CALL CENTERS (CENTRES) - Faculty of Industrial Engineering and ...

17. Batt, Rosemary. Strategic segmentation in front-line services: Matching customers, employees
and human resource systems, Int. J. of Human Resource Management, 11 (3), 2000, 540–561.
Abstract. This paper examines variation in the use of high involvement work practices in
service and sales operations. It is argued that the relationship between the customer and the
front-line service provider is a central feature that distinguishes production-level service activities
from manufacturing. In particular, through strategic segmentation, firms are able to segment
customers by their demand characteristics and to match the complexity and potential revenue
stream of the customer to the skills of employees and the human resource system that shapes
the customer-employee interface. Unlike manufacturing, where high involvement systems have
emerged in a wide variety of product markets, therefore, service organizations are likely to use
high involvement systems only to serve higher value-added customers because of the high costs
of these systems and the labour intensive nature of services. Data from a nationally random
sample of 354 call centres in US telecommunications documents this pattern: from classic mass
production approaches for back office workers and increasingly for front office residential service
agents, to greater involvement for small business service providers and high involvement practices
for middle-market service agents.
Keywords: High performance work systems, Strategic human resource management, Service
management, Telecommunications, Call centres
18. Belt, V., R. Richardson and J. Webster. Women’s work in the information economy: The case
of telephone call centres, Information, Communication & Society, 3 (3), 2000, 366–385.
Abstract. This paper is concerned with the work experiences and career opportunities of
women employed in technology-intensive offices known as telephone ‘call centres’. Call centres
have grown rapidly across Europe in recent years, creating a significant number of new jobs and
receiving considerable attention within the media, business and academic communities. However,
despite the fact that the majority of call centre jobs have been taken by women, researchers
have so far paid little attention to their position in this new ‘industry’. The article addresses
this research gap. In particular, it is concerned with the question of whether call centre work
is offering women new opportunities for skill development and career progression, or whether a
more familiar trend is taking place in which women are being drawn into a highly routinized,
‘de-skilled’ and de-valued area of work. The paper also uses the specific example of call centre
work in order to reflect on broader issues about the changing nature of women’s work and employment
in the so-called ‘information economy’.
19. Boddy, D. Implementing interorganizational IT systems: lessons from a call centre project, Journal
of Information Technology, 15 (1), 2000, 29–37.
Abstract. The growing power of computer-telephony integration (CTI) systems is encouraging
many companies to create call centres. These deal with a growing range of business processes
and, in doing so, can be used to challenge established organizational arrangements. The range
of human and management issues that need to be dealt with has yet to become clear. Some
insights into these are offered from a study of one call centre over 2 years, from shortly before its
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