Mapping Inertial Forces for Organizational Change in Textile Sector of Pakistan

The primary objective of this research is the analysis of internal environment of textile sector of Pakistan to identify inertial forces that compel organizations to remain on status quo rather than adopting the strategies for change. The inertial forces exist in various dimensions of internal environment; however, this research analyzes two important dimensions of internal environment which include human resource and technology. Data was collected through self administered questionnaires. More than 500 questionnaires were distributed in different subsectors of textile. After analyzing the data, this research concluded that the numbers of variables existed in internal environment of textile sector are more in numbers and complex in nature than the variables existed in the context of developed countries.


INTRODUCTION
Pakistan is a developing country.Since its independence in 1947, it has remained as an agricultural economy.Currently, agriculture is the largest sector of Pakistan's economy with strong effects on the socio-economic setup.It employed 45% of the total workforce and contributed 25% to the total GDP (Ministry of Finance and Government of Pakistan, 2012).This sector is relatively more developed than most of the other developing nations.Besides meeting its primary objective i.e., to fulfill the requirements of food for the nation, this sector has many backward and forward linkages with other sectors e.g., this sector is the major source of manufacturing inputs to the various industries like paper, textile and edible oil industry etc.
As this research specifically focuses on the textile sector of Pakistan, which is operative virtually since 1947, with few spinning and composite units, working in their individual capacity.Over the time, textile sector has developed rapidly in the shapes of different industrial hubs e.g., Multan, Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi etc. Currently this sector may be called the back bone of Pakistan's economy.
The current situation of the textile sector is not satisfactory.Most of the investors are moving to other countries like Bangladesh, Egypt and now India as well.
In our previous research papers we have attempted to outline the external environmental factors that adversely affect the performance of textile sector of Pakistan (Majid et al., 2011(Majid et al., , 2010)).In this research the major focus of analysis is internal environment with the purpose of analyzing the forces that create inertial pressures and resist the change process.
Organizational change in large organizational setting is difficult to phenomenon implement (Tushman and Anderson, 1986).That is the major reason that the failure rate in successful implementation of change is very high.Successful implementation of change depends upon two important factors: organizational capabilities and environmental condition.There are various factors within and outside the organization that affect the organizational capabilities to implement the organizational change process, as Hannan and Freeman (1984) said that internal and external conditions limit the organizational ability to change.That limited capability of the organization is known as organizational inertia in the available literature (Amburgey et al., 1993;Kelly and Amburgey, 1991;Boyera and Robert, 2006;Cooper and Schendel, 1976;Hannan and Freeman, 1984;Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000).
There are various factors that create organizational inertia some are internal while others are external.Internal factor include sunk costs, equipment, human resource, organizational structure and the dynamics of political coalitions.External factors include legal and other barriers to entry and exit in a specific business or market, competitors and institutional support etc.These inertial forces do not stop the change process but make the implementation process slow (Hannan and Freeman, 1984).
The purpose of bringing change in the organization is to make improvements in its different dimensions.If the implementation process remains unsuccessful it will adversely affect the organization in various ways like loss of financial resources, demotivation of human resource, wastage of time, as well as failure of strategic plans etc.To avoid all these, it is necessary for change manager to overcome the inertial forces that can stop or slower the process of change.
The purpose of discussing organizational change in the presence of inertial forces in textile sector of Pakistan is to understand the environmental context accurately and develop a context dependent strategy for change.If change policies remain unsuccessful in textile sector then most of the productions units would not be able to bear the cost of change failure.Therefore it is necessary to analyze the inertial forces for the purpose of minimizing their effects on newly developed change projects.

RESEARCH CONTEXT OF TEXTILE SECTOR OF PAKISTAN
Textile sector has been operative in Pakistan since 1947 with a few spinning and composite units.It comprised of yarn manufacturing, weaving and dyeing plants.Over the time, the Government of Pakistan announced a number of incentives for the textile sector which motivated the private investors to install their individual spinning and weaving units.Most of these units were installed at the places which offered easy availability of raw material.Therefore, this sector developed in the form of industrial hubs at various localities.Most of the ginning factories are located around the cities of Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Nawab Shah and Larkana, whereas, the majority of spinning mills is located around the cities of Faisalabad and Sheikhupura.Weaving and dyeing mills are mostly located at Lahore and Faisalabad, while Karachi and Lahore are the industrial hubs for madeups and garments.The textile sector has remained a major contributor in the GDP of Pakistan, but after the growing energy crisis in recent years it is in deep trouble.Therefore, the industry is in need of governmental support to regain its competitive position in the world market.
Textile sector of Pakistan consists of small, medium and large scale industries.In which approximately 80% units are operating at small scale, 15% at medium scale and merely 5% units are operating at large scale (Majeed, 2004).Small and medium scale units mostly deal in weaving, ginning, hosiery, towel and finishing, while most of the large scale units are involved in spinning.
Textile is an export oriented industry of Pakistan.During the financial year 2011-12, most of its export items for example yarn, fabric, readymade garments, towel and bed linen have remained under international competitive pressure.Its share in total exports had declined from 66% in FY 2004-05 to 54% in the FY 2011-12 (Ministry of Finance and Government of Pakistan, 2012).There are various national and international factors affecting the performance of the textile sector.Important factors in the domestic environment affecting the textile sector include: rapid increase in the cost of production, energy crisis, war against terrorism and high interest rates etc.While international factors include: global economic crisis, increase in global supply of textile products, antidumping duties on Pakistani textile products and trade barriers.

METHODOLOGY
Survey method was adopted for this research, in which questionnaires were distributed amongst the categories of workforce in different sub-subsectors of the textile sector.In this research 525 questionnaires were distributed amongst the respondents in the selected sample of 105 manufacturing units of the textile sector.The format of the questionnaire was very simple.It consisted of six sections ranging from "A" to "F".In section A, the demographic information about the respondents was collected.The next five sections of the questionnaire were dedicated to different dimensions of the internal environment of the manufacturing units for the purpose of highlighting the inertial forces.The sample was selected in the following manner.
The textile sector of Pakistan consists of the ginning, spinning, weaving and garments manufacturing sub-sectors.According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan: 2008-2009, there are 1221 ginning units in ginning sector, 521 spinning and composite units in spinning sector, 1196 weaving, knitting and finishing units in weaving sector and 1500 garments manufacturing units in garments sector (Ministry of Finance and Government of Pakistan, 2009).Most of the manufacturing units of the textile sector are the members of various associations like APTMA, PCFAMEA, PCGA and PRGMEA, etc.There are some units which have no affiliation with any association of the textile sector which have been identified in this research as the 'independent units'.Sample has been selected only from those units which had some form of membership or registration with any textile association.
In the cotton ginning and garments manufacturing sub-sectors, 15 units from each sub-sector were randomly selected, while in the weaving and spinning sub-sectors, the manufacturing units have been arranged in a systematic way and then randomly selected 15 units from different categories of each subsector.The systematic arrangement of units from these sub-sectors is explained in the following paragraph.
In spinning sub-sector, the spinning units have been divided into two categories.These two categories were spinning units and composite units.In weaving sub-sector, the manufacturing units have been divided into three categories.The division was made on the basis of manufacturing processes.These three categories included the simple weaving units with looms, knitting units and finishing units.The rationale behind the selection of 15 units was that in each subsector or different categories of individual sub-sector, the manufacturing process was identical.Therefore 15 units as a sample were good enough to depict the reasonable picture of sub-sector.From the independent units, no manufacturing unit was selected.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
In this research, 525 questionnaires were distributed amongst the respondents in the selected sample of 105 manufacturing units of the textile sector.The criteria for the selection of sample size have already been discussed in previous section.The response rate of the questionnaires was 37.20%.On the whole, 196 questionnaires were returned, partially or fully filled in by the respondents.
In order to minimize the margin of error, relevant data was collected from employees at various levels of manufacturing unit i.e., manager, executives and technical as well as operational workers.In defector sample 14.29% respondents were top-level executives, while 33.67% were middle-level managers.On the other hand, technical staff was 8.16%, while operational-level workers were 43.88% of the total respondents.
To identify the potential inertial forces in the internal environment of the textile sector manufacturing units, all the responses in the questionnaire have been analyzed by using statistical techniques of the mode and corresponding frequencies.The primary objective of this research was to identify the areas which could affect the process of successful change.To collect the required data, the five point Likert Scale, ranging from '1' to '5' was used, where '1' represented 'Never' and '5' represented 'Always'.The mode provides the most frequent response against each question.In the Likert Scale, the responses that have a mode value of '3' or lesser than '3' are considered as the inertial force.
In the following sections, all the questions that had mode value lesser than 03 have been analyzed through cross-tabulation method to discuss the inertial forces separately.Successful change in textile sector might not have been possible without improving the key areas related with these inertial forces.The technique of cross tabulation method has been used for analysis purposes.In cross-tabulation method, the frequency table shows the results of the tabulation at each level of observation (Forthofer and Lee, 1995).In the following subsections, key inertial forces are cross-tabulated on the basis of the nature of study and sub-sectors of the textile industry.
Inertial forces related to human resource: Organizational vision: In response to the question related to organizational vision, there was no significant difference among the responses.(81.30%) respondents including managers and executives in most of the subsectors did not know about the vision of the organization.This was also the result of conservative approaches of the owners as discussed earlier.They were doing business with conservative mentality of the "SotarGali" 1 , which was to increase profit at any cost.They do not consider the modern approaches of doing business and were not ready to adopt new forms of structures and business portfolios.Therefore, in most of the production units, organizational vision was not yet developed.The detailed analysis of the responses of the workforce is presented in Table 1.

HR practices:
In response to the question related to HR practices, there was a significant difference among the responses, 49.4% respondents were not satisfied, while 50.6% were satisfied with the human resource practices in the textile sector of Pakistan (Table 2).Some of the reasons behind this dissatisfaction included no job security, lesser bonuses and rewards; comparatively more working hours, no weekend breaks, no fringe benefits, as well as marginal salaries.On the other hand, managers and executives were enjoying high salaries, high fringe benefits and moderate work hours.Therefore, the members of executive and managerial class were satisfied with their jobs.

Employees' motivation:
In response to the question related to employees' motivation there was a significant difference among the responses of workforce.Table 3 reveals that 43.20% respondents were never or rarely motivated to achieve the organizational goals.Whereas, 21.60% responded that they were not motivated on regular basis to achieve the organizational goals.35.30% respondents held the view that the top management uses motivation tools to achieve the organizational goals and objectives; most of these respondents were managers.

Negotiation:
In response to the question related to negotiation, there was a significant difference among the responses.(60.60%) respondents especially operation-level workers responded that top management do not negotiate with employees in most of the cases and are reluctant to accept their rational demands at the time of conflict (Table 6).The reasons of this could be the same as discussed previously, which include short working life and conservative approaches of executives and corporate owners.On the other hand, 39.30% responded that management negotiates with them at the time of conflict.Most of these respondents were executives and top-level managers.
Participative management: In response to the question related to participative management, there was no significant difference amongst the respondents.(72.90%) responded that mostly executives and toplevel managers are consulted at the time of making important decisions (Table 7).For example, in the Anum Weaving Mills, Lahore, visited during my fieldwork, the owners of the unit had decided to stop the production and close the mills immediately.Only a few top-level executives were consulted before making this decision.The reason of this behavior was that the owners were acting as executives as well and they did not want to consult the workers including first-line managers at the time of making this decision.

Employees' efficiency:
The findings of this survey demonstrate that the employees were not satisfied with the human resource practices of managers in the textile sector of Pakistan.Therefore, they were not working at their optimum performance level.However, they argued that they could improve their performance if some incentives would have been provided to them.Table 9 indicates that 79.10% respondents were not working on their optimum capacity (they were mostly technical and operational workers).On the other hand, there was a significant difference among the responses of executives and operational worker.Most of the executives responded that they were performing at their best possible level; therefore, they could not improve their performance with higher rewards.

Technology:
Manufacturing technology: In the textile sector of Pakistan, most of the units were not efficiently using the available technology.There were many reasons behind it.These were identified as the problem of power shortage, scarcity of raw material and inefficient workforce etc. (60.70%) respondents including executives and managers of different sub-sectors as presented in Table 10 responded that their organization was not using its technological resources efficiently.
Need for modern technology: Table 11 reveals that 80% respondents (including executives and managers) responded that there is a strong need to improve the existing technology of their manufacturing units.

Information and communication technology:
Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) is a prerequisite for successful change.The results of this survey as mentioned in Table 12 show that there is a marginal use of ICTs in the business operations of the textile sector.(81.60%) respondents including managers and executives do not use ICTs in their business operations.To achieve the targets of successful transformation, fast and relevant flow of information using ICTs is essential.

CONCLUSION
Textile is the largest manufacturing sector of Pakistan.The analysis of this research study regarding the internal environment of textile sector of Pakistan brings new paradigms in the research context of developing countries.Most of the earlier studies on organizational inertia and change focus on the variables available in the context of developed world.This study not only identifies the inertial forces but their relative intensity in the various subsectors has also been discussed.
This research on textile sector of Pakistan discussed various issues related to human resource and technology for analyzing the inertial forces.The areas identified in human resources include lack of vision, job insecurity, demotivation, as well as lack of training and development and negotiation etc. Inefficient use of technology, outdated technology and absence of information and communication technology is the grey areas of technological dimension.For implanting the successful change in textile sector of Pakistan, it is necessary to make improvement in these areas to break the grip of inertial forces that make the change process slow.

Table 1 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of organizational vision Sub-sectors -

Table 2 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of HR practices Sub-sectors -

Table 3 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of employees' motivation Sub-sectors -

Table 4 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of training and development Sub-sectors -

Table 5 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of rewards and benefits Sub

Table 6 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of negotiation Sub-sectors -

Table 7 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of participative management Sub-sectors

Table 8 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of employees' turnover Sub-sectors

Table 10 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of manufacturing technology Sub-sectors

Table 11 :
Percentage responses on the basis of the nature of work and sub-sectors of the textile industry under the condition of need for modern technology Sub-sectors -