Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality?: Moving the Back Office to India

Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality?: Moving the Back Office to India August 7, 2003 Rafiq Dossani Senior Research Scholar Asia/Pacific Research Center Stanford University dossani@stanford.edu Martin Kenney Professor Department of Human and Community Development University of California, Davis Davis, California 95616 mfkenney@ucdavis.edu Senior Project Director Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy University of California, Berkeley * The authors thank Frank Mayadas and Gail Pesyna of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for supporting our research. They appreciate the comments by the participants of the Manhattan India Investment Roundtable and Harry Rowen on an earlier version. Thanks go to the executives of the forty-six firms that consented to our interviews. The authors also thank, in alphabetical order, the Maharastra Industrial Development Corporation, NASSCOM, and the Science and Technology Parks of India. Without their assistance, this research would not have been possible. The authors remain solely responsible for any conclusions and opinions expressed in the paper.

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