Karen Shire

Service Work in Consumer Capitalism: Customers, Control and Contradictions

There is an important literature suggesting that the consumer has become a key focus of identity and figure of authority in contemporary society. Within this literature, however, there is little consideration of the role that the identification with the customer could play in management control within production, nor of the ensuing potential contradictions. This paper examines these issues in front line call centre work. Control in this setting is theorised as being informed by dual logics of customer-orientation and bureaucratisation. The paper shows the important use of norms of customer identification in control. It also highlights two levels of contradictions in the use of these norms. First there is the contradiction between continuing bureaucratic control and the attempts to develop normative control. Second, there are contradictions within the development of customer-related normative control. Specifically, the definition of the customer as the focus for normative commitment is a contested terrain, with systematic and significant differences existing here between call centre workers and management.

Temporary Work in Coordinated Market Economies: Evidence from Front-Line Service Workplaces

The growing use of temporary contracts in Europe raises the question of whether long-term employment relations are eroding in coordinated market economies, where protective regulations are historically strong. This paper, using data from establishment-level surveys conducted in 2003–2005, examines the institutional and organizational factors that have shaped the extent of use of temporary contracts in call centers in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. While differences in regulatory regimes appear to have influenced employer behavior in some cases, the exceptions are striking, as the countries with the most stringent restrictions on temporary workers were among the heaviest users of such workers. By contrast, firm-level strategies that retained work in-house and invested in work force skills and training were consistent predictors of the use of long-term contracts as opposed to temporary ones.

Collective Bargaining and Temporary Contracts in Call Centre Employment in Austria, Germany and Spain:

This study compares the effectiveness of bargaining institutions in regulating temporary contracts in Austrian, German and Spanish call centres. Unions’ capacities to bargain over the expansion and conditions of temporary contract use are shaped by bargaining structures and state regulation of various temporary contract types. National capacities to regulate the use of outsourcing and coordinate collective agreements with workplace bargaining are particularly effective in limiting the use of temporary contracts. Nonetheless, cross-national analysis indicates that employers are adept at exploiting very specific forms of temporary contracts in order to circumvent regulations and evade collective bargaining.

Gender and the Conceptualization of the Knowledge Economy in Comparison

This chapter poses the question of how best to conceptualize the new economic activities at the core of discourses on the transition to a knowledge-based economy from a gender perspective. The focus is on economic rather than political, social or cultural dimensions of change; nonetheless behind the available reclassifications of economic activities are understandings of the driving forces behind economic changes, which have implications for a gender analysis of the knowledge-based economy. The dominant view places the emergence of new economic activities in the context of political and economic liberalization and internationalization, driven by technological innovations, with consequences for firm organization, skills and the division of labour. The important questions from a gender perspective address the extent to which gender-based occupational and labour market segregation persists within the emerging domains of the knowledge-based economy, and whether cross-national differences in gender continuity versus gender transformation are evident.

Das Szenariobasierte Design als Instrument für eine partizipative Technikentwicklung im Pflegedienstleistungssektor

Die Entwicklung von neuen Technologien und Produkten fur den Dienstleistungssektor profitiert erheblich von einer Beteiligung der kunftigen Nutzer (Giesecke 2003). Hierbei geht es nicht nur darum eine Entwicklung zu gewahrleisten, die sich an den tatsachlichen Bedarf orientiert, sondern auch die spezifischen Eigenheiten des Einsatzfeldes fruhzeitig in die Technikentwicklung mit einzubeziehen (Compagna et al. 2011a). Ein wertvolles Instrument zur Umsetzung einer solchen partizipativen Technikentwicklung stellt das sogenannte Szenariobasierte Design (SBD) dar (Rosson/Carroll 2003). Im Kern ist das SBD ein narrativer Ansatz, wobei die Darstellung und Nacherzahlung typischer Handlungsablaufe des geplanten Einsatzfeldes in einzelnen Szenarien nach und nach mit der neu zu entwickelnden und zu implementierenden Technik angereichert werden (Nardi 1995). Die Zielsetzung ist hierbei selbstredend die Arbeitsund/ oder Lebensbedingungen der Personen des Einsatzfeldes durch den Technikeinsatz zu verbessern. Die schrittweise und iterative Anpassung, in der die Abstraktions- und Detailtiefe der Szenarien immer weiter zunimmt, begleitet und modelliert den gesamten Gestaltungs- und Entwicklungsprozess (Mack 1995).

Technologiegestützte Dienstleistungsinnovation in der Gesundheitswirtschaft

Der demografischen Wandel eroffnet vielfaltige Einsatzbereiche und einen wachsenden Markt fur neuartige Verknupfungen von Dienstleistungsangeboten und innovativen Technologien im Healthcare-Bereich. Fur die Gestaltung derartiger technologiegestutzter Dienstleistungsinnovationen fehlen bisher jedoch Konzepte und Erfahrungswissen. In diesem Sammelband werden verschiedene Ansatze und Methoden der nutzerzentrierten Technikentwicklung, sowie der Gestaltung von Dienstleistungen vorgestellt und die gewonnenen Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse - von der Bedarfsermittlung bis zur prototypischem Pilotierung von technologiegestutzten Dienstleistungen - reflektiert und an konkreten Anwendungsbeispielen illustriert.

Einsatz und Pilotierung mobiler Serviceroboter zur Unterstützung von Dienstleistungen in der stationären Altenpflege

In diesem Beitrag werden die Erfahrungen und Besonderheiten der Pilotierung mobiler Serviceroboter in einer stationaren Pflegeeinrichtung dargestellt. Der Hintergrund stellt das vom BMBF geforderte Projekt WiMi-Care dar. Die Hauptzielsetzung des Verbundvorhabens WiMi-Care war die Herstellung und Optimierung des Wissensaustauschs, um eine nutzerzentrierte Technikentwicklung im Pflegesektor zu ermoglichen. Durch die Anwendung des Szenariobasierten Designs konnte ein intensiver Wissenstransfer verwirklicht werden, im Rahmen dessen mehrere iterative Schleifen zwischen den Anwendern (Pflegekrafte und Bewohner einer stationaren Pflegeeinrichtung) und den Entwicklern mobiler Serviceroboter durchlaufen wurden. Die Pilotierung stellte dabei einen zentralen Arbeitsschritt fur die Verwirklichung einer auf die Besonderheiten von Pflegedienstleistungen ausgerichteten Technikentwicklung dar.

Private Labour Market Intermediaries in Cross-Border Labour Markets in Europe and Asia: International Norms, Regional Actors and Patterns of Cross-Border Labour Mobility

International and national regulatory changes over the past twenty years have established private employment services as market actors in the intermediation of the supply and demand for temporary contract labour. Through the expansion of networks of temporary agency branches internationally, often in the wake of foreign direct investments by home‐country client firms, the field research reported in this chapter shows that temporary staffing agencies now play a central role in the recruitment and placement of foreign labour, in areas such as administrative, sales and technical work. The cross‐border staffing services of private intermediaries are compared in two world regions, the European Union (EU) and East and Southeast Asia, and at multiple levels of analysis. The inter‐regional comparison shows that regulatory developments differ sharply between the EU and East and Southeast Asia, yet staffing firms in both world regions practice surprisingly similar forms of cross‐border recruitment and placement. Moreover, even in the European national employment systems where private intermediaries are legalized, staffing firms invent new and hidden forms of intermediation in the recruitment and placement of temporary migrant labour to circumvent local employment protections. The research reported in this chapter establishes that temporary staffing firms are central actors in the creation of cross‐border labour markets for skilled migrants, mediating school‐to‐work transitions across borders, contributing to the training and development of foreign national workforces, and to the management of circular migration and foreign subcontracting, all in the interest of meeting client demands for cheaper sources of skilled labour.

Comprehensive policy review of anti-trafficking projects funded by the EU

This report addresses four objectives: 1. To conduct a comprehensive review of European Commission (EC) funded anti-trafficking projects so as to enhance coordination, avoid duplication and provide a solid basis for coherent, cost-effective and strategic planning, including potentially for the further development of anti-trafficking policies at EU level, thereby supporting the dual aims of enhanced coordination and cooperation among key actors and policy coherence. 2. To map and analyse the distribution of EC-funded anti-trafficking projects according to their scope of intervention, geographic areas of intervention, fields, actors, target beneficiaries, funding level, types of output, policy recommendations and other relevant aspects. 3. To identify and assess the common, unique or complementary contribution of the impact and results of these funded projects to the objectives of the EU anti-trafficking strategy, including whether their contribution has yet been taken into account. 4. To identify trends, emerging research and policy questions

Beyond the Flexibility/Security Divide: Skills, Work Organisation, and External Employment in the German Knowledge-Based Economy

Continental European economies share a pattern of employment institutions, characterised by strong employment protections, investments in workforce training, and employment-based inclusion in social security and other welfare protections. In the German economy, as elsewhere, employment protections limiting dismissals constitute a key regulatory mechanism. Dismissal restrictions pose constraints on employment strategies, by blocking the ability of firms to easily adjust employment levels in response to market downturns and uncertainties. In the face of such constraints, firms in protected employment economies like Germany have found alternatives through more flexible use of internal labour markets. Labour market theory has pointed to the benefits of internal employment and the long-term employment relations they imply for reducing transaction costs and moral hazards, especially in skilled work contexts (Marsden 1999). Research on comparative capitalism has viewed employment protections as ‘beneficial constraints’ (Streeck 1997), since firms are forced to abandon strategies of hiring and firing (numerical flexibility) in favour of training and rotating staff to gain (functional) flexibility. Employment protections and the flexible internal labour markets they create contribute strongly to Germany’s successful alignment of strong economic performance with relatively high employment and social security for workers, rendering Germany one of the best cases of the coordinated market variety of capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001).