Women, social skill and interactive service work in telephone call centres

This paper contributes to current debates about gender, work and skill in the service economy, focusing specifically on the case of women's employment in telephone call centres. The paper asks whether call centre employers are capitalising on women's 'feminine' social skills, and examines the degree to which these skills are being developed, acknowledged and recognised.     

Voices from higher up the ladder: exploring the team leader role in call centres

This paper focuses on an under‐researched employee category in the call centre literature—the team leader. The paper, drawing on data from nine Australian call centres, finds that the team leader role is integral to the effectiveness of call centres, yet it is a role that consists of considerable complexity and contradictions. The research demonstrates the critical role performed by team leaders: coach, mentor, trainer, performance evaluator, communicator and supervisor. It also shows team leaders as being far more positive about many of the features of the call centre work environment compared with those on the front line. However, there does appear to be a need for greater acknowledgement of their challenging role, the contradictions that are inherent in the job and the need, in many cases, for increased support being made available to assist.     

'You don't know what you've got till it's gone': re-contextualising the origins, development and impact of the call centre

This paper locates the emergence of call centres within the broader political economy. We demonstrate how British Gas responded to privatisation, restrictive regulation and the need to deliver shareholder value by radically changing work organisation. Using documentary evidence and oral testimonies, we show how the call centre was pivotal to tightening control over the labour process, to intensifying work and transforming the experience of work.     

New technology and changing organisational forms: implications for managerial control and skills

Changes in organisational forms are central to the way new technologies impact on the future of work and employment. Drawing on case–study evidence of a call centre and its client relations and a multinational IT firm and its partnership with a government department, this paper explores the implications for skill and managerial control.     

Making it Personal in a call centre: electronic peer surveillance

This paper analyses a form of electronic surveillance in a call centre that was not automatically performed through or by information and communication technology but required the active involvement of peers to provide feedback on each other's work by using an online reporting tool. Increased surveillance led to a tightening of control over certain aspects of work as advisors modified their call‐handling practices. But surveillance was simultaneously undermined by technical and bureaucratic control linked to existing information systems, which affected the ability and availability of peers to perform monitoring. Electronic peer surveillance was also unable to provide objective information or unobtrusive control as performing and evaluating surveillance became a highly political and contested process. Various forms of resistance arose, which were not always directed at management, but were instead manifest through increased animosity between teams.     

Towards a flexible future? The nature of organisational response in the clothing industry

Quick response behaviour is a necessity in the clothing industry. It was expected that the requirements for this would show a number of dysfunctions in the Taylorist production concept. However, it is concluded that the way in which clothing companies are attempting to reorganise their processes can be termed 'intensification': changes designed to increase productivity without substantial reorganisation of the Taylorist production concept.     

Taylorism, new technology and just-in-time systems in Japanese manufacturing

This article attempts to examine what is believed to be a significant overall Taylorist influence in Japanese manufacturing as well as a specific manifestation of this phenomenon, namely the unique flow requirements of the generic Toyota system (JIT). The use of unbufferred flow, it is argued, is feasible only with consistent quality, thus making non-discretionary Taylorist job design a necessary condition.     

Making and maintaining the subject in call centre work

This article reports an ethnographic study of call centre work. Analytics are applied enabling study of relations between power and subjectivity. Findings indicate that organisational 'truth' claims about workers are produced in a constellation of architectural, technological and managerial apparatuses. Workers orient to and reify the power of these claims, even when resisting.     

Visible moves and invisible bodies: the case of teleworking in an Italian call centre

Popular images of teleworkers' autonomy, such as 'the electronic cottage', give unrealistic pictures of the control exercised over teleworkers, particularly when these are call centre operators and highly integrated information and communication technology systems facilitate pervasive forms of control. However, this study of Italian home-located call centre operators demonstrates that extensive and multifaceted monitoring practices cannot 'solve' the controversial issue of control.     

'You gotta lie to it': software applications and the management of technological change in a call centre

This paper advances an extended material analysis to the study of technological change in a call centre. It shows how such an analysis is particularly apropos for understanding the distance that often separates managerial intentions in introducing a new technology from the outcomes associated with how workers utilise it.     

Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre

This article presents a thoroughgoing critique of Fernie and Metcalf's perspective, that the call centre is characterised by the operation of an 'electronic panopticon' in which supervisory power has been 'rendered perfect'. Drawing on evidence from a telecommunications call centre the authors analyse the significance of emerging forms of employee resistance.     

Why do off‐shored Indian call centre workers want to leave their jobs?

Employee turnover is a major problem in off‐shored Indian call centres. Agents who service Western customers often face hostility and racial abuse because of who they are and where they are located. A substantial part of job‐related training focuses on teaching employees to manage their identity and modify their accent. Based on a sample (n = 211) of Indian call centre workers servicing international customers, we explore these issues and investigate how they affect employee turnover intentions. The study utilises Taylor and Bain's (2005) distinction between factors particular to the Indian context and those more generic to the call centre labour process to better understand the drivers of turnover. We found that a number of distinctive factors including accent modification difficulty, stigma consciousness, racial abuse and perceived favouritism were associated with turnover intentions. The study also revealed that certain job‐related factors related to intentions to leave, including routinisation and poor promotional opportunities.     

Coping Strategies in Call Centres: Work Intensity and the Role of Co-workers and Supervisors

It has been observed that customer service workers often develop mutually supportive coping strategies to protect themselves from the emotional strain of overwork. These strategies can receive tacit support from supervisors, who may accept them as a means of getting the work done. The study explores the impact of a number of different forms of support on emotional exhaustion among a group of 480 call centre workers focusing, in particular, on the role of supportive behaviours relating to absence taking. The research shows that a supportive co-worker absence culture and team leader absence permissiveness can lessen the effects of job demands on emotional exhaustion and improve worker well-being. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Employer Strategies and Wages in New Service Activities: A Comparison of Co‐ordinated and Liberal Market Economies

Using survey data for call centre establishments in eight countries, we examine the relationship between wages and human resource practices. High‐involvement work design and the use of performance‐based pay are significantly positively related to wages, whereas intensive use of performance monitoring is negatively associated with wages. These relationships are larger among liberal economies compared with co‐ordinated ones, but individual country differences are large and, in many cases, do not conform to expectations regarding institutional differences between liberal and co‐ordinated market economies. The exception is Denmark.     

Automatic production control applying control theory

A new dynamic production model for the planning level will be presented in this paper. The model is based on methods of control theory, which provide a large variety of appropriate tools for analysing and controlling dynamic systems. With the help of the funnel model and the theory of the logistic operating curve, a continuous flow model of a single work centre has been designed. For the control task a backlog controller and a WIP controller have been developed. The controllers interact to adjust the capacity and the input rate of the work centre so as to eliminate the backlog as soon as possible and to set the WIP to a defined level. By means of envelope curves of capacity flexibility, which are easily applicable to industry, the individual range of capacity adjustments at a single work centre can be modelled. Simulation experiments confirm that this concept ensures the synchronisation of capacity and work. The objective is to develop a closed-loop control for PPC with defined control and reference variables based on the logistical objectives.     

Indian call centres and business process outsourcing: a study in union formation

In this exploratory study of union formation in the Indian call centre/business process outsourcing sector, the authors draw upon evidence from the first detailed survey of members of the recently formed UNITES, and from extensive interviews. This paper engages with mobilisation theory and analyses of trade union formation.     

Ambiguous professionalism: managing efficiency and service quality in an Israeli call centre

This case study examines the management of frontline employees in an Israeli call centre by focusing on the organisational rhetoric of 'professionalism' and the implementation of integrative human resource practices (debriefing, covert call monitoring, information and technology software, and a monthly bonus). This culture is critically explored as a ceremonial facade that covers the conventional quantity/quality tension.     

Enabling ‘managed activism’: the adoption of call centres in Australian,British and US trade unions

This article examines how trade unions in different country settings have utilised call centre technologies. Rather than viewing union call centres as simply a means of service delivery, our research suggests they can also enable a more strategic approach to workplace organising. We explore the implications of union call centres for debates on servicing and organising models of trade unionism.     

'We are nurses, we are supposed to care for people': professional values among nurses in NHS Direct call centres

This paper explores the interpretive negotiation of professional values by nurses working in a large public-sector organisation in the UK, namely the NHS Direct (NHSD). Reported are findings from a number of case studies of NHSD, undertaken in response to calls for more research into so-called professional call centre settings.