Purpose – The purpose of this article is to assess whether tele‐nursing in Scotland (NHS24), when compared with traditional face‐to‐face nursing, facilitates greater employee control over working time and therefore a potentially better work‐life balance. Design/methodology/approach –...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the introduction of teamwork in two health call centres, NHS Direct and NHS24, and intervenes in the emergent debate over teamwork in call centres. Although within the call centre work environment there is no obvious functional rationale for teamwork, teams...

This article examines the nature of industrial relations and work practices in Japanese firms within an investment cluster in Telford, Shropshire. Telford has the highest concentration of Japanese firms in one site in Britain. The article examines how conditions which were supposedly favourable...

Globalization of capital accumulation and transnational production highlight a shifting paradigm in labour process theory, which requires a theorization on the spatial politics of production.The shift from Taylorism and Fordism (mass production and welfare-state interventions) to flexible...

This article draws on fieldwork conducted with nurses in two sites of NHS Direct, the English tele-nursing service.Theoretically it has two objectives. Firstly to examine a group of professional workers in order to show how the discourse of work transformation associated with the call centre...

Current cross-national organisational theory remains tied to stark polarisation between convergence and divergence, universal and relative, frames of analysis. Attempts at synthesis between these forces allow for, but do not always explain, why the organisation of work should be constantly...