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Global Business Review
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Articles

Technical Call Centres

Beyond ‘Electronic Sweatshops’ and ‘Assembly Lines in the Head’

Premilla D'Cruz

Premilla D'Cruz is Assistant Professor, Organisational Behaviour Area, Wing 14, Room C, IIM Ahmedabad, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad 380 015, Gujarat, India. E-mail: premilla_dcruz{at}yahoo.com, pdcruz{at}iimahd.ernet.in

Ernesto Noronha

Ernesto Noronha is Associaté Professor, Organisational Behaviour Area, Wing 6, Room J, IIM Ahmedabad, Vastrapur, Ahmedabad 380 015, Gujarat, India. E-mail: enoronha{at}iimahd.ernet.in

Views on call centres as work systems represent a dichotomy. While, on the one hand, call centres are seen as conforming to an engineering or mass service model, on the other hand, they are described as high commitment service organizations. Technical call centres, studied as part of a larger qualitative study on experiences of working in call centres, back offices and medical transcription in Mumbai and Bangalore, India, were found to resemble high commitment service organizations. Task complexity, variety and autonomy were distinguishing factors in technical call centre jobs, the presence of which promoted employee well-being and satisfaction. At the same time, the emotional labour required by front-line service work remained an important part of the job profile. The emergence of cross-cultural interactions in call centre work, stemming from the contemporary outsourcing trend, is highlighted.

Global Business Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, 53-67 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/097215090600800104
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Home page
 Work Employment SocietyHome page
B. Russell and M. Thite
The next division of labour: work skills in Australian and Indian call centres
Work Employment Society, December 1, 2008; 22(4): 615 - 634.
[Abstract] [PDF]