(p.3) By early 1998, two sharply contrasting portrayals of the call centre had been established in popular consciousness. On the one hand were the optimistic descriptions, cultivated by the sector’s publicists, who presented exciting images of centres, staffed by co-operative teamworking employees ‘smiling down the phone’ and talking to customers in a relaxed and professional manner in comforting regional accents. On the other hand, there was the perspective of Fernie and Metcalf who utilised Foucault’s adaptation of Bentham’s Panopticon to claim that electronic surveillance had ‘rendered perfect’ the supervisor’s power, thus eliminating the possibility of worker resistance. When a leading consultant,...

(p.4) Those who see workplace regimes as characterised by the existence of the ‘electronic panopticon’ typically employ a Foucauldian framework. In Jeremy Bentham’s late- eighteenth century design for a prison, later adapted by Foucault (1977) as a metaphor for societal surveillance, the central observation tower is constructed in such a way that isolated, individual inmates could never be sure when they were being watched. From the vantage point in the tower, the observer could see the inmates in their peripheral cells at any time without being seen. Thus, the prisoners come to act as though they are under the carceral gaze...

(p.5) Thompson and Ackroyd observe that ‘the panopticon is the favourite in this armoury’ when the Foucauldian perspective is adopted to new management practices (1995: 622). Whether electronic or informational in application, the panopticon is central to the Foucauldian emphasis on ‘the increased and successful use of monitoring and surveillance of workers’ activities’. They identify a distinct tendency amongst those claiming to utilise Foucault’s theories to give no account of resistance, and that this (mistaken) position can be located in the way in which power is perceived. The belief that management’s monopoly of knowledge marginalises other groups, leads self-declared Foucauldians to...

(p.16) The blithe acceptance of the panopticon metaphor, and its uncritical application to the contemporary workplace, requires explanation. Why is it that such a perspective, which so palpably fails any serious theoretical and empirical examination, has been adopted so readily? For some it would seem to explain reality. Here are workplaces and workforces which appear to be so dominated by overpowering technology, that there is no room for escape. If Winston Smith cannot evade Big Brother, then the call centre agent in her electronic penitentiary is similarly entrapped. Those ensnared by the panopticon perspective, following a superficial reading of Foucault, are...

(p.2) This occupation [call centre work] merits study because the possibilities for monitoring behaviour and measuring output are amazing to behold – the “tyranny of the assembly line” is but a Sunday school picnic compared with the control that management can exercise in computer telephony. Indeed, the advertising brochure for a popular call centre software package is boldly titled TOTAL CONTROL MADE EASY. All this has been noted in the trade press where Apostol (1996), Garrod (1996) and Roncoroni (1997) describe call centres either as the new sweatshops or dark satanic mills. And in the personnel managers’ professional monthly journal farmyard...

(p.8) The director of the L & R Group, a consulting and training business that has developed a new certificate in call centre management for the Institute of Direct Marketing, puts all this rather starkly: “the call centre provides management with the ultimate opportunity for control” (quoted in Arkin 1997). Indeed, his organization has a module on “staying sane in the call centre”. Call centres are therefore the archetypal organization to represent Foucault’s (1977) application of Bentham’s Panopticon to the workplace. “All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each...

(p.9) It is perhaps reassuring, however, that even with “ultimate” or “total” control disaffected agents still find ways of avoiding work. They might, for example, take a call and say nothing so that the caller hangs up, or alternatively let the caller hang up first and remain on the line so no one else gets through.