This title was first published in 2002. Call centres are a type of service work that stand at the interface between corporations and consumers. They exemplify more general tendencies present within service work. They also have a particular public image - being associated in the public mind with low skilled and regimented work. This volume presents contributions from British and German management academics and industrial sociologists based on primary research on call centres in both countries. The contributions cover the genesis and development of call centres as a new form of organization, or indeed a new industry; the rationalization and control strategies of organizations that establish call centres; and the nature of service work and service interactions. The findings of this volume challenge the common public image of call centres and finds that call centre employment is in fact very diverse. So, for example, skilled advising and consulting services are often performed over the phone. Along with the sometimes skilled nature of call centre work, work organization and working conditions vary as well. The text also seeks to contrast the British and German experience of call centre work and employment. In Germany clerical work has traditionally been embedded in the specific traditions of co-operative industrial relations that define the German model. Call centres present a strategic challenge to this model, and the expansion of call centres has been at the forefront of changes aimed at making employment more flexible in Germany. This work offers a choice of country cases, which permit a comparison of service employment within both a liberal capitalist and a socially embedded economy.
By:
Karen A. Shire,
Ursula Holtgrewe,
Christian Kerst
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 449g
ISBN: 9781138718432
ISBN 10: 1138718432
Series: Routledge Revivals
Pages: 244
Publication Date: 29 June 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
A / AS level
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
1: Re-Organising Customer Service Work: An Introduction; 1: Institutions and Contexts: The Making of an Industry?; 2: Call Centres: Constructing Flexibility; 3: Consolidation, ‘Cowboys’ and the Developing Employment Relationship in British, Dutch and US Call Centres; 4: Call Centres in Germany: Employment, Training and Job Design; 5: Call Centres as Organisational Crystallisation of New Labour Relations, Working Conditions and a New Service Culture?; II: Rationalisation, Skills and Control; 6: Skill Formation in Call Centres; 7: Capitalising on Femininity: Gender and the Utilisation of Social Skills in Telephone Call Centres; 8: Call Centres and the Contradictions of the Flexible Bureaucracy; III: Customer Service Work and Interaction; 9: Call Centre Consumption and the Enchanting Myth of Customer Sovereignty 1; 10: Quality Time and the ‘Beautiful Call’ 1; 11: Co-Production in Call Centres: The Workers’ and Customers’ Contribution
Karen A. Shire, Ursula Holtgrewe, Christian Kerst
