1st Edition

Re-organising Service Work Call Centres in Germany and Britain

244 Pages
by Routledge

244 Pages
by Routledge

244 Pages
by Routledge

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... Read more
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

Biography

Karen A. Shire, Ursula Holtgrewe, Christian Kerst