Department of Human Resource Management
Spaces and Places of Capital and Labour –
Researching the UK to India Call Centre
Value Chain
Phil Taylor
University of Strathclyde
25 November 2011
The British Academy of Management
Research Methodology Special Interest Group
‘Research in Knowledge Intensive – Globalised Organisations’
University of Loughborough
Department of Human Resource Management
Introduction
• Title is not a throwaway nor rhetorical, but considered
• Customers in developed economies interacting with
servicing agents in particular developing countries
• But the call centre value chain is not a de-materialised
abstraction – critique of weightlessness (Huws, 2003)
• The c.c. chain (or network?) is not ‘virtual’ but tangible
• Across space – digital ICTs, optic fibre cabling,
investment flows, managers, transition teams, lift & shift
• Capital and technology are more mobile than labour,
which is essentially place-bound (Castree et al, 2004: 69ff)
• Differential characteristics of labour in place - or
respective places – generate research problematics
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• ‘Spatial fix’ (Harvey,1982) – capital accumulation strategies
develop global reach but capital must materialise somewhere
• Firm primary actor - directly or subsidiaries or contractors
degrees of disaggregation – organises production
• We might apply the spatial fix metaphor to research practice
between places
- diversity of research norms/expectations
- differential access issues
- the legacy of historical and cultural traditions and reflexivity
(**academic equivalent of East India Company Mark II**)
- comparative study – validation, replication, generalisation
- assumptions, traditions, orientations of researcher
his/herself, themselves
- legacy of researchers’ previous studies – theory building
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Call Centre/BPO Research –
From the National to the Transnational
• From 2002-2011 rolling projects focused on offshored
and outsourced call centres and BPO
• Prefigured by 7 years research on Scottish/UK c.c.s
• UK projects generated problematics, amplified or given
unique cultural twists when refracted through Indian lens
• CC as relatively new phenomenon in 1990s – scale,
sector, workforce characteristics, contract etc.= political
economy + management practices and work organisation
• Scottish Enterprise and CCA support – govt. and
employer endorsement – objective ‘facts’ but good news
• How to reconcile with the critical sociological, I.R., labour
process, TU organising interests of Taylor and Bain?
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How to sustain employer access while drilling deep
into and revealing employee experience?
Genuinely critical work likely to lead to closed doors
‘An assembly line in the head’ – work and employee
relations in the call centre’ (Taylor and Bain, 1999) –
employers’ responses mixed
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‘High wire act’ - helped by reports that informed employers
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Trade union access and worker confidence were never
problems in the UK e.g. ‘Subterranean Worksick Blues’
Researching offshoring and cc chain brought new
challenges to this carefully constructed edifice
UK and Indian employers super-sensitive, Indian
labour in different place with contrasting expectations
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How to Research Global Call Centre?
– Methodological Limitations of GCCP
• Global Call Centre Project (GCCP) (Holman et al, 2007)
• Extensive data on management and employment
practices from 2,500 centres across 17 countries
• Same questionnaire in each country
• GCCP informed by the ‘Varieties of Capital’ e.g. (Hall
and Soskice, 2001) – national institutional distinctions
• National contrasts/comparisons– LME, CME, transitional
• Important to know market and organisational convergence
• Divergent work organisational, HR and IR practices
• But GCCP not so much a ‘globalised’ study as
comparative of nationally aggregated data sets
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GCCP deals inadequately with offshoring phenomenon,
failing to account for:-
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drivers of uneven capital and technology transnational flows
locational strategies and reasons
transformative role of TNCs
the emergent global divisions of labour
implications of the dependency of international-facing c.c.s
on corporate decisions in developed countries not drawn out
co-ordination across the transnational servicing chain
understanding of India’s (and industry’s) distinctive history,
culture, managerial practice
labour and indeterminacy take different forms in India
cannot be read off from universal template
hugely significant for the practice of research
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Alternatives - Researching the CC Chain
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Context – 2002 first wave of UK offshoring to India
Research questions included:-
 What is current scale of offshoring?
 What are the factors driving, inhibiting, facilitating offshoring,
considered from Indian and UK perspectives?
 What were the type of services being offshored?
 What was the scale of UK job loss and future job loss?
 What were growth prospects for Indian BPO/cc industry?
 What were the features of work organisation, labour process
and HRM policy and practice in India?
 In what ways were Indian characteristics comparable to and
contrasted with those from Scotland/UK?
• Underpinning– explanation and plausible generative
mechanisms
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Philosophical Approach and Methods
• Broadly critical realist, challenging the stereotypical
oppositions and packaging of –
 positivism, objectivity and quantitative methods
 constructivism/interpretivism, subjectivity and qualitative
methods
• Reject the privileging of the epistemological over the
ontological - albeit epistemological issues important
• Complex causal processes in different contingent
contexts that can plausibly account for events observed
• As knowledge is bound up with conceptions – fallibility
• But better or worse forms of knowledge do exist and
reliable procedures for producing knowledge of things
(Ackroyd and Fleetwood, 2004)
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Methods are tools for tasks - no data source privileged
Analytical generalisation primarily theoretical but
bounded by the quantity and quality of the data
Synthesise data from UK/Scotland and India
 from the contrasting nodes of the cc servicing ‘chain’,
 from source and destination countries
 understand how the cc activity tends ‘to slice through, while
still being unevenly contained within state boundaries’
(Henderson et al, 2002)
 countries not bounded silos
 spatial division of labour and importance of place
 identical methods cannot be replicated in each place
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Capital - Researching the UK Organisation
• Survey/audit to all centres in Scotland - SE sponsored
• Completed by site management but for offshoring firms
typically senior management based in London in FS
• Practices and intentions of companies re. offshoring
• Confidentiality and sensitivities – critical press and
apocalyptic predictions
• Audits and confidence in previous surveys (Taylor and
Bain, 1997; 2000) re-assured companies
• Documentary evidence and critical triangulation - TU
sources e.g. Prudential, HSBC, Aviva, BTand DTI (2004)
• Problem of ‘independence’ e.g. BBC documentary
• UK/Scottish perspective on the ‘chain’
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Disaggregated Organisations?
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Capital – Researching the Indian Organisation
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Variable contractual relationship between UK firm and
Indian supplier - from ‘captive’ to full ‘outsourcing’
Challenge of getting reliable data from Indian
companies and market - confidentiality
Objective – follow the links in the chain from ‘source to
destination’ – in-house more difficult than third-party
In-house ‘captives’ – e.g. HSBC, AXA
Third-parties – e.g. Aviva ► EXL; BT ► Progeon
Problematic of confidentiality and reliability of data
from site visits and interviews – costs and attrition
Concern that researcher has hostile agenda – would
management reveal weaknesses?
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Data from multiple sources– semi-structured interviews
National Association of Software and Service
Companies (Nasscom) annual and special reports
Nasscom Conferences invaluable – attended every
Leadership and BPO conference since 2003
presentations and debates on BPO industry – transcribed
documentation and media
informal discussions and networking – ‘wear the kilt’
serendipity and tacit knowledge based on immersion
from feeling as an outsider to being an ‘insider’ (e.g.
attrition rate on UK service was 84% in 2010)
 longitudinal dimension to the research – subtle shifts e.g.
re-shoring of voice services to UK
• ‘The subtleties a spectrograph would miss’ (Brian Eno)
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Researching Labour in India
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How to gain access to workers – a major issue
Difficulties of gaining access through companies
Initial approach – serendipity – sons and daughters of
interviewees ►►►snowballing e.g. Windsor Tavern
in Bangalore, in houses, coffee shops, hotels, Qualis
From outsider to more or less accepted insider
UNITES pro facilitated a more systematic approach
Assumptions and preconceptions from experience of
UK research challenged
frequently sardonic attitudes towards management and co.
HR seen in adversarial terms
complaints about intensity of work and targets
linguistic and cultural training
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Labour and Contrasting Globalisation Discourses
In the Global ‘north’ - UK
In the Global ‘south’ – India
Pace and scale of offshoring causing Middle-class graduates keenly
embrace well-paid employment
intense anxiety
Uncritical identification with
Threat to jobs and union influence
managerial demands
Perceived ‘race to the bottom’
Resignation to job loss and inferior
conditions and work intensification
Strong professional identity
Unrestrained competition between
places damaging
Powerful career identities
Highly critical of company strategy
Exclusivity towards unionisation
HR and HR policy adversarial
Unrestrained competition between
places beneficial
Captured ‘hearts and minds’
‘Inclusivist’ HR perception
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Researching Union/Worker Responses to
Globalisation in India
• Not just that methods cannot be mechanically transposed
• No established union – Unites an embryonic formation
• Distribution of questionnaires (2007) – focused on
workplace but cannot be distributed through workplaces
• As an outsider – how to break through the shell?
• Develop collaborative working with Indian academics
but not East India Company Mark II
• Utilise local networks ethically – unlike some
• Responsiveness to context for survey e.g. travelling
times, transportation, safety/security, working time
• Example of cultural difference – women in cc workforce
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Some Tentative Conclusions
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Research and theory building is an incremental and
iterative process – data partly independent of theory
Significance of ‘reflexivity’ lies in this as much as in
researcher-centric considerations
Practice of research laden with difficulties in UK
The Indian lens should force researchers to question
assumptions in research practice and meaning of data
The ‘substantive’ and methodological inextricably
entwined
Doesn’t mean explanatory logic is confined to narrative
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References
Ackroyd, S. and Fleetwood, S. (eds.) (2004) Realist Perspectives on
Management and Organisation, London: Routledge
Castree, N., Coe, N., Ward, K. and Samers,M. (2004) Spaces of Work,
London: Sage
Hall, P. and Soskice, D. (eds.) Varieties of Capitalism – The Institutional
Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: OUP
Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital, London: Verso
Henderson, G., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N. and Wa-Chung, H. (2002)
‘Global Production Networks and the Analysis of Economic
Development’, Review of International Political Economy, 9.3: 436-64
Holman, D., Batt, R. and Holtgrewe, U. (2007) The Global Call Centre
Report: International Perspectives on Management and Employment,
Ithaca: Cornell University
Huws, U. (2003) The Making of a Cybertariat, London: Merlin
Department of Human Resource Management
Taylor, P. (2010) ‘The globalization of service work: analysing the call
centre value’, in Thompson, P. and Smith, C. Working Life:
Renewing Labour Process Theory, pp. 244-268
Taylor, P. and Bain, P. (1999) ‘An assembly line in the head – work
and employee relations in the call centre’, Industrial Relations
Journal, 30.2: 101-117