Purpose – The purpose of this short paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes. Design/methodology/approach – The control-resistance literatures are described, and the necessity for field-led empirical accounts is amplified, as a precursor to introducing the...

The growth of service work has introduced the customer as a third party to the employment relationship. Yet dominant images of customer relations portray docile service workers offering de-personalized care to sometimes aggressive but otherwise not much more agential customers. This paper seeks...