Garment Industry Vs. IT industry
It is a buzzword to shape the merchandising department to the tune of IT industry. However there are certain fundamental differences between the two industries. It would be futile to camouflage the real nature of the garment industry by simulating appearances like culture of first name basis and providing cubicles to the merchandisers.Unlike the pure black and white logic in the IT industry, the garment industry is characterised by shades of gray and color. The problem becomes more complex when the merchandising department becomes IT enabled.
Today in order to look "hype", the garment industry is changing its appearance. There are working hour norms in place. There is a provision of working from home. One can see the emergence of email as the only medium and evidence of communication. "Punctuality" has acquired a new meaning.The point of doing all this is to give garment industry the appearance of that of an IT industry in order to make it attractive for the employees and to ride in the boat of "efficiency" and "speed" in the name of ITising the industry. The question is if this analogy is perfect or even similar.
For one, IT industry is based on a project based organisation where teams get built for a particular project, then are reorganised for someother project. The whole culture of the IT organisation is based on this approach. When there is a project that needs to be completed, then punctuality doesnt matter as long as one is doing the task that is assigned. There is no need for a business attire as the bosses are temporary. There the culture is on first name basis as the hierarchy is flat. One can work from home and one can get organised with one's emails as all those things remain till the project last. It seems and is clear that the demands of the project based organisation
shape the requirements that are listed in this paragraph.
Take a look at garment industry, primarily garment industry is characterised by multiple ongoing tasks with no project based requirements. The bosses are usually permanent, and have a significant stake in their long term employement. Thus all the tools and camouflaging imposed by HR department become a tool to ensure that goal. Mails are used to gain time as well as to safeguard their positions. Also mails sent at odd hours are used as a way to influence their bases. Then they need subordinate to locate and organise those mails. Thus mails become in their hands as a way to manipulate and consolidate their position. Sometimes, huge 'mail-mail' games are started in which an avalanche of e-mail is catapulted from both sides. This distorts the vary purpose for which emails are needed.
"First Name Basis" is a trap, that most people find it hard to resist. Of course, employees want to call people higher in the hierarchy on first name basis. The problem starts when people equate the first name basis as a means to assert their equality which doesnt go well with most of the bosses in the garment industry who, as said earlier are permanent in their positions and would like to safeguard their positions by building huge ego defences. Tensions also develop when an employee cannot call his or her boss on the first name basis because of their attitude, but he/she has to do so because "first name" is promoted by the organisation.
Working hour norms dont work here again because of peculiar nature of the garment industry. If a consignment has to go on time it has to go on time, in that case, one has to put more hours and more often than not consignments in a garment industry are almost always late because of so many factors beyond the control of the management. So one finds herself working late almost daily.
The most important difference between a garment and an IT industry is the role of logic in the whole operation. IT product has a lifecycle and it is operated and built upon by pure logic. In garment industry the product is image based product, since image is subjective, therefore the product depends on so many factors as season, color, taste. Even the raw material of the product i.e. fibres are so variable in nature that we can only do a statistical analysis on them. Also the suppliers are spread in different location and their interpretation of a particular is different. Thus the very base of garment and IT industry is different.
The situation becomes compounded when we try to ITise the garment industry. Thus an ERP package is introduced which can at best increase the existing camouflaging and confusion. Things go bad quickly and in huge quantities because of this. And in order to thrust IT logic onto garment industry create so ridiculuous situations that it often happens that the ERP package is done away with. If the management still has that euphoria of IT, they will go for a 'bigger' and 'better' ERP package which makes existing situation even worse.
The solution, understand the true nature of the industry, its peculiarities and its idiocyncracies and design your organisational policies keeping those points of view into consideration. Merely thrusting some industry's requirements onto some other industry will only complicate and aggravate the matters further.
