The big picture franchise -who has it and what do they claim?hose 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. sThe disappearance of the 'old economy' characterized by large firms, mass production and standardized work; supplanted by flexible, creative, knowledge-based labour in a largely service context. s A shift from technical, financial or bureaucratic controls to cultural coordination, internalized commitment and self-discipline among employees.sThe substitution of hierarchy by networks, boundaryless or decentralized units in a globalized world in which private capital is the only significant actor, with the state and labour marginalized.There is some recognition that not everyone is a winner in these scenarios. A frequent distinction is drawn between core and peripheral employees. Gorz argues that companies have now largely eliminated the capital-labour antagonism, 'for the stable core of its elite workers and shifts those antagonisms 359Work, employment and society

You have found out something: The hand that knows his business won't be toldTo work better or faster -those two things. Robert Frost, Collected PoemsNow you see it, now you don'tThere is little that more graphically indicates the normative character of much social science than its handling of misbehaviour. There is a great deal of evidence, particularly gathered from ethnographic research, indicating that misbehaviour at work is prevalent at all levels and amongst all types of employment (Fleming and Spicer, 2007). Research has revealed tendencies to misbehave -and especially for employees to innovate non-sanctioned ways of responding to work and of evading attempts to control what they do. Yet, at the same time, there are also tendencies amongst social scientists and others to overlook such behaviour or to minimize its importance.

Call centres are growing rapidly and are receiving attention from politicians, policy makers and academics. While most of the latter focus on work relations, notably patterns of control and surveillance, this paper explores the role of recruitment, selection and training in the shaping call centre labour. The paper uses data from a case study of a call centre (Telebank) to argue that the increased significance of social competencies within interactive service work gives these procedures greater salience and that they are used by management to address the indeterminacy of labour, in part, outside the labour process. Primary data from management and customer service representatives is used to examine and contrast their respective perceptions of recruitment, selection and training. The paper shows the contested and contradictory tendencies associated with how a particular company identifies and then uses social competencies. Tensions in the labour process between the mobilization of employee attributes and the deliberate moulding and standardization of such competencies is merely part of wider and unresolved tensions concerning the contested nature of emotional labour and the demands of quantity and quality in the management of call centre work. Call centres represent important new forms of work; both in terms of the increasing size of the sector and number of employees (Datamonitor, 1998) and through the nature of the labour process. Understandably, therefore, call centres are attracting an increasing amount of academic attention. Equally unsurprisingly the work process and its attendant control and employment relations has been the primary focus of debate (Fernie and Metcalf, 1997; Frenkel et al., 1998). Given that these employees will be working in an environment where job tasks are often highly scripted and performance is closely monitored, some authors have

Though perspectives underpinning research may have differed sharply, industrial sociology at its best has been able to uncover the variety of workplace resistance and misbehaviour that lies beneath the surface of the formal and consensual. The paper argues that this legacy is in danger of being lost as labour is taken out of the process and replaced by management as the active and successful agency. While there are a number of practical and theoretical forces shaping this trend, the paper identifies the growing influence of Foucauldian perspectives. It goes on to develop a critique of the way in which such theory and research overstates the extent and effectiveness of new management practices, while marginalising the potential for resistance.

Call centres represent a new strategy by capital to reduce unit labour costs. While this strategy has been applied to many different types of work, it is particularly successful in cutting costs in routine interactive service encounters. Telebank, the case study research site, is one of four integrated call centres throughout the UK. Data collection includes taped semi-structured interviews with customer service representatives and managers as well as non-participant observation of recruitment, training and the labour process. This article argues that management has developed a new form of structural control. Theoretically this draws heavily on Edwards's concept of technical control, but not only is this shown to be extended and modified, it is also combined with bureaucratic control, which influences the social structure of the workplace. Contrary to Edwards such systems are not distinct; rather they are blended together in the process of institutionalizing control. Part of the rationale for this is to camouflage control, to contain conflict by making control a product of the system rather than involving direct confrontation between management and workers. Despite such attempts the struggle for transforming labour power into profitable labour remains, and the article ends by exploring confrontation between workers and managers and worker agency more generally.