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This study inquires into emotion work performed by call center operators. Twelve call center operators were interviewed. Qualitative methodological strategies were utilized, where the focus of the thematic content analysis was on comprehension of the call center operator's work characteristics, the organization's display rules, and the emotional self-management strategies utilized. Two types of emotional self-management strategies were found: cognitive and behavioral. The organization acknowledged that people are not always able to handle the affective cost in relation to emotion work, offering emotional support and models concerning affective self-management strategies to be used. This organizational assistance strongly influenced the choice of strategies, for the call center operators most frequently used strategies taught by the organization. Emotion work was influenced by variables concerning the work context, factors that either favored or made the work, perceptions, evaluations, and the workers and the customers' affective states problematic. Emotion work was crucial in the call center operators' working routine, whenever the customers became aggressive, and social support made the task of displaying predominantly positive feelings less arduous.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe associations between the strategic (market/industry) context, the operational requirements, and the work design of in‐house, inbound call centres in the financial sector.

This cross‐sectional study uses data from a survey conducted between February 2002 and September 2005 as part of the Global Call Centre Industry Project, which included call centres from 17 countries. The present analysis is based on a sub‐sample of 375 call centres from that survey.

Managers of in‐house, inbound call centres in the financial‐services sector claim that they adopt a relationship‐oriented approach to the work of their call centres; however, the present study demonstrates that they fail to design their employees' work appropriately to meet this requirement. This is especially the case for call centres in the insurance sector.

The original data collection was undertaken in a much broader context than this delineated study. There is a need to develop the concepts of relationship building and work design in the context of call centres. There is also a need to explore the perspective of employees with regard to operational requirements and work design and the customer's perception of service quality.

If managers of call centres in the financial‐services sector really wish to encourage relationship building between employees and customers, they need to reconsider the current work design of their call centres.

The paper enhances knowledge of how operational requirements are linked to work design in call centres.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the experience of women working in New Zealand call centres after finding contrary evidence in the international research which suggests call centre work does not offer career opportunities for its mainly female workforce. The research seeks to explore the career progress of women in a selection of call centres to determine whether the New Zealand employment relations context contributed to outcomes different to those reported in the international research.

Case study methodology and six different call centre types were used to find 32 women who had experienced career progress. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were held with the women and senior management representatives at each organisation. Analysis of interview transcripts identified common themes and patterns across the case studies. Insights were gained from survey responses from 60 entry‐level workers, many of whom were return‐to‐work mothers, new immigrants or students.

The findings demonstrated that women were achieving considerable career success in the call centres investigated. Management practices accommodated their different labour market needs and respondents spoke about their passion and enjoyment of call centre work. The entry‐level workers reported that being part of the call centre workplace, allowed them to meet people, develop new skills and confidence while enhancing their career prospects. At many levels, call centre processes seemed to have enabled respondents to become competent, connected and confident workers.

Contrary to the international portrayal of call centre work and the career prospects for female workers the paper highlights the need for researchers to link employment outcomes to particular employment contexts.

Workplace temporalities are being reshaped under globalization. Some scholars argue that work time is becoming more flexible, de-territorializing, and even disappearing. I provide an alternative picture of what is happening to work time by focusing on the customer service call center industry in India. Through case studies of three firms, and interviews with 80 employees, managers, and officials, I show how this industry involves a “reversal” of work time in which organizations and their employees shift their schedules entirely to the night. Rather than liberation from time, workers experience a hyper-management, rigidification, and re-territorialization of temporalities. This temporal order pervades both the physical and virtual tasks of the job, and has consequences for workers’ health, families, future careers, and the wider community of New Delhi. I argue that this trend is prompted by capital mobility within the information economy, expansion of the service sector, and global inequalities of time, and is reflective of an emerging stratification of employment temporalities across lines of the Global North and South.

Describes a production scheduler, which utilizes a hybrid push/pull approach to scheduling and exploits the expert system technology in order to obtain satisfactory solutions. The scheduler is applied to a multi‐stage production and inventory system, managed by make‐to‐order, with a large variety of incoming orders. The search for solution is made in respect of the due‐dates and under efficiency constraints (minimum lot, maximum storehouse levels, etc.). Considers order aggregation, both at portfolio and production level. Provides a dynamic rescheduling mechanism. Outlines theoretical arguments in favour of the scheduler and notes practical advantages as a consequence of the application of the scheduler in a firm which utilized a traditional despatching system.

The purpose of this paper is to study how contact centre employees rationalize the perceived problems of an open plan contact centre environment.

The paper applies a framework of four different orientations towards the working environment: the object orientation, system orientation, people orientation and territory orientation. Interviews in three contact centre environments with 28 interviewees were carried out, in order to test whether the framework could be used to analyse the ways the contact centre employees rationalize their working environment. The data were analysed with a qualitative content analysis.

It was possible to find four ways to rationalize the working environment from the speech of the contact centre employees: object‐oriented, system‐oriented, people‐oriented and territory‐oriented rationalization. Persons with the same dominant way of rationalization had internally coherent ways of constructing the reality of their workplace and a common way to justify the existing spatial solutions.

This research is limited to the insights of 28 contact centre workers. Their experiences of their working environment were studied without an attempt to objectively assess whether the problems they named were real or not. The results are not generalizable in the traditional statistical sense.

The research on workplace‐related issues in a contact centre context is limited. Contact centre work is demanding but the physical working environment can be used to minimize the negative consequences of these demands. Thus, it is important to raise understanding of the workplace‐related issues in a contact centre context.

This study sought to explain the high turnover rates in Philippine call centers using a cultural lens. Specifically, the study looks at the phenomenon of work‐life conflict and its impact on turnover intent. It also examined the moderating role of perceived organization support on the relationship between work‐life conflict and turnover intent.

The study utilized a two‐phased, mixed‐method approach. In the first phase, qualitative data from 30 interviews were obtained to validate the existence of the constructs among Filipino call center agents. In the second phase, 991 surveys were administered to quantitatively test the hypothesized relationships between the study variables.

Results show that work‐life conflict predicts intent to leave over and beyond that explained by job satisfaction. Findings also show that organizational support moderates the relationship between work‐life conflict and intent to leave. The results also reveal the context‐specific sources of work‐life conflict: physical and psychological impact of work schedule, social isolation and lack of social support.

The study focused on work‐life conflict and perceived organizational support. However, there are other variables that may be examined in future research such as personality, family, and organizational variables.

Beyond the traditional responses to the issue of work‐life conflict, the results suggest the importance of cultural nuanced responses to address work‐life conflict.

Although outsourcing is a boon to the economy of developing countries, policies encouraging call centers need to be coupled with an understanding of the personal and social costs of call center work.

This study highlights the importance of considering culture in viewing management practices and their impact on workers' behavior and wellbeing. It calls attention to the unique experience of call centers in developing countries and the importance of developing work‐life interventions that are contextualized to local culture.

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.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

Presents a microcomputer‐based finite scheduling approach to effective planning and execution of make‐to‐order production. Going beyond the traditional application of scheduling algorithms to prioritize jobs through work centers, the finite scheduling approach can be used to establish “smart” promise dates, manage the jobs through the work centers and enable supervisors to meet these due dates in the dynamic MTO environment.

Using data from an operational jobshop and a simulation‐based finite scheduling algorithm linked to pre‐ and post‐processing capabilities developed in Access, this research provides specific examples of establishing smart due dates and managing resources to meet those dates. We provide some what‐ifs in order to more fully explore the benefits of a finite scheduling system.

Through use of actual jobshop data, the paper demonstrates that finite scheduling can be effectively performed on standard computing equipment. It also provides an understanding of finite scheduling and demonstrates that such a system can be of significant value in a MTO environment.

Future research could review/compare various ERP packages and their scheduling components to provide guidance on selection and implementation.

The paper clearly indicates that managers, even of smaller companies, should be considering the use of finite scheduling.

The paper provides a new approach to finite scheduling using a combination of simulation and Microsoft Access on a personal computer. Additionally, it provides a very useful presentation for practitioners who want an understanding of finite scheduling and why they need to implement it.