Business Processing Outsourcing Research Articles

Cognitive Factors Affecting the Manufacturing Optimization Skills of Rural Indian BPO Workers

Crowdsourcing offers on-demand access to large numbers of human workers to implement new forms of human–computer collaborative functionalities that can be seamlessly integrated into advanced software and algorithms. However, crowdsourcing tasks are primarily undertaken by urban rather than rural workers. To enable the development of skilled rural employment, this research aims to assess rural crowdsourcing workers’ spatial reasoning and creative abilities and their abilities to solve irregular strip packing problems associated with the manufacture of sheet materials. The study conducted experiments and data collection with 140 rural Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) workers located in six states of India. The statistical analyses of the data collected from seven rural BPO firms (140 rural workers) reveal that rural workers can achieve a 2D packing efficiency that is up to 8% higher than that of commercial algorithm outcomes. The results suggest that rural crowdsourcing can lead to effective job creation, skill development, and, for a modest cost, it can support industries that employ CAD/CAM systems to generate geometric data for common manufacturing processes.

The Transformation in Philippine BPO Companies: The Impact of Digital Workplace Transformation to the Front Office CSR in terms of their Work Culture

The workforce in various industries, particularly the BPO industry, experiences significant impacts from digital workplace transformation. It is affected by employee skill levels, knowledge, efficiency, and rationalization. This research aims to investigate the impact of digital workplace transformation on work culture, represented by the following variables: employee retention, motivation, and productivity. Participants in this study work as front-office customer service representatives (CSR) for business processing outsourcing (BPO) companies in the Philippines, specifically the top BPO companies on the list issued by the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP). Using a mixed method approach, the researchers incorporated qualitative and quantitative data for this study, allowing them to compile all the necessary information. Using Somer's delta, the researchers identified the association between the dependent and independent variables. After analyzing the data, researchers found that the development of the digital workplace positively impacts work culture. At the same time, the shift to a digital workplace benefits worker productivity, motivation, and retention. On the contrary, with the interview results of the study conducted with the respective team leaders of these employees, the researchers discovered that despite the magnificent benefits of digital workplace transformation, it can still cause stress and work overload. In conclusion, our research findings contradicted our initial hypothesis that the digital workplace would not significantly impact work culture in BPO companies. Instead, we discovered that digital workplace transformation impacts employee retention, motivation, and productivity. The transformation to a digital workplace progressively enhances the quality of work performed by customer service representatives in BPO companies, leading to a better work experience. Researchers recommend that BPO companies focus on skills development, effective communication, work environment enhancements, and supervisor support to ensure a successful transformation.

Outsourcing Strategy and Financial Performance of Quoted Commercial Banks in Nigeria

This study investigates the impact of outsourcing on the financial performance of commercial banks in Nigeria over the period 2013 – 2018, while adopting a panel research design. The sample of the study covers the commercial banks with international authorization in Nigeria. These eight commercial banks represent the tier one banks. This set of commercial banks continue to grow in customer deposits, branch spread and loan issuance. They are considered to be the strongest banks. Financial performance was captured by using profit before tax, profit after tax and earnings per share as proxies, while the independent variable- outsourcing was denominated by the annual expenditure on outsourcing. All data was collected from the companies’ annual reports. The models were estimated using the Pooled Ordinary Least Squares method. The stata software was used in model estimation. Results from this study generally indicate that outsourcing has a positive impact on all the measures of financial performance. Based on the findings, the researchers recommend that outsourcing can contribute more to performance, if companies manage the outsourcing process better and involve the employees in the decision. Keywords : Business Processing Outsourcing, total outsourcing, partial outsourcing, core activities, non-core activities DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/12-3-08 Publication date: January 31 st 2020

An alternative to ‘exodus capitalism’? Offshore services in Iloilo City, Philippines

ABSTRACTTheoretically informed by the relationships between growth poles and regional development, this article investigates two industries in Iloilo City, a secondary city in the Philippines: business processing outsourcing (BPO) and English as a second language (ESL). The empirical analysis is based on 46 interviews. First, the results of the empirical investigation demonstrate that Iloilo City should be considered a genuine growth pole with a substantial degree of enabling institutions. Yet, two qualifications need to be made. While information technology–business processing outsourcing (IT-BPO) is booming, the ESL industry is still small and is heavily reliant on Korean students. Second, while banking on offshore services enables the Philippines to encourage regional deconcentration, it remains to be seen whether future growth of the IT-BPO and ESL industries will result in attaining inter-regional balance and providing a decent alternative to overseas migration. The implications of the results relate to labour markets, endogenous regional development theories and international integration.

Places for Happiness: Community, Self, and Performance in the Philippines by William Peterson

Reviewed by: Places for Happiness: Community, Self, and Performance in the Philippines by William Peterson Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco PLACES FOR HAPPINESS: COMMUNITY, SELF, AND PERFORMANCE IN THE PHILIPPINES. By William Peterson. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016. Cloth, $59. Tourism is now considered a major economic "engine of growth" in the archipelagic nation of the Philippines, and as Bernado M. Villegas (2016) reports tourism is now second to business processing outsourcing in terms of financial contribution to the nation's GDP. According to the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, this phenomenon may be attributed to the country's most successful tourism campaign to date: "It's More Fun in the Philippines." Launched in 2012, the campaign is believed to have attracted up to almost 5 million foreign visitors as compared to foreign tourists prior to the release of the campaign (Department of Tourism 2015). In this campaign, the Philippine government has crafted a brand that has been communicating how happiness, performances, and community may be simultaneously experienced when one visits the country. The same communication is the starting point of William Peterson's Places for Happiness: Community, Self, and Performance in the Philippines, who in a sense is arguing for these vectors for the understanding of Philippine theatre and performance. In Places for Happiness, Peterson centers on an investigation regarding how local psychological, political, and cultural concepts may contribute to the understanding of Philippine performance culture in its complex ontology. In my view, the inclusion of "happiness" in the title of the book is a conceptual strategy to locate the place of the Philippines in the scholarly world of Southeast Asian theatre and performance, where scholars are often engaged in a [End Page 506] constant search for the indigenous. As Peterson implies, there is "uninhibited fun through performance" (p. 2) in the archipelago, following a comment made by a fellow passenger on Philippine Airlines about two Filipino children happily playing en route to Manila, the nation's capital. He later notes what may be inferred as a prelude to his larger claims on Philippine performance: "Fun was its own reason for being, and from that we took pleasure that contributed to our individual and collective happiness" (p. 2). Happiness is a Filipino core value. As Peterson explains, it is in being happy where "the self only truly exists in relation to the other" (p. 4). In relation, he argues that theatre (performance) in the archipelago "through celebration and ritual is the key productive, purposeful activity that links the individual to the collective in ways that contribute to happiness in the Philippines" (p. 4). Peterson reminds his readers that one must understand this place for happiness is not solely about locating a physical space where people are "happy" but also about how this happiness resides inside the (Filipino) individual as manifested through various forms of theatres and performances. Peterson relies on three analytical frames as he attempts to provide an understanding of Philippine performance. At the same time, this linking is an attempt toward a pursuit of performance theory. Peterson connects the psychosociological conception of play (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) with the Filipino concept of the self: kapwa (a sense of individuality that is primarily rooted in the individual's relationship with the other) and the concept of bayan, referring to emplacement, belonging, community, and country. In providing details about how these concepts may be engaged in an intellectual conversation, Peterson investigates performance activities in the Philippines, arguing for performance as paradoxically connecting and separating community members of the archipelago: "bring communities together and to separate them from one another" (p. 14). The performances investigated include the sinakulo, a local passion play on the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the moriones, a folk-Catholic performance-ritual in the island of Marinduque reenacting the beheading of Longinus, a Roman soldier who proclaimed that Jesus was indeed the Christ after his blind eye was miraculously healed from the blood spattering after lancing his spear at Jesus's side; ati-atihan, a dance ritual in the island of Panay; performances of the Bayanihan Dance Group in international festivals; the street dancing performance competition based on the different regional...

English and Cantonese in a bilingual call centre in Hong Kong

ABSTRACTWith the rapid development of telecommunications and the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry, many companies are establishing call centres for customer service in developing countries, where English is the major language used in the industry but often not spoken as the first language. While there is an abundance of research on call centre communication from the perspectives of business and management, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, there is still a dearth of information about the use of English in the BPO industry with the coexistence of other languages. This paper presents a comparative study on the use of English and Cantonese in call centre communication conducted in an international healthcare insurance organisation in Hong Kong. English and Cantonese calls with apparent conflicts were transcribed and analysed in terms of how customer service representatives (CSRs) respond to complaints, and how customers enact their negative emotions while complaining.

English Language Assessment for the Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) Industry: Business Needs Meet Communication Needs

The ability to communicate well in English with native speaker customers on the phones, especially those from the USA, UK and Australia, is a much valued commodity in the newly established outsourced and off-shored (O & O) call centres in post - colonial Asian countries such as the Philippines and India. But how is this commodity sourced, developed and measured within the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry in Asia?This article chronicles over a period of 5 years (2003-2008), the development of language measurement tools and processes for English communication in these OO something owned and operated by the industry stakeholders themselves and something tailored to their business needs. This article provides an engaging account of the risks and rewards in crafting the BUPLAS solution that is becoming a popular communications assessment choice in the call centre industry in Asia.

Are We Getting the Right People for the Job? A Study of English Language Recruitment Assessment Practices in the Business Processing Outsourcing Sector: India and the Philippines

Although the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry in India and the Philippines is keen to employ good English language communicators, especially to work in call centers dealing with nativ...

Developing an English for specific purpose curriculum for Asian call centres: How theory can inform practice

The primary focus of this article is the investigation of how current applied linguistic research into the nature of call centre communication breakdown in business processing outsourcing (BPO) sites such as India and the Philippines, can impact English communications training program content and design for this industry. It is argued that a research-based approach to English for specific purpose (ESP) syllabus design and content will yield improved outcomes. It is the interface between the research and the design and content, rather than the implementation and the evaluation of the program, that is the focus of this article. A case study of an ESP curriculum development project commissioned by a large multinational company operating global call centres and back offices in Asia is used for this investigation. There has been concern within this company about the level of English communication skills where their customers are native speakers of English, but their customer services representatives (CSRs) are second language speakers of English. The article outlines the theoretical principles upon which this ESP syllabus was developed and then traces the steps in integrating the findings and tailoring the program to the needs of this multinational worksite.

The uses and abuses of time: globalization and time arbitrage in India's outsourcing industries

AbstractGlobalization has undoubtedly altered our conceptions and experience of time. It has sped up the pace of life and some scholars even suggest that a new temporal order is supplanting ‘natural’ and pre‐existing cycles and rhythms. Yet time is not dissolved in the global circuits of capital. Rather, globalization has brought about a complex mixture of temporal orientations; the workplaces of ‘new economy’, for example, are traversed by novel and retrograde modes of work pace, rhythm and time‐discipline. In this article, I explore the temporal implications of the outsourcing of information technology‐based service work to India. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers, managers and executives in the Indian IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industries, I address the following questions: (1) How are corporations using time arbitrage to reap the full benefits of a globally dispersed labour pool? (2) What impacts are these temporal changes having on the health and social lives of Indian workers? For corporations, time arbitrage means increased efficiency and cost‐savings. But for workers, it results in long hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement. Night‐shift employees, such as call centre workers, are particularly vulnerable to such displacement, as manifested in health and safety problems and social alienation. Globalization therefore does not entail the loosening of temporal chains, but their reconfiguration: a combination both rigid and flexible that binds even as it liberates.

“ I’d love to put someone in jail for this”: An initial investigation of English in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry

In the global workplace, there has been tremendous growth in business processing outsourcing (BPO). Many industries are establishing call centres, back offices and other offshore enterprises in developing countries in an attempt to reduce costs. This development has far-reaching implications for language in these offshore destinations. Despite complaints about the communication skills of non-native English speaking (NNES) agents in these outsourced destinations, the language of the calls has not been well-researched. This paper focuses on one area of the BPO industry, call centre communication. We limit the discussion to calls in the insurance industry, in one offshore destination, the Philippines. In this paper, we outline the development and problems faced in offshore outsource destinations. Based on an analysis of a sample of call centre interactions, we outline their generic structure, and we investigate some of the reasons for breakdowns in communication. We use some examples from the data and discuss the linguistic realisations to illustrate what is happening in such breakdowns. The findings from the analyses are important for the development of the industry, for the training of customer service representatives, and could help us understand why frustration is experienced by many.