RICERCA ITALIANA     

The dimensions of organisational well-being in call centres. A research project into the working conditions of operators in call centres in Italy in an integrated and comparative perspective.

Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

Abstract

Call centres have spread rapidly in all industrialized countries, especially so during the Nineteen nineties, undergoing great changes over the course of time. With reference to the situation in Italy, it should be noted that in the last ten years call centres have been one of the major economic growth areas, assuming a major significance in the occupational and economic development of Italy.
The growing presence of call centres is a varied and complex phenomenon that, until now, has not been sufficiently understood and studied. In fact, if we start with the definition of a call centre provided by the CMMC (Customer Management Multimedia Call Centre), that is “an organization that – either inside companies and corporations or outside, but on their behalf – carries out specialized services of interaction with clients and/or users by means of the telephone and/or other media (such as fax, e-mail and internet) in a structured way”, we can see that this definition reveals that those centres that render services that are not of a commercial nature, such as those of public utilities can also be considered to be call centres (Gobo, 2002; 2007; Gobo, Rozzi, Zanini and Diotti, 2008).
Instead, the studies and the debate on call centres, have both concentrated almost exclusively on those of a commercial type, which has resulted in an incomplete and limited perception of the situation. Furthermore, the tendency of the research programmes already carried out on call centres >>>

Principal Investigator

Maurizio Bonolis Università degli Studi di ROMA "La Sapienza"

Research Objectives

The general objective of the proposed inquiry is to identify the factors related to the geographical opportunities and constraints, to the organizational models, to the professionalism required, as well as the factors inherent to the individual’s resources and aspirations that weigh most heavily on the level of well-being/discomfort of operators working within Italian call centres.
The research project has a national scope to it; for this reason, it will involve four provinces with differing geographical locations:
• Milan for North Italy;
• Rome for the Centre;
• Cosenza for the South;
• Catania for the Islands.
Hence, the research project is presented as a single entity and with the aim of providing comparisons on a geographical basis. However, internally, each local research unit will specialize in the analysis of different aspects of the problem under investigation and in the methodological planning of specific sections of the overall research plan.
Rather than analysing the universe of the call centres as an indistinct whole, it is considered appropriate to give due attention to all those factors related to the cultural, economic and social contexts within which they are situated. Particular attention will be reserved for all those aspects related to the organizational culture of call centres that, hypothetically, contributes to the establishment of working conditions having diversely orientated effects on the workers >>>

First Results

15.1.Originality of the theoretical approach.

From a sociological point of view, the debate on call centres – recognised by some authors as a symbol of flexible capitalism (Arzbacher et al., 2002, pg. 19)- is inserted in a wider debate on the development of new productive paradigms and job organisations that have put into discussion the taylonst-fordist productive paradigm. More precisely, the theoretical perspectives inside the debate on call centres, have been developing since the nineteen seventies following the process of globalisation. They articulate around two approaches, according toe the position assumed in continuum old vs. new economy (cf. Greco, 2006) In other words the deba is between who proposes the most light on analogies with the organisations of the “old economy” of the taylorist-fordist paradigm(Baldry, Bain, Taylor, 1998) and who identify with “the new economy” or “knowledge- based” economy (Butera, Donati, Cesaria, 1997; Campi, Palamara, 2002; Holtgrewe, Kerst, 2002). The two extreme positions can also be synthesised:

- return to taylorism (neo-taylorism) vs. greater control from the single subject on the technologies used;
- de-qualification of professional competences of workers vs. retraining of professional competences;
- diminution of client’s control vs. increasing client’s control ( the orientation given to the client is the principal strategy);
- standardization of procedures vs. flexibility of >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

12.1. The spread of Call centres
The Call centres have spread rapidly in all the industrialized countries, especially so during the Nineteen nineties, undergoing great changes over the course of time. In the United States as the sixties ended, they were transformed from simple, small offices for dealing with complaints about goods purchased, into complex organisations of some size that used the most sophisticated information and communications technology, delivering services to clients both incoming and outgoing (cf. Bagnara, Gabrielli, 2002). This profound organisational transformation, both in their objectives and in their operations, brought about the fact that in economic compared with sociological literature, current organisations are no longer called ‘call centres’ but rather ‘contact centres’, in order to highlight that they are true and proper centres for contacts between the company/body and the outside world (clients/users).
With reference to the situation in Italy, it is pointed out that in the last ten years call centres have been one of the fastest growing areas of business. From the approximately 700 employees in 1993, it quickly passed to 65,000 employees in 2002 and to 190,000 in 2004, before reaching the current 250,000, equal to 1% of the work-force. This pace of growth is in line with the European market, that today sees two million operators in call centres, equal to 1.2 % of the total work-force. This is therefore, a phenomenon that >>>