Taylorism and Fordism

“An assembly line in the

head’: work and employee
relations in the call centre
 Article’s Introduction
 Definition of call centre
 ACD or predictive dialing system

 Why call centre?

 Competitive Edge

 Call centre process

 Inbound Vs Outbound calls
 Strengths
 Total control Vs tight control
 Use of electronic surveillance
 E.g.. Real-Time Adherence module
 Weakness
 Supervision
 But when managerial control=electronic
surveillance, is there any human touch?
 Most essential supervision – Human Supervision
 Emotional Labor
 What is it?
 How does it relate to call centre labor?
 A labour to suppress feelings in order to substain a
proper image in customers
 Weakness
 “Assembly-line in the head” Scenario
 Prominent Digital Displays
 Leads to constant awareness of task

 Immense Pressures’ Effect

 High turnover rate
 Weakness
 Dilemma of managers
 Should quantitative output measurement be
used?
 Taylorism
What is Taylorism?
Taylorism and scientific management –
introduction of administrative means to
control labour force and achieve efficiency
 Job fragmentation
 Job specialization

 Separation of mental and manual labor

 Fordism
What is Fordism?
Fordism – a production technique to
achieve efficiency inspired by Taylor’s ideas
adjusted for the mass production era.
 Standardized products
 Single purpose machine tools
 Assembly line

All above = MASS PRODUCTION

 Our Critical Thinking
 Advanced Fordism?
 Highly popular method
 Demand of quality service at customers’
convenience
 Assembly line workers.. And much
more!
 Problem with high turnover rate
 Quality of supervision