Despite formidable obstacles, a small but growing number of U.S. companies rccognize that today's domestic and international markets require them to transform their production process. On the basis of more than ten years of survey data and the evidence of case studies, Eileen Appelbaum and...

The author analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Total Quality Management and Self-Managed Teams, as compared to mass production approaches to service delivery, among customer service and sales workers in a large unionized regional Bell operating company. Participation in self-managed teams...

This introduction to the special issue on the globalization of service work provides an overview of the call center sector and its development in coordinated, liberal market, and emerging market economies. The introduction’s authors situate this research in literature on the comparative...

This paper examines the economic logic of organizing field technicians into self-managed teams, an approach to work organization that shifts the division of labour from a hierarchical to horizontal one. Economic efficiencies arise through the integration of direct and indirect labour tasks and...

Using data from a 1998 establishment-level survey in the telecommunications industry, the authors examine the predictors of aggregate quit rates. They draw on strategic human resource and industrial relations theory to identify the sets of employee voice mechanisms and human resource practices...

This case study of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) demonstrates the value of resource dependence and contingency organizational theories-two branches of organization theory, which has most commonly been used to interpret firm behavior-for analyzing union revitalization. Consistent...

The last twenty-five years of the twentieth century was a period of extraordinary change in organizations and the economies of the developed world. This continues today. Such has been the scale and momentum of events that, for some analysts, the only comparable periods are the early part of the...

The last twenty-five years of the twentieth century was a period of extraordinary change in organizations and the economies of the developed world. This continues today. Such has been the scale and momentum of events that, for some analysts, the only comparable periods are the early part of the...

There has been a surge of new interest in federal training policy. This momentum has been fueled by concerns with productivity and competitiveness, whereas past federal policy has been more focused upon distributional issues. A wide range of new proposals have been put forth, and high on the...

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...