This study examines reasons for variation in work design (defined by job discretion and performance monitoring) and how work design affects organizational outcomes. Drawing on a 2003–2006 survey of 2,359 call centers in 16 countries, the authors test strategic human resource management...

This introduction to the special issue on the globalization of service work provides an overview of the call center sector and its development in coordinated, liberal market, and emerging market economies. The introduction's authors situate this research in literature on the comparative...

ERES:conference

This paper is the first to explore the impact of culture on the acceptability of workplace bullying and to do so across a wide range of countries. Physically intimidating bullying is less acceptable than work related bullying both within groups of similar cultures and globally. Cultures with...

Using data from a sample of 145 UK call centres, the authors test the core propositions of the strategic human resource management (SHRM) approach that: (a) there are coherent links through the SHRM chain from strategy, through operational requirements, to work design and human resource...

One view of the manager is as a ‘practical’ scientist. In contrast to this image, many managers do not see themselves in this light and are uncomfortable with the notion that to be successful they should act in purely a mechanistic ‘scientific’ way. Alternative to this view is to see the...

Employment regime theory is used to examine whether cross-national variation in call centre job quality is a result of differences in national institutional regime, i.e. inclusivist, dualist and market regimes. Analysis of an establishment-level survey of 1734 call centres revealed that, as...