'What happens when the phone goes wild?': staff, stress and spaces for escape in a BPR telephone banking work regime

Article Abstract:

This paper explores the experiences of staff working under a business process reengineering (BPR) work regime. We examine the nature of work within a team-based, multi-skilled and empowered environment within financial services. Despite mixed responses our case study indicates that for those employees who remain in employment after 're-engineering', working conditions may become more stressful and intensive. Although some staff may welcome those elements of a BPR work regime that facilitate a more varied work experience, the possibilities for satisfaction are often curtailed due to management's preoccupation with productivity and 'bottom line' results. In practice BPR is neither as simple to implement nor as 'rational' in its content as the gurus would have us believe. Partly for these reasons it is also not as coercive in its control over labour as some critics fear. While managers may only want to encourage employee autonomy that is productive to its ends, we identify a number of occasions where autonomy is disruptive of corporate goals. The paper seeks to add to our understanding of 'stress', 'resistance' and management 'control' by considering the ways in which staff engage in the operation of BPR so as to maintain and reproduce these conditions. This dynamic cannot be understood, however, outside of the relations of power and inequality that characterize society and employment. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Management, Case studies, Work environment, Job stress, Participatory management, Job satisfaction, Reengineering (Management)

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'How would you measure something like that?': quality in a retail bank

Article Abstract:

In this paper we explore a case study of total quality management (TQM) within the financial services sector. We demonstrate that a 'conformance to requirements' approach towards TQM is concerned with increasing management's physical and financial control over procedures, documentation, systems and people. Such an approach only partially addresses quality because (a) there can never be a precise 'conformance' and (b) this approach neglects customers and employees. We illustrate that often management do not understand the flaws/problematics and underlying philosophy behind TQM. Thus they continue to adopt 'inconsistent' approaches, such as attempting to control costs and employees while espousing the importance of the customer and the need for a trust-based culture. Yet, whether or not they understand the rationale behind TQM and attempt to widen their focus by considering people and customers more directly, we argue that management cannot easily adopt a 'consistent' approach because a preoccupation with controlling costs is bound up with career-based identities and hierarchical power relations. Ultimately we argue that management cannot control 'quality' in any simple top down way, essentially because of the 'indeterminacy' of labour, the 'intangibility' of customer satisfaction, and the complexity of organizational power and identity relations. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Quality management, Total quality management

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Governing through teamwork: reconstituting subjectivity in a call centre

Article Abstract:

The authors argue that teamworking, instead of being a mechanism of government, fosters instead a desire to govern. A call center is used as an illustration, in which teamworking is perceived by individuals to impinge on their self-autonomy, promoting resistance.

United Kingdom, Science & research, Public affairs, Personnel administration, Psychological aspects, Social aspects, Human resource management, Work groups, Teamwork (Workplace), Comparative analysis, Autonomy (Psychology), Company personnel management, Subjectivity, Employee attitudes, Call centers, Call centres

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