New Services: global convergence or national path-dependency

Telephone call centres are companies or organizational units that specialise in customer contact over the phone supported by networked information and communication technology, but they also enable considerable changes in customer contact and customer relationships. These changes increasingly take place beyond the boundaries of individual companies: Complete value-chains are re-organized, outsourcing and offshoring become an option, and service work is disembedded from face-to-face interaction and may be relocated across the globe. Employment relationships and working conditions also are highly flexible: Call centres use opportunities to re-organise work outside of normal employment relationships, they use part-time work, short-hours jobs or free-lancers. However, they do not embody a globally convergent model of deskilled and precarious work along neo-Taylorist lines. Employment relationships vary, and so does the skill content and discretion in call centre work. Closeness to clients and customers still plays a part in location decisions. Hence, the project addresses the comparative questions how call centres embed themselves into their institutional and societal environments and how they transform them, under what conditions they pursue which strategies of flexibility and especially, how, when and for whom they offer comparative `good jobs`, that is, jobs paying a living wage and offering some discretion and chances for learning and participation. We thus apply for the funding of further case studies and comparative analyses on the basis of the data gathered by the "Global Call Centre Industry Project". The "Global Call Centre Industry Project" has so far conducted a standardised management survey in currently 17 countries and 2400 call centres investigating the workforce structure, HRM strategies, work organisation, management strategy, industrial relations and participation in regional networks and regional business development. These have been supplemented and validated by case studies in companies and expert interviews in relevant institutions. After the country reports for currently 17 countries are finished and the international data set has been compiled, now the comparative analyses need to be conducted. The overarching question is in how far observable variations in the employment structure, organisational structure, management strategies and customer contact can be explained through diverse varieties of capitalism or generally societal configurations of institutions and and collective actors, or, alternatively, if in call centres organisational forms and working conditions converge across national contexts, driven by company strategies or technology and in themselves contribute to globally convergent processes of business reorganisation.

Telephone call centres are companies or organizational units that specialise in customer contact over the phone supported by networked information and communication technology, but they also enable considerable changes in customer contact and customer relationships. These changes increasingly take place beyond the boundaries of individual companies: Complete value-chains are re-organized, outsourcing and offshoring become an option, and service work is disembedded from face-to-face interaction and may be relocated across the globe. Employment relationships and working conditions also are highly flexible: Call centres use opportunities to re-organise work outside of normal employment relationships, they use part-time work, short-hours jobs or free-lancers. However, they do not embody a globally convergent model of deskilled and precarious work along neo-Taylorist lines. Employment relationships vary, and so does the skill content and discretion in call centre work. Closeness to clients and customers still plays a part in location decisions. Hence, the project addresses the comparative questions how call centres embed themselves into their institutional and societal environments and how they transform them, under what conditions they pursue which strategies of flexibility and especially, how, when and for whom they offer comparative "good jobs", that is, jobs paying a living wage and offering some discretion and chances for learning and participation. We thus apply for the funding of further case studies and comparative analyses on the basis of the data gathered by the "Global Call Centre Industry Project". The "Global Call Centre Industry Project" has so far conducted a standardised management survey in currently 17 countries and 2400 call centres investigating the workforce structure, HRM strategies, work organisation, management strategy, industrial relations and participation in regional networks and regional business development. These have been supplemented and validated by case studies in companies and expert interviews in relevant institutions. After the country reports for currently 17 countries are finished and the international data set has been compiled, now the comparative analyses need to be conducted. The overarching question is in how far observable variations in the employment structure, organisational structure, management strategies and customer contact can be explained through diverse varieties of capitalism or generally societal configurations of institutions and and collective actors, or, alternatively, if in call centres organisational forms and working conditions converge across national contexts, driven by company strategies or technology and in themselves contribute to globally convergent processes of business reorganisation.