Lost in Translation: Organizational Practices and Formal Employment of Women in India

Sociological research has argued that economic globalization and the rise of formal job opportunities is transforming the lives of women in developing countries. An underlying assumption in this research is that women who have never formally worked before are uniformly able to capitalize on the employment opportunities created by foreign investment and successfully transition into formal employment. In this article, I question this assumption and hypothesize that local employer practices mediate whether women transition into formal employment and are ultimately transformed by globalization. I study a large garment factory in India and examine the effect of one organizational practice, the assignment of trainers to new joiners, on whether women successfully sustain formal employment. Using a combination of unique longitudinal data and exogenous variation in trainer assignment, I find that first-time women employees assigned to experienced trainers are 20% more like to capitalize on their job opportunities and build careers in formal employment. Additionally, I show that experienced trainers impact the transition of women into formal employment not by imparting job-related skills or organizational identification, but by inculcating "work readiness" in their trainees, which I define as essential skills needed to survive at work including an understanding of self-presentation, interpersonal communication, work-life separation and self-reliance. These findings have implications for research on the employment of women in developing economies as well as for the role of organizational practices in affecting employee career outcomes.