Restructuring Gendered Flexibility in Organizations: a Comparative Analysis of Call Centres in Germany

Abstract

Telephone call centres are represented as the less skilled and externally flexible segment of the new economy. They are frequently cited as an exemplary case for neo-Taylorist standardization and automation of service work, where tasks are simplified and jobs are poorly paid and insecure. Through such a downgrading of working conditions, companies achieve numerical flexibility. This pattern has often been gendered, especially in computerized service and clerical work. A gendered segmentation of tasks and workforces has been a way for companies to legitimately become more numerically flexible. Especially in coordinated economies, part-time work plays a crucial part in the gendering of flexibility (cf. Nishikawa and Tanaka in this volume). The equation of downgrading, de-skilling and feminization may possibly be reiterated in call centres, another instance of ICT-supported flexible information work. Yet empirical findings suggest that call centres do not simply re-enact a Taylorist logic of rationalization and that in this new field heterogeneous patterns of gendering apply.1KeywordsCall CentreEmotional LabourEmployment FormClerical WorkOrganizational FlexibilityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.