Suchergebnisse

The article intends to look into the mode of work organization in nursing, which is constantly evolving owing to technological innovations, in the context of rising private healthcare in India and management rationales behind it. Locating the study within the framework of scientific management techniques and analyzing through lens of Weberian power structure and Marx's concepts of work alienation and subjugation, the article contributes to understanding how in the absence of standard mode of work design, management in private healthcare recruits workers hailing from migrated ethnic communities without formal skills and qualification. The organization of work is based on subjectivities and social institutions such as race, class and ethnicities of workers. In the name of efficiency, those workers are selected who respond positively to workplace controls. Thus, while Taylorist concepts of efficiency, fragmentation and specialization of work are used to design work, they are reconceptualized and merged with informal social institutions to fulfil the management's goals of higher accumulation in service industries.

AbstractThe paper examines the growth of private health care in India in the context of its regulatory provisions and questions the work and employment conditions of female care workers (nurses) employed there. Nurses constitute 80% of the total workers in each nursing home/hospital. In the wake of increased demand for private health care since mid‐1990s, insertion of technology and investment is inducing transformation of nursing homes into multi‐ and super‐speciality hospitals resulting in changes in work organization of nurses. This has led to demand for larger numbers of workers. Employers gain by the segmentation in the nursing labor market, paying low wages. Workers face widespread social discrimination, long working hours, and high work intensity. The deplorable situation of a significant section of workers employed in this sector indicates state failure to control the private health sector. Lack of effective standards of work impacts nature of work of the workforce employed in various levels in the healthcare system.