ABSTRACT
Offshore sourcing – the relocation of service jobs from the United States – has been widely described by business analysts as the ‘next stage’ of globalisation. A growing array of services formerly performed in the US, including customer support, claims processing and market research is now performed in a number of low-wage countries. By any measure, the practice of offshore sourcing is growing at a phenomenal rate. Forrester Research (2002) estimates that ‘(o)ver the next 15 years, 3.3 million US services industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore to countries such as India, Russia, China, and the Philippines’. This movement of jobs and wages is being led by business processes outsourcing (BPO), which includes customer interaction services such as call centres, help desks and technical support services.
