My changing roles

I had to play a variety of roles in order to gain the trust of respondents and senior managers, on whose acquiescence my access to the field was premised and who would be important in my initiating contact with other informants. Already in the first few days of fieldwork I could see that a key issue would be adopting an appropriate role, one which would make me acceptable to my gatekeepers but which was not entirely under my own control.

My position as a student stood me in good stead, and I did not have to dissimulate to play this role. I adopted the role of the innocent inexperienced in the ways of the world and new to industry, which to a certain degree was true, as I was making my way through unfamiliar surroundings in a large manufacturing setting. It was a role of passive

observer, but it also meant that I had to be shown round the factory, and have the role of the different departments and important managers explained to me.

In fact, the role assigned me by Mr. N, as a ‘trainee’, was ideal in so far as it meant that he had to explain things to me. My academic background did seem to be a positive factor in my favour, but he was also clearly convinced that for a student to succeed in his research he needed to be guided in the ‘proper’ manner. To accomplish that he needed to explain and make sure I understood how GEMBA was working and point out the need for ‘course correction’. He told me that was the precise reason for supporting me was so I could strengthen the on-going project which he was heading.

In order to put him at ease I requested to be “guided” and my career be shaped by his valued inputs brought by many years in the industry. I adapted to the role of a willing 'project trainee' who needed to be provided in his words as a senior manager with the 'right perspective'. He was my primary gatekeeper until I met Mr. AB, his second in command on the GEMBA project. All this meant both he and others had to explain things to me explicitly that they might not have done otherwise. Moreover, he and others had a model for this role in the trainees from management institutes who worked on the programme.

So although I did make the move from a rank outsider to being a member of the community, it was largely by being deferent and respectful, friendly but not ingratiating, and attentive to others, as Yin [2011:119] suggests. Conscious that I should not

emphasise my other role as an independent researcher I restricted my queries to asking apparently innocuous questions and trying to ‘stay around’, completing a 10:00a.m. to 17:00p.m. routine in the plant, reading GEMBA tracker charts in the first half of the day and later attending meetings and talking walks around the assembly areas. I was very occasionally taken to lunch in the executive canteen by Mr. NNK and could see who showed respect to whom, who the important visitors were, and so on. Managers and

operators ate separately and managers enjoyed a much better overall environment than that of operators. I also observed that special guests such as senior managers from other companies, including important suppliers, were served special lunch menus that were different from the main menu. Japanese visitors seemed particularly well treated.

It also meant I could watch Mr. N perform his role. I was able to see how Mr. N managed his subordinates in subtle but powerful ways and came to appreciate the

‘performativity’ of his change programme phrases by seeing how his subordinates sought to adopt them. I watched him conduct long distance teleconferences with a series of vendors and the Head of the Corporate Purchase department in Nellore apparently seeking its advice before asking for approval for the purchase of new computer peripherals. Mr. N was careful to keep people of influence ‘in the loop’, a phrase that would become repeated many times until it became ingrained in the minds of subordinate managers who dared not to use Mr. N’s favourite vocabularies

Sometimes, Mr. N would give me a lift back to my home in his car and he would talk nostalgically about himself, my uncle and other erstwhile colleagues. But I realised that along with trying to induct me into the company, the senior managers were also seeking to ‘chaperon’ me, as [Yin, 2011: 127] says, in order to monitor me and to see what I was learning.

The host may have two different motives. One is to monitor the site visitor. The other is to see or hear what the site visitor appears to be learning. For instance, when organizations are the setting for field research, the site visitor may have access to a higher official who might not normally give such access to the host.

Luckily, however, I had opportunities to meet other people in CompCo. For a month from September 2008, at Mr. N’s suggestion, I attended training programmes at the training

institute located midway between WAP4 and EWS at Hubli. This was meant to give me a deeper understanding of the implementation of lean manufacturing at CompCo and gave me an opportunity to witness first-hand the hierarchical pathways in which graduate engineering trainees were being groomed for future managerial positions, to discern their educational background, and the challenges these young recruits mostly male faced in their training course, and whether they would continue to rise up through the CompCo hierarchy and become company men or conversely leave at the first opportunity to a better job in the less physically taxing IT industry. During these training classes I started building up a small cohort of friends who were younger than me and worked with Mr. N’s deputy Mr. AB. The training classes also provided me with another opportunity to examine how functional roles in different specialisms were apportioned, understand different middle managers’ work histories and how they got to their present occupational position, how they addressed superiors such as Mr. N, and the extent to which they embraced these training programmes.

I date the second phase of my fieldwork to beginning the inventory project for Mr. N. I was now able to develop a ‘hands-on’ understanding of the company’s lean

manufacturing innovations with regard to its inventory management system. I got to know a number of middle managers and an important actor, Mr. AB, whom I will discuss further below.

Later, before my exit from the field, and with the increased acceptance of my presence and the trust of many managers, I became more confident and independent in my demeanour and was able to ask for meetings and interviews I felt the research required. In this role I was able to pursue more detailed unstructured interviews, asking questions that previously would have been impossible.