Explain the role of ICT in the growth of international outsourcing.

“Environmental degradation is the inevitable outcome of global economic interactions.” Discuss this statement.

Outsourcing is the concept of taking internal company functions and paying an outside firm to handle them (eg one company employing another company to produce goods or services rather than manufacture them “in-house” at a branch plant or back-office owned by the first company). International outsourcing consists of the means by which a domestic firm asks a foreign firm to produce a specified product, component or service, for which it can perhaps supply the inputs and transfer technology and technical assistance to the producer. Different sectors of industry (from agribusiness to call centres) use ICT in different ways to support outsourcing.

Links with ICT might include: outsourced office and quaternary/research work that is enabled via ICT and the movement of bundled files, data, use of Skype, etc. Many back-office services eg call centres, accountancy, have been moved to India from UK/USA for instance; and France to North Africa (the role of other factors eg availability of European language speakers, may be commented on). Some answers may comment on how the trend has changed over time in line with technological advancements. Also credit more general ideas about using ICT to research outsourcing destinations, or to transfer payments to client companies.

ICT also helps with inventories, just-in-time ordering from suppliers, etc, thereby supporting outsourcing of other sectors of industry including manufacturing and food. For bands D and E, expect a broad analysis of the role of ICT that has some good supporting details of outsourcing (and is likely to offer a definition).

Performance at band C is likely to be narrower (very limited range of outsourcing examples) and/or may lack much/any evidence of where/when outsourcing has taken place (or may get side-tracked by describing in depth the evolution of ICT, or ICT led global interactions, with little explicit focus on outsourcing ).

Other approaches may be equally valid. Marks should be allocated according to the markbands.

Credit all content in line with the markbands. Credit unexpected approaches wherever relevant.

The terms “environmental degradation” and “global economic interactions” are both broad; either, or both, may be deconstructed to provide some essay structure.

Commodity movements (raw materials, agro-industrial produce, e-waste) are important forms of economic interaction [Guide 4]. Global economic interactions also comprise financial flows ie loans, aid, debt repayment, FDI [Guide 3]. Migration, tourism and online financial transactions may also be included [Guide 3].

A broad interpretation of “degradation” should be credited [Guide 4]. Environmental degradation can take many forms, with the geography guide suggesting candidates become familiar with impacts of tourism [Guide 5], agro-industrialization, air freighting (food miles), waste movements and transboundary pollution events [Guide 4]. Other suggestions may be made drawing on other parts of the geography course, and these should be credited. Weaker answers may neglect to link these impacts with specific global interactions (may assert that “businesses” cause deforestation but say little about why they are doing so/where demand is coming from/who the actual TNCs are). Do not over-credit pollution events that do not relate to global interactions (eg Chernobyl) or are weakly related.

Good answers may cast the net wider eg addressing the carbon footprint of financial flows such as online trading (relying on the use of ICT requiring electricity); or may look at how the burden of debt may result in an increase in environmentally damaging practices such as logging; or may look at the environmental impacts of FDI-led development eg Bhopal (India) or Shell (Niger delta) or BP (Gulf of Mexico).

Counter-arguments may include the limited impacts of online interactions; or the measures taken by TNCs or other actors to minimize environmental impacts including climate change “carbon-neutral” initiative and other mitigation measures (actions of NGOs eg WWF). Credit any attempt made to stress the lower-impact nature of certain activities (good answers may even question the level of damage that constitutes actual “degradation”, or may contrast local and global scale degradation).

At band C, there could be a conclusion that disagrees with the statement, but purely on the basis of the discussion of a very narrow range of interactions (eg has simply contrasted internet use with oil spills) or impacts (but global interactions not clear).

For band D there should be a synthesis of several evidenced interactions and impacts, or a properly evidenced conclusion that provides a considered viewpoint, or gives an overview, about the impacts of different global interactions on the environment. At band E, expect both of these elements.

Marks should be allocated according to the markbands.

Many candidates floundered over the term “outsourcing” even though it is clearly defined in the subject guide. Thankfully, the role of ICT was more successfully tackled. Thus, even if outsourcing was not fully understood, marks were picked up for analysing the key role of technology and the process of time–space compression. Those that attempted the question generally knew something about call centres in India, though it was often simply asserted technology had “made it happen” before writing at length about other factors (for example, the English language being spoken in India), which was not answering the question directly. The best answers addressed the stem phrase “the role of” and understood that an analysis of multiple roles would, logically, gain more marks. Thus, as well as Bangalore’s success, they also explored how computer-aided just-in-time procurement allows TNC retailers, such as Tesco or Carrefour, to effectively liaise with Kenyan agribusinesses in their supply chain. Generally, it was good to see limited conceptual slippage between supply chain outsourcing and a TNC’s own internal spatial division of labour (while the factors that drive the growth of both are similar, they are far from being the same thing).

A lot of weak answers were seen here, as has already been commented on. These were of the “human impact” variety. Many candidates wrote about how economic activity frequently has adverse effects on the environment, but did no more than imply that there is some link with globalization. Many of the impacts written about could have happened in isolation from global interactions, such as acid rain on a country’s own doorstep on account of its own power stations. The worst example of this is the common assertion that the USSR adopted nuclear power “because of globalization” and this led to the Chernobyl disaster. Similar problems arise with the use of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Candidates do not link deep-sea oil exploration with globalization in a meaningful way, other than to tell us that BP is a TNC. One suggestion might be for candidates to at least note that global economic growth and the spread of wealth (notably so amongst the middle classes of the BRIC nations) has hastened the approach of peak oil; thus energy TNCs are forced towards riskier deep ocean operations, or must make greater use of non-conventional fossil fuels (fracking). Similar issues arise with the way deforestation, climate change, soil erosion and eutrophication are commonly handled whenever an “environment” question is set on paper 3. Very general answers are commonplace that do not locate these impacts nor link them with the actions of recognizable global actors, such as TNCs. Very few candidates can name an actual agribusiness, such as Cargill.