ABSTRACT
Services offshoring, or the cross-border translocation of services production, notably from developed to developing countries, has generated several millions of export-oriented services jobs in the latter. 1 The IT-enabled trend, which kicked off in earnest in the 1990s and gained momentum after the turn of the century, has left few countries unaffected (Oshri et al., 2011; see also Tholons 2014). The work that is shifted from high-wage to lower-wage economies is multifarious and, apart from industry-specific activities, tends to fall into the generic domains of information technology outsourcing (ITO), business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) (Fernandez-Stark et al., 2011). It typically concerns so-called ‘back-office’ work, i.e. work that requires little or no face-to-face contact with clients, suppliers or even co-workers and the fruits of which can be electronically transferred. While this kind of work in advanced economies is generally catalogued as ‘low-skilled’, ‘low-value-added’ and/or ‘routine’, for developing countries it often represents work that previously was performed either not at all, on a modest scale only, or at lower service level standards (Fernandez-Stark et al., 2011).
