H1 Test Result:

Thus the hypothesis H1 test result is as follows:

This paves a way to prove that employees of different gender, age and other diverse factors are seen in NTT Data. This could also be proved by the frequency statistics below (Table-5.2):

Figure- 5.1 Histogram of the frequency statistics for ‘Presence of Employees with diverse Backgrounds in NTT Data’

The table (Table- 5.2) and the histogram (Figure- 5.1) shows that all the respondents have expressed their view that employees of different diverse factors such as ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, age group and gender can be seen in NTT Data.

5.2.2. Test of Hypothesis H1:

To test the strength of two variables, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PMCC) test could be used (Dancey and Reidy, 2011).

Below are the H2 hypothesis and its null hypothesis taken from section 2.2.5.:

H2: There is a relationship between inclusion of diversity statements in job advertisements and organization’s encouragement of recruiting diverse workgroups and it is statistically significant.

H2o: There is no relationship between inclusion of diversity statements in job advertisements and organization’s encouragement of recruiting diverse workgroups.

Table-5.3 shows the Pearson’s product moment correlation co-efficient for the relationship between inclusion of diversity statements in job advertisements and organization’s encouragement of recruiting diverse workgroups. As mentioned in the section 4.5.2.2, that all the respondents supported that NTT Data includes diversity related statements in their job advertisements and as the Pearson Correlation proves that the relationship is statistically significant, the hypothesis H2 could be accepted and thus the null hypothesis H2o could be rejected.

5.2.2.1. Hypothesis H2 Test Result:

Thus the hypothesis H2 test result is as follows:

5.3. Research Questions Answered:

This section of the study answers the research questions which arouse in the section 2.2. There are two main research questions and each of these two research questions lead to two subsidiary questions.

5.3.1. Research Question RQ1:

Main Research Question:

RQ1 - Does NTT Data encourage diversity and equality in its employment?

Subsidiary Research Questions:

RQ1A - Are employees with different diverse factors found in NTT Data?

From section 4.5.3, it could be understood that the respondents were of different age categories, male employees, female employees and even disabled and non-disabled employees. The figure (Figure- 5.2) shows the pie chart representation of the age category of the respondents. It can be seen that almost half of the respondents (48%) fall under the age category 30-40. It could also be noticed that employees of the age group 20-30, 40-50 and above 50 have been the respondents for this study.

Figure- 5.2 Age Category of the Respondents

Also, it could be seen that the respondents are of mixed gender – i.e., 32 respondents were male and 18 respondents were female employees.

The above table (Table 5.4) shows the frequency statistics for the Gender category of the respondents. Although male employee respondents form 64% of the total respondents, it could be seen that female employees contributed 36% for this study as respondents.

In addition, from the 50 respondents surveyed, 4 of the respondents were disabled employees. From the table (Table 4.7) of section 4.5.3, we could say that NTT Data gives employment opportunities for disabled people as well.

From the above discussions, we could say that NTT data has employees of different diverse backgrounds such as age, gender, disability, etc.

Thus the answer for the research question RQ1A is as follows:

Yes, employees with different diverse factors can be found in NTT Data.

RQ1B – Are equal opportunities and inclusion policies being followed in NTT Data?

Section 4.5.1.4 of this study gave the statistical data related to equality and inclusion in NTT Data. The below frequency table (Table 5.5) shows that employees in NTT Data are aware of equality and inclusion and that NTT Data protects its employees from harassment and bullying by taking necessary initiatives required for equality and inclusion in the organization. All the respondents (50 respondents) including the 4 disabled respondents have disagreed that they face harassment and bullying. This means inclusion policies are followed in NTT Data to promote diversity and inclusion.

Also, from the below table (Table 5.6), it could be seen that both male and female employees work in both leadership based and non-leadership based roles. 5 among the 18 female respondents work in leadership-based role, and on the other hand 7 out of 32 male-employee respondents find themselves in leadership-based job roles. This shows that NTT Data encourages and adheres to equality policies in order to promote equality in diversity in its workplace.

Thus with the above discussions, the research question RQ1B could be answered as follows:

Yes, equal opportunities and inclusion policies are being followed in NTT Data.

5.3.2. Research Question RQ2:

Main Research Question:

RQ2 – Does NTT Data practise challenging recruitment and selection strategies?

Subsidiary Research Questions:

RQ2A – Are current trends and strategies in recruitment and selection followed in NTT Data?

Figure- 5.3 Initial Job Advertisement Mode

From the figure (Figure- 5.3), it is understood that the respondents have had come across their job advertisements for their job positions in different modes like job portal, agencies, campus recruitment, company career website, social media and employee referral. Company career website is no longer a demanding trend to find job vacancies. Although agencies and job portal play major role in job advertisements and recruitment, it could also be seen that most recent trends like social media and employee referral have also played important role in job advertisement and recruitment of the respondents surveyed. Though the questions in the questionnaire were not specific in knowing the exact mode of job advertisement via social media, it was clear that NTT Data places its job vacancies in social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, and other similar social websites to attract employees with unique talents and skills.

Thus with the above discussion, the research question RQ2A could be answered as follows:

Yes, evidences of the usage of current recruitment and selection trends and strategies could be seen in NTT Data.

RQ2B – Are mixed strategies of recruitment and selection followed in NTT Data?

The responses to one of the questions in the questionnaire ‘I am a Contract/Temporary or Permanent Employee’ could answer this subsidiary research question to a certain extent.

The table (Table 5.7) shows that 13 male respondents and 5 female respondents contributing to a total of 18 respondents out of 50 respondents surveyed work as contractors/temporary employees in NTT Data. On the other hand, 64% of the respondents, i.e., 19 male employees and 13 female employees among the 50 respondents hold a permanent job position at NTT Data. These statistical data show that NTT data uses different strategies in employing the NTT Data employees.

Thus with the above discussion, the research question RQ2B could be answered as follows:

Yes, mixed strategies of recruitment and selection are followed to an extent by NTT Data.

5.4. Discussions on the Literature Review Constructs:

This section holds the discussions on few specific constructs found in the literature review chapter in section 2.2.

5.4.1. Aren’t Women Good Enough For Technical Job?

From section 2.2.3, we could see that there are discussions on whether women are suitable for technical job or only soft-skills related job position. To measure this, there was a question set up in the questionnaire to find in what department the respondents work in. The table (Table 5.8) shows the responses in a cross tabulation format. It could be seen that among the 18 female respondents 15 respondents work in technical department and the remaining 3 respondents are from functional department of the organization, i.e., approximately 83% of the respondents holds a technical job position rather than soft-skills related functional job position. Thus we could support the notion of Girl (2008) that women have the capability to perform well in a technical job position in an IT organization, like NTT Data.

5.4.2. Can Women Be Found in Leadership Roles?

Another discussion that’s found in section 2.2.3 is that whether women could be found in leadership roles or not. From the table (Table 5.9) it could be seen that among the 18 female respondents surveyed, 5 female respondents find themselves in a leadership role, either as a technical team leader/manager or as a functional HR leader. Although the percentage (an approximate 28%) is not relatively huge when compared to those with non-leadership roles (an approximate 72%), it could be seen that women play competitive role in finding themselves as leaders when compared to male employees’ percentage of an approximate 22% in having leadership job roles.

5.4.3. Innovative Learner vs. Experienced Mentor:

In the section 2.2.6, there are discussions about young employees being innovative and creative while the older employees find themselves as experienced mentors. It could be seen from the table (Table 5.10) that the respondents have seen themselves as either innovative & creative or experienced mentors. The respondents who considered themselves as experienced mentors are under the age category 30-40, 40-50 and above 50. On the other hand, the respondents who considered themselves as innovative and creative are mostly from the age group 20-30 and few from the age category 30-40. This shows that young employees are so innovative and creative in their work, whereas older employees are experienced mentors. These statistical data prove the notions of Ruggs et al., (2014) as discussed in section 2.2.6., and thus organizations consider these factors while recruiting young and older employees and recruit accordingly to match their job specifications.

5.5. Conclusion and Link to Next Chapter:

Thus this chapter provided the discussions and test results of few statistical significance tests of the collected data and the hypotheses. It also answered the research questions and the subsidiary research questions which lead to the main research questions. The discussions in the literature were compared with the statistical data findings and the discussions showed whether they support or deny the notions of specific authors.

From the discussions in this chapter, it could be seen that NTT Data promotes and adheres to diversity with support of equality and inclusion policies, and it has recent trends and strategies adopted in its recruitment and selection methods in attracting and recruiting employees with diverse factors.

The next chapter would deal with more discussions on this research study and data findings. It would list through the limitations of this study if any and would make recommendations for further study.

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