Restructuring Gendered Flexibility in Organizations: a Comparative Analysis of Call Centres in Germany

Holtgrewe, Ursula

doi:10.1057/9780230624870_10

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Unemployment and labour market insecurity may be worse for men than women (Oppenheimer, 1994) suggesting that these women are actually better off than less educated men. More sceptically, to encourage workforce stability in the face of high attrition and to enhance organizational flexibility, employers may intentionally recruit from ready supplies of women with lower qualifications and conducive domestic situations, who are willing to accommodate flexible shifts (Holtgrewe, 2006). Whether men with low qualifications gravitate to better or worse employment situations could not be evaluated, but assuming that call centres will continue to attract women with low qualifications, their inability to escape these roles means that inequalities are likely to persist.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beneath the glass ceiling: Explaining gendered role segmentation in call centres

Scholarios

Taylor

2011

Human Relations

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Although the call centre is much researched, the literature on gender remains surprisingly undeveloped given the importance of this setting for women's employment. This study of role segmentation in four call centres demonstrates women's disproportionate representation in more routinized mass production roles, as opposed to higher status or managerial grades. It also analyses three explanations -human capital, domestic status and supervisor career support. The evidence shows that women face a 'glass ceiling', first, on entry to the call centre in terms of human capital disadvantage and levels of domestic constraint and, second, within the call centre in their ability to secure supervisor support for career opportunities. We argue that even for women with similar career aspiration and human capital to men, domestic responsibilities create obstacles before they reach the glass ceiling, especially for managerial roles, and contribute thereafter to reinforcing their concentration in more intensive, lower status work.

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Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beneath the glass ceiling: Explaining gendered role segmentation in call centres

Scholarios

Taylor

2011

Human Relations

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“…Previous publications from these projects focused on developments in the telecommunications industry (Doellgast, 2008, 2009) or on work organization and employment structures (Holtgrewe, 2007; Holtgrewe and Kerst, 2002). The current analysis examines service unions’ changing approaches to regulating call centre work over time.…”

Section: The Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

A service union’s innovation dilemma: limitations on creative action in German industrial relations

Holtgrewe

Doellgast

2012

Work, Employment and Society

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This article examines union responses to the reorganization of call centre work in Germany, drawing on case studies from the telecommunications, financial services and subcontractor industries. Service unions initially adopted innovative strategies to organize these workplaces, in response to threats and opportunities presented by the rapid growth of a new ‘sector’. However, the new conglomerate service union, ver.di, has been unable to sustain these alternative strategies due to both institutional and organizational factors. The increasingly fragmented character of the German industrial relations system provides growing exit options for employers, while the union is disadvantaged by declining membership, resource scarcity and an organizational structure reflecting past industry (and union) boundaries. Ver.di thus finds itself in an institutionally enhanced innovation dilemma. Sustaining innovations necessary to organize new workplaces would require organizational slack and redundant resources. However, environmental pressures of changing employer strategies and institutional erosion limit the possibilities for mobilizing these resources.

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“…It is the “moment of truth” (Carlzon 1985, cited in Korczynski 2002:172) in determining how customers experience the call centre service and yet it is a component of the labour process that call centre managements are least able to control. Even with scripts, it still depends on frontline advisors to mediate the customer experience and in this way the call centre labour process makes “intense use” of largely unrecognised or unacknowledged skill (Holtgrewe 2007:251).…”

Section: Local or Global? Labour And Skill In The Call Centre Labour mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Call centres have captured women's skill and flexibility in all of these ways, although in some localities it is often students and school leavers (both male and female) rather than working mothers who may be the preferred labour supply. Not only do students, like working mothers, have “temporal needs” that make them willing to work below their skills levels (Arzbacher et al 2002:31) but also they can be more flexible and willing to work weekends and evenings in ways working mothers may not (Holtgrewe 2007:259). Women working part time often restrict their hours to accommodate their family responsibilities and are proving to be a rather rigid workforce as the demand for 24/7 services grows (Coyle 2005:74).…”

Section: Local or Global? Labour And Skill In The Call Centre Labour mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are You in This Country? How “Local” Social Relations Can Limit the “Globalisation” of Customer Services Supply Chains

Coyle

2010

Antipode

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The relocation of thousands of call centre and back office jobs from the UK to subcontractors in India in the early 2000s led to extensive speculation that the "globalisation" and "jobs flight" of service work was underway. Yet as this article illustrates some call centre customer services do not easily transfer to different local, social and cultural contexts. Call centre operations are embedded in local social relations and taken for granted skills that are difficult to reproduce outside of the locality which has produced them. Nevertheless the spatial dispersal of work can be as much a political process as it is an economic one. This article, which follows the journey of 1000 call centre jobs from the UK to India, illuminates how subcontracting service work "offshore" can facilitate a transformation of the employment relation and an escape from a difficult to discipline labour force.

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Restructuring Gendered Flexibility in Organizations: a Comparative Analysis of Call Centres in Germany

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Beneath the glass ceiling: Explaining gendered role segmentation in call centres

Beneath the glass ceiling: Explaining gendered role segmentation in call centres

A service union’s innovation dilemma: limitations on creative action in German industrial relations

Are You in This Country? How “Local” Social Relations Can Limit the “Globalisation” of Customer Services Supply Chains

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