‘Get paid,get out’: online resistance to call centre labour in Canada

This qualitative content analysis of 503 anonymous online reviews of 52 Canadian call centres posted on RateMyEmployer.ca explores how forms of resistance, alienation and emotional labour are expressed outside of the workplace. Our study finds that digital publics are producing emotive insurgencies and networks of support within marginalised communities that undermine employers’ attempts at deadening the workforce. The reviews exemplify worker awareness of exploitation as some connect these issues to broader socio‐economic factors that are beyond their control. While many offer tactics to challenge and destabilise their working conditions and culture as well as heartfelt and sarcastic warnings of what one might expect if they pursue call centre employment, others use the online space as a means of venting frustrations, eliciting empathies and expressing sentiments of hope(lessness).     

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.     

Managerial control and the limits to employee participation in retail work spaces: evidence from a UK IKEA store

This article contributes to labour process debates around managerial control and worker autonomy in the retail workplace. Through critical analysis of managerial strategies in the production of organisational space within an IKEA store, it explores how spatial design and practice shape managerial control and employee participation. Rather than the rhetoric of employee participation espoused by IKEA, our findings emphasise how managers use space to foster employee commitment to corporate objectives. While employees do exercise their own agency and spatial practice, their actions are moulded and constrained by dominant organisational structures and managerial strategies. As such, the article augments existing labour process research by developing new insights about how the spatial dimension shapes managerial control in retail workplaces. Although workers are far from the passive recipients of management decisions apparent in much labour process theory, their participation largely serves the strategic visions and spatial plans of their employer.     

Algorithmic management in food-delivery platform economy in China

This article investigates the organisation of work under algorithmic control in the platform economy. Based on a 1-year ethnographic study conducted at top food-delivery platforms in China, this study finds two main mechanisms for organising labour under algorithmic management: the virtual organisation of labour and algorithm-driven labour process control. First, platform drivers are reorganised in an outsourced labour force, placed in application-based virtual-networked production under sophisticated technological infrastructure. Second, to habituate drivers to the virtual mode of production, food-delivery platforms utilise four algorithm-driven control techniques, which are identified as: smart machinery control, information monopoly, management by multi-stakeholders, and ‘carrots and sticks’. The findings highlight the process of algorithmic design in configuring a digital managerial ecosystem for platform governance and contribute to emerging debates on algorithmic management.     

Consensual control through the articulation of technology and local culture: evidence from a textile factory in Turkey

This article focuses on the complex network of control and consent through the articulation of technology and local culture in the workplace. The dynamics of this network are embedded in the interplay of global and local markets. The article explores these dynamics by focusing on the distinctive characteristics of a Central Anatolian city, Çorum, based on a case study conducted in Turkey. We observe how globalised patterns of control and consent are reproduced through the articulation of new technologies and the conservative culture specific to this locality. During the negotiations between employers and employees, this interplay plays a significant role in the construction of work realities. The consensual control produced within the framework of conservative values leads to a consensual hegemony in the organisation of labour process.     

‘You monitor performance at every hour’: labour and the management of performance in the supermarket supply chain

With reference to the performance management research agenda, this article focuses on the politics of production in food manufacturing and distribution companies in the supermarket supply chain. Burawoy's concept of ‘factory regimes’ is utilised to explore the broader context of labour process change in inter‐linked organisations in the retail supply chain. The article examines the extent to which new despotic or coercive regime characteristics are emerging that weakens the power of both suppliers and labour. In revealing changes in the nature and dynamics of performance regimes within these organisations, the article exposes the connections and linkages between workplaces as distinct moments in the integrated circuit of capital.     

污水处理厂改良A2O工艺脱氮条件优化研究——以石家庄市某污水处理厂为例

为了适应日趋严格的污水排放标准对污水处理厂脱氮性能的新要求,在强化改良A2 O工艺脱氮效果的同时节省药剂投加成本,通过批次实验确定最佳污泥浓度范围和乙酸钠投加量,并进行为期35 d运行实践.实验结果表明:当乙酸钠投加量一定时,随着生物池内污泥浓度的增加,NO3--N及TN的浓度逐渐下降,脱氮性能提高,当污泥质量浓度高于...