Factors Causing Stress: A Study of Indian Call Centres

Abstract

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the process of contracting out services to a third

South Africa’s Call Centre Industry: The Emerging Challenges of a Growing Destination in the Global South

“…The impact of stress on worker burnout and retention has been further articulated in New Zealand (Rod & Ashill, 2012). Questions about the factors that cause stress have come under investigation also for call centres in India (Aziz, 2013) Overall, it is emphasized that whilst call centres can generate much needed job opportunities, often they are criticised "as a low paying and undesirable form of work, which are reliant upon factory style and Taylorist production methods" (Hastings, 2011, p. 98).…”

“…It is observed that the phenomenon of call centres "has been tackled from many dimensions and perspectives in an attempt to explain this relatively new and different part of the world of work and employment" (Paulet 2008, p. 306). A number of issues have been scrutinised with research across a range of countries and contexts with the Indian experience among the best documented in recent writings (see Ramesh, 2004;Penter et al 2009;Agrawal et al 2010;Kuruvilla & Ranganathan, 2010;Mishra, 2011;Vira & James, 2011;Suchet, 2012;Valdyanathan, 2012;Aziz, 2013;Ghosh, 2013;Taylor et al 2013).…”

“…The offshoring of BPO is inseparable from broader processes of globalization whereby labour-intensive activities have increasingly shifted from countries in the global North, to the global South where labour is considered relatively cheaper and more widely available (Vira & James, 2011). Among others Aziz (2013) points out that intense competitive pressures to reduce costs between multinational enterprises has prompted a host of organisations to offshore and relocate their non-core operations to low cost destinations, such as India and the Philippines At the broadest level of classification, areas of services in the BPO & O sector can be separated into two distinct groups. On the one hand are back office operations, the activities of which involve business processing functions such as finance and administration, and on the other hand are front office operations which relate mainly to business operations involving customer interactive services, that see direct contact between firm operators and customers (Penter et al, 2009).…”