Mode of Work Organization in Nursing: Management Practices in Private Healthcare in India

Abstract

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.