1. Describe one way call center training and work conditions transform one’s sense of having a regional and national identity. In other words, how does globalization and the creation of a virtual labor force transform formerly geographically bounded identities? (Your answer must include at least one reference to A. Aneesh's chapter)
2. Review the "Reading Room: the economics of outsourcing" essay in the course reader. Visit "Alladeen" -- the website for The Builders Association's theatrical production "Alladeen Bangalore-London-New York."
Go to the "cyber immigrants" section and view the videos in:
My Strangest Phone Call
Perceptions of America and American Culture
Aspirations for the Future
(move your cursor over the "blue diamonds" on the left hand side of the screen to get section titles)
How does the "Alladeen" site, through its design (magic lamp motif), and its use and organization of video and sound clips, allow us, the users, to confront and challenge our expectations of call center workers and their lived experience as virtual laborers? (Provide one example from the video sections listed above)
After reading Virtual Migration I started to think about how technology has enabled us to do so much; now, it is possible to live in one country working for a firm in another. As A. Aneesh states in Virtual Migration, “The programming schemes of virtual integration do not entail transporting the body from one place to another; instead they keep the body in one place while performance travels to other locations.” This has transformed the identities set by geographical boundaries, in that, people can identify with a workforce and community from another country because they are a part of that system. However, they may not necessarily know very much about that community or may not take part in the same cultural acts.
ReplyDeleteI found the videos on “Alladeen” very interesting. The site is set up in a way that represents this sort of digital board of buttons and sounds. The sounds are representative of the noise the phone makes when you dial a number. It all ties in with what they hear and do on a daily basis. In “My strangest phone call”, Riaz speaks about how he changed his identity when talking to the District Attorney. It shows how virtual laborers don’t have any physical presence with their customers and the interaction is purely verbal. Therefore, they have no idea who they are talking to and the receiving end might believe they are talking to ‘someone else.’ It changes the way that I think about people from call centers because when you are dealing with a virtual world, identity can sometimes be misleading. It was also pretty funny to see how the call center workers former ideas on Americans have changed because of their interactions with them. Their earlier perceptions were based on things that they heard and the identities that we have represented through the media and their newer perceptions are based on phone interaction.
Unfortunately outsourcing really is the best way to go for a lot of companies. While it is detrimental to the economy here in the United States, companies based here with workers in India and/or all over the rest of the world are benefiting in multiple areas. Aneesh says,"It may range from real-time work performed on mainframe computers and servers in the United States by a worker based in India to distributed work design, allowing a firm to be geographically dispersed, without a central work station, among several sites throughout the world. Such a firm may divide up it's work to take advantage of cheaper labor, diverse skills, and different time zones." With a company spread out all over the world, boundaries are now meaningless. Alladeen showed the difference in the salaries that call company workers make as opposed to workers in the United States, and it is no wonder this work is being outsourced..."per agent cost in the USA is approximately $40,000 while in India it is only $5,000." And the best part is, Alledeen went on to say that this is still more money than the average doctor makes in India. So while it is saving money for American companies, it is also great money for the outsourced agents. Companies are now all over the world and people are no longer people they are just jobs. We are losing identities and personal relationships don't matter. Money and efficiency are completely taking over.
ReplyDeleteTechnical support centers require that their workers maintain an image that conveys a since of familiarity to the customer in order to better serve them. In almost all cases this means putting aside their native identity and taking up a different one to better suit the job at hand. Acquiring this identity requires the workers to experience and take on certain aspects of American culture that will aid them into understanding and preventing differences that may occur between them and the caller. To strengthen this identity, they are exposed to many aspects of the culture ranging from film, food, history, geography, and even adapting the accents of the language. It is even more so when Aneesh mentions that workers will give an American name and say that they are calling from an American city to put them at ease. Having to switch identities between work and social life would inevitably transform one’s sense of being part of two cultures simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteThrough the videos on the Alladeen site, my view of call center workers has changed a lot. The “aspirations for the future” video impressed me the most because all of the people view their job as temporary and plan on going on to something more rewarding. It is also interesting to see the implication of the story of Aladdin into this, because all the workers have plans of being something better just like the story of going from rags to riches.
Derek (DJ) Harris
ReplyDeleteArt 309 – Migration and Visual Art
Greene
Being able to work with people all over the world unlocks a whole new realm of possibilities. While doing this has its ups and downs, there are far too many upward looking possibilities to ignore it. Allowing someone from the US to collaborate with someone from India enables a new approach to products and ideas. This does of course throw the idea of Globalization into the centerfold. With people from multiple countries to work on the same project at the same time reduces the physical gap created by our world. Something that would have taken months or years in the past can now be done extremely fast thanks to these technological advancements. Virtual Migration means your closest co-worker can be a world away but at the same time, present in the same room you are. The reading gives two special aspects of virtual migration: “spatial integration, which decouples work performance and the work site, and temporal integration, a real00time unification of different time zones, which underscores the importance of the temporal point of the revolving and rotating earth where one is located.” Thanks to these two aspects, the world has now become smaller than ever, eliminating the spatial and temporal barriers that this world held onto before.
The website is not typically set up to convey information, but instead makes you look deeper and hunt for it. By doing this, I feel that it helps create that barrier that these people on the site have to endure daily. It may be a bit harder for them to always understand us, and vice versa, but it’s definitely possible. They talk about how they perceive American culture now after they have experienced Americans on the phone and how they have changed what they think of us. Some of their perceptions changed for the better, others thought that we weren’t as great as we are shown to be. Regardless of how they now think of us, the technology that allows them to talk to us, creates a better relationship between us and the rest of the world.
Justin Beale
ReplyDeleteArt 309- Migration and Visual Art
Greene
In recent years outsourcing the workforce to countries with skilled cheap labor has become increasingly popular among American based corporations for a variety of reasons. While this seems almost detrimental to many Americans who have found themselves out of work from our current economic recession, major companies such as The Gap and GE Capital have utilized this to their advantage. Aneesh states “Through (the firm’s) proprietary technology platform, the geographic constraint is removed allowing companies, for the first time, to deploy a virtual staff” (p. 73). Never before have multinational companies been able to perform work or maintain systems on a location so far removed from its staff. This displacement of workforce in regards to their geographically bound identities has created a staff that is able to identify with regions they may never even visit. As these identities are sculpted out of many new multinational corporations it renders the nation/state border almost meaningless as it applies to the workforce and a fixed cultural identity. This virtual staff may be introduced to interactions and opportunities from across the world but will never be able to suffice the first hand experience one might encounter if they visited their companies home country.
After viewing the Alladeen site and the accompanying videos, my view of call centers has not drastically changed as I have had experience working in the call center type setting. Yet after watching the aspirations for the future videos, I found myself pondering the fact that this virtual workforce did not see this as a career but merely a temporary job. Although Alladeen states in Reading Room that “in India a call centre operator still makes more than the average doctor” (p.169), this job does not seem to warrant the staff to seek long term employment as one might with a career as a doctor. I was left wondering what will happen to these jobs once the virtual staff has moved on in life. Will these job vacancies be outsourced even further to cheaper skill labor around the world, or will many of these jobs remain based in India? Regardless of how these questions can be answered it is important to note that this era of multi-nationalism is constantly evolving concept that is ultimately in search of maximizing profits by the use of outsourcing cheap skilled labor.
Kevin M. Otto
ReplyDeleteArt 309
Section 502
The common misconception amongst the individuals from the website for The Builders Association is that all Americans act like what they see in the media specifically music videos and television. Some of the things that they mentioned were that Americans were cold, lonely, cool, did not regard the family unit as being as important, and expressed their freedom of speech without regard for repercussions. One woman mentioned how an American told her that she was married for 25 years and the secret of staying happily married is to never make a decision by yourself but to always make them together. The workers at that site have a preconceived notion of Americans but some of them after speaking to many Americans on the phone have changed their opinions due to conversing with them.
Migration around the site was difficult due to being presented in a foreign manner to me. After seeing the video clips of the call center workers I realize that although they are making good money compared with the standards in their country that they have higher aspirations. Many of them spoke about moving on to better jobs in the future and going to school. "When the CICS (computer information control system) is not in use in the United States, Indian workers can provide solutions and complete them online. When the office opens in the morning in the United States, a lot of back-end work has already been completed, thus creating a virtual twenty-four-hour office for the American client." (Virtual Migration, 85). Outsourcing does not necessarily help the customers of companies who have outsourced who need customer service help. Language barriers make it difficult to understand some of the representatives in the outsourced countries. Time is money and time is wasted on not being able to understand someone.
Ismar Kulenovic
ReplyDeleteArt 309
Greene
Today's world is very different from any past time and is still changing as we speak. Many companies use overseas work and labor for cheaper production of the product. A great example is my own job. I work at a pharmacy as a tech and many pharmacy's use the system of pharmacists checking scripts virtually at different locations. There are also systems that use pharmacists in India, our pharmacy was interested with the idea of this system, we ended up not going with it, but the possibility is still there. Aneesh states this in the Virtual migration article; “The programming schemes of virtual integration do not entail transporting the body from one place to another; instead they keep the body in one place while performance travels to other locations.”. Cheaper labor is always a incentive for any company or industry, even if it may not benefit us. The Alladeen website was very interesting, however I didn't like the main page or “home page” since some of the links were small. This type of site shows how a virtual community is available today 24/7 for needs of people. The phone style setup of dialing was nice and I like how it was set up. However I am not a fan of how you can be talking to anyone and not know who it may be, this leaves room for fraud types of situations. In the end this is just another example of a virtual world with no physical barriers and globalization.
“Except for the fact that they are in India, we could be sitting across the room from those people and be working” (Quote from a CEO in A. Aneesh’s “virtual migration”). By creating support services across the ocean, American companies gain valuable off hour manpower, and Indian IT centers gain valuable business. It is a win-win in a business sense. But it is really interesting the overall effect of such business set up on individuals and cultural influences.
ReplyDeleteI found the video on the Alladeen website, about Indian workers adopting America accents to be truly fascinating and rather odd all at once. I just wonder why is it so important for them to do that? Is it because American companies are ashamed of their collaboration with foreign businesses? I also found the video about future aspirations to be very interesting. Some of them were happy to stay working at the call center, some seemed to have their eyes set on higher goals.
I find it interesting as well that the opinions of the Indian workers were changed so drastically by their jobs. I had no idea how much they really do interact with American customers. Their opinions of American I felt were fairly accurate. However the artificial nature of their training and responses to questions I felt makes the whole interaction rather one sided, and gives a strange impression to the Indian workers about their own culture, which I think could have some negative repercussions ultimately.
Brianna Jaeger
ReplyDeleteTechnology allows businesses to outsource all over the world. Naturally there are positives and negatives with this new option. In the article by A. Aneesh touches on the ability to have customer service is only possible by having a headquarters set up in another place in the world. When the work day is done in America, workers in India are just starting their day and now can take over. More work is getting done and customer questions can be answered within 24 hours instead of having to wait for the next workday. In addition to having 24 hour customer service, it is also cheaper to outsource. One of the downfalls of moving businesses overseas is if employees from each country want to have a meeting with one another each location has to stay late, or come in early to make up for the time difference. Communication between countries is a challenge. Also, the language and cultural barrier can create problems for some of the call center employees. Sometimes they would create an American alias to go by and tell the caller that they were in America.
I thought the website was very interesting. I liked the worker’s thoughts about Americans, and culture. Most of their views on Americans were shaped by the media and what they have seen on TV. Then, by actually talking to Americans on the phone sometimes their views changed. In “My Strangest Phone Call” Riaz talked about changing his identity when talking to the District Attorney. This shows how anyone we talk on the phone could be pretending to be someone else, and could not even be located in America. It can be very misleading when calling for example, a credit card company. Who are you actually talking to? And if they say they are in America, how do you really know?
Sara Stearns
ReplyDeleteArt and Migration 309
Greene
Aneesh’s chapter, “Virtual Migration”, brought up some important points, to the concept of working virtually in a different location then where you physically are. This causes one to transform one’s sense of having a national identity. If we look at one of the concepts that he brought up, Temporal Integration, we can see limits that it creates. Often there are consequently cultural misunderstandings between the worker in India, and the customer in the United States. This in turn creates for the company, a training in which the new employee must submerse themselves into a culture that isn’t truly their own. Many of the employees of the call center in India must work 3rd shift in order to be aligned with the customer’s normal daytime schedule in the United States. This creates the Indian worker to disconnected with their own culture, as they are sleeping when the majority of their population is sleeping, and they are sleeping when the majority of their culture is awake. Finally another example would be that they are forced to lead an American holiday schedule, causing them to sacrifice celebrating their own culture’s holidays.
The Alladeen site really does, through its design, challenges one to think differently about virtual laborers. After watching the video segments, it really forces you to understand that these people are normal people with their own aspirations, opinions, and goals. We can see in the “Aspirations for the Future” segment, that these people do have bigger plans, and want a future for themselves. In the “Weirdest Phone Call” segment, we hear from the worker Aatri, how she had someone call and say that they were naked and shaved off all their body hair. This seems absolutely absurd, but really would probably make anyone laugh as it did to her. This creates one have a humanistic approach towards virtual laborers.
Two ways that outsourcing is conducted is by either “following the sun” where work is passed between two different regions (California to India). The other is a twenty-four hour office where work is done for another country or place but the work gets done in India. Workers in India are doing jobs for people outside of their country, they don’t work with their culture over the phone they work with one overseas. Workers have to learn English and speak it clear enough to even be able to get an outsourced job. They have to erase a little bit of their identity or change themselves in ways to fit the need the people they are helping.
ReplyDeleteThe music for the site is pretty mystical like I am in a dark cave. The locations of the buttons bring my cursor to go in circular motions, like I am rubbing a cyber lamp. There is the option of making a wish which is pretty neat. It’s like a different form of post secrets or something. It was neat hearing the perceptions that Indian workers had of Americans most said they were off, because of media. I wonder if we were the virtual laborers how our perceptions would change and what kind of strange phone calls we would get. It seems like this is a college job, or a limbo job that people take on their way to something.
Aneesh on page 81 states. "Virtual migration presents a problem of synchrony across sociocultural and physical divides." She is describing the virtual migration in which Indian telemarketers have to endure while working in this industry. She continues by saying that in order for these software industries to survive they must synchronize themselves on an organizational level or else they will fail. this is the problem that she is speaking of and this is a perfect example or globalization. The telemarketers in India must obey certain rules and conform or "synchronize" to these global or "western" norms. The telemarketers, in order to be a successful company, must change their names to western names that are easily pronounced by their clientele. They also must adopt American accents and culture in order to seem that they are either living in the US or are apart of the culture. This adoption of culture has an effect on these telemarketers who have an alias. They begin to lose their sense of regional and some what their national identity. In the process, they become somewhat American and relate to Americans in the highly globalized world of today. This conformation can be negative of course, however it can be interesting to the person who is doing the adoption of another culture. The adoption of another culture can open your eyes and perceive your own culture differently and perceive the cultures of others differently as well. On the Alladeen website, some of the telemarketers noticed that their preconceived notions and stereotypes they had once believed about the US has changed to a more positive outlook. This is why the adoption of another culture can sometimes be positive, it can eliminate differences and create unity.
ReplyDeleteTechnology today has allowed businesses to outsource in order to save money. The chapter by Aneesh, "Visual Migration," was about telemarketers and people in sales who are based in India. Most of the employees work 3rd shift because of the time difference and this has a direct effect on social and personal relationships as well as the overall disconnect these workers deal with. Also, most of the employees over in India have been schooled in Western etiquette as well as their dialect and accents. These workers are giving up a certain aspect of their cultural identity. They are trained to talk and sounds like the person on the other end of the line.
ReplyDeleteThe "Alladeen" site confronts and challenges our expectations in a number of ways. One of them is in regards to the sites design and form. Their is an area on the main page where you can type in a wish and it will float around the screen after you submit it. This is a fun but subtle way of challenging our expectations. When we call our cell phone provider, etc. we expect prompt service and we want our questions answered right away. Another way has a lot to do with the blue diamonds you can click on and the interviews they take you to. They people are very up front and direct and they talk about things that give the viewer something more to think about. The people talk about their opinions of America and Americans and also, my favorite part, their hopes, dreams and goals in life. The site does a nice job of keeping the viewer interested.
Derek Hansen
ReplyDeleteArt 309
One way that call center training and work conditions transform one’s sense of having a regional and national identity is that of language. From the reading this trait, “...plays an important part in the success of Indian software firms, as the considerable prevalence of English in India gives them an advantage over their competitors from non-English-speaking countries like China”. India uses the linguistic advantage greatly in globalization of communications, but alterations are speech behavior and patterns are demanded for those in call centers. People pursuing a job in a call center have to learn an American accent on top of learning how to say names of cities and other aspects of American life. The Website alladeen.com shows this process of speech classes and familiarization of the culture that comprises the United States.
The layout and design of the website has style of a chic, indian restaurant from the arrangement of diamond shapes. When going through the Cyber Immigrants section, particular icons make tonal sounds as your cursor grazes over them. Which personally seems a bit tacky coming from a web design perspective, but does fit the theme to call centers. The short videos from the workers were rather interesting and various. Some of the workers like what they do and where they work. Rohit, a call center worker stated, “I didn’t have a social life then. I Prefer to stay here (work) most of the time. I try and come here, even when it’s not my shift and spending time here because the environment and the people are good.” Meanwhile, another interviewed worker named Riaz talked about how this job has made him unable to meet or “Catch-up” with his friends. Yet the majority of those interviewed on camera were upbeat and positive about their line of work. What was also rather interesting was how Aarti, found that one of the Americans she called shared that a common trait in which decisions in a couple are not made alone. In short, this gives proof to the idea that regardless of distance and culture, people will have similarities in morals and ideals.