The Office Farther Back: Business Services, Productivity, and the Offshore Back Office

Abstract

Insurance in Ireland. Back offices in Barbados. Software in Seoul. The routinization and mass production of services, combined with the spatial flexibility afforded by communications, is changing the structure and location pattern of the service economy. Basic paperwork and information processing is increasingly performed away from corporate headquarters in North America and Europe, and placed in low cost locations offshore. Back offices exemplify several current characteristics of the service economy, such as growing international trade, application of advanced technology to services production, and the spatial separation of operations that comprise production networks.