Showing papers in "Work, Employment & Society in 2002"

Work Organization, Control and the Experience of Work in Call Centres

Abstract: Despite the integration of telephone and VDU technologies, call centres are not uniform in terms of work organization. It is suggested that diversity can best be understood by reference to a range of quantitative and qualitative characteristics. Consequently, perspectives that treat all call centres as if they were the same hybrids of customization and routinization are rejected, along with over-optimistic interpretations of labour control over work organization. Empirical evidence from nine 'workflows' in two call centres - an established financial sector organization and a rapidly growing outsourced operation - provide excellent grounds for an examination of similarity and difference. A picture emerges of workflows which are volume-driven and routinized, involving low levels of employee discretion, and, by contrast, those less dominated by quantitative criteria offering higher levels of operator discretion and an emphasis on the quality of customer service. Despite these distinctions, larger numbers of operators report an experience of work which is driven by quantitative imperatives, most manifest in the pervasive implementation of targets. Targets are also used increasingly to assess and mould the quality of the call centre operator's interaction with the customer. Overall, the evidence casts doubt on the optimistic perspective that call centre work, in time, will come to resemble 'knowledge work'.

Social Movement Unionism: the Case of South Africa

Abstract: In the context of renewed international debates about the significance of social movement unionism, this article undertakes a detailed analysis of social movement unionism in a South African steelw...

Changing labour markets and early career outcomes : labour market entry in Europe over the past decade

Abstract: This article sets out to address the effects of changing labour market conditions on early career outcomes for those who entered the labour markets in 12 European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom) in the late 1980s and the late 1990s. It is based on data from the 1988-97 European Community Labour Force Surveys (ECLFS) and the analyses focus on the responses of the outcomes of unemployment risks and occupational allocation to different aspects of socio-economic change. The article begins by discussing the theoretical background and hypotheses of the study and then describes the ECLFS database and the methodology. The study found that unemployment risks have closely followed the evolution of aggregate economic conditions with demographic factors having only a slight impact. Consequently, changes in occupation allocation are more dependent on the relative evolution of educational expansion and occupational upgrading trends. The article concludes with a summary of the results and their implications.

Customer Violence and Employee Health and Safety

Abstract: This paper seeks to extend current perspectives on occupational health and safety (OHS) by integrating `emotional labour' into OHS debates. We focus on the growing incidence of customer violence in...

Making Money: Exploring the Economy of Young Homeless Workers

Abstract: Three hundred and sixty homeless youth in Toronto, Canada were asked to report how they made money in order to survive. Income generation among this marginal population was conceptualized by fusing...

What's so special about small firms? Developing an integrated approach to analysing small firm industrial relations

Abstract: The contention in this article is that an integrated approach can be used to analyse industrial relations in small firms and to investigate the image of industrial harmony. The integrated approach, incorporating the dialectical relationship between structural forces and human agency, is underpinned by Marxist labour process theory, and can be used to explain the variety of small firm industrial relations and the conditions under which they are produced. The integrated approach points to a way forward from the old stereotype of 'small is beautiful'.

Is Lean Mean? Workplace Transformation and Employee Well-being

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between workplace transformation (or restructuring) and the well-being of employees, in terms of both psychological and physical health, at a large manufacturing corporation in the United States. While the previous literature has been largely divided over the issue - some researchers providing unqualified enthusiasm and others equally strong criticism of workplace changes - we found, after decomposing workplace transformation into five distinct dimensions of intensity, autonomy, team-work, skilling and computing, that certain components were harmful while others were beneficial to the employees. Furthermore, some effects of reengineering varied between managers and non-managers. Overall, increases in workplace intensity were associated with the largest increases in stress and symptoms of poor health. The data were produced by a longitudinal (two-wave) survey questionnaire of over 1000 employees and were analyzed by means of a structural equations model.

Managing Self-management: Successful Transitions to Portfolio Careers:

Abstract: Various economic and social pressures have, arguably, combined to effect a shift in both the reality and perceptions of career structures. Recent debates have centred on the extent to which traditi...

Overqualification in Employment

Abstract: There is widespread evidence that many workers have higher qualifications than are needed for their job. This finding of a substantial degree of overqualification should not be the case if, as has often been argued, there has been a consistent upgrading of the skills of the labour force as a result of technological change. It might also be argued that even if overqualification exists, this is a result of a new emphasis on flexible employment and therefore increased labour-market uncertainty: people start careers at a level below the traditional start, and so are initially overqualified. In this case overqualification is only a temporary, life-course phenomenon. Evidence is presented here using BHPS and LFS data to suggest, first, that an upgrading of labour does not adequately describe recent change in employment and, second, that overqualification is not a temporary factor resulting from changed employment practices. We should therefore view overqualification as having some sort of structural causation. One tentatively given explanation is that the social demand for education is causing a bunching of qualifications at the higher levels, which means that employers cannot easily discriminate between different apparent skill levels. As a result they reduce the rewards for such skills.

Transgressive desires: new enterprising selves in the new capitalism

Abstract: The growth of self-employed enterprise and the supposed ascendancy of the `enterprising self' are commonly associated with the forces of flexibilization and individualization in contemporary work arrangements. What is driving these forces and their effects can be understood, in part, by examining what psychoanalytic theory would name desire. The focus here is upon the dynamics of desire among individuals who leave jobs to enter the growing ranks of the self-employed. Drawing from findings of a qualitative study of such new women entrepreneurs across Canada, changing concepts of the enterprising self are explored with specific attention to the relations between their desires and their conception of work. This article addresses three questions in particular: How is desire enmeshed in the development of enterprising selves? How do women come to desire work through self-employed enterprise, often entailing personal and economic pain? Do these desires configure possibilities for new alternatives in enterprise?...

Spectres of Marx and Braverman in the Twilight of Postmodernist Labour Process Research

Abstract: John Bellamy Foster's 1998 introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital (1998) missed an opportunity in failing to engage the industry of (largely British)...

Informal Labour Market Governance: the Case of the British and German Media Production Industries:

Abstract: This article is concerned with labour market transactions in the occupational labour markets (OLM) of the media production industries of Germany and the UK. In both countries, labour markets are characterized by a high inter-firm mobility of workers and patterns of short-term employment and freelance work. In this environment, missing standards produce uncertainty about skill levels of workers and qualification needs of firms. As a result, co-operation costs increase and opportunism becomes possible. It will be argued that, in the absence of manifest labour market institutions such as apprenticeships or skill certificates, which traditionally safeguard OLM transactions, the use of intermediaries and restriction of access will take over as informal mechanisms for governing the labour market. Labour market data from interviews with media firms in Germany and the UK, and from surveys on German and British media professionals, are used in order to test this hypothesis.

Ethnicity and Female Labour Market Participation: a New Look at the Palestinian Enclave in Israel

Abstract: The enclave model and the cultural model have often been used by sociologists to explain the patterns of participation of minority women in western labour markets. While the cultural models explain, in general, the mechanisms that restrict women's employment, the enclave models, by contrast, explain the mechanisms that facilitate women's labour market participation. Using data from the 1995 Israeli population census and assuming these theoretical models, this paper aims to examine the labour market participation pattern of three groups of women in Israel: the Muslim-Arabs, the Christian-Arabs and the Druze-Arabs. The results indicate that the participation of Arab women in the Israeli labour market is determined primarily by their ethnic and religious affiliation, education (particularly post-secondary and academic education), marital status and age. By contrast, the ethnic enclave was found to exert a differential influence: its influence on the labour market participation of Muslim women was positive, w...

The Uneven Geographies of Informal Economic Activities: a Case Study of Two British Cities:

Abstract: This article explores the uneven geographies of informal economic activities. Drawing upon 511 interviews conducted in higher- and lower-income neighbourhoods of one affluent and one deprived city in Britain, we explore whether the capabilities of households to perform necessary work and household work practices vary across space. We reveal not only the ways in which household work capabilities and practices vary between areas, but also the complex spatial variations in the extent, character and reasons for households participating in self-provisioning, mutual aid and paid informal work. To conclude, we explore the implications of our findings both for understanding uneven development and for policy making.

Labour Market Flexibility in the Netherlands: Looking for Winners and Losers

Abstract: Almost two decades have passed since Dutch employers, unions and the government, in their struggle against unemployment, agreed on a policy to increase labour market flexibility. Over the years the share of flexible jobs in the Netherlands has gradually increased to around ten percent. According to some parties the introduction of more labour market flexibility would lead to more inequality and a division in the labour market between workers with permanent employment and an underclass of women, immigrant workers and poorly educated workers with temporary contracts.The Dutch government has always claimed that a special set of legal rules regarding labour market flexibility would prevent the development of such an underclass. In this article three questions are addressed: Who has a flexible labour contract and who is in permanent employment? What is the pattern of transition to permanent contracts? What are the consequences for wage rates for those on permanent or flexible contracts respectively? The answers to these questions are provided using panel data for the period 1986‐96.The results show that labour market flexibility has been introduced into the Dutch labour market without detrimental consequences for specific groups of workers.

Labour Market Integration and Institutions: An Anglo-german Comparison

Abstract: This article compares processes of labour market entry and early career stages in Britain and West Germany. It starts by looking at the characteristics of the respective institutional structures in which human capital is formed and allocated. The two national systems of formal institutions can be regarded as generating particular modes of coordination between education and the labour market, that is, the labour market integration of young people follows different rules in the two countries. A frame of reference is provided by a general model that distinguishes between a horizontal, a vertical and a temporal dimension of the process of integration into the labour market. These dimensions are further pursued in empirical terms: here, the major aims of the article are to assess the effects of formal qualifications on the quality of first jobs and to analyse the multi-dimensional stability of entry positions in early careers. In Britain, coordination is, to a larger extent, achieved by criteria of timing, in ...

Jobseekers and Gatekeepers: the Role of the Private Employment Agency in the Placement of the Unemployed:

Abstract: This paper discusses two conflicting discourses about the role of temporary work agencies. Some labour market analysts argue that they mobilize the unemployed labour reserve to undercut established...

Barriers to Participation in Residual Rural Labour Markets

Abstract: Structural change in rural areas has led to a differentiation in the ranges of experience of rural life. Within generally prosperous localities, some individuals may be unable to achieve what is widely accepted as an adequate standard of living. This article focuses on the barriers that individuals face with respect to participation in residual local labour markets in rural areas. A variety of factors influence capacity to participate. Empirical evidence is provided from a study that used in-depth interviews in two rural case study areas. The article assesses the barriers influencing labour market participation identified in the interviews, including the mismatch between skills and opportunities, recruitment practices, accessibility, the costs of labour market participation and housing. All may be influenced by the rural nature of the locations. The approach offers a framework for a qualitative analysis of labour markets from an individual perspective, avoiding the presumption of a common experience of a ...

The Migration of Bureaucracy: Contracting and the Regulation of Labour in the Telecommunications Industry

Abstract: This is a study of the reconfiguration of bureaucracy, based on a case study of subcontracting within BT plc, the UK's largest telecommunications firm. The 1990s witnessed significant quantitative and qualitative changes in the utilization and management of subcontracting. The expansion in the use of subcontractors in this period was paralleled by reforms to the processes of negotiating, administrating and monitoring contracts. This article traces these developments and analyses their implications. The continuing process of reform saw a significant redrawing of the boundaries of responsibility between the patron firm and its supplier, as discrete elements of the production process were transferred to the remit of subcontractors. This migration of responsibility was, however, predicated upon the exportation of bureaucracy, from the patron to the supplier; the relocation of the bureaucratic mechanisms appropriate to the management of the widening range of tasks. The movement towards an increased reliance on...

A Divided Working Class? Planning and Career Perception in the Service and Working Classes

Abstract: The contrast between the service class and the working class is central to much class analysis. This structural distinction, based on differences in the employment relationship, is analytically powerful, has validity, and is not in question here. The working class, however, is not homogeneous in all respects. This paper focuses on a sizeable group within the working class who perceive themselves as having (or having had) a career. As well as having this perception, they exhibit a forward-looking perspective, both in the world of employment and with regard to more general planning. They demonstrate degrees of planning, in work and non-work areas, strikingly comparable to service class respondents, and significantly greater than working class respondents without career perceptions. They believe that they can achieve their plans and indeed some have done so successfully. This exercise of forethought is materially aided by this group's possession of rather greater resources of various kinds than the rest of t...

The Technicization of Sales Work: an Ethnographic Study in the US Electronics Industry

Abstract: When do salespeople become technical experts, and when does sales work become technical in nature? To address these questions, this study presents a typology of markets and compares the impact of the structure of knowledge on the organization of sales practices in a mass and in a non-standard market in the electronic industry. A year-long ethnographic study in the United States shows that the technicization of sales occurs only in the non-standard market, in which buyers do not possess knowledge on products' quality and in which no common image of use exists. The technicization of sales is manifested in a larger percentage of engineers in the sales force, an infusion of engineering knowledge into initial sales interactions, and in a greater dependence on social and interactive skills. The technicization of sales is further compounded by the need to communicate contextual knowledge. Co-development and shared practice emerge as dominant forms of work organization in the non-standard market.

Does women's employment reduce poverty?: Evidence from Israel

Abstract: This article focuses on two dimensions of the effect of women’s employment on poverty. On the micro level, it examines the effects of women’s employment on the odds of their household being poor, and, on the macro level, it examines the effects of women’s employment on poverty rates in society. Analysing Israel’s 1996 Income Survey, our findings confirm the general argument that women’s employment is negatively related to poverty, in both female- and couple-headed households.The findings show that poverty levels are substantially lower in households in which women participate in the labour market, either on a full-time or on a part-time basis, than in households in which the woman is not economically active. At the macro level, our simulations demonstrate that increasing women’s employment, even to a part-time level, would reduce poverty in both couple- and femaleheaded households, and would reduce the economic disparities between these two types of households. Our findings also suggest that while universal employment of female heads of household has an unequivocal equalizing effect on poverty rates, universal employment of women in couple-headed households increases the poverty rate.These findings reveal the different selection processes of women in female- and couple-headed households into paid employment.