“The recession has passed but the effects are still with Us”: Employment, work organization and employee experiences of work in post-crisis Indian BPO

Abstract

Over the past two decades, offshoring and the relocation of economic activities from the global north to the global south have prompted diverse efforts to describe, map and analyse developments. The global commodity chain (GCC) research of Gereffi and Korzeniewicz (Commodity chains and global capitalism, 1994) stimulated the formulation of related but distinct frameworks (global value chains/GVCs and global production networks/GPNs) to understand the ways in which manufacturing and services are integrated while being geographically dispersed. Taylor (Offshoring and working conditions in remote work, 2010a) applied these GVC and GPN frameworks to the call/contact centre chain which entwined the sites of “remote” service delivery in India with the location of corporate decisionmaking and final customers in the home countries of the USA, the UK, and elsewhere. This chapter, developing these insights, utilizes the GVC and GPN frameworks to undertake an empirical study that examines work and employment in Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) industry post-recession. The study addresses the lacuna of published work on post-crisis Indian BPO by examining the dynamics of work and employment in three contrasting servicing chain relationships that span the spectrum of offshoring in the Indian BPO industry-an Indian third-party organization, a global service provider and a captive (i.e. in-house) operation. GVC concepts are employed to inform analysis and explain developments and differences. Findings demonstrate the pressures on business strategy and employee experiences of work and employment resulting fromthese organizations’ respective positioning within global service supply chains during the period 2012-14.