1 / 11

India’s emergence in the IT arena: Accident, luck or social engineering? (Research in Progress)

India’s emergence in the IT arena: Accident, luck or social engineering? (Research in Progress). Ramesh Subramanian Quinnipiac University – School of Business Hamden, CT 06518 USA Ramesh.Subramanian@quinnipiac.edu. Motivations.

anka
Download Presentation

India’s emergence in the IT arena: Accident, luck or social engineering? (Research in Progress)

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. India’s emergence in the IT arena: Accident, luck or social engineering?(Research in Progress) Ramesh Subramanian Quinnipiac University – School of Business Hamden, CT 06518 USA Ramesh.Subramanian@quinnipiac.edu

  2. Motivations • History: a legitimate area of research in Management (Daniel Wren, 1987, 2003, 2004) • Shortage of historical research in Information Systems • History is especially important in understanding the intersection of organizations, information systems and society

  3. Indian IT sector as a topic of study • Rapid emergence in the global IT services sector. • Fast becoming a favorite destination for software services such as help-desk, customer relations, back-end office processing, remote systems and network administration and more recently, IT research and development (R & D). • From a business-model perspective, India seems to have perfectly integrated both vertically and virtually in the range of IT services it provides to developed countries.

  4. Reasons for India’s “emergence”(Kapur & Ramamurti, 2001) • Successful immigrants from India who settled in the United States of America, and who started up several successful IT ventures. • These IT experts then played a major role in transferring their know-how to India, or set up collaborative IT ventures and development centers in India. • The IT industry in India received a major boost through the “year-2000” (Y2K) problem. • The economic downturn in 1999-2000 caused several US and European organizations to turn to software outsourcing for economic reasons • India clearly benefited by offering qualified, English-speaking manpower at a fraction of the costs of similarly trained manpower in the western countries.

  5. Questions • Are the often-stated reasons accurate? • What has led to India’s “emergence?” • What are the historical underpinnings? • What was the role of the government? • What was the role of the “free markets?” • What was the role of Indian society? • Who are/were the leading players? • Can this be emulated elsewhere? • What is likely to be the future?

  6. This study • A qualitative, historical study • Tries to identify and understand the roots of IT in India • Trace the evolution of the IT services sector in India

  7. Methodology • Qualitative study • Evidence (data) is collected from in-depth interviews and published literature • The primary sources of this research include interviews with government officials and leading IT industry professionals • Secondary resources include published articles in journals, conferences and web-based literature • Our main “hypothesis” is that the development and growth of India’s IT services sector is not a “spurt” phenomenon that occurred in the last 15 years, but is a continuous, evolutionary process that has its origins much before India’s Independence in 1947

  8. Progress so far… • Interviews with Indian IT persona: • The subjects include a cabinet secretary in the government who served under four of India’s Prime Ministers and actually helped write India’s IT policy, a head of research in a specialized IT laboratory, academics and entrepreneurs • “Current” literature review • Historial literature review • Currently analyzing data

  9. Progress so far… • Analysis phase: Initial results • There has been a more gradual, planned, or evolutionary path in India’s development in the IT sector • The roots of India’s IT prowess can be traced to India’s Independence movement • Central planning and the quest for self-reliance played a big role in building strong foundations • The same central planning also stifled the IT sector • A combination of strong foundation and macro-economic conditions have played a big part in the emergence of the Indian IT services sector

  10. Offshoots • Roots of E-governance in India • Applying critical social theories to the architects of technology development in India • Cross-national studies of IT emergence • Socio-cultural issues and IT development

  11. Questions for OASIS • This seems to be interesting, but will it become “acceptable” research? • Can you suggest any ideas to enhance this work? • Is there any theoretical background I can lean on? (i.e., complexity theory, chaos theory) • What could be possible avenues for publishing this? • Can we have an IT history track at ICIS/AMCIS? • Is there a Journal of IT history? Should there be one?

More Related