Preface and acknowledgments Introduction 1. Explanation and dialectics Part I. Philosophy and Economics: 2. Philosophical anthropology 3. Economics 4. Exploitation, freedom and justice Part II. Theory of History: 5. Modes of production 6. Classes 7. Politics and the state 8. Ideologies 9. Capitalism, communism and revolution Conclusion references Index of names index of subjects.

Making Sense of Marx

Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research.

In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.

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The Modern Call Center: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on Operations Management Research

Over the last 40 years, major changes have taken place in the workplace. The growth in the use of information technology at work, the globalization of many industries, organizational restructuring, changes in work contracts and worktime scheduling have radically transformed the nature of work in many organizations. The workforce itself is also diversifying, with an increase in female participation, a growing number of dual-earner couples and older workers. The present paper discusses the impact of these workplace transitions on employee well-being. We focus on four issues that are current concerns for organizations and the workforce; job insecurity, work hours, control at work, and managerial style. For each topic, recent research is presented, with suggestions for future research and recommendations for practitioners working in the organizations of today. The paper concludes with some final considerations for researchers and practitioners that may benefit both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness.

Well‐being and occupational health in the 21st century workplace

Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, including helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although women and men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different in their emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women is prosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men is behaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive. These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor, which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes and the social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonal processes, social expectations, and individual dispositions.

The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender.

Those who ply their trade by purveying ideas - academics, policy entrepreneurs, consultants and the like - have a vested interest in proclaiming the new. It is much harder to make a reputation or a splash in the ideas pool by arguing that nothing much has changed. Let's call this the continuity option. Since the early 1980s the big picture franchise has passed to and through a variety of paradigm break theories. We have moved from and through flexible specialization, new production concepts, lean production, post-Fordism, postmodernization, and lately the knowledge economy. While there have, of course, been variations in these perspectives, we can also observe a number of common themes. The argument of this article is that while model building necessarily tends to overstate system cohesiveness, there are powerful structural tendencies, driven by developments in capital markets, which are exacerbating disunity between these different domains. Within modern capitalism economic actors are finding it increasingly difficult to 'make connections' between objectives in the spheres of work and employment, and simultaneously employers are finding it harder to keep their side of any bargain with employees.

Disconnected capitalism : or why employers can't keep their side of the bargain

Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves

The paper locates the rise of the call centre within the context of the development of Taylorist methods and technological change in office work in general. Managerial utilisation of targets to impose and measure employees' quantitative and qualitative performance is analysed in four case-study organisations. The paper concludes that call centre work reflects a pardigmic re-configuration of customer servicing operations, and that the continuing application of Taylorist methods appears likely.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/NTWE103.pdf?abstractid=371416&mirid=1&type=2

Taylorism, Targets and the Pursuit of Quantity and Quality by Call Centre Management

The paper locates the rise of the call centre within the context of the development of Taylorist methods and technological change in office work in general. Managerial utilisation of targets to impose and measure employees’ quantitative and qualitative performance is analysed in four case–study organisations. The paper concludes that call centre work reflects a pardigmic re–configuration of customer servicing operations, and that the continuing application of Taylorist methods appears likely.

/pdf/taylorism-targets-and-the-pursuit-of-quantity-and-quality-by-45gailihld.pdf

Taylorism, targets and the pursuit of quantity and quality by call centre management

Foreword, Sheldon Friedman Chapter 1 Introduction, Gregor Gall Chapter 2 Organising the Unorganised: Union Recruitment Strategies in American Transnationals, c 1945-1977, Bill Knox and Alan McKinlay Chapter 3 Organising in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry in Britain, c 1972-1990: A Long Flame Burning or a Spark that has Gone Out?, Gregor Gall Chapter 4 Trade Union Recruitment Policy in Britain: Form and Ethics, Edmund Heery, Melanie Simms, Rick Delbridge, John Salmon and Dave Simpson Chapter 5 Employer Opposition to Union Recognition, Gregor Gall Chapter 6 Union Organising in a Not-for-Profit Organisation, Melanie Simms Chapter 7 Organising in Electronics: Recruitment, Recognition and Representation - Shadow Shop Stewards in Scotland's 'Silicon Glen', Patricia Findlay and Alan McKinlay Chapter 8 Organising in Transport and Travel: Learning Lessons from TSSA's Seacat Campaign, Jane Wills Chapter 9 Call Centre Organising in Adversity: From Excell to Vertex, Phil Taylor and Peter Bain Chapter 10 Comparisons and Prospects: Industrial Relations and Trade Unions in North America and Britain, Brian Towers Chapter 11 Union Organising in the United States, Jack Fiorito Chapter 12 Union Recognition in Germany: A Dual System of Industrial Relations with Two Recognition Problems, Otto Jacobi Chapter 13 Conclusion: Drawing up a Balance Sheet, Gregor Gall

Union Organizing: Campaigning for trade union recognition

Towards the end of the century many grandiose assertions were made about changes in the workplace and what these implied for the role of work in our lives. Many of these were incorporated into the idea of the 'knowledge economy' in which working with the new technologies was supposed to be more intrinsically satisfying, knowledge workers displayed higher levels of commitment and work in general was becoming a 'central life interest'. This book critically investigates the evidence for such trends by taking two new and expanding information-intensive employment sectors - call centres and software development. Through observation, survey and interview data from nine case studies, the book records, analyses and tries to understand the multiple levels of meaning which people attach to work today. It records not only the changes to the contemporary workplace but also the continuities with the past. Work today is the same mixture of satisfaction and unpleasantness as it has always been, but the contemporary workplace is perhaps a more unstable environment than we have been used to for some time.

Gregor Gall

Papers

Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves

Taylorism, Targets and the Pursuit of Quantity and Quality by Call Centre Management

Taylorism, targets and the pursuit of quantity and quality by call centre management

Union Organizing: Campaigning for trade union recognition

The Meaning of Work in the New Economy