Call Centre Work: Smile By Wire: Special Issue Of The European Journal Of Work And Organisational Psychology, Vol. 12 Issue 4 (european Journal Of Work And Organizational Psychology)

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In our current 'service economy' delivery of services is a major task for industry. Organizations are looking for ways to be accessible to their customers, to be able to promptly answer questions customers may have, or to provide reliable and up-to-date information. This has resulted in the creation of specialized departments for customer contacts: the call centre. Call centres can harbour jobs of different levels of qualification, ranging from unskilled people who are providing standard information (sometimes even reading from prescribed scripts) to frequently asked questions, to highly qualified personnel who deal with unique complex problems. Most articles compiled in this Special Issue are concerned with the working conditions at call centres. Zapf et al. report results of a comparison of a variety of variables between call centres and different kinds of jobs (service jobs, non-service jobs). Bakker et al. show that different kinds of working conditions have different kinds of effects; whilst job demands affect absenteeism via health problems, job resources affect turnover via involvement. Grebner et al. show how a great variety of resources and stressors including aspects of emotion work, which Zapf et al. have identified as particularly high in call centre jobs, are related to health outcomes in call centres. Dollard and Lewig found similar results in Australian call centres, showing that the effects are similar across countries and cultures. Finally, Shah and Bandi present a case study from India (a country where, given the low level of wages and high level of people's qualifications in ICT, many organizations have set up call centres), in which the demand for personnel development in high-knowledge customer-contact-centres is vividly described. This study explicitly shows that there is no technological determinism since the work of the agents in the study is relatively enriched.

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Editor Fred Zijlstra, Department of Psychology, School of Human Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH, UK. Email: [email protected] Associate Editors Christian Dormann, Institut für Psychologie, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Germany José Maria Peiró, Faculdad de Psicología, Universidad de Valencia, Spain Michael West, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK Book Reviews Editor Robert A.Roe, Universiteit Maastricht, Department of Organization Studies, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands Editorial Board European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology is published by Psychology Press Ltd, a member of the Taylor & Francis group. Correspondence for the publisher should be addressed to European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Psychology Press Ltd, 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA, UK. Information about Psychology Press journals and other publications is available from http://www.psypress.co.uk. Go to http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ pp/1359432X.html for current information about this journal, including how to access the online version or to register for the free table of contents alerting service. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Subscription rates to Volume 12, 2003 (4 issues) are as follows: To individuals: UK: £118.00 • Rest of world: $195.00 To institutions: UK: £258.00 • Rest of world: $425.00 Members of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) receive the journal as part of their membership package. Membership enquiries for EAWOP should
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