New approaches to studying multinational corporations sensitive to issues of power and politics often neglect the way power and politics in corporations shape workplaces, specifically labour processes and modes of their control. The article presents a case study of a firm’s relocation of activities to a shared services centre. The relationships among the shared services centre, its client departments and the headquarters involve an ongoing combination of cooperation and competition, resulting in increased managerial control over labour processes and changes in corporate governance. The shared services centre established as a support unit aims to strengthen its position in the organizational structure by gaining control over labour processes and their modification. Competition with client departments for control over labour processes leads to the introduction of controlling mechanisms, norms and standards both in the centre and in client departments. These rules, on the one hand, limit uncertainty; on the other hand, they drive the fragmentation of labour processes, rendering them more codifiable and less complex. These effects make labour processes easier to control and, eventually, to relocate, which is advantageous for the headquarters. Changes in labour processes thus shape the relationships within the corporation and the space for power struggles and politics.
AchterberghJVriensDJ (2009) Organizations: Social Systems Conducting Experiments. Dordrecht: Springer.
2.
AneeshA (2006) Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization. Durham, MD: Duke University Press.
3.
BarnesTDasKSLPratapS (2016) Incorporating labour research into studies of global value chains: Lessons from India’s auto industry. Global Labour Journal7(3): 240–256.
4.
BaxterPJackS (2008) Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers. The Qualitative Report13(4): 544–559.
5.
Becker-RitterspachFDörrenbächerC (2011) An organizational politics perspective on intra-firm competition in multinational corporations. Management International Review51(4): 533–559.
6.
BouquetCBirkinshawJ (2008) Managing power in the multinational corporation: How low-power actors gain influence. Journal of Management34(3): 477–508.
7.
BravermanH (1998) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, 25th anniversary edn. New York: Monthly Review Press.
8.
CleggS (1989) Frameworks of Power. London: SAGE.
9.
CleggSCourpassonDPhillipsN (2006) Power and Organizations: Foundations for Organizational Science. London: SAGE.
10.
CoaseRH (1937) The nature of the firm. Economica4(16): 386–405.
11.
CumbersANativelCRoutledgeP (2008) Labour agency and union positionalities in global production networks. Journal of Economic Geography8(3): 369–387.
DörrenbächerCGeppertM (2006) Micro-politics and conflicts in multinational corporations: Current debates, re-framing, and contributions of this special issue. Journal of International Management12(3): 251–265.
14.
EijnattenFMvan der ZwaanAH (1998) The Dutch IOR approach to organizational design: An alternative to business process re-engineering?Human Relations51(3): 289–318.
15.
FleckerJ (2009) Outsourcing, spatial relocation and the fragmentation of employment. Competition & Change13(3): 251–266.
16.
FleckerJMeilP (2010) Organisational restructuring and emerging service value chains: Implications for work and employment. Work, Employment and Society24(4): 680–698.
17.
FleckerJHaidingerBSchönauerA (2013) Divide and serve: The labour process in service value chains and networks. Competition & Change17(1): 6–23.
FlyvbjergB (2006) Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry12(2): 219–245.
20.
GeppertMDörrenbächerC (2014) Politics and power within multinational corporations: Mainstream studies, emerging critical approaches and suggestions for future research: Politics and power within MNCs. International Journal of Management Reviews16(2): 226–244.
21.
GeppertMWilliamsK (2006) Global, national and local practices in multinational corporations: Towards a sociopolitical framework. The International Journal of Human Resource Management17(1): 49–69.
22.
GereffiGLeeJ (2016) Economic and social upgrading in global value chains and industrial clusters: Why governance matters. Journal of Business Ethics133(1): 25–38.
23.
GereffiGHumphreyJSturgeonT (2005) The governance of global value chains. Review of International Political Economy12(1): 78–104.
24.
HammerNRiisgardL (2015) Labour and segmentation in value chains. In: NewsomeKTaylorPBairJRainnieA (eds) Putting Labour in its Place: Labour Process Analysis and Global Value Chains. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 83–99.
25.
HopkinsTKWallersteinI (1986) Commodity chains in the world-economy prior to 1800. Review (Fernand Braudel Center)10(1): 157–170.
26.
HopkinsTKWallersteinI (1994) Commodity chains: Construct and research. In: GereffiGKorzeniewiczM (eds) Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism. Westport, CT: Praeger, 17–34.
27.
HowcroftDRichardsonH (2012) The back office goes global: Exploring connections and contradictions in shared service centres. Work, Employment & Society26(1): 111–127.
28.
KingN (1994) The qualitative research interview. In: CassellCSymonG (eds) Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research. London: SAGE, 14–36.
KristensenPHZeitlinJ (2005) Local Players in Global Games: The Strategic Constitution of a Multinational Corporation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31.
LakhaniTKuruvillaSAvgarA (2013) From the firm to the network: Global value chains and employment relations theory. British Journal of Industrial Relations51(3): 440–472.
32.
McGrath-ChampSRainnieAPickrenG (2015) Global destruction networks, the labour process and employment relations. Journal of Industrial Relations57(4): 624–640.
33.
MorganG (2001) The multinational firm: Organizing across institutional and national divides. In: MorganGKristensenPHWhitleyR (eds) The Multinational Firm: Organizing Across Institutional and National Divides. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–24.
34.
MorganGKristensenPH (2006) The contested space of multinationals: Varieties of institutionalism, varieties of capitalism. Human Relations59(11): 1467–1490.
35.
NewsomeKTaylorPBairJRainnieA (2015) Introduction. In: NewsomeKTaylorPBairJRainnieA (eds) Putting Labour in its Place: Labour Process Analysis and Global Value Chains. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–26.
36.
OliveiraJCleggS (2015) Paradoxical puzzles of control and circuits of power. Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management12(4): 425–451.
37.
PonteSGibbonP (2005) Quality standards, conventions and the governance of global value chains. Economy and Society34(1): 1–31.
38.
PonteSSturgeonT (2014) Explaining governance in global value chains: A modular theory-building effort. Review of International Political Economy21(1): 195–223.
39.
RainnieAHerodAMcGrath-ChampS (2011) Review and positions: Global production networks and labour. Competition & Change15(2): 155–169.
40.
RamioulM (2012) The map is not the territory. The role of knowledge in spatial restructuring processes. Unpublished dissertation. Leuven: KU Leuven.
41.
RamioulMVan HootegemG (2015) Relocation, the restructuring of the labour and job quality. In: DrahokoupilJ (ed.) The Outsourcing Challenge: Organizing Workers Across Fragmented Production Networks. Brussels: ETUI, 91–115.
42.
RichterPCBrühlR (2017) Shared service center research: A review of the past, present, and future. European Management Journal35(1): 26–38.
43.
RothKKostovaT (2003) The use of the multinational corporation as a research context. Journal of Management29(6): 883–902.
44.
SturgeonTJ (2001) How do we define value chains and production networks?IDS Bulletin32(3): 9–18.
45.
SydowJ (1998) Unternehmung und Mitbestimmung im Wandel. Auf dem Weg zur Entbetrieblichung des Betriebs? In: BerthelJ (ed.) Unternehmen im Wandel: Konsequenzen für und Unterstützung durch die Personalwirtschaft. München: Hampp, 137–144.
46.
TaylorPBainP (2005) ‘India calling to the far away towns’: The call centre labour process and globalization. Work, Employment and Society19(2): 261–282.
47.
UpadhyaC (2016) Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
48.
YinRK (2003) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd edn.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
