BACK OFFICES AND FEMALE LABOR MARKETS: OFFICE SUBURBANIZATION IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA (CLERICAL AUTOMATION, LOCATION THEORY, JOURNEY-TO-WORK; CALIFORNIA)

A theory of private office location is proposed to explain the suburbanization of corporate offices in the late 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. and other advanced industrial nations. The theory views the location of corporate offices as a form of corporate rationalization in response to competitive conditions, consisting of moving to locations with more appropriate supplies of the important office "factors of production": land, linkages, prestige (for some offices), and labor.;The office location theory is used to analyze the location of one type of office function: back offices--large, usually highly-automated offices with low extra-corporate contact needs. Case studies of six back offices in the San Francisco Bay Area indentify locational demands for land, linkages (access) and labor. An investigation of differential metropolitan supply of back office location requirements concludes that demands for land, linkages, and higher-wage labor can be met in various localities that have not been sought for back office development, including some central city areas, but only the outer suburban subregion now attracting most back offices has excellent supplies of the preferred clerical labor, as well as all other locational requirements. Case study occupational analyses of automated clerical jobs show them to be characterized by high job performance requirements and/or eroded working conditions, increasing the importance of clerical workers who will be productive, stable and non-militant at low clerical wages. Labor markets characterized either by upwardly-mobile women or low-income, minority women do not satisfy this contradictory labor demand. Case study journey-to-work data demonstrate the dependence of back offices on local clerical labor markets. The class structure and related household structure of expanding suburban owner-occupied housing districts guarantee corporate back offices a supply of relatively educated female workers whose position in the household economy limits their career mobility and who are likely to identify with the managerial class. The transfer of back office clerical jobs from central city low-income, predominantly-minority female workforces to higher-income, predominantly-white suburban female workforces has important policy implications.