- Title
- Collaboration, co-operation or collusion? Contrasting employee responses to managerial control in three call centres
- Creator
- Nyberg, Daniel; Sewell, Graham
- Relation
- British Journal of Industrial Relations Vol. 52, Issue 2, p. 308-332
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2012.00920.x
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- This article draws on ethnographic studies of three call centres in a single, medium-sized insurance company to explore how employees responded differently to similar techniques of managerial control. Considering recent discussions of compromise in the workplace, we identify a response to control that sits between implacable resistance and supine acquiescence. We style this collusion and distinguish it from other states of compromise, such as collaboration and co-operation. Drawing on the work of Edwards et al., we argue that a dynamic and politically sophisticated collusive compromise can exist between parties whose control and developmental concerns are in conflict. From this position, we extend existing theories of compromise: (a) to accommodate different permutations of control and developmental concerns; and (b) to predict when collaboration, co-operation and collusion are likely to occur under ostensibly similar conditions of managerial control.
- Subject
- managerial control; compromise; collaboration; collusion
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1356029
- Identifier
- uon:31589
- Identifier
- ISSN:0007-1080
- Language
- eng
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