Once More With Feeling: Ethnographic Reflections on the Mediation of Tension in a Small Team of Call Centre Workers

This article explores the labour process of a team of call‐centre workers based in a multi‐client call centre in the West Midlands. Founded on the basis of a 13‐month ethnographic study into workplace resistance in call‐centre environments, this article provides insights into control in call centres, focusing on sexuality, internal team dynamics and discipline. It is argued that control is exerted through management and information technology but it is crucially exerted laterally in the team and sexuality is an important medium of such control. This article focuses specifically on how worker sexuality is deployed to regulate the tension between contradictory imperatives faced by workers. The article then considers the emotional content of the call‐centre labour process, arguing that the apparent resolution of potentially contradictory logic, in fact, depends upon the development by call‐centre workers, encouraged by more senior employees, of informal, pseudo‐sexualized client relations at the point of production. Crucially however the fieldwork reveals that the demands placed upon customer service representatives are subtly gendered.     

WOMEN'S WORK IN THE INFORMATION ECONOMY: The case of telephone call centres

This paper is concerned with the work experiences and career opportunities of women employed in technology-intensive offices known as telephone 'call centres'. Call centres have grown rapidly across Europe in recent years, creating a significant number of new jobs and receiving considerable attention within the media, business and academic communities. However, despite the fact that the majority of call centre jobs have been taken by women, researchers have so far paid little attention to their position in this new 'industry'. The article addresses this research gap. In particular, it is concerned with the question of whether call centre work is offering women new opportunities for skill development and career progression, or whether a more familiar trend is taking place in which women are being drawn into a highly routinized, 'de-skilled' and de-valued area of work. The paper also uses the specific example of call centre work in order to reflect on broader issues about the changing nature of women's work and employment in the so-called 'information economy'.     

Nurses' Pay Formation in Swedish Health Call Centres

This article analyses the pay formation process for nurses in the new organizational form of health call centres (HCCs) in Sweden. It finds that HCC tele‐nurses have gained a better labour market position than both the average call centre employees in other sectors and some other nurses. This specialization of the nursing occupation may thus have importance for gendered pay formation in public healthcare. In evaluating pay formation, the article draws on case studies carried out by the author. It analyses the shift from centralized bargaining towards more decentralized and individualized pay formation and the importance of union organization, economic and professional factors that have contributed to relatively higher pay for these workers. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this process for the gender pay gap in the state sector and limitations to future gains.     

Critical Reflections on a Social Inclusion Approach for an Ageing Australia

Abstract

The use of call centre operations in public and private sectors is a notable development in the changing structure and nature of employment worldwide. This trend is clearly evident in the South Pacific with the establishment of a call centre as the official point of entry for the statutory child protection systems in both New Zealand and New South Wales. As sites of professional practice however call centres are a controversial development. This paper discusses the practice findings of a qualitative research project which explored the particularity of intake social work (ISW) with 14 social workers employed at the Child Youth and Families' (CYF) National Contact Centre (NCC) in New Zealand. Findings were established through semi structured interviews and thematic analysis. They reveal a unique practice combining attributes of social work and emergency communication services in a workplace environment subject to similar output requirements as those found in commercial call centres.     

Calling capital: call centre strategies in New Brunswick and New Zealand

This article compares government promoted call centre initiatives in New Zealand and New Brunswick, Canada, thereby identifying differing policies and practices associated with ‘globalization’. Both New Brunswick and New Zealand are small resource based economies in which policy makers aspire to attract foreign investment into call centres as a new means of economic growth and job creation. However there are significant differences between the two call centre strategies. In New Brunswick the provincial government plays a central role, most notably through the use of incentives to lure companies to the province but also through the coordination of education and training. In New Zealand an informal network made up of public and private sector actors drives the strategy, and the relevant government agency (Trade NZ) plays only a coordinating role. Despite these differences both call centre strategies aspire to link service sector activities into global flows and networks, and foster low wage and feminized forms of employment.     

‘You're not going anywhere': employee retention,symbolic violence and the structuring of subordination in a UK‐based call centre

This article explores practices that produce and reproduce domination in and through organizational hierarchies and shows how high levels of employee turnover were managed within a UK‐based call centre through the use of culturally bound employment practices. Using ethnographic methods the paper explores the experience of managerial retention strategies from the perspective of employees and draws upon some of the theoretical resources employed by Pierre Bourdieu, specifically in relation to his concern with structures of subordination, and with the ways that processes of symbolic violence appear legitimate. The paper therefore makes three contributions to our understanding of the sociology of work generally and the management of labour turnover in service industries specifically; first, it extends understanding of the cultural basis of retention strategies. Second, it explores the ‘lived experience’ of these strategies. Finally, it considers the relevance of Bourdieu's analysis for making sense of these practices in action.     

‘You Don't Have to Shout’—Vocal Behaviour in Social Work Communication

In the context of an increasing trend toward indirect service user/practitioner contact, this article argues that voice quality, vocal features, and the use of paralanguage can facilitate communication and/or negatively reinforce social difference and professional hierarchies of power in social work practice. These issues will be considered with reference to a finding from a qualitative research study undertaken in New Zealand with Intake Social Workers (ISW) at the National Contact Centre of Child Youth and Family (CYF). The National Contact Centre (NCC) is a social work call centre, and the official entry point to New Zealand's statutory child protection system. The research explored how ISWs constructed their practice in a call centre environment. The study identified the importance to many ISWs of achieving a calm, respectful telephone manner towards service users. A smaller number of participants showed more in-depth appreciation of the impact of vocal behaviour on practice, drawing attention to the effect of paralanguage on relationships with callers. Strategies for the teaching of this skill set to social work students will be considered.     

Vocatives as rationalized politeness: Theoretical insights from emerging norms in call centre service encounters

This study offers an extension of existing politeness theories by illuminating how changes in politeness conventions come about as a result of contextual specificities. Despite a surge in mediated service encounters, few studies to date have considered the linguistic enactment of politeness in call centres, mainly due to restrictions on access. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of an onshore call centre in Scotland and data in the form of authentic service interactions, interviews, on‐site observations, and institutional documents, the study combines quantitative and qualitative discourse analytic techniques to explore how the call centre‐specific tension between efficiency and customer care is managed in theory and practice. It is found that while the institution accords equal importance to efficiency and customer care, in actual service interactions, agents prioritize efficiency. Furthermore, in the few cases where agents do orient to customer care, vocatives appear to be used as a shortcut evidencing the emergence of a novel – rationalized – type of politeness. The study contributes the theoretical insight that new politeness conventions may emerge, not so much because of the imposition of one culture on another, but because they are shaped by the particular context in which they arise.     

Call centres and job satisfaction in Italy: employment conditions and socio-biographical patterns

ABSTRACT

The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried out on 1715 handlers indicate how dissatisfaction prevails among call centre representatives (CCRs) and how it is influenced by aspects related to some organisational characteristics (service delivered, size and organisational typology), on one side, and to different aspects of working conditions (contract, wage and tenure) and participants’ biographical and working profiles of CCRs (gender, age, educational attainment), on the others. However, the most interesting finding emerges by distinguishing different dimensions of job satisfaction (extrinsic and intrinsic-relational). In particular, the relationship between type of contract and job satisfaction is rather interesting. For non-permanent workers, in fact, the probability of being dissatisfied is decidedly greater if we consider the extrinsic dimension of job satisfaction. Instead, when the intrinsic-relational dimension is taking into account, atypical workers are no more dissatisfied than the permanent ones. Job insecurity and limited perspectives in terms of work alternatives, safeguards and rewards, seem to be the source of greatest dissatisfaction for Italian CCRs. This certainly does not surprise considering the Italian development model and its dualistic labour market, highly segmented between insiders and outsiders.     

The uses and abuses of time: globalization and time arbitrage in India's outsourcing industries

Globalization has undoubtedly altered our conceptions and experience of time. It has sped up the pace of life and some scholars even suggest that a new temporal order is supplanting ‘natural’ and pre‐existing cycles and rhythms. Yet time is not dissolved in the global circuits of capital. Rather, globalization has brought about a complex mixture of temporal orientations; the workplaces of ‘new economy’, for example, are traversed by novel and retrograde modes of work pace, rhythm and time‐discipline. In this article, I explore the temporal implications of the outsourcing of information technology‐based service work to India. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers, managers and executives in the Indian IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industries, I address the following questions: (1) How are corporations using time arbitrage to reap the full benefits of a globally dispersed labour pool? (2) What impacts are these temporal changes having on the health and social lives of Indian workers? For corporations, time arbitrage means increased efficiency and cost‐savings. But for workers, it results in long hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement. Night‐shift employees, such as call centre workers, are particularly vulnerable to such displacement, as manifested in health and safety problems and social alienation. Globalization therefore does not entail the loosening of temporal chains, but their reconfiguration: a combination both rigid and flexible that binds even as it liberates.     

A Child's Place in Society: New Challenges for the Family and Day Care

SUMMARY. Using the experience of a study of childhood in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, this article explores the now common situation of children growing up in two settings: their families and day care centres. In Denmark, where almost all mothers work and where good quality care is widely available, the family and day care centres are seen as having important complementary roles in supporting children's social development. The child learns to both integrate and separate the experience of these two worlds, more or less successfully depending on how well he or she is developing at home, and the relationship between the home and the day care centre. Day care should be seen as a positive support for family life: dual-socialisation through family and day care is, and will remain, part of the lives of most children.     

Video-Based Studies of Work Practice

The use of the visual, let alone video, is surprisingly rare within social scientific studies of work and organisations. Nevertheless there is an emerging corpus of research that use video recordings, augmented by field work, as their principal data; recordings that provide access to the fine details of work as it is accomplished within everyday organisational settings. They include studies of work in a broad range of domains, including call centres, mobile offices, operating theatres, construction sites and control centres. This paper outlines the nature of these video-based studies of work and organisation and highlights some of their major contributions to our understanding of issues such as the nature of skill and expertise, the use of technology and the organisation of teamwork. It also reflects on the impact that these studies, and this approach, are having within the practical fields of industrial and market research.     

Careers in the third sector

The article explores the concept of career as it relates to third-sector employees. The results of a survey of third-sector employees in New South Wales, Australia, suggests a distinctive pattern of work orientation involving a preference for work that is both personally challenging and socially meaningful. Pragmatic considerations are also important for women with young children. These and other findings suggest that the majority of third-sector employees pursue a career that more closely fits Driver's spiral career model rather than the conventional linear career model. It therefore behooves nonprofit employers to tailor the organizational reward system to the motivational needs of their employees if they hope to maximize worker satisfaction and effectiveness.     

Day Labourers' Work Related Injuries: An Assessment of Risks,Choices, and Policies

Literature and theory surrounding the informal economy in international contexts suggest that informal work arrangements may entail assuming various levels of risk, and that the higher the level of risk in an employment arrangement, the higher the premium paid to the worker. This study is designed to assess if a wage compensation for risk exists within the United States' day labour job market ‐ the most visible sector of the United States' informal economy. Using data from the 2005 National Day Labour Survey we find a statistically significant wage premium indicating that a risk‐wage tradeoff within the day labour informal economy exists. Ultimately, we argue that current policy interventions facilitated through day labour centres into the day labour market appear to be effective in mitigating the risks associated with this type of employment.

• Evidence of a risk‐wage premium in the day labour market suggests there is an incentive to assume higher levels of risk in work arrangements which presents significant concerns for worker safety.
• Higher levels of work related risks assumed by day labourers, may be minimized if they receive proper safety training through a formal venue such as a worker centre.
• Worker centres only serve 20 per cent of all day labourers in the United States, suggesting a need for the establishment of additional worker centres in other connected or industry based work sites, to help mitigate potential work related risks and injuries in the day labour market.

     

‘Girls Who Do Boys Like They're Girls’? Exploring the Role of Gender in the Junior Management of Contemporary Service Work

This article attempts to explain the clustering of women managers at junior managerial grades in the service sector by focusing on the structuring and organization of work in a call centre. The article is based on an ethnography of an organization and seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate in gender research by exploring and documenting the requirement for the enactment of masculinities at work for successful managers. Central to our account is the role of team leader which, as a junior management position, occupies a key role in understanding and accounting for the gendered hierarchical terrain of contemporary service‐based organizations. In exploring the role of team leader, a position that tends overwhelmingly to be held by female staff, we draw attention to the perception of the gendered nature of the role by subordinate members of the organization, the team‐leaders themselves and more senior managers. The position is also brought into sharp relief in comparison with the subordinate role of the ‘problem manager’, a position overwhelmingly held by men.     

Gender and Disability: Feminizing Male Employees with Visible Impairments in Danish Work Organizations

The purpose of this article is to examine how stereotypical gender perceptions relate to employees with physical impairments. This is done by investigating how employees and managers in 13 Danish work organizations draw on stereotypical perceptions of femininity when they talk about their colleague with cerebral palsy, and by examining how these stereotypical perceptions influence the work lives of the participating employees with cerebral palsy — as seen from their own perspective. The empirical point of departure is an interview study conducted in 2013 with 13 employees with cerebral palsy, 44 colleagues and 19 managers. In contrast to the findings of much research on gender and work, this study finds that stereotypically feminized perceptions of employees with cerebral palsy as weak, in need of help, etc., are linked to the impairments of the employee rather than his or her biological sex or the specific gender norms of the particular industry. The analysis of this article thus contributes to increase our understanding of gender processes in work organizations. More specifically, the article shows how impairments intersect with gender perceptions; in this case how the study participants with cerebral palsy are expected to relate to and reproduce stereotypically female behaviour — regardless of their biological sex.     

‘Building rapport’ with customers across the world: The global diffusion of a call centre speech style1

This paper identifies a particular ‘rapport‐building’ speech style prescribed to call centre workers in four countries – Denmark, Britain, Hong Kong and the Philippines – irrespective of the language being spoken in the service interaction. It then compares Danish and British call centre workers’ compliance with the prescribed speech style and finds that Danish workers adhere significantly less to it than their British counterparts. It is suggested that this is attributable to the predominance of different politeness norms in the two cultures. The paper then discusses the indexicality of the prescribed speech style and argues that it is more commercially than culturally marked, despite the American origin of call centres. Overall, the paper draws attention to inadequacies in the paradigm focusing on the global spread of English, while lending support to recent theoretical suggestions to focus instead on how practices and styles are exported globally and potentially independently of language. Denne artikel identificerer en særlig ‘relationsskabende’ samtalestil som foreskrives til callcentermedarbejdere i fire lande – Danmark, Storbritannien, Hong Kong og Filippinerne – uafhængigt af hvilket sprog der benyttes i serviceinteraktionen. Herefter bliver danske og engelske callcentermedarbejderes brug af den foreskrevne samtalestil sammenlignet, og det vises at danske medarbejdere gør signifikant mindre brug af den end deres britiske modparter. Det foreslås at dette skyldes at der råder forskellige høflighedsnormer i de to kulturer. Artiklen diskuterer derefter indeksikaliteten af den foreskrevne samtalestil, og argumenterer for at den i højere grad er kommercielt end kulturelt kodet, på trods af callcentres amerikanske oprindelse. I sin helhed gør artiklen opmærksom på utilstrækkeligheder i det paradigme der fokuserer på hvordan engelsk breder sig globalt, mens den underbygger nylige teoretiske forslag om i stedet at fokusere på hvordan praksisser og stile eksporteres globalt og potentielt set uafhængigt af sprog.     

Not for everyone: intra-organisational divides and the stratification of access to work–life policies

Prior research documented a number of factors pertaining to employees or to organisational cultures that can prevent employees from accessing employer-driven work–life policies (WLP). Our study focuses on factors originating in the jobs themselves. We conducted 98 in-depth employee interviews in two multinational companies based in Europe and led feedback sessions with human resources executives. Three mechanisms explained the observed stratification of access to WLP across jobs: (1) the intra-organisational digital divide prevented ‘less digital’ employees from collecting information about WLP on the intranet and thus impaired awareness of the policies; (2) the divide in worksite size prevented employees on smaller worksites from accessing childcare centres, sports or health facilities and (3) the divide in job types restricted access to WLP for specific occupations. The stratification of access to WLP was not strategically driven by human resources; rather the divides were largely unintentional. Our study uncovers inequalities of access originating in the jobs themselves and provides a theoretical integration of the various sets of factors that may promote or hinder employee awareness of WLP. Our findings suggest that organisations should strive to identify these inequalities and to provide ways to cope for these, for instance by offering other forms of support.