It is also argued in the literature that organisations such as call centres are built on the principles of Taylor’s scientific management. Call centre work is frequently described as the “neo-Taylorism” of service activities (D’Alessio and Oberbeck, 2002). Just as many manufacturing organisations are moving away from scientific management and the production-line approach to workforce management, service organisations, and especially call centres, seem to be eagerly embracing this model. Jobs are narrowly constructed, contingent labour is used extensively, and work is mentally and physically demanding. Taylor and Bain (1999) make this comparison more explicit and draw attention to the intensive control systems applied in most call centres, pointing to the widespread monitoring and measurement of calls and the scripting and standardisation of customer service (Deery and Kinnie, 2002:5). Russell (2006:96) characterises work in call centres as an “assembly line of the head”, where conformity to key quantitative performance indicators inevitably leads to work disaggregation, intensification and process standardisation – the hallmarks of scientific management. The integration of
telephone and computer technologies, which defines the call centre, has produced new developments in the Taylorisation of white-collar work (Taylor and Bain, 1999:115). The underlying premise is that call centre environments are an extension of “Taylorist” approaches (Taylor and Bain, 1999:115). The efficiency characteristics of classical management theory, which emerged in the early twentieth century primarily under the umbrella of “scientific management”, address quantitative aspects of organisational effectiveness. For example, ACD and its associated techniques are similar to the objectivism idealised in Taylor’s scientific management (Winiecki, 2004:86). Taylor’s scientific management, which emphasised the importance of work methods to enhance worker productivity by breaking down work into individual tasks, may seem archaic today, yet it is often considered as a foundation for the study of organisational efficiency (Wren, 2004). Managers in twenty-first-century call centres seem to have embraced the principles of scientific management in order to achieve optimal productivity from their call centre employees (Bain et al., 2002). In this context, employees are perceived as a measurable entity with identifiable physical and mental traits that must be manipulated by management to fit the requirements of production (Braverman, 1974:124).
Moreover, there is a view that call centres are built on bureaucratic elements. Call centre workers appear to occupy “low discretion” and “low trust” roles, while management holds a high level of “technical”, “detailed” and “bureaucratic” control (Koskina, 2006:171). Deery and Kinnie (2002:6) describe the management of call centres as “mass customized bureaucracy”, while Korczynski (2002) refers to this approach as “customer oriented bureaucracy”. A number of social theorists have argued that monitoring in call centres is replacing bureaucratisation as the driving force in the rationalisation of
everyday work (Bogard, 2012; Lyon, 1994; Raven, 1993; Sewell, 1998). The use of EPM in call centres has created an environment in which practices are built largely on rationalising elements (Deery and Kinnie, 2002:3). Callaghan and Thompson (2001:13), argue that management in call centres has developed a new form of structural control. They extend and modify Edwards’ (1979) concept of technical control and combine it with bureaucratic control, which influences the social structure of the workplace. Reed (1999:46) suggests that bureaucratic control is giving way to a new control regime ideally suited to the dynamic, shifting and uncertain world in which contemporary organisations must operate – panopticon control. While bureaucratic control is obtuse, static and rigid, surveillance control is sharply focused, mobile and flexible. Only the latter is appropriately equipped to provide the simultaneous “tight loose” control processes and practices required by the new regime of globalised capitalist accumulation (Reed, 1999:53). Post-Fordist monitoring of production processes may actually be more complex and somewhat differently intentioned than mere electronic Taylorism, and may result in more extensive and intensive surveillance of individual workers (Bryant, 1995). The very principles of Taylorism have become intensified, extended and increasingly automated through the application of new technologies (Webster and Robins, 1993:248). To be visible in this way evokes a sense of vulnerability and powerlessness (Zuboff, 1984:344). Fernie and Metcalf (1998, cited in Hingst, 2006:2) contend that in call centres agents are constantly visible and the supervisor’s power through the computer monitoring screen has been “rendered perfect” and therefore does not actually have to be used. However, this argument does not ring entirely true, and observations of the call centre’s likeness to the panopticon may have been “grossly overdrawn” (Frenkel et al.,
1998:967). Bain and Taylor (2000:6) claim that a careful reading of Fernie and Metcalf’s (1998) research findings demonstrate profound flaws in the argument that the electronic panopticon has perfected supervisory power. In only two locations could the panopticon be said to apply even theoretically, and here the evidence is weighted conclusively against the presence of dominating regimes of surveillance. Moreover, there is ample evidence of continuing employee resistance, which raises a final methodological problem. Fernie and Metcalf (1998:10) rely exclusively on “documentary evidence, detailed questionnaire, lengthy semi structured interview and observation of working methods” from management sources. Despite claiming to have talked to employees, no evidence is presented, and consequently the perspective is clearly uncritically managerial in character, with the experience of agents in these “carceral regimes” wholly undocumented. The silence of the agents seems to confirm, for Fernie and Metcalf (1998), the assumption that they are passive subjects (Bain and Taylor, 2000:6). If the experiences of many thousands of call centre agents resemble those of the panopticon, the last thing they need to be told is that there is nothing they can do about it. Hence, the panopticon must be challenged, and this perspective should not be taken for granted. People may, in fact, be able to resist this type of power system (Bain and Taylor, 2000:17). Managers of call centres would certainly be surprised to discover that they exercise total control over the workforce (Bain and Taylor, 2000:115). If the subject is perfectly docile and compliant, then there is perfect surveillance, which is rarely the case (Ball, 2009:640).