Under construction: The continuing evolution of job structures in call centers

Industrial Relations

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 173-208

  Moss, Philip ^a   Salzman, Harold ^b   Tilly, Chris ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL   (United States)

^b URBAN INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CALL CENTER; EMPLOYMENT; INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; LABOR MARKET;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 40349084109     PISSN: 00198676     EISSN: 1468232X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-232X.2008.00516.x     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Altieri, Giovanna, Salvo Leonardi, Cristina Oteri, and Doriana Pellerito. 2002. "D3 Study: Case Studies Report. TOSCA (Social Observation Table of Call Centers)." European Trade Union Confederation, Brussels, Belgium.
2. Arzbächer, Sandra, Ursula Holtgrewe, and Christian Kerst. 2002. "Call Centres: Constructing Flexibility." In Re-Organising Service Work: Call Centres in Germany and Britain, edited by Ursula Holtgrewe, Christian Kerst, and Karen Shire, pp. 19-41. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
3. Bagnara S., and E. Donati. 1999. "Call Centres. Un' Opportunitàper Riorganizzare i Servizi." Working Paper, February. Milan, Italy: Il Sole 24 Ore.
4. Bailey, Thomas R., and Annette D. Bernhardt. 1997. "In Search of the High Road in a Low-Wage Industry." Politics and Society 25:179-201.
5. Baldoz, Rick, Charles Koeber, and Philip Kraft (eds). 2001. The Critical Study of Work. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
6. Baldry, Chris, Peter Bain, and Phil Taylor. 1998. "Bright Satanic Offices: Intensification, Control and Team Taylorism." In Workplaces of the Future, edited by Paul Thompson and Christopher Warhurst, pp. 163-83. London: Macmillan.
7. Baron, James N., Michael T. Hannan, and M. Diane Burton. 2001. "Labor Pains: Change in Organizational Models and Employee Turnover in Young, High-Tech Firms." American Journal of Sociology 106(4):960-1012.
8. Batt, Rosemary. 2000. "Strategic Segmentation and Frontline Services: Matching Customers, Employees, and Human Resource Systems." International Journal of Human Resource Management 11(3):540-61.
9. Batt, Rosemary, and Jeffrey Keefe. 1999. "Human Resource and Employment Practices in Telecommunications Services." In Employment Practices and Business Strategy, edited by Peter Cappelli, pp. 107-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10. Batt, Rosemary, Virginia Doellgast, and Hunji Kwon. 2005. "The U.S. Call Center Industry 2004: National Benchmarking Report." Working Paper 05-06. Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.
11. Benner, Chris. 2002. "Calling the Cape: Information Technology, Restructuring of Work, and the South African Call Center Industry." Unpublished paper, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, available at http:personal.psu.edu/faculty/c/c/ccb10/
12. Berger, Allen N., Anil K. Kashyap, Joseph M. Scalise, Mark Gertler, and Benjamin M. Friedman. 1995. "The Transformation of the U.S. Banking Industry: What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2:55-218.
13. Bernhardt, Annette, and Douglas Slater. 1998. "What Technology Can and Cannot Do: A Case Study in Banking." Industrial Relations Research Association Series: Proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Meeting 1:118-25.
14. Butera, F., E. Donati, and R. Cesaria. 1997. I Lavoratori della Conoscenza. Milan, Italy: F. Angeli.
15. Cappelli, Peter. 2001. "Assessing the Decline of Internal Labor Markets." In Sourcebook of Labor Markets: Evolving Structures and Processes, edited by Ivar Berg and Arne Kalleberg, pp. 207-45. New York: Plenum.
16. Cappelli, Peter, and Anne Crocker-Hefter. 1996. "Distinctive Human Resources Are Firms' Core Competencies." Organizational Dynamics 24: 7-21.
17. Cappelli, Peter, and David Neumark. 2001. "External Churning and Internal Flexibility: Evidence on the Functional Flexibility and Core-Periphery Hypotheses." Industrial Relations 43(1):148-82.
18. Caroli, Eve. 2003. "Internal Versus External Labour Flexibility: The Role of Knowledge Codification." LEA Working Paper No. 310. Paris: Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée.
19. Castilla, Emilio J. 2005. "Social Networks and Employee Performance in a Call Center." American Journal of Sociology 110(5):1243-83.
20. Catalog Age. 2000. "The 2000 Catalog Age 100." Available at http:intertec.com/catalogagemag/content/catage100/1999/rank.htm
21. D'Ausilio, Rosanne. 1999. Wake Up Your Call Center: How to Be a Better Call Center Agent. Revised and Expanded Edition. West Lafayette, IN: Ichor Business Books.
22. Delery, John E., Nina Gupta, Jason D. Shaw, G. Douglas Jenkins Jr, and Margot L. Ganster. 2000. "Unionization, Compensation, and Voice Effects on Quits and Retention." Industrial Relations 39(4):625-45.
23. Doeringer, Peter B., and Michael J. Piore. 1971. Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath.
24. Eccles, Robert G., Nitin Nohria, and James D. Berkley. 1992. Beyond the Hype. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
25. Edwards, Richard. 1979. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.
26. Fernández, Roberto M., Emilio J. Castilla, and Paul Moore. 2000. "Social Capital at Work: Networks and Employment at a Phone Center." American Journal of Sociology 105(5):1288-356.
27. Fernie, Sue, and David Metcalf. 1998. "(Not) Hanging on the Telephone. Payment Systems in the New Sweatshops?" CEP discussion paper 390. Centre for Economic Performance, London. Available at http:lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0390.pdf, downloaded April 2003.
28. Fields, Dail, Myra E. Dingman, Paul M. Roman, and Terry C. Blum. 2005. "Exploring Predictors of Alternative Job Changes." Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 78(1):63-82.
29. Gordon, David, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich. 1982. Segmented Workers, Divided Work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
30. Griffeth, Rodger W., Peter W. Hom, and Stefan Gaertner. 2000. "A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents and Correlates of Employee Turnover: Update, Moderator Tests, and Research Implications for the Next Millennium." Journal of Management 26(3):463-88.
31. Hansell, Saul. 2000. "Holiday Traffic at Online-Only Stores Lags Chains' Sites." New York Times, December 4, p. C8.
32. Haveman, Heather A., and Lisa E. Cohen 1994. "The Ecological Dynamics of Careers: The Impact of Organizational Founding, Dissolution, and Merger on Job Mobility." American Journal of Sociology 100:104-52.
33. Heckscher, Charles. 2000. "HR Strategy and Nonstandard Work: Dualism vs. True Mobility." In Nonstandard Work: The Nature and Challenges of Changing Employment Relationships, edited by Françoise Carré, Marianne A. Ferber, Lonnie Golden, and Stephen A. Herzenberg, pp. 267-90. Champaign, IL: Industrial Relations Research Association.
34. Herzenberg, Stephen A., John A. Alic, and Howard Wial. 1999. New Rules for a New Economy: Employment and Opportunity in Postindustrial America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
35. Holtgrewe, Ursula, and Christian Kerst. 2002. "Researching Call Centres: Gathering Results and Theories." Paper presented at the 20th Annual International Labour Process Conference, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, April 2-4.
36. Hunter, Larry W. 1999. "Transforming Retail Banking: Inclusion and Segmentation in Service Work." In Employment Practices and Business Strategy, edited by Peter Cappelli, pp. 153-92. New York: Oxford University Press.
37. Hunter, Larry, Annette Bernhardt, Katherine L. Hughes, and Eva Skuratowicz. 2001. "It's Not Just the ATMs: Firm Strategies, Work Restructuring, and Workers' Earnings in Retail Banking." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 52:402-24.
38. Juravich, Tom. 2005. "Stressed: Customer Service Representatives at Verizon." Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, August 13-16.
39. Keltner, Brent, and David Finegold. 1996. "Adding Value in Banking: Human Resource Innovations for Service Firms." Sloan Management Review 38(1):57-68.
40. Keltner, Brent, and David Finegold. 1999. "Market Challenges and Changing Employment Relations in the U.S. Banking Industry." In From Tellers to Sellers: Changing Employment Relations in Banks, edited by
41. Marino Regini, Martin Baethge, and Jim Kitay, pp. 31-62. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
42. Korczynski, Marek. 2002a. "Call Center Consumption and the Enchanting Myth of Consumer Sovereignty." In Re-Organising Service Work: Call Centres in Germany and Britain, edited by Ursula Holtgrewe, Christian Kerst, and Karen Shire, pp. 161-82. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
43. Korczynski, Marek. 2002b. "The Contradictions of Service Work: Call Centre as Customer-Oriented Bureaucracy." In Customer Service: Empowerment and Entrapment, edited by
44. Andrew Sturdy, Irena Grugulis, and Hugh Willmott, pp. 79-101. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
45. Kotter, John P. 1996. Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
46. Kraakman, Renier. 2001. "The Durability of the Corporate Form." In The Twenty-First Century Firm, edited by Paul DiMaggio, pp. 147-60. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
47. Lambert, Susan J. 1999. "Lower-Wage Workers and the New Realities of Work and Family." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 562:174-90.
48. Lambert, Susan J., and Anna Haley-Lock. 2004. "The Organizational Stratification of Opportunities for Work-Life Balance: Addressing Issues of Equality and Social Justice in the Workplace." Community, Work, and Family 7:179-95.
49. Lane, Julia, Philip Moss, Harold Salzman, and Chris Tilly. 2003. "Too Many Cooks? Tracking Internal Labor Market Dynamics in Food Service with Case Studies and Quantitative Data." In Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace, edited by Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt, and Richard Murnane, pp. 229-69. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
50. Levine, David I., Dale Belman, Gary Charness, Erica L. Groshen, and K. C. O'Shaughnessy. 2002. How New is the New Employment Contract? Evidence from North American Pay Practices. Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute.
51. Lively, Kathryn, J. 2000. "Reciprocal Emotional Management: Working Together to Maintain Stratification in Private Law Firms." Work and Occupations 27:32-63.
52. MacKenzie, Robert. 2000. "Subcontracting and the Reregulation of the Employment Relationship: A Case Study from the Telecommunications Industry." Work, Employment, and Society 14:707-26.
53. Mandel, Michael J. 1996. The High-Risk Society: Peril and Promise in the New Economy. New York: Times Business.
54. Marsden, David. 1999. A Theory of Employment Systems. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
55. Moss, Philip, Harold Salzman, and Chris Tilly. 2000. "Limits to Market-Mediated Employment: From Deconstruction to Reconstruction of Internal Labor Markets." In Nonstandard Work: The Nature and Challenges of Changing Employment Relationships, edited by Françoise Carré, Marianne A. Ferber, Lonnie Golden, and Stephen A. Herzenberg, pp. 95-121. Champaign, IL: Industrial Relations Research Association.
56. Moss, Philip, Harold Salzman, and Chris Tilly. 2005. "When Firms Restructure: Understanding Work-Life Outcomes." In Work Life Integration in Organizations: New Directions for Theory and Practice, edited by
57. Ellen Ernst Kossek and Susan Lambert, pp. 127-50. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
58. National Retail Federation. 2000. "VeriFone and Russell Reynolds Associates Top 100 Internet Retailers." STORES Online, September. http:stores.org/archives/archives00.asp.
59. Neumark, David (ed.). 2000. On the Job: Is Long-Term Employment a Thing of the Past? New York: Russell Sage Founation.
60. New York Times. 2000. "Layoffs May Be at a Record Low, Survey Finds." August 10.
61. Ortmann, Günther, and Harold Salzman. 2002. "Stumbling Giants: The Emptiness, Fullness, and Recursiveness of Strategic Management." Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift Für Soziologische Theorie 8:205-30.
62. Osterman, Paul, Thomas A. Kochan, Richard M. Locke, and Michael J. Piore. 2001. Working in America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
63. Pasternack, Bruce A., and Albert J. Viscio. 1998. The Centerless Corporation: A New Model for Transforming Your Organization for Growth and Prosperity. New York: Simon and Schuster.
64. Powell, Walter W. 2001. "The Capitalist Firm in the Twenty-First Century: Emerging Patterns in Western Enterprise." In The Twenty-First Century Firm, edited by Paul DiMaggio, pp. 33-68. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
65. Price, James L. 2001. "Reflections on the Determinants of Voluntary Turnover." International Journal of Manpower 22(7):600-24.
66. Progressive Grocer. 1995. "Progressive Grocer Annual Report." April.
67. Salzman, Harold, and Katrina Buchau. 1997. "An Overview of the U.S. Insurance Industry." Working Paper. Boston, MA: Jobs for the Future.
68. Salzman, Harold, and Stephen Rosenthal. 1994. Software by Design: Shaping Technology in the Workplace. New York: Oxford University Press.
69. Scott, W. Richard. 1987. "The Adolescence of Institutional Theory." Administrative Science Quarterly 32: 493-511.
70. Shaw, Jason D., John E. Delery, G. Douglas Jenkins Jr, and Nina Gupta. 1998. "An Organization-Level Analysis of Voluntary and Involuntary Turnover." Academy of Management Journal 41(5):511-25.
71. Shire, Karen, Ursula Holtgrewe, and Christian Kerst. 2002. "Re-Organising Customer Service Work: An Introduction." In Re-Organising Service Work: Call Centres in Germany and Britain, edited by Ursula Holtgrewe, Christian Kerst, and Karen Shire, pp. 1-19. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
72. Taylor, Phil, Jeff Hyman, Gareth Mulvey, and Peter Bain. 2002. "Work Organization, Control and the Experience of Work in Call Centres." Work, Employment, and Society 16(1):133-50.
73. Tilly, Chris. 1996. Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
74. Tilly, Chris, and Charles Tilly. 1997. Work Under Capitalism. Denver, CO: Westview Press.
75. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1997. Employment and Earnings, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January), Table 21. Washington, DC.
76. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2005. Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2004 Industry-Specific Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. http:bls.gov/oes/home.htm, accessed August 2005.
77. U.S. Census Bureau. 2002. "1997 Economic Census Data on Concentration." http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/concentration.html, accessed July 2004.
78. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. "County Business Patterns.". http:census.gov/epcd/cbp/view/cbpview.html, accessed July 2004.
79. Varian, Hal. 2005. Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach, 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton.
80. Wirtz, Ronald A. 2001. "Phone Home." Fed Gazette (Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank). May.
81. Yin, Robert K. 2003. Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
82. Zetka, James R. Jr. 1998. "The Technological Foundations of Task-Coordinating Structures in New Work Organizations: Theoretical Notes From the Case of Abdominal Surgery." Work and Occupations 25(3):356-79.