PERCEIVED SUPERVISOR SUPPORT AND WOMEN EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE: A CASE OF IT COMPANIES IN INDIA

Abstract

The IT industry has emerged as a key employer for Indian women in the organized segment (Table 2). Women now constitute 38.70% of the IT industry's overall workforce (Ministry of Labor and Employment, 2022). However, their representation declines with the rise in the corporate hierarchy and they constitute merely 25 percent of the managerial positions and less than 1 percent of the c-suite employees (The Print, 2020). This reflects that the Indian IT industry is struggling with the problem of leaky female talent pipeline. Hence, this thesis identifies the barriers to women’s career progression (i.e. the constituents of glass ceiling) in the Indian IT industry. It further analyzes if these barriers have an impact on women employees’ performance. Finally, it ascertains the moderating role of perceived supervisor support (PSS) on the relationship between glass ceiling and women employees’ performance. To achieve the research objectives, this thesis has used a mixed methods research design. Firstly, a qualitative study was conducted following which a quantitative study was carried out. The findings of the qualitative study highlighted that women in IT industry in India encounter three broad categories of barriers namely socio-cultural barriers, organizational barriers and personal barriers. On the other hand, the results of the quantitative study highlighted a significant negative impact of organizational culture related barriers on female employees’ work performance and significant positive impact of socio-cultural barriers on female employees’ work performance. Apart from this, perceived supervisor support (PSS) was found to have a significant moderating impact on the relationship between socio-cultural barriers, role conflict, organizational culture related barriers and organizational climate related barriers and female employees’ work performance. This study posits the need for top management to clearly communicate their support and commitment for creation of gender equal workplaces. This thesis has certain limitations. Firstly, this thesis is based on a cross sectional research design and is limited only to the Indian IT sector. Secondly, this thesis did not take into account the impact of barriers on other aspects of work performance such as adaptive performance and counterproductive work behavior. Finally, this study investigated the moderating role of only one factor i.e. perceived supervisor support. Future studies may work towards empirical assessment of the importance of different barriers through various multi-criteria decision making techniques (MCDM) techniques like Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) analysis. Further, a quantitative investigation of the impact of glass ceiling on various organizational level variables such as female employee productivity, corporate reputation etc may be conducted. Finally, the dynamics of women’s careers in light of various social changes such as increasing role of male partners in domestic and parental responsibilities, same-sex marriages etc. may be explored.