‘Everywhere is becoming the same’?  Regulating IT-work between India and Germany by Nicole Mayer-Ahuja

                                                ISBN: 978-93-83166-01-5

Hardback 565pp; Pub date: 2014; Pub Price: Rs 725

"This book, an outstanding piece of scholarship comparing the two varied political and social contexts of Germany and India, challenges the dominant notion of the convergence of corporate practices unleashed by globalisation. Presenting a pioneering inquiry, it makes a seminal and significant contribution to the substantive area."

 Ernesto Noronha

Professor Ernesto Noronha, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

‘The world is flat’ – this popular account of current developments celebrates transnationally operating companies as great ‘equalisers’. Such tendencies of homogenisation come up against limits, however. Focussing on Indo-German project work in software programming, this study analyses the complex interrelations between the business models of transnationally operating companies and localised standards of regulating reproduction. They result in marked differences between the ways in which labour power is utilised in the companies’ Indian and German subsidiaries. The world is not ‘flat’ – instead, transnational corporate activities draw upon the combined and uneven development of world regions and reinforce difference rather than reducing it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nicole Mayer-Ahuja is Professor of Sociology at University of Hamburg and was Director of the Sociological Research Institute (SOFI) at University of Goettingen, Germany. Her research addresses work and labour, social policy and labour market policy from a historical and transnational perspective. She has published several books and articles on the history of precarious work in late 20^th century Germany, on control practices in small and medium internet companies, and on transnational IT work.

List of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Concepts - Regulating Scenarios and Pathways of Transnationalisation
3. The Spatial Binding of Labour Power
4. The Contractual Binding of Labour Power
5. Remuneration
6. WorkingTime
7. Qualifications - Requirements and Profiles
8. In Lieu of a Summary - Corporate Utilisation of Labour Power and Capitalist Development
9. Appendix
10. Bibliography