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This study seeks to: involve team members in part of the actual design of training for their own team leaders; improve team leader knowledge and skills; and demonstrate the use of skill charting (SC) for learning and performance improvement.

Using focus groups of team members and q‐sort methodology we were able to have team members identify practical performance elements regarding the behavior of their team leaders. Integrating these performance elements into the training design for team leaders and using SC as a training tool, we were able to compare two groups of team leaders: one group (the study group) whose training focused, specifically, on the team‐generated performance elements and another group (the traditional group) whose training was focused on general, team leader performance elements.

In the perceptions of the team members, the S group team leaders, following training, performed more effectively regarding: response time, positive reinforcement, and focus on desired behavior of team members, than did the T group team leaders. Mean scores of ratings of performance were higher for S group team leaders than T group team leaders on all variables save one.

Owing to the nature of SC training, sample sizes could not be large; that is, sample sizes could not exceed 35 participants per each condition. Statistical tests are thus influenced. Other limitations involve the obvious time gap between actual training and the subsequent changes in behavior and performance. The study does offer considerable support to other research that makes use of SC training tools.

The activities undertaken in the study serve to involve team members, recognize their knowledge and skill, and empower them via decision making and personal recognition.

This study points to ways to involve team members directly in performance improvement and learning.

Metrics, data, algorithms and numbers play an unmistakably powerful role in today’s society. Over the years, their use and function have expanded to cover almost every sphere of everyday life so much so that it can be argued that we are now living in a ‘metric culture’, a term indicating at once the growing cultural interest in numbers and a culture that is increasingly shaped by numbers, as Beer (2016) also argues. At the same time, metric culture is not only about numbers and numbers alone, but also links to issues of power and control, to questions of value and agency and to expressions of self and identity. Self-tracking practices are indeed a manifestation of this metric culture and a testimony to how measurement, quantification, documentation and datafication have all become important tropes for managing life and the living in contemporary society. In this introductory chapter, I provide a general contextualisation of the topic of this edited collection along with an overview of the different chapters and their key arguments.

This paper aims to present reasons why social classifications which use occupations should seek to adopt “specific” approaches which are tailored to the country, time period and gender of the subjects under study.

The relative motivations for adopting a specific approach to social classifications are discussed and theoretical perspectives on specificity and empirical evidence on the contribution of specific approaches are reviewed. Also the practical costs of implementing specific social classifications are evaluated, and the authors' development of the “GEODE” data service (grid‐enabled occupational data environment), which seeks to assist this process, is discussed.

Specific approaches make a non‐trivial difference to the conclusions drawn from analyses of occupation‐based social classifications. It is argued that the GEODE service has reduced the practical challenges of implementing specific measures.

There remain conceptual and pragmatic challenges in working with specific occupation‐based social classifications. Non‐specific (“universal”) measures are adequate for many purposes.

The paper argues that there are few excuses for ignoring specific occupation‐based social classifications.

The paper demonstrates that recent technological developments have shifted the balance in the long‐standing debate between universal and specific approaches to occupation‐based social classifications.

Increasing turnover of frontline staff in call centres is detrimental to the delivery of quality service to customers. This paper aims to present the context for the rapid growth of the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in India, and to address a critical issue faced by call centre organisations in this sector – the high employee turnover.

Following a triangulation approach, two separate empirical investigations are conducted to examine various aspects of high labour turnover rates in the call centre sector in India. Study one examines the research issue via 51 in‐depth interviews in as many units. Study two reports results from a questionnaire survey with 204 frontline agents across 11 call centres regarding employee turnover.

This research reveals a range of reasons – from monotonous work, stressful work environment, adverse working conditions, lack of career development opportunities; to better job opportunities elsewhere, which emerge as the key causes of increasing attrition rates in the Indian call centre industry.

The research suggests that there are several issues that need to be handled carefully by management of call centres in India to overcome the problem of increasing employee turnover, and that this also demands support from the Indian government.

The contributions of this study untangle the issues underlying a key problem in the call centre industry, i.e. employee turnover in the Indian call centre industry context. Adopting an internal marketing approach, it provides useful information for both academics and practitioners and suggests internal marketing interventions, and avenues for future research to combat the problem of employee turnover.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a case study used in a strategic sales class that employs the use of work-based learning pedagogy to expose students to real-life cold calling experiences. This real-life cold calling experience involves students within the course building a target list of prospective students for a small liberal arts college. The students must then construct pre-call strategies, build rapport with prospective students and finally “close the deal” by having the prospective student visit campus.

This paper begins by describing work-based learning as a unique pedagogical method and the importance of cold-calling skills in the context of workplace skills in demand. Theoretical foundations in Lichtenstein and Lyon’s (1996) entrepreneurial skillset is analyzed, as is the application of “live” group projects. The case is then described in detail and focuses on the project itself, the personal and group incentives used in the course of the project, and finally, a review of the learning outcomes and desired skillset outcomes for the class.

The case shows that students can learn and implement the behaviors, attitudes and practices that make professional cold-callers successful. The impact on the university can also be seen since real contributions were made to the recruiting efforts of the college vis-à-vis higher matriculation numbers. The entrepreneurial skillsets and “live” group project literature is contextualized in light of the findings of the project. This research found that students engaged in varying levels of progress in their managerial, entrepreneurial, technical skillsets as well as levels of personal maturity. Finally, the authors provide guidance for future research to expound the findings of this project by testing the variables using quantitative methodologies.

The paper showcases an innovative pedagogic approach to exposing students to the best practices of cold-calling and allows them to exercise these tools real time as they make actual cold calls and work toward sales incentives. The focus on recruiting new students as customers of the college serves is not only active classroom learning, but it also serves mission-based outcomes to help the college achieve desired recruiting goals. This case study will provide a tool for small, liberal arts colleges to use which mobilizes faculty and students in the effort to recruit new students, in an environment where enrollment numbers are falling for this market sector in higher education.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in India has always been characterized by ungodly hours, monotonous job, low perceived value, dispirited efficiency resulting to high attrition level. Notwithstanding the ever rising attrition rate, it has become critical for the companies to satisfy their employees in order to retain them. The purpose of this paper is to determine what and how job‐related and demographic variables are associated with employee satisfaction of the BPO employees.

Data collected from 500 middle level BPO employees was analyzed using SPSS 16.0. T‐tests and Duncan's post hoc tests were done to compare the various dimensions of employee satisfaction across selected demographic variables such as gender, marital status, education, age and tenure. Correlation was done to find out the relationship between employee satisfaction and various job characteristics as well as demographic variables and finally, regression was done to find out the actual determinants of employee satisfaction.

There is difference of perception towards the job‐related variables on the basis of gender, marital status, education, age, and tenure. Correlations revealed that interpersonal relationships, career progression, salary, company policies, working conditions, and authority have significant positive relationship with employee satisfaction and only accountability had a significant negative relationship with employee satisfaction. Regression revealed the significant determinants of employee satisfaction which were interpersonal relationships, career progression, salary, gender, accountability, and authority.

The study exclusively used surveys to poll work‐related satisfaction from the employees working only in BPO in India and considers only ten job‐related variables and five demographic variables for the study.

The comprehensive study of employee satisfaction is helpful for both practitioners and academicians as it helps in disentangling the perceptions about employee satisfaction and also explains the variances among various groups of demographic characteristics. This will enable organizations to correctly gauge employee satisfaction based on the job‐related and demographic characteristics.

Now that the study has revealed the dimensions of employee satisfaction and the crucial determinants of satisfaction, each of these factors can be individually tackled to ensure employee retention.

The present study illuminates the existing theoretical foundations regarding employee satisfaction by exploring the detailed and ample responses provided by BPO employees in Indian industry; this can help practitioners to make robust managerial decisions.

This article examines the early post-World War II civil rights organizing of black women radicals affiliated with the organized left. It details the work of these women in such organizations as the Civil Rights Congress and Freedom newspaper as they fought to challenge the unjust conviction and sentencing of black defendants caught in the racial machinations of U.S. local and state criminal justice systems. These campaigns against what was provocatively called “legal lynching” formed a cornerstone of African American civil rights activism in the early postwar years. In centering the civil rights politics and organizing of these black women radicals, a more detailed picture emerges of the Communist Party-supported anti-legal lynching campaigns. Such a perspective moves beyond a view of civil rights legal activism as solely the work of lawyers, to examining the ways committed activists within the U.S. left, helped to build this legal activism and sustain an important left base in the U.S. during the Cold War.