Re-Organising Service Work

by Holtgrewe, Ursula; Kerst, Christian; Shire, Karen

• ISBN13: 9780754619550
• ISBN10: 0754619559
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Ltd

Summary

Call centres are a new 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 book 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 book 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. A strength of the book is the choice of country cases, which permit a comparison of service employment within both a liberal capitalist and a socially embedded economy.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	vii
List of Contributors	viii
List of Abbreviations	xii
Re-Organising Customer Service Work: An Introduction	1	(18)
Karen Shire
Ursula Holtgrewe
Christian Kerst
PART I INSTITUTIONS AND CONTEXTS: THE MAKING OF AN INDUSTRY?
Call Centres: Constructing Flexibility	19	(23)
Sandra Arzbacher
Ursula Holtgrewe
Christian Kerst
Consolidation, `Cowboys' and the Developing Employment Relationship in British, Dutch and US Call Centres	42	(21)
Peter Bain
Phil Taylor
Call Centres in Germany: Employment, Training and Job Design	63	(23)
Susanne Bittner
Marc Schietinger
Jochen Schroth
Claudia Weinkopf
Call Centres as Organisational Crystallisation of New Labour Relations, Working Conditions and a New Service Culture?	86	(19)
Nestor D'Alessio
Herbert Oberbeck
PART II RATIONALISATION, SKILLS AND CONTROL
Skill Formation in Call Centres	105	(18)
Paul Thompson
George Callaghan
Capitalising on Femininity: Gender and the Utilisation of Social Skills in Telephone Call Centres	123	(23)
Vicki Belt
Call Centres and the Contradictions of the Flexible Bureaucracy	146	(17)
Carsten Dose
PART III CUSTOMER SERVICE WORK AND INTERACTION
Call Centre Consumption and the Enchanting Myth of Customer Sovereignty	163	(20)
Marek Korczynski
Quality Time and the `Beautiful Call'	183	(21)
Catrina Alferoff
David Knights
Co-Production in Call Centres: The Workers' and Customers' Contribution	204	(24)
Kerstin Rieder
Ingo Matuschek
Philip Anderson
Index	228