Bengaluru, 05th September 2019: A paper titled: ‘Stigmatized Identities And Media In An Atmosphere Of Criminality: A Case Of Homosexual Individuals In India’, co-authored by Professor Pearl Malhotra, IIM Bangalore faculty from the Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management area, and Anupama Kondayya, doctoral scholar of the OBHRM area at IIMB, has been awarded the Best Developmental Paper in the Identity Track at the British Academy of Management Conference 2019, held at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, from September 03 to 05, 2019.
The paper investigates how homosexual individuals in India came to terms with their identity in the presence of stigma and criminal connotations prior to 2018, and the role played by the internet and popular media in the process in the absence of conversations related to homosexuality in local culture.
India’s unique social, legal and cultural framework presents an interesting context to study identity formation as an interaction with media in an atmosphere of taboo, stigma and criminality. The paper studies this phenomenon with Troiden’s model of homosexual identity formation as the basis and through a narrative study of interviews with Indian homosexual individuals involving semi-structured interviews.
Prof. Pearl Malhotra’s areas of teaching are: Human Resource Management, and Industrial Relations and Labour Law. Her research examines the nuances of manager-subordinate relationships and the impact of managers on their subordinates. Her research interests also include diversity in organizations, procrastination at the workplace, leadership, and Human Resource Management processes. Her work has been published in Human Resource Management Review.
