This paper contributes to current debates about gender, work and skill in the service economy, focusing specifically on the case of women's employment in telephone call centres. The paper asks whether call centre employers are capitalising on women's "feminine" social skills, and examines the...

The massive rise in UK call centre employment in recent years has been closely related to developments in the finance sector. This paper analyses these developments in order to contextualise the organisational experiences of unions in the sector. Recruitment activity in both hostile and...

The advent of the call centre workplace phenomenon has re-kindled debate within labour process theory, particularly in relation to control issues concerning service sector work and routinisation of clerical and white-collar labour. There has been rather more limited discussion of employment...

Call centres represent a blend of old and new employment features that are only partially grasped by existing theoretical alternatives. Labour process theory suggests that call centres are best depicted as new electronic assembly lines of fragmented, low skill service labour. Second-wave...

Tertiary labour is the fastest growing form of work in the West. Additionally, computer and telecommunication mediation of labour is increasingly prevalent. However, little research focuses on subjectivity in technology-mediated tertiary labour. Taking a Foucaultian orientation, this paper...

Intorduction : Theorizing the gendering of the knowledge economy : comparative approaches / Sylvia Walby -- Gender and the conceptualization of the knowledge economy in comparison / Karen Shire -- Comparative livelihood security systems from a gender perspective, with a focus on Japan / Mari...

Adopting an internal marketing approach, this paper attempts to provide a deeper understanding of the organisational commitment — service quality relationship in the service context. This is done by empirically testing the relationships that the three components of organisational commitment...

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,...