[...]... rooted in the notion of professionalism, served organizational interests in maintaining conducive intra-organizational and extra-organizational environments that allowed business to flourish In the attempt to extend the theoretical generalizability of the core theme, we pursued three courses of action First, we compared agents’ notion of professionalism with academic literature from the sociology of the. .. empirical inquiry, rooted in van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology, describing the work experiences of Indian call centre agents employed in international facing call centres located in Bangalore and Mumbai Through a holistic thematic analysis, the study identifies being professional as the core theme that captures the essence of agents’ lived experience The notion of professionalism embraced agents’ identity, ... cultivated the notion of professionalism in employees through induction training, on-going socialization, performance evaluation mechanisms and other elements of organizational design, in order to gain their compliance and commitment to the realization of the organization’s agenda That professional identity is greatly valued as a symbol of social status Preface xi and upward mobility in the Indian context... that they preferred their calls to be recorded or listened to because it protected them from customer complaints (Belt et al., 1999a) Other research supports this latter view, highlighting that employees see call recording as a means of protecting themselves from unreasonable customer complaints by providing a record of their interaction and 16 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres giving them an... with each level of the organization putting pressure on the level below (Houlihan, 2000) The operationalization of the latter perspective is facilitated by technology 20 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres Though the adoption of team working is seen as central to the management strategy of call centres, in reality, team working here has a narrow meaning referring to employees working in physical... sparking off the offshoring trend Various facets of employee experiences of working in call centres have received research attention In the West and in Australia, numerous inquiries examining a range of substantive areas such as skills and training, career development, emotional labour, strain and wellbeing, control, resistance, and collectivization have been undertaken Chapter 1 presents the findings of. .. disciplinary actions, 14 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres training needs and so on (Richardson et al., 2000) Monitoring and surveillance thus contribute to maintaining the pace and standards of work, precipitating intensity and stress (Richardson et al., 2000) Two viewpoints have emerged in the academic literature about the effects of monitoring, surveillance and technobureaucratic controls in call. .. the role of technology in generating such inevitable stress by rendering call centres into new and effective manifestations of the increasingly capital intensive industrialization of service sector work where the work 22 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres performed is highly intensive, routine and controlled, cannot be ignored (Buchanan and Koch-Schulte, 2000; Richardson et al., 2000) While the. .. power relations that define the labour and capital relationship Her case study of a telecommunications call centre found that the primary opposition took the form of high rates of labour turnover, 18 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres including many who chose not to begin work after completing the training, a form of resistance likely to prove costly to the employee who then has no job, and which... stating that ‘employees leaving call centres are not more fully prepared for other, more challenging types of employment because they are not ordinarily expected to utilize more than basic keyboarding skills, and the communication and interpersonal skills that they do acquire are undervalued’ 8 Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres The insider–outsider dichotomy underscores that while there is often . alt="" Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres ii Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres Employee Identity in Indian Call Centres The Notion of Professionalism Ernesto. the enactment of professionalism within the organization. Overall, the fi ndings of the study highlight how the inculcation and internalization of professional