De overkomst van kenniswerkers uit niet-westerse landen naar geavanceerde economieën: Indiase IT professionals in Nederland

Only a few studies focus on professionals who move from less advanced economies to more advanced economies as a result of their transfer to another division within a transnational business corporation. In this study of Indian IT professionals who work at the Dutch division of producer-services company Capgemini, we tried to understand why Indian IT professionals are being recruited and what kind of skills and knowledge they deploy. We expected that the transfer of these professionals to advanced economies would be the result of the company’s efforts to reduce costs. We also expected that these professionals would engage in routine activities mainly because tacit knowledge is hard to transfer across large distances. However, our main finding is that the international mobility of these IT professionals is not so much a result of cutting personnel costs, but rather the consequence of a deficiency at the national labour market. Furthermore, while Indian IT professionals mainly conduct routine programming jobs, others are engaged in activities in which forms of tacit knowldege are of central importance. This is the case for those who engage in mediating functions between Dutch and Indian locations of Capgemini and also for those who try to gain business orders and who operate in the international business environment.