Global Production: The Case of Offshore Programming

The production of goods and services is becoming more and more international, or even global, as large transnational corporations and networks of small and medium sized companies distribute their activities across the world in their quest for cheap labour or other economic resources. The production of software is no exception.In this paper, we present a newly started research project on offshore program-ming, that is the practice of sending software development “offshore,” to India or other low wage areas. The project focuses on the organisation of offshore program-ming and, particularly, on the role of advanced communication technologies such as high-speed data links and video conferencing. The project explores a number of in-depth case studies of Danish and Indian companies engaged in offshore programming.