The influence of the economic crisis on the call center development in metro Cebu
Summary
In the last decades, our world has developed into a global village. The globalization of the world has helped to connect locations that previously were unknown in the global economy. New industries and sectors have evolved due to the rise of information technology, call centers are a specific example of this development. This research focused on the call center development in metro Cebu, the Philippines, under the influence of our current economic crisis. The call center sector is part of an umbrella sector call the BPO sector. The BPO sector stands for Business Process Outsourcing sector. The main objective of the research was to gain insight on the influence of the economic crisis on the call center sector in metro Cebu. To tackle the objective, the main theme of analysis of the research will be to look at a contradiction that lies within the development of this sector in relation to the economic crisis. Results show that the economic had in general little influence on the development of the call center sector. However, various key informants have the notion that the sector is making a change from wide-ranged growth into a deepening of the sector. Deepening stands for the enormous growth of large call center companies while small call center operator faced multiple issues. The economic crisis could have enhanced this process due to the fact that trust, stability, and competitiveness are even more important features of the global economy during a general downward trend. Embedded in our new economy and based on cost reduction, the call center sector in general is a technological empowerment sector which helped to established a degree of flexibility towards short-term influences of the global market such as the economic crisis.