The Harshness in the Call Center Industry and the Expectations of the Business Clients - Research Paper Example

Businesses have outsourced some of their functions to other countries where they can get to continue their operations without spending much. They have considered their overall financial status and try to maximize the profit by minimizing their overhead expenses. It has been hard for businesses to expand their operations and flourish without getting big expenses if they do all of the business processes by themselves. Because of the need to outsource, call centers and other business support service providers become popular. The outsourcing tactics of the companies are attributed to the globalization. It has been a concept that has been around for many years as technological advancement happens. People tend to expand their views regarding businesses, services, culture, products and other concepts related on how they operate. The consciousness has opened to larger possibilities and options for bigger growth and help among companies worldwide. Ervin and Smith (2008, p. 1) had found out that the existence of improved transportation, the invention and proliferation of modern telecommunication and the growth of the internet use have provided the people and organizations the support, connections and ideas for further processes and enhancement of businesses. Various people in the academic community have disputes regarding the history of the existence of globalization. Some have attributed it to the expansions and discoveries made by the Europeans when they were still holding the advanced technologies in the world alone. Despite of that idea, it cannot be denied that globalization and its enormous impact in the world was only seen in the recent years when technological advancement had grown exponentially. In the 21st century, globalization was identified with four main factors that affect its proliferation which include investments, economic and financial exchange, immigration and emigration, and the information dissemination. It has also affected other fields like environment, society and education according to Butter (2012, p. 207). The modern concept of globalization has changed since it was first seen as an exchange when cultural mix-up occurred in various parts of the world. Culture, philosophy, arts, beliefs and technology were shared as interactions occurred among people from various parts of the world which happen since the ancient times. The expansion has been attributed to the efforts of the Europeans who went on voyages to discover the world. They had found out the vast ocean waters and discovered that the world is round without edges and dead-ends. They had also learned that there are ways to connect people around the world more efficiently as Ervin and Smith (2008, p. 35) had found out. In addition, they get to learn foreign cultures, knowledge and technologies too. With the quick inventions and proliferations of transportation like ships and trains, the interactions among people and organizations became faster than before. It accelerated until land transportation like cars became typical way of traveling as private individuals already own at least one of them. Technology did not stop there as the latest century had quicker progress than ever before with the use of computers, internet and mobile devices. People can now connect and interact with others regardless of time and space. It has been proven by those technologies that people can become more productive and be able to share without actually leaving their current locations and priorities in life. It has brought a big impact in call centers and outsourcing providers to be popular around the world. For those who do not know outsourcing, it can be said to be a contract between two parties like organizations and individuals to perform tasks for the other party for a certain fee. Some companies find it to be less expensive than doing the processes internally because they would need to hire additional employees, use tools and build infrastructures to cater to those business processes. As they have big regards for profits and they know the conditions of the economy, outsourcing has been a viable choice according to Hira and Hira (2005, p. 3). The client companies are able to save a lot while the service providers are able to grow their businesses and make profits. Outsourcing is not limited to contracting another organization or service providers for certain tasks but also allow some of the employees of the companies needing outsourced processes to give their workers and assets to a partner. In that case, those companies are really careful not to cause unemployment to their workers as they also care for their livelihood while ensuring the quality of the outsourced work to their partners. Outsourcing can be done anywhere from local to international transactions. Once it is done with Foreign Service providers, the outsourcing technique is called offshoring. It can be done by contacting foreign organizations and business process service providers or transferring the business department or certain functions to other countries for cheaper operations as Greaver (1999, p. 3) had said. Outsourcing may also be done by organizations if they are having problems with their human resources like having no qualified workers to perform specific tasks. Instead of going for costly job openings or additional education and trainings for their current employees, they will seek the support of external organizations. The external ones would be responsible for the performance of specific tasks and business functions for certain prices. In that case, both parties are in a win-win situation. The company that outsourced gets the jobs done with high standards without spending too much while the service providers get profits from the services rendered. As the time passes by, more organizations take advantage of outsourcing and they do it not only within their geographical locations but may do so overseas. Because of the growing popularity of the practice, other similar concepts sprouted like multisourcing and crowdsourcing. The former pertains to the way of seeking help from more than one external source of manpower. On the other hand, the latter pertains to the use of technology like the internet to get the most qualified contractors for the works that must be outsourced according to the International Outsourcing Professionals according to Oshri et al. (2011, p. 36). After 20th century, the technology has driven the world of outsourcing to become a common practice among businesses around the world. Professionals become available online to take on specific tasks to assist startups and large companies with their business functions. The practice avails the businesses to save money from training employees, looking for new workers, adding infrastructures for certain business functions and many more. Outsourcing has also allowed professionals to get higher salary than other careers in other fields of industry. Some people are even able to start their own businesses by getting offshore clients and hiring their own employees to work on the projects of the business clients. The common activities being outsourced are telemarketing, customer service, marketing, accounting, administrative tasks, web business processes, web designs and multimedia works according to Oshri et al. (2011, p. 63). They are done through the use of digital channels and can easily be delivered. Companies have found such activities as fulfilling and time-saving. Companies dare to avoid the expenses so they outsource. They face many costs to pay for when they conduct their operations which include taxes, energy costs, additional wages and benefits for their employees, labor unions, and other operating expenses. Corporations have preferred the short-term profits over the high maintenance of internal business operations. By outsourcing, they are able to focus their works and resources on the core business operations. It has been studied that executive and high managerial positions earn many times bigger than the ordinary workers. Probably they do not outsource those positions and functions because they are the brain power of the business. Companies outsource the operations which are not directly related to their line of business. Specialized roles have been taken cared by business service providers so the business clients can focus on their core operations instead of spreading their attention and finances in all functions. As the aforementioned paragraph had shown, outsourcing can be a short-term remedy for companies to save themselves from overwhelming expenses and get to leverage the workload. They are able to get bigger returns as they purchase cheaper labor from foreign countries. Although they gain success with that practice, it might hurt the mother country of the companies. Their fellowmen may find no opportunities to work and the government may face larger tax burdens and may have hampered economic growth. Outsourcing may also reduce the privacy toward sensitive documents and information that should have been kept confidential within the companies. As the outsourcing becomes popular, more people start their businesses at home while some go to work for call centers as they see the salary to be sustainable. Since working in the outsourcing industry involves business clients, the service providers tend to be tied or bonded to the contracts set forth with their clients as what Cruz and . In response, they ensure that their agents are top notch and can work under pressure. Of course they need to fulfill the quota or targets dictated by the companies outsourcing their functions. In the process of fulfilling the goals, agents may experience the so-called corporate bullying when the stresses and pressures seem to go up. Those can hamper the balanced life of the agents as they need to adapt to their new working environment. Such adaptation may also be experienced in other industries and bullying is also present in other careers just like the cases that Cruz and Noronha (2009) had studied. They may not be intentionally done but they still pose risk despite of the controls set forth to treat the employees with dignity. For the purpose of the paper, bullying in the call center industry would be taken into focus and the Indian setting would be the specific sample to illustrate the occurrence of bullying in the workplace of business process outsourcing companies. Then, they would be explained further using various business and economic theories set forth by experts. Various theories would be used to explain the existence of bullying and power imbalance in the call center industry. Those theories were made by Weber, Marx, Habermas, Foucault, and Frankfurt. They would be introduced first before being used directly in the study. The first theory was made by Maximilian Karl Emil Weber. He was known as Max Weber who was a German economic thinker who had made several researches and theories regarding the discipline of economics and sociology. He was even considered in par with Karl Marx who was also a popular theorist. He had been concerned with the so-called antipositivism as he promoted it. He greatly emphasized the rationale and secular contexts of action instead of being empirical. He had associated it with capitalism. He was able to connect economics and religion by writing a book entitled The Spirit of Capitalism. He pointed out that Protestantism played a role in the market taking the lead in maneuvering the system according to Camic et al. (2005). It even sometimes goes beyond the role of the legal system. He even studied the world religions and had seen how capitalism was not able to flourish in nations with religions like Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. He had also written another book entitled Politics as a Vocation wherein he pointed out that bureaucracy moved towards legal and rational ways in handling the State. He also separated the ways leadership can be categorized into traditional, legal and rational, and charismatic. Leadership in his context was based on the social perspective according to Camic et al. (2005, p. 157). With his works that contributed to the fields of economics and sociology and even politics, he was able to influence the theory made by the Frankfurt School. Another thinker that goes by the same surname was able to contribute to the fields of economics and sociology. He was the younger brother of Max Weber and his name is Alfred. He was the one responsible to introduce again the preexisting models in economics which was based on causality. Just like his older brother, he also had ventured out in other fields like operations research, religion, sociology, history and culture according to Camic et al. (2005, p. 75). He was able to publish various works and researches on capitalism. Unlike his older brother who was a leader in a not-so successful democratic party, Alfred Weber was able to become a great leader using his mind to resist the Nazis in Germany. His works became very influential and had been known by people inside and outside of the academic community. He was even known for his theory in industrial location. The Theory of Industrial Location deals with the things that affect the businesses and industries on the place of their operations. He was able to make two main classifications of the factors called primary and secondary causes of industrial distribution. The businesses take on the primary causes like labor and transport. The theory puts into consideration if other things are set equal, industries would flourish in places where transport costs are low. They can be measured through the parameters like the length of travel and the weight to be transferred from one location to another (Barthwal 2007, p. 481). Then, travel cost is affected by the vehicle used, the nature of the pathways, the characteristics of goods and many more. He also pointed out that the location of the production setting must be considered based upon where the market is and the source of the materials or resources. Those figures that are included in the theory are dependent on the place of the raw materials and the things needed for the processing to turn them into products sellable in the market. Weber also included the secondary causes for the location of businesses to be agglomerative and deglomerative. The former pertains to the lowering of production price as a result of creating them at the same time and place while the latter pertains to the lowering of production price by having the production in several locations. In that kind of practice, the external economies would be the ones to benefit from the practice. Another theorist for related to the study is Carl Marx who was the one who popularized Communism. His ideas developed into a movement called Marxism wherein people believed in the materialistic perspective of development of history with a twist of social change. He had used it to compare and study the classes in the society with their relationships and conflicts with one another. His perspective encompassed philosophy, sociology, economics and even politics. It had started from a point where the state must run the economic activities of a nation to equally distribute the economic capabilities of its citizens. The organization that formed from the ideology tackled the production means as affected by morality, politics, laws, and society (Allman 2001). The ideology tackled the conflicts that arise socially in capitalism as efficiency of production heightens. The result is the conflict among classes. Marx had analyzed the situation in capitalism as conflicts arise from the increased mechanical systems of production controlled by a smaller group of people. They are the ones who control the power in the system as they have the money and pursuit for profit. It would eventually lead to a social revolution as the poor and the rich classes fight with each other. Once the social revolution commences, a classless system which is known as socialism would emerge. The business and economic activities would be based on the so-called shared ownership where people help one another in all aspects of the business from production to distribution. Another theorist would be Michel Foucault with his works on sociology, history and literature. He had also been known as a French philosopher who focused on the power and knowledge as a way to control the society. He had also delved into sexuality and the prison system. His studied had influenced the academic communities very well. Foucault had published his first book when he was a cultural diplomat. His work was entitled Madness and Civilization. He also created other books such as The Order of Things and the Birth of the Clinic. His increasing interest in structuralism had leaded him to join the so-called theoretical movement (Deleuze 2006). He had also worked on the book entitled Discipline and Punish where he revealed the system of punishment to control the society. It had dealt with the existence of prison system and its flaws to prevent crimes (Deleuze 2006). It also talked about power and how the strong dominate the weak in the form of the elites and the poor. He had even thought of the government as a way of enslaving the citizens in the form of discipline and control. Another theorist is named Jurgen Habermas and he is a German sociologist and philosopher at the same time. His two most popular works involve the public sphere and communicative rationality. He had pointed out that in the modern world, the public sphere theory that he had already existed centuries ago. It is through representation which was seen in the culture of Europe in the 18th century where some people control and dominate their subjects in the process of representing themselves to the audience (Outhwaite 2009). In the workplace especially in call centers, it cannot be denied that bullying exist in the form of repetitive hostile behaviors and control of the superiors over their subordinates as Cruz and Noronha (2009, p. 26). The practice of workplace bullying had been noted to be part of the everyday practices to ensure the quotas are met and profits are made. It is quite obvious in many call centers like in India where the business process industry grows as a result of the efforts of companies in western nations to cut their expenses (p. 27). A study was made for the particular call center agents in Mumbai and Bangalore and those agents were interviewed with structured questioning. They had allowed the audio recording of the interview to ensure the accuracy (pp. 28-29). The interview had shown how hectic the work of call center agents are as they need to learn how to control emotions, deal pressure, become positive when communicating to their clients, and handling the overwhelming strictness of their superiors from team leaders to managers (p. 33). Despite of the oppressions at the workplace, people still consider the industry to be a viable employment opportunity because of the benefits and perks that they can get such as higher salary, paid leave, healthcare support and many more (p. 35). The perks were considered to outweigh the negative effects of working in a call center like adjusting the biological clock, getting scold, having very short breaks and many tasks to fulfill (p. 36). They face those consequences because of the service-level agreement that the call center have with its business clients like quotas and goals to reach (p. 34). Workplace bullying that occurred in call centers in India is also applicable in other places as well. It can be explained by the theory of Max Weber as market-driven and controlled by the culture. His theory may justify the use of the actions that seem to be bullying to make the agents exert more efforts in reaching the quotas. The call centers are bounded by service-level contracts with business clients that make the leadership style to be rational and legal without any personal intention of attacking the agents. The theory of industrial location may also explain the existence of call centers as the action of businesses would always involve the lower cost in input while maximizing the output. Outsourcing is a good way for them to get bigger profits immediately by reducing production and operational costs. They have looked into developing countries like India to outsource their business processes. Carl Marx may have something to say through his theory. Marxism may point out that in capitalism; the economy is controlled by the wealthy and powerful. They have the controlling factor and sometimes may overwhelm those of the working class. It may reflect in the way call center agents are treated at work. The theory of Michel Foucault on discipline and punish may be compared to the relationship between the agents and their superiors. The way to control the agents is by pressure and force although it is not brutal. It is still comparable to the ancient prison system that had evolved into the current jail system. The system is present even if crimes are not avoided and it is done as a way to control people and discipline them. In the same way, supervisors treat their agents in pressured way although in the corporate world, it is not personally done. Lastly, Jigen Habermas also shared his theory that can explain the harshness in the call center industry. The public sphere concept which had shown the representation done to the audience by oppressing the subjects his being practiced in the workplace. Outsourcing has become popular and has provided the developing nation the capacity to boost their performance economically. They have also provided a bigger source of income for professionals despite of the consequences involve like bullying at the office. Workplace bullying has been justified to be done impersonally to meet the expectations of the business clients. After all, call centers depend upon their clients to stay in business by making profits. In return, the agents are subjected to the service-level agreements and must meet the demands of the clients even if the agents need to work under pressure with more tasks and less breaks. Various theories had justified the existence of such practice as they came from various points-of-view. References Allman, P. (2001) Critical education against global capitalism. USA: Greenwood Publishing. Barthwal, R. (2007) Industrial economics: An introductory text book. India: New Age International. Butter, F. 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