Impacts of agglomeration on call centre operations: evidence from North West England

Frank Peck, Ignazio Cabras

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Impacts of agglomeration on call centre operations: evidence from North West England, Regional Studies. Call centres have until fairly recently provided a significant source of employment growth in the peripheral regions of the UK. Despite the potential for locational dispersal throughout the urban hierarchy, however, call centres tend to be highly concentrated in larger urban centres and variations in wage costs between local labour markets appear to have little influence over location patterns. This paper explores the consequences of high levels of agglomeration for recruitment and retention of labour within call centres in the North West Region of England. Using survey data, various measures of labour market stress are shown to be positively correlated with urban size. The results tend to confirm that businesses are prepared to absorb the costs of concentration in order to avoid the perceived risks of labour shortages in smaller dispersed urban centres.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)923-934
    JournalRegional Studies
    Volume43
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 4 Aug 2009

    Keywords

    • contact centres
    • location factors
    • local labour market
    • service industries
    • R11
    • R12

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