Call Centers Case Study

In the past few years, the number of call centers all over the world has been increasing. This spike in the number of call centers all over the world is owed to the fact that more and more corporations are outsourcing their customer care businesses to other nations in the form of call centers. This trend is followed because in countries like India, China, etc. since the population huge, cheap labor is presence in abundance and thus saves the big multinationals a lot of bucks. This act of outsourcing is however a very resourceful concept for such nations as it is helps in the creation of employment.

Though, like everything in this world, some problem or the other arises, in industries as big as the call center industry and such problems affect the quality and quantity of the work done. This report aims at an analysis of the work and employee relations in Call Centers and their repercussions. Some of these problems have been efficiently illustrated by Taylor & Bain in their paper. These problems are:

Theoretical Problems

(a) The prison, the workplace:

In recent descriptions, taken by the authors, related to that of call centers, workers have described it as George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" with management akin to Big Brother. The case of call centers is that the employees are under continuous surveillance and are visible to the manager at all times. The authors feel that the process of capital accumulation and the frequently sought and contested after nature of power, control and authority creates the basic and fundamental differences between the institution and workplace. Moreover, the constant visibility and surveillance clause helps in the creation of a model of complete control which understates the voluntary nature o...

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... expressed and structured through trade unionism.

This case paper discusses about the problems in the employer and the employee relation and the treatment of the employees at work in call centers. This case study initially discusses about the criticism of the call centers by the scholars and then discusses the major dilemmas in the process of working of a call center. Then it talks about the survey that was carried out so as to collect quantitative as well as qualitative data regarding the working of a call center. While doing the survey it mainly touches upon the main dilemmas that the workers of the call center face that are stress, low employee turnover rate and high attrition rate, lack of opportunities due to flat organizational structure. All these factors have led to introduction of various trade unions in this industry to protect the rights of the employees.