Call Centre Employees' Responses to Electronic Monitoring: Some Research Findings

Lankshear, Gloria; Cook, Peter; Mason, David; Coates, Sally; Button, Graham

doi:10.1017/s095001700100037x

Cited by 23 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…Furthermore, surveillance is Janus-faced -it can generate real material and emotional benefits for those who are subjected to it (Lyon 2001). Employees may accept the legitimacy of routine surveillance as an inevitable aspect of the wages-effort bargain, as long as this does not encroach upon their perceived private sphere of life (Mason et al 2002;Lankshear et al 2001). Very few of the home-located workers we interviewed complained about the intrusiveness of electronic surveillance or felt that they were unduly subject to an electronic panoptican.…”

Section: New Surveillance Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerial Control of Employees Working at Home

Felstead

Jewson

Walters

2003

Brit J Industrial Rel

145

130

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Places of work constitute processes of management by facilitating 'visibility' (the possibility for supervisors and others to observe workers) and 'presence' (the ability for workers to participate in relations with co-workers and others). Working at home creates problems for both these aspects of managerial control. We suggest that managers seek to compensate for the relative lack of visibility and presence of home-located workers by generating a range of devices and social disciplines that together comprise loose networks of control. However, these responses are only partially successful since they are founded on contradictory assumptions and practices. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003..

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Section: New Surveillance Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerial Control of Employees Working at Home

Felstead

Jewson

Walters

2003

Brit J Industrial Rel

145

130

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Ball 2001Ball , 2003Owen and Ball 2000), interception of Internet and e-mail use and surveillance of call-centre employees' activities (cf. Lankshear et al 2001;Ball 2001Ball , 2003Ball and Wilson 2000). In below, documented experiences of surveillance at work will be discussed alongside general intuitions regarding what employees are likely to consider privacy sensitive in the context of work.…”

Section: Employees' Privacy Expectations At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Miller and Weckert 2000) and listening-in device in call-centers (Lankshear et al 2001). However, discretion regarding interpersonal communication and various types of correspondence are not claims exclusively addressed to employers.…”

Section: Employees' Privacy Expectations At Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy Expectations at Work—What is Reasonable and Why?

Palm

2008

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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Throughout the longstanding debate on privacy, the concept has been framed in various ways. Most often it has been discussed as an area within which individuals rightfully may expect to be left alone and in terms of certain data that they should be entitled to control. The sphere in which individuals should be granted freedom from intrusion has typically been equated with the indisputably private domestic sphere. Privacy claims in the semi-public area of work have not been sufficiently investigated. In this article, the case is made that employees have reasonable expectations on privacy at work. Firstly, in a descriptive analysis, employees' need for workspace privacy is spelt out. Secondly, a normative analysis explicates the reasons why privacy should be protected. The main thrust is to provide a more inclusive privacy concept and hence, a more adequate basis for privacy protection legislation and codes in the area of work. Contrary to prevailing workplace privacy protection, employees' need for local privacy should be accommodated as well as informational privacy.

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“…Lankshear et al (2001) found that staff in a call centre selling travel services welcomed rather than resisted the taping of customer calls. In one example directly relevant to employee‐management relations, a female worker recounted her successful use of taped calls as evidence in her defence against victimization by an individual manager.…”

Section: Management Control As a Resource In The Enhancement Of Workementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The analysis is grounded in the distinctive nature of the service context and proposes that the conception of formal control as a potential employee resource (rather than inherent constraint) may help explain why these forms are often experienced by workers in beneficial rather than aversive terms (Edwards et al, 1998; Frenkel et al, 1998; Grugulis et al, 2000; Kinnie et al, 2000; Knights and McCabe, 1998a; Lankshear et al, 2001; Leidner, 1993; Rosenthal et al, 1997). It challenges critical researchers to give more sustained attention to subjectivity and agency in this regard, by surfacing broader questions largely unaddressed in the literature, for example the basis upon which service workers distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ rules.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Management Control as an Employee Resource: The Case of Front‐line Service Workers

Rosenthal

2004

J Management Studies

102

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This paper argues that the conception of management control as an employee resource can enhance critical understandings of front-line service work. The argument is developed first through a critique of the contemporary control literature and its prominent worker images of smiling docility and haggard exhaustion. Seeking to encourage accounts more sensitive to the subjectivity and agency of service workers, the paper calls for more research attention to the question of how these employees experience and evaluate management control in relation to their self-defined interests. Analysis of the nature of contemporary service work suggests that one such perceived interest is likely to be interactive control, or the capacity of workers to control and influence those parties with whom they directly interact. Based on a close reading of the emerging empirical literature on services, the article explores various ways in which the bureaucratic, technical and normative regulation designed by management to control service workers is used in turn by workers to further their own control and influence over managers and customers. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.

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Call Centre Employees' Responses to Electronic Monitoring: Some Research Findings

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

Managerial Control of Employees Working at Home

Managerial Control of Employees Working at Home

Privacy Expectations at Work—What is Reasonable and Why?

Management Control as an Employee Resource: The Case of Front‐line Service Workers

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