Call Centers as Opportunities in Development of Less Developed Regions*

At the end of the economic reconstruction process experienced since the 1980s, social scientists have discovered new industry areas, concepts such as flexible production and spatial division of labor, and they began focusing increasingly on services. During this era, many professions in the production and service sector were eliminated as a result of automation. There has been a growing tendency towards the spatial separation of routine and non-routine office activities in advanced economies. Routine activities that are defined as back office activities, mainly involving data processing (e.g. payroll, accounting, subscriptions, billing, credit card services, claims processing and word processing), so-called “call centers”, are moved to less developed regions with cheap and skilled labor. Call centers are offices established by organizations to deliver services remotely by telephone, replacing the need for face-to-face interaction with customers. This paper considers the implications of call center work on economic development in regions in Turkey facing relative economic disadvantage.