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Running the electronic sweatshop: Call centre managers' views on call centres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

George Robinson  and
Clive Morley
George Robinson
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Business, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne VIC, Australia
Clive Morley
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Business, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne VIC, Australia
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Abstract

Call centres have been described as ‘electronic sweatshops’ and ‘slave galleons of the twenty first century’ and, contrarily as progressive, team based and career fulfilling work environments. Drawing on data from a survey of call centre managers in Australia, it is shown that there are elements of call centre management with practices from both extremes of the descriptive continuum and in some instances these elements coexist in the one centre. Whilst call centres are managed with a high level of control and the work of call centre agents is subject to intense scrutiny and monitoring, the simplistic notion that they are electronic sweatshops, or that the metaphor of the Panopticon applies, is rejected.

Keywords

call centrespanopticonelectronic sweatshopmanagersagentsTaylorismelectronic surveillance
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 249 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2007

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