Objective: A case study on the institutional factors responsible for deteriorating performance of BSNL has been undertaken in this work.
Methodology: Time series data on subscribers’ base, profit, loss and market share have been used in the study. Since the data on the qualification of employees and infrastructure sharing are not publish by any agency, they were collected under Right to Information Act (RTI) from BSNL office at District Alwar in the state of Rajasthan (India). Mostly descriptive statistical analysis has been used to analyze the data and to present findings.
Findings: Apart from the common problems faced by any public sector unit due to the co-existence of private players, BSNL had to face other institutional problems also. One of them is qualification of technical staff. BSNL is the unique example of a technical driven industry, where a lot of non-technical staff is working at the positions of technical requirements. For instance, there wasn’t any phone mechanic (PE) with any technical degree or diploma. Similarly 33.3% of junior engineers (JE) did not have any formal technical education. On a basic level the problem with such non-technically qualified engineers, that too at higher positions, is that the other technical staff finds it difficult to comprehend or communicate them the problems at hand.
Application/Improvement: Since a technical driven company cannot compete without qualified engineers, the policies should be directed towards the placement of surplus employees based on their qualification.