Temporal Flexibility in Business Process Outsourcing Industry: Organization of Work/Non-Work around Time Zone Dependent Work Schedules in a Gendered Cultural Context

Offshoring business processes to low-cost locations around the globe has made temporal flexibility a pervasive feature in the work lives of young workers in global South countries like Sri Lanka as it requires them to work on a time zone dependent (TZD) basis. In an environment where great resignation has broadened the discourse on flexibility and work-life balance while pandemic-induced economic crisis urging the Asian businesses to return to purely physical pre–Covid-19 legacy processes, this article explores the under-researched social consequences of the organization of work and non-work lives around non-standard work schedules, and how Sri Lankan TZD workers experience and manage those consequences. Data was gathered from in-depth interviews with TZD workers in Sri Lanka. The findings reveal that TZD work reflects a temporal colonization of global South countries by the capital of Western countries. Though unexpected, interposed transitions are inevitable in TZD work, male and female TZD workers experience them differently due to the reinforcement of prevailing gender and cultural stereotypes in Sri Lanka. Despite significant social de-synchronization resulting from temporal colonization, TZD workers have rearticulated the way they produce their social life with a more ‘inward’ approach—facilitated by the homelike environment created at the workplace.