‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’

Caroline Lloyd and Jonathan Payne
Additional contact information
Caroline Lloyd: SKOPE, Cardiff University, lloydc4@cardiff.ac.uk
Jonathan Payne: SKOPE, Cardiff University, paynej3@cardiff.ac.uk

Work, Employment & Society, 2009, vol. 23, issue 4, 617-634

Abstract: A current theme within debates over interactive service work is that many routine service jobs are ‘skilled’ because they require workers to perform ‘emotion work’ and ‘articulation work’. Drawing upon workers’ views of their skills in two mass market call centres in the UK, the article questions the use and validity of these new skill concepts. It is argued that these concepts overplay the amount of task variation, discretion and control available to workers. Even more problematic is the tendency to equate skill with the ability to cope with badly designed jobs and stressful working conditions.The findings suggest that there is a need for a thorough debate about what is meant by a ‘skilled job’ in an expanding service-based economy.

Keywords: articulation work; call centres; emotion work; skill (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017009344863 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:23:y:2009:i:4:p:617-634

DOI: 10.1177/0950017009344863

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().