This paper explores the globalization of service work through an analysis of customer service call centers in India for U.S. firms. It reveals a new kind of managerial strategy, "national identity management," in which employees are asked to subsume different national identities as part of the job. Through interviews with over eighty Indian call center personnel and case studies of three call centers, this paper analyzes how and why ethnicity and citizenship have become crucial elements of the labor process. It builds upon and elaborates seminal theories of managerial control in interactive service work, including Hochschild's theory of emotion management and Leidner's theory of scripting. It argues that globalization fundamentally alters the relationship of the actors, the purpose and practice of managerial control, and the outcomes for those involved. In addition, it reflects on theories of advancing information and communication technology (ICT), and global identity. Some scholars argue that the development of ICTs will lead to a homogenization (especially an "Americanization") of identities, while others see increasing global disjuncture and renegotiation of identities. Instead, this analysis reveals a continuum of responses by workers to the process of national identity management, and the forging of multiple, internally differentiated ethnic identities. It concludes by arguing that customer service work will continue to be globalized, and as a result, issues of "nation" will increasingly surface within interactive service work.
Global call centers, such as those in India receiving back office work from the U.S., are testing grounds for new ICTs (information and communication technologies). While the “electronic sweatshop” has been the prevailing model for understanding the implications of these ICTs, this analysis proposes that a multi-surveillances framework offers a more compelling account. It widens the lens from managers alone, and uncovers a web of actors directly involved in the daily operations of Indian call centers—technology vendors, American outsourcing clients, American consumers, Indian shopfloor supervisors, and Indian employees. Using a case study of the Indian call center industry, this analysis shows each of these actors participates in their own independent surveillance of the others. It charts the proliferation of the technologies themselves and shows how devices like emotion detectors, answering machines, and online unions are symbolic of changing relations in global interactive service.
SUSTAINABILITY Parsing the relationship between climate and conflict p.587 PHYSICS A history of how quantum physics picked its winners p.582 LAB LIFE Freeman Dyson's letters reveal a delighted noticer of details p.581 C omputer hacking is becoming more widespread and damaging. Headlines highlight attacks on government agencies, political campaign offices, financial institutions and big corporations. But citizens and consumers are paying a heavy price. In 2016, 2 billion people had their personal details stolen, including the medical records of more than 100 million Americans. Hacks of US retail outlets such as Target and global credit companies such as Equifax compromised the private data of hundreds of millions of customers. In the past 6 years, more than US$107 billion was stolen from US consumers through identity theft.Cybercrime exacerbates inequalities. A million more US women than men had their identities stolen in 2014. People of African American and Latino descent are, on average, two to three times more likely than white people to be victims of fraud related to debt or income. And women and girls are more likely than men to be targets of 'remote sexual abuse' -coerced into posing nude online or being stalked through the Internet. Security technologies also disadvantage women and other groups. For example, biometric facial recognition systems have trouble identifying the faces of women and people of colour. Airport security systems and operators disproportionately flag black women for strip searches relative to other passengers 1 . Cybersecurity professionals -who protect databases, software systems and computer networks from access, change or destruction -are predominantly male. Women comprise only 11% of these professionals worldwide, and only 14% in North America (see 'Women in cybersecurity'). By comparison, women make up 57% of the US professional workforce. Even cybersecurity's sister industries do better: 15% of the US military and 25% of staff in information technology are women (see 'Sister fields'). By 2020, 2 million more cybersecurity jobs will be needed worldwide in addition to the 3.2 million people who are already © 2 0 1 8 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .
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