Organizational Change and Control in Call Center Workplace

Abstract

The main goal of the paper is to interpret the concept of organizational change in the perspective of critical management studies, by analyzing both the discourses and the control practices used by management. We aim at denaturalize the concept of change related to transition from a bureaucratic model to a professional (post-bureaucratic) model of the call centers organizational design, showing how these discourses and practices reproduce control systems. For this purpose, two cases study of call center outsourced industry are presented. On one hand, we emphasize the bureaucratic nature of call center A associated with standardization of processes and products and where work is highly controlled and routinized. On the other hand, we observe a different image of call center: call center B can be described as a place where work is customized, workers are considered key resources with higher competences and skills that are able to give customers unique solutions and to give answer to complex questions. We suggest that these 'new practices' and 'new organizational approaches' are merely illusions of change. We argue that in professional model (call center B), control institutionalized through technology is strengthened and deepened by the use of post-bureaucratic control in shaping organizational behaviors, reproducing a Panopticon structure both in terms of electronic surveillance and in terms of behavioral (self) regulation and discipline.