Smiling Down the Line

Bob Russell is an associate professor in the Department of Employment Relations at Griffith Business School, Griffith University.

List of Tables and Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments 1. New Workplaces: The Call Centre 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The Three Changes 1.2.1 ICTs and the Technical Division of Labour 1.2.2 Globalization and the Social Division of Labour 1.2.3 Beyond Consent? Managerialism and Human Resource Management 1.3 The Rest of the Book 2. The Call-Centre Case Studies 2.1 Studying Call Centres: Methodological Matters 2.2 The Centres 2.3 Summary 3. Making a New Occupation 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Recruitment and Selection of Call Centre Labour 3.3 Employment Status 3.4 Training 3.5 'Shall I Stay or Shall I Go?': Attrition and Retention in Call Centres 4. The Call-Centre Labour Process (1): The Division of Labour, Work Effort, and Job Skill 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Experiencing the Labour Process: Work Intensity and the Effort Bargain 4.3 Call Centres and Job Skills 4.4 Emotional Labour in Call Centres 4.5 Conclusions 5. The Call-Centre Labour Process (2): Technological Selection and the Means of Communication in Info-Service Work 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Theoretical Issues 5.3.1 The Case Study: What Did Management Want? 5.3.2 Between the Cup and the Lip: The Adoption of CMS 5.4 Conclusions 6. HRM and Call Centres: Culture and Identities 6.1 Introduction 6.2 HRM in Call Centres 6.3 Identity in the Call Centre 6.4 Accounting for Organizational Identities 6.5 Conclusions 7. Globalizing Info-Service Work: Outsourcing to India (with Mohan Thite) 7.1 Introduction 7.2 The BPO Case Studies 7.3 Skills and the Global Division of Labour 7.4 Work Intensity 7.5 HRM and Identity in BPO 7.6 The Contradictions of BPO 7.7 Conclusions 8. Discontent, Resistance, and Organizing in Info-Service Work 8.1 Introduction: Work Relations in Call Centres 8.2 From Partners to Pariahs: Unions in Australian Employment 8.3 From Resistance to Organizing, or Organizing as Resistance: Unions in Call Centres 8.4 Unionization in the Australian Case-Study Sites 8.5 A Postscript from Australia: Work Choices and Beyond 8.6 A Note on Resistance and Organization in Indian BPOs 9. Concluding Remarks Notes References Index