RIEB, Kobe University

RIEB Seminar

Date&Time	Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 2:00pm-
Place	Seminar Room at RIEB (Kanematsu Memorial Hall 1st Floor)
Intended Audience	Faculty, Graduate Students, Undergraduates, and Managers for Technology and Product Development at Manufacturers
Language	English
Note	Copies of the paper will be available at Office of Promoting Research Collaboration.

2:00pm-

Speaker	Nishant KUMAR
Affiliation	PhD Candidate, School of Business, Stockholm University
Topic	Exploring the impact of relationship transparency on Indian Born-Global firm's survival and growth
Abstract	The growth of the Indian knowledge intensive service (KIS) industry has been a phenomenal success. Faced with a small and undeveloped domestic knowledge based services market, Indian KIS firms focused primarily on the international market and within few years of their inception they become globally active. But this growth has not been free from challenges. According to a study undertaken by Assocham Business Barometer (ABB) on 'Attrition Problem in a Growing Economy' covering 137 leading human resource (HR) heads has revealed that Indian service sector is facing the problem of attrition which churned to 30 per cent in first half of 2010. Attrition level in the service sector has edged up to 35 per cent, while IT and IT services sector saw attrition rate at 24 per cent. About 65 per cent of the respondents in this survey said that high attrition affects the morale of existing employees, disrupting long-term planning and customer projects. Employee attrition is posing a threat to their vision to service their clients globally. While an extensive body of research has examined several issues related to various human resource (HR) practices, such as employee exit, changing work values, and employee's intention to quit in Indian companies, little research has paid attention to the strategies these firms are adopting in an effort to deal with this high attrition rate. 　The issue of employee attrition is acute for Indian KIS Born-Global firms posing challenges to their expansion and survival. For instance, maintaining long-term relationships with customers is identified as crucial to their growth and sustenance in international markets. Relationship with customers can be at risk if people employed on projects and interacting with customers leave the organization. Thus it is important to know how Indian KIS firms meet the expectations of the customers by eliminating the uncertainty of people leaving the projects. This study aims to fill this relative gap in the literature by showing how Indian Born-Global firms are dealing with personnel attrition in their efforts to minimize, for their customers, the risk and uncertainty associated with employees leaving the projects. 　The present study aims to explore the strategies deployed by Indian Born-Globals in order to address the challenges of employee attrition, reaffirming their ability to accomplish their commitment and projects satisfactorily. In doing so I suggest a strategy based on transparency between customers and employees as a way of minimizing customers' concern about attrition. Transparency is assumed to be a crucial factor for sustaining long term relationships with customers. Hence, in answering the question of what strategies Born-Globals are using to tackle the attrition challenge I have conducted case studies of five Indian Born-Globals, which suffer from employee attrition. The results are expected to contribute to the literature on HR management, in general, and employee attrition management, in particular.