Data collection and data analysis for survey B

4.2.1 Data collection

If TQM is the proposed model of change for Indian Railways, to what is extent there congruence between TQM oriented organisational culture and the cultural values of Indian Railway personnel? Section 2.2.6.6 had shown that there is no study in this area. Since hierarchy was found to be having strong negative influence on TQM implementation (Tan &

Khoo 2002, Tata & Prasad 1998), survey B attempted to assess this among the employees of the Indian Railways.

The instrument for survey (S004 available in Appendix 3) was personally administered by the researcher during visits to different units of the Indian Railways.

Personally administering the instrument had the advantage of explaining the rationale of the survey and clarifying any doubt by the respondents before they could start filling the questionnaire. This also took care that there were no missing responses in the filled questionnaire. This helped at the time of data analysis.

A total of 311 responses were collected from the survey. The distribution of the respondents is shown in Table 4.4.

Category of employee:

44 respondent’s age less than 30 years

nil respondent’s less than 30 years between 30 years to 50 years

11 respondent’s More than 50 years

34 respondent’s more than 50 years

21

Table 4. 4Number of respondents in different categories for survey B Source: developed from field data.

In Indian Railways, for the field postings, there is no direct recruitment at the class 2 level. The class 3 supervisors after putting in certain years of service take a departmental promotion examination. Those who qualify through this are promoted to the level of class 2.

Thus most of the class 2 officers are more than 30 years old. Hence during the survey, no class 2 officer less than 30 years of age could be accessed. In the category of class 1 officers less than 30 years of age, all were trainee officers, that is, they had not yet joined a working post. Since the training period for them is two years, they had not put in more than two years of service in the Indian Railways. Thus it could be said that their values were not influenced by railway specific experiences and it was more a reflection of their experiences in the Indian society.

4.2.2 Data Analysis

For the data analysis, the scores obtained on the dimensions of ‘status consciousness’,

‘tendency for personalised relationship’ and ‘dependency proneness’ were symbolised by S, P and D scores respectively. The class 1, class 2 and class3 employees were symbolised by the suffix 1, 2 or 3 respectively after S, P or D. Thus D3 means ‘dependency proneness’

score for class 3 employees of Indian Railways. The scores were further divided age group wise as shown in the Table 4.5 which is self-illustrative.

Dimensions of hierarchy Status respondent’s age less than 30 years (n=

44) score 2.4818 2.9113 2.4522

S1_31-50 P1_31-50 D1_31-50 respondent’s age between 30 years to

50 years (n=89)

score 2.4292 3.0224 2.6112 S1_>50 P1_>50 D1_>50 respondent’s age more than 50 years

(n=11)

score 2.3454 2.8909 2.4454 average score for class 1 officers

(n=144)

S1= 2.43 P1 = 2.98 D1 =2.55 category of employee: class 2 officers

S2_<30yr P2_<30yr D2_<30yr respondent’s age less than 30 years

(n=0)

score

n.a. n.a. n.a.

S2_31-50 P2_31-50 D2_31-50 respondent’s age between 30 years to 50

years (n=27)

score 2.0296 2.7703 2.1259 S2_>50 P2_>50 D2_>50 respondent’s age more than 50 years

(n=34)

score 2.2147 3.0323 2.2323 average score for class 2 officers

(n=61)

S2=2.13 P2=2.92 D2=2.18 category of employee: class 3 supervisors

S3_<30yr P3_<30yr D3_<30yr respondent’s age less than 30 years

(n=8)

score

1.6750 2.6500 1.7625

S3_31-50 P3_31-50 D3_31-50 respondent’s age between 30 years to 50

years (n=77)

score 1.7909 3.0103 1.7441 S3_>50 P3_>50 D3_>50 respondent’s age more than 50 years

(n=21)

score 1.8333 3.1428 1.7666 average scores for class 3 supervisors

(n=106)

S3=1.79 P3=3.01 D3=1.75 average scores for the class1, class2 &

class3 combined (n=144+61+106 =311)

S=2.1578 P=2.9768 D= 2.2057

n.a.= not available

Note: quite true-1 true-2 undecided–3 false-4 quite false-5

Table 4. 5 Scores obtained on the three dimensions of ‘status consciousness (S)’,

‘personalised relationship (P)’ and ‘dependency proneness (D) ’ by different categories of employees of Indian Railways

Source: developed from survey data.

In Table 4.5, the lower the scores, the higher the measured tendency of ‘status consciousness (S)’, ‘personalised relationship (P)’ and ‘dependency proneness (D) ’ .The Statistical package ‘Statistica’ was used to analyse the data. Wherever ANOVA was used, the following assumptions of ANOVA were verified to be true before conclusions were made based on ANOVA:

(i) Homogeneity of variance

(ii) Lack of correlation between the mean and variance.

Since for all ANOVA based analysis, the sample sizes were more than thirty and also because the violation of normality assumption does not affect the robustness of F test (Statistica 1998, p. 1710), the test of normality was not specifically done.

The analysis began by verifying whether there was any difference between the S score, P score and D scores given below. The lower the score, the higher was the tendency of

‘status consciousness (S)’, ‘personalised relationship (P)’ and ‘dependency proneness (D)’.

Symbol Mean value Valid N

S 2.1578 311

P 2.9768 311

D 2.2057 311

All Groups 2.4468

The details of the analysis done are shown in step 1 at Appendix 3A.

The analysis showed that in the Indian Railway staff, among the three components of hierarchy, the dimension of ‘tendency for a personalised relationship’ was significantly weaker than those of ‘dependency on superior’ and ‘status consciousness’. Further, there was no significant difference on the scores obtained on the dimensions of ‘status consciousness’

and ‘dependency on the superior’.

Then it was assessed whether there was any difference among class 1, class 2 and class 3 staff of the Indian Railway on the three dimensions. The details of the analysis are available in step 2 at Appendix 3A.

The analysis showed that the ‘status consciousness with respect to the superior’ and

‘dependency on the superior’ increased from class1 to class 2 and from class 2 to class 3 employees. However, there was no difference in their ‘tendency for personalised relationship’ with their superior which in any case was significantly weaker than that of

‘status consciousness with respect to the superior’ and ‘dependency on the superior’ as seen from the analysis done in step 1 of Appendix 3A.

The analysis further showed that within a category of employee (class 1, class 2, class 3) there was no significant difference in their scores on the two dimensions of ‘status consciousness’ and ‘dependency on the superior’ from younger (less than 30 years of age) to older (more than 50 years of age) employees. The details of the analysis are shown in step 3 at Appendix 3A.

On the dimension of ‘tendency for personalised relationship’, the analysis carried out in step 4 at Appendix 3A showed that there was no difference in P scores across different age groups and across different classes of employees. That is, the ‘tendency for personalised relationship’ is consistently weak across different age and class groups in the Indian Railways.

The hypotheses made in section 3.4.2 are now reproduced for convenience:

(i) Class 1 officers show lower hierarchical tendencies in comparison to class 2 officers.

(ii) Class 2 officers show lower hierarchical tendencies in comparison to class 3 employees.

(iii) Younger employees show lesser hierarchical tendencies than older employees.

In terms of hypothesis testing, hypothesis i and hypothesis ii were accepted on two dimensions of hierarchy – ‘status consciousness’ and ‘dependency proneness’. But hypothesis i and hypothesis ii were not accepted on the third dimension of hierarchy

-‘personalised relationship’.

Hypothesis iii was not accepted on the two dimensions of ‘status consciousness’ and

‘dependency proneness’. That is, in the Indian Railways, the younger employees are as hierarchical in nature as their superiors who joined service roughly 25 years ago.