Connecting India: the rise of standards in service offshoring

Abstract

This paper explores the role of international standards in the globalisation of the service economy. Various strands of economic analyses consider that core attributes of services affect their ability to be reliably delocalised, industrialised, and standardised. In contrast, international political economy (IPE) approaches draw attention to power configurations supporting conflicting use of standards across industries and nations. The paper examines the case of the Indian service industry in business process outsourcing to probe these opposing views. The findings suggest that standards matter in types of services conventionally identified as unlikely to be standardised, and that their use raises little conflict. An IPE perspective on service standardisation highlights, however, the importance of potential power issues likely to be included in more progressive forms of standardisation.

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