Its business span business and technology consulting

Infosys technologies ltd. is the most admired Indian company (Wall street journal, 2009) and among worlds top 50 most reputed companies (Reputation Institute, 2009) with a revenue of US $ 4 billion. Infosys believes in flat world and has a global presence. Its business span business and technology consulting, systems integration, application services, custom software development, re-engineering, maintenance, independent testing, product engineering, and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing (Infosys, 2009). The nature of its business demands outsourcing and most of its workforce are Indian. In order to keep pace with its growth, Infosys needs thousands of people each year who are recruited from campus. However, India having a population of 1.1 billion has large number of graduates passing every year. Last year, only 1% of people were selected from 1.3 million applications (Fortune Magazine, 2009) making the entrance more difficult than Harvard’s.

There are various classes of people working in the organization who are classified on the basis of the following parameters, education, occupation, family background and income (Russel, 1983). Davis Kean (2005) has found out that family background like occupation and income of parents are major determinant for the academic performance of their children. They affect the performance of their children through their beliefs and behaviors. In addition, these beliefs and behaviors are different for different races of people.

Family is one of the important social factors that affect the management of the organization (Carlson & Kachmar, 2000). Traditionally, India had a culture of joint families where uncles, aunts, grandsons, etc lived together (Inderscience, 2009). However, with the dawn of new age the family value has changed in India. India has seen a massive transition from joint family to nuclear family (Goliath, 2005). Now, joint family is usually seen in rural parts of India while nuclear family is seen in urban areas and metro cities (Makar, 2007). Infosys being an Indian major has operations in all the metros and major urban cities of India. In addition, the worker class are mostly fresh graduates from engineering colleges whose parents live in small towns or cities. These worker classes generally do not have any family members in the metro cities and are usually single. They have a western outlook towards life and prefer to live in metro city and start a nuclear family. In order to engage and retain their employee at worker level, Infosys is promoting marriage of these bachelors within the firm. That is bachelor male and female employee are given additional holidays, company owned homes and other incentives to marry each other. The idea behind the incentive is that if spouse of employee is also working in the firm than the employee are more engaged with the work, are more loyal to the company and their efficiency and output increases. Moreover, Infosys can better manage their human resources if both husband and wife are working in the same firm. It has been observed that if spouses are working in the same firm than tendency to visit parents in different city/ town decreases considerably. For the other classes of higher management and middle management, no particular policy is in place, which caters to the changing family definition as is seen in the worker class people because the attrition rate in former is much lower than the later.

Thus, we see that Socio-geographic factor plays an important role in the firm’s management tactics. The case here was of Infosys, one of the MNC based in India. There were three classes identified in the organization based on the factors such as education, income, occupation (nature of job) and family background. It was seen that education played a vital role in the recruitment process of Infosys, which in turn depended upon the family background. In addition, income of individual was correlated to the nature of the job being done by the individual in the organization. Work values among the employee varied within the classes and between classes. The variance was highest in the worker class employee and between worker class and middle and higher management employee. As Infosys is an Indian company and has majority of its operation in India to leverage the lower cost of operations, there was not much geographic mobility seen in the organization, but even the smallest mobility posed a threat towards the integration of project because of the lack of proper communication amongst the various international stakeholders. There were not many regional variations seen in organization apart from celebration of local festivals, which were mostly South Indian. India is moving from joint family (extended family) to nuclear family and this shift has affected organizations. Infosys management has planned an innovative solution to tackle this problem. They are giving incentive to people to marry with the employee of Infosys; this initiative is helping them to retain their employee at worker level and increasing the employee’s efficiency.

Fortune magazine (2009) Infosys U: 'More Competitive than Gaining Admission to Harvard', Retrived 28th August 2009 from http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/infosys-in-the-news/infosys-u/default.asp

Pamela E. Davis-Kean (2005), The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child

Goliath (2005), Dual career nuclear families in India: attitudes and social support, Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Retrived 28th August 2009 from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0198-526263/Dual-career-nuclear-families-in.html

KnowIndia (2008), States and Union Territories, Retrived 28th August 2009 from http://india.gov.in/knowindia/state_uts.php

Infosys Contacts (2009), Retrived 28th August 2009 from http://www.infosys.com/contact/default.asp

Infosys Projects (2009), Retrived 28th August 2009 from http://www.infosys.com/InStepWeb/projects/searchable-directory.asp