Call centres: A decade of research

Abstract

Call centres have, over the past decade, become a central element in the way information services are produced and delivered to the public. Much as automobile factories or textile mills were treated as both objects of curiosity and as metaphors for their age, call centres have garnered attention both in their own right as a new means of organizing particular types of work and as an important venue from which to undertake the study of other elements of management practice, including human resource management. This paper critically examines all aspects of research that has been undertaken on call centres, from the publication of the first novel pieces of research up to the most recent contributions. A good deal of effort has gone into classifying call centres, comparing the organization of work in them with other types of work and considering the extent of variation between call centres. Depending upon the theoretical lens that is used (e.g. labour process theory, high‐performance work systems theory, HR perspectives, gender theory, etc.) different aspects of call‐centre work are emphasized and different conclusions regarding call‐centre employment and its possibilities are reached. These contrasting results are compared and evaluated in this review. It is also the case that the study of call centres invites critical reflection upon theories of management, and this is also entered into in this paper. Additionally, the continuous spread of call centres into new realms of professional work activity and into new spaces of the global economy throws up challenges that are brought to the reader's attention for our understanding of this approach to managing informational work.