The offshore outsourcing of software-production services to places outside of the established networks in well-developed core economies is a dynamic and topical aspect of contemporary reorganizations in the software-development industries. Software production and related information technology services are outsourced to firms offshore or, more specifically, to places where labor skills appropriate to these industries are available at lower costs. Notable offshore destinations include: India, Russia, Ireland, Israel, Romania, and Ukraine, among several others. The offshore outsourcing of software production involves complex introductions, reorganizations, and compositions of production chains and management structures in the continuing negotiation of how relations and work processes will be governed across spaces. The author documents the roles of certification—ISO 9000 and CMM—as new governmental forms that shape understandings, perceptions, and strategies for becoming recognized within the offshore. Drawing on field research with over twenty firms in St Petersburg, Russia, the author proposes that certification is an emergent form of governance that embodies specific processes of globalization.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AroraAAsimdiJ, 2000, “Quality certification and the economics of contract software development: a study of the Indian software industry”, working paper, H John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
2.
AroraAAthreyeS, 2001, “The software industry and India's economic development”, working paper, H John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
3.
AroraAGambardellaA (Eds), 2004From Underdogs to Tigers: The Rise and Growth of the Software Industry in Brazil, China, India, Ireland, and Israel (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
4.
AroraAArunachalamV SAsundiJFernandesR, 2001, “The Indian software services industry”Research Policy301267–1287
5.
BardhanAKrollC, 2003, “The new wave of outsourcing”, Fisher Center Research Reports, University of California, Berkeley, CA
6.
BenezechDLambertGLanouxBLerchCLoos-BaroinJ, 2001, “Completion of knowledge codification: an illustration through the ISO 9000 Standards Implementation Process”Research Policy301395–1408
7.
BrennerN, 1999, “Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies”Theory and Society2839–78
8.
BrennerN, 2001, “The limits to scale? Methodological reflections on scalar structuration”Progress in Human Geography25591–614
9.
BunnellT GCoeN M, 2001, “Spaces and scales of innovation”Progress in Human Geography25569–589
10.
BurowayMVerderyK (Eds), 1999Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD)
11.
CallonM, 1986, “Some elements in a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and fisherman of St Brieuc Bay”, in Power, Action, Belief Ed. LawJ (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) pp 196–233
12.
CallonM, 1998, “Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics”, in The Laws of Markets Ed. CallonM (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 1–57
13.
CallonMMeadelCRabeharisoaV, 2004, “The economy of qualities”, in The Cultural Economy Reader Eds AminAThriftN (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 58–80
14.
ClarkG, 1998, “Stylized facts and close dialogue: methodology in economic geography”Annals of the Association of American Geographers8873–87
15.
CohendetPAminA, 2004Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
16.
CookeP, 1998, “Introduction: origins of the concept”, in Regional Innovation Systems Eds BraczykH-JCookePHeidenreichM (Routledge, London) pp 2–27
17.
DickenPKellyP FOldsKYeungH W, 2001, “Chains and networks, territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy”Global Networks189–112
18.
Du GayPPrykeM, 2003, “Introduction”, in Cultural Economy Eds Du GayPPrykeM (Sage, London) pp 1–20
19.
FeakinsM, 2001Access to Capital for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Poland: Banks, Decisions and Economic Development in Post-Socialism DPhil dissertation, Department of Geography, Oxford University
20.
FoucaultM, 1986, “Nietzsche, genealogy, history”, in The Foucault Reader Ed. RabinowP (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middx) pp 76–100
21.
GerrefiG, 1994, “The organisation of buyer-driven global commodity chains: how US retailers shape overseas production networks”, in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism Eds GerrefiGKorzeniewiczMKorzeniewiczR P (Praeger, Westport, CT) pp 95–122
22.
GerrefiGKorzeniewiczMKorzeniewiczR P (Eds), 1994Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Praeger, Westport, CT)
23.
GertlerM, 2003, “Tacit knowledge and the economic geography of context, or the undefinable tacitness of being (there)”Journal of Economic Geography375–99
24.
GirardMStarkD, 2002, “Distributing intelligence and organizing diversity in new-media projects”Environment and Planning A341927–1949
GrabherG, 2001, “Ecologies of creativity: the Village, the Group, and the heterarchic organisation of the British advertising industry”Environment and Planning A33351–374
27.
GuthmanJ, 1998, “Regulating meaning, appropriating nature: the codification of California organic agriculture”Antipode30135–154
28.
HawkSMcHenryW, 2005, “The maturation of the Russian offshore software industry”Journal of Information Technology for Development11(1) 31–57
29.
HedlundG, 1986, “The hypermodern MNC—a heterarchy?”Human Resource Management25(1) 9–35
30.
HedlundG, 1993, “Assumptions of hierarchy and heterarchy, with applications to the management of multinational corporation”, in Organization Theory and the Multinational Corporation Eds GhoshalSWestneyD E (St Martin's Press, New York) pp 211–236
31.
LarnerWLeHeronR, 2002, “The spaces and subjects of a globalising economy: a situated exploration of method”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space20753–774
32.
LarnerWLeHeronR, 2004, “Global benchmarking: participating ‘at a distance’ in the globalizing economy”, in Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces Eds LarnerWWaltersW (Routledge, London) pp 212–231
33.
MutersbaughT, 2004, “Serve and certify: paradoxes of service work in organic-coffee certification”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space22533–552
34.
NeumayerEPerkinsR, 2003, “What explains the uneven take-up of ISO 14001 at the global level? A panel-data analysis”Environment and Planning A36823–839
35.
O'RiainS, 1997, “An offshore Silicon Valley?”Competition and Change2175–212
36.
PaulkM, 1994, “A comparison of ISO 9001 and the capability maturity model for software”, CMU/SEI-94-TR-12, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
37.
PaulkM, 1995, “How ISO 9000 compares with CMM”IEEE Software January, 74–83
38.
PaulkM, 1999, “Practices of high maturity organizations”, paper presented at the 11th Software Engineering Process Group Conference, Atlanta, GA, 8–11 March, http://citesees.ist.psu.edu/paulk99practices.html
39.
RoseN, 1999Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
40.
SchoenbergerE, 1991, “The corporate interview as a research method in economic geography”The Professional Geographer43180–189
41.
SheppardE, 2002, “The spaces and times of globalization: place, scale, networks and positionality”Economic Geography78301–331
42.
SimonH, 1962, “The architecture of complexity”Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society106467–482
43.
StarkD, 1996, “Recombinant property in East European capitalism”American Journal of Sociology101993–1027
44.
StarkDBrusztL, 1998Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
45.
StorperM, 2000, “Globalisation and knowledge flows: an industrial geographer's perspective”, in Regions, Globalisation and the Knowledge Based Economy Ed. DunningJ (Oxford University Press, Oxford) pp 42–63
46.
SwyngedouwE, 1997“Neither global nor local: ‘glocalization’ and the politics of scale”, in Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local Ed. CoxK R (Guilford Press, New York) pp 137–166
47.
ThriftN, 2000, “Performing cultures in the new economy”Annals of the Association of American Geographers90674–692
48.
ThriftNAminA, 2004, “Introduction”, in The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader Eds AminAThriftN (Blackwell, Oxford) pp x–xxx
49.
VerderyK, 1996What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
50.
YeungH W-C, 2002, “The limits to globalization theory: a geographic perspective on global economic change”Economic Geography78285–305
51.
YurchakA, 2006Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
