Unpacking the Service Triangle: Arranging Power Relations Between Frontline Occupations

Abstract

Service work scholarship has insufficiently acknowledged the diversity of interactive frontline occupational categories within organizations. Nor has it paid enough attention to how frontline workers act collectively to deal with the structural contradictions in the service labor process to actually produce a service. This article studies both these questions using Anselm Strauss’ conceptual framework, articulation work. Based on in-depth qualitative research in a major French bank, this article highlights the power relations between two distinct groups of frontline employees responsible for managing customer complaints. It shows how these groups arrange temporary solutions to the structural tensions underpinning their activities. In doing so, this article makes two contributions to service work theory. First, it provides a more detailed picture of the service triangle which is enlarged by these arrangements between different groups of frontline workers. Second, it shows how lateral relations between frontline workers can contribute to the making of a “fragile service social order.”