Hyunji Kwon

It’s all in the mix: Determinants and consequences of workforce blending in call centres

Supplementing the full-time permanent workforce with part-time staff is a widespread practice among firms. To better understand this dynamic, we evaluate how work organization choices influence the degree of part-time use by analysing North American survey data from call centre establishments. We also evaluate the effect of part-time use on the voluntary turnover behaviour of the full-time permanent workforce. For example, firms with greater reliance on a high involvement approach to work organization relied less on part-time use than those pursuing a low involvement approach. For firms that choose to rely heavily on part-time use, we find that this decision has consequences for their full-time permanent workforce, namely higher voluntary turnover among their full-time permanent staff. Interestingly, greater reliance on a high involvement approach appears to weaken the positive relationship between part-time use and voluntary turnover among the full-time employees.

Employer Strategies and Wages in New Service Activities: A Comparison of Co-Ordinated and Liberal Market Economies

Using survey data for call centre establishments in eight countries, we examine the relationship between wages and human resource practices. High-involvement work design and the use of performance-based pay are significantly positively related to wages, whereas intensive use of performance monitoring is negatively associated with wages. These relationships are larger among liberal economies compared with co-ordinated ones, but individual country differences are large and, in many cases, do not conform to expectations regarding institutional differences between liberal and co-ordinated market economies. The exception is Denmark.