Geography, uneven development and distributive justice: the political economy of IT growth in India

D’Costa, Anthony P.

doi:10.1093/cjres/rsr003

Cited by 40 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In particular, we investigate how this new type of marketplace affects wage differentials between places and how users of such platforms react to the new competitive environment created. With respect to the former, various authors have raised the issue of how international wage differentials may narrow when skill markets globalize and Western workers have to compete with an expanding pool of lower waged but increasingly skilled workers from developing countries (see Brown et al 2008a;D'Costa 2011;Levy 2005;World Bank 2007). Currently, we can consider global online job market websites as being among the venues where, in its most direct form, global competition between individuals from different countries takes place.…”

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confidence: 99%

Competition in online job marketplaces: towards a global labour market for outsourcing services?

2014

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A new form of service outsourcing has emerged, namely the global online job marketplace for freelance contractors. Such platforms are currently the closest proxy to the idea of a global labour market where everyone competes for jobs regardless of location. In this article, we examine how competition manifests itself on one such global online platform, namely oDesk. We present a comparative analysis of the relative wages and the rewarding of skills and expertise of contractors from selected countries and investigate whether, via labour arbitrage, wage convergence takes place between Western and developing countries. We find that wage convergence is noticeable but experience and skills hardly translate into better remuneration. While service outsourcing (or microwork) via global online marketplaces provides new employment opportunities for freelancers around the world, the intense competition and the inherent restrictions of this type of marketplace limit the financial gains for most contractors.

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confidence: 99%

Competition in online job marketplaces: towards a global labour market for outsourcing services?

2014

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“…In Tunisia, for example, Smith () demonstrates how the expansion of global production networks in the country involved the highly selective incorporation of the coastal zone into the export economy, leaving the inland and southern areas largely untouched, a process obscured by Tunisia's impressive national growth and export statistics. Similarly, the concentration of export industries in the Philippines has contributed to significant intra‐national sociospatial unevenness (Kelly, ; see also D'Costa, on the IT sector and India). Such spatial patterning may offer the condition for future rounds of network restructuring as export industries seek lower cost locations, creating the intra‐national competition that I examined earlier.…”

Section: Foregrounding Processes Of Uneven Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global production networks and uneven development: Exploring geographies of devaluation, disinvestment, and exclusion

Werner

2016

Geography Compass

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This paper examines global production networks through the lens of uneven development. Although originally concerned with asymmetries in the global economy, in the 1990s, global production network studies shifted decidedly towards a focus upon realizing the mutual benefits of engagement between multinationals, their suppliers, and the regions where the latter were located. Recent trends in supply chain restructuring, thrown into sharp relief by the 2008 financial crisis, have spurred more attention to the downsides of participation in global production networks, framed as empirical outcomes. Here, I explore this literature through the lens of three inter‐related processes of uneven development: strategies to defer devaluation, regional disinvestment, and constitutive exclusion. Viewed from this perspective, the global production network can serve as a powerful heuristic device to grasp emerging forms of territorial and social unevenness in the global economy.

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“…Henderson et al 2002). (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2006;D'Costa 2011). The following discussion is based on empirical research on the role of India and the Philippines in offshore services networks, collected in several interlinked research projects under the umbrella of the 'Understanding Globalisation' research project at the University of Amsterdam.…”

Section: Applying the Three Services Network Lenses: Services Offshomentioning

confidence: 99%

Pervasive but Neglected: Conceptualising Services and Global Production Networks

Kleibert

2016

Geography Compass

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Services account for a very large share of employment and economic growth across the globe. In recent years, a global shift in service delivery has occurred through the relocation, or offshoring, of ICT-enabled service employment to countries in the Global South. Despite the pervasiveness of services in the global economy, empirical research employing the global production network (GPN) framework has not fully engaged with services and continues to be characterised by a 'productionist bias' (Coe and Yeung 2015, p. 24). This article addresses the neglected function of services in GPNs and global value chain research and interrogates the potential of the globalisation of service delivery for regional economic development. Services in GPNs are conceptualised using three lenses: a services-within-manufacturing networks lens (seeing services as intermediaries), a dedicated services networks lens (seeing services as independent service production networks), and a local support services networks lens ( focusing on the rise of local service networks in regions). This conceptualisation is explored empirically drawing on research on the information technology and business process outsourcing sector in the Philippines and India. Employing a local support services networks lens makes visible otherwise hidden territorial processes and reveals a rising local service-sector nexus, which is relevant for understanding regional economic development implications.

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Geography, uneven development and distributive justice: the political economy of IT growth in India

Cited by 40 publications

References 12 publications

Competition in online job marketplaces: towards a global labour market for outsourcing services?

Competition in online job marketplaces: towards a global labour market for outsourcing services?

Global production networks and uneven development: Exploring geographies of devaluation, disinvestment, and exclusion

Pervasive but Neglected: Conceptualising Services and Global Production Networks

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