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Economic Sociology
Service Work


Development of Services Employment
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o
o
o
o

o
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Are Services Jobs Bad Jobs?
o
o
o



From great hope to “dead-end” jobs
 Ref
...
: Sennett
Main opportunities for job creation now lie in services
 Ref
...
: Braverman in Edgell
Female domestic servants
Male and female sales workers
 Skilled and knowledgeable but unsatisfactory pay/working conditions
Deskilling of shop workers and managers in post war Europe
 Self-service, computerisation, increase in part time
McDonaldisation
 Ref
...
g
...
: Bosch and Lehndorff

Explaining Services Growth
o

o
o
o
o
o


British and German IT engineers work long hours, while Finnish engineers
work c
...
g
...
g
...
: Bosch and Wagner

Relationship Between Income Inequality and Volume of Services
o

Ref
...
in all EU states
 Women and students – cost cutting
Average working times employees in Europe considerably shorter than in US
 Due to falling wages as a result of decline in trade union influence
 Less labour market regulation and social protection in US
Ref
...
: Bosch and Wagner
More hours worked per week in social services, high % social protection expenditure

Working Time
o



Denmark – Large volume of personal and social services, low levels of
income distribution
Ire – Low volume of personal and social services, mid to high levels of
income distribution

Service work involving communicating w/service recipients face-to-face or voiceto-voice
 Ref
...
: Hochschild (1983)
Plus aesthetic dimension now
 Aesthetic Labour
 Ref
...
: Hochschild (1983)
Social actors’ ability to manage emotion
 Emotional Work
Capitalism’s appropriation of that skill
 Emotional Labour
Result is alienation from our own emotions
Ref
...
: Gatta et
...
(2009)

Skills in Interactive Services
o
o
o
o
o
o



 Prescriptive
 Pecuniary
Emotional Numbness Vs
...
g
...
: Gatta et
...
(2009)

Reading I; Bosch and Lehndorff (2005) Services Economies – High Road or Low Road?
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o

o
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o

o

Ref
...
: Daniel Bell (1973)
 Distinction between conventional services e
...
retail, transport, finance and
post-industrial services e
...
health, education, research
 Predicted latter would grow particularly strongly
Post WWII Attitude to Services
 Debate on working/employment conditions in services activities reflected
spirit of post WWII attitude
 Generations of industrial workers saw shift into services work (which
kids/grandchildren entering) as form of upward mobility
Today’s Attitudes to Service Work
 Image of service work now tarnished

Economic Sociology


o

o

o

Many service jobs poorly paid, offer no promotion opportunities, or security
of payment
 Now idealisation of the past
 Industrial jobs – “Golden era” more secure
 Important to remember, also poor working conditions
 Many authors today associate transition to service economy with beginning
of period of instability and uncertainty
 Destandardistaion of employment relationships
 Differential consumer expectations
 Made customer orientation key element around which services
work revolves
 Personnel Flexibility
 Said to lie at very heart of customer orientation
Regulation
 Standard forms of regulation governing employment/working conditions
that emerged in industrial age are assumed to no longer exist
 Full time, employment for life w/stable companies, regulated labour
markets protecting workers from risks of labour market no longer in
existence
 Raises question as to place there’ll be in future world of work for uniform
labour standards, whose function is take establishment of basic
employment/working conditions for all employees out of sphere of
competition and market processes
 Thereby decommercialising
 USA; labour standards regarded as obstacle to raising employment rate
 Mainstream examinations say highly developed service sector not
compatible with rigorous labour standards
 Argued that choice is between high unemployment in Europe and high
inequality in US
 Question
 Is structural change forcing very different national employment
models towards a single, competitive model characterised by high
levels of inequality
 Or can service work be organised in different ways with similar
levels of economic success
Relationship between Labour and Product Markets
 “High road”- positive reciprocal r’ship between manufacture of quality
products, high service quality and good employment conditions
 “Low road”- vicious circle created by combination of short termism in
markets encouraged by weak institutional framework, poor working/
employment conditions
New forms of Work in Service Economy
 EC funded project to identity causes of diversity and possible opportunities
for alternative development path
 Intended to provide answers to 3 Qs
 Must we really accept greater social inequality in order to extend
service sector or is the high road development plan a real option?

Economic Sociology


o

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o

o

Does increase in service activities necessarily go hand in hand w/destandardisation or polarisation of employment/working conditions?
 Are service societies and service work converging towards a single,
uniform model?
Different Service Societies in Europe
 Even optimistic forecast can’t suppose tertiary sector will employ over 85%
of economically active population; would leave only 5% for agri
...

 Ref
...
: Bosch and Wagner
 Describe various service sectors in EU; identify features in common/
differences
 Degree of tertiarisation differs considerably
 Rapid growth of functions such as design, R+D, marketing means vol
...
Industry also increasing
 But differences in shares of services activities greater in some countries
more than others
 Due to division of labour and differences in industry-product mix
 Differences esp
...
Development as reason for national
differences in services sector
 Assume that incomes rise, employment shifts to services sector due to
positive demand and productivity bias
 Ref
...
: Esping-Andersen’s (1990) classification of welfare states
 Depending on welfare services, personal and social services either
provided by family, market or state
 Called supposed convergence into question
Ref
...
and social inequality in US regarded as price
that must be paid by countries seeking similar economic dynamism and high
employment rates
 But fact that countries e
...
Sweden, Norway and Finland have employment
rates similar to US but with less social inequality has been ignored
EU Member states; service industries greatest contribution to employment growth
 Both men and women
 Only in a few countries did top five job creating industries include activities
other than services
 Ref
...
g
...
of years
Such heterogeneous patterns of development therefore suggest nothing in nature of
services themselves that might account for high share of temporary and part time
employment in service activities
One reason for different levels of temporary employment is differences in national
labour standards and forms of labour market regulation
Greatest differences in level of service employment is observed among women
 Ref
...
: Jill Rubbery
 Reformulates labour market segmentation theory
 Offers explanation for differentiation of working/employment conditions
and of job quality
 Organisations play central role in shaping work/ structuring labour markets
 Influence of outside world +organisational structure also brought into play
 Welfare state regimes, product and labour market reg and changes in forms
of competition all have impact on organisations
 Many service industries, privatisation plays role
 And yet influence of outside factors always mediated by management
 Therefore organisations can take advantage of changes in competitive
conditions
Rubbery sets out critical counter argument to notion that ultimately everything
regulated through the market
Trade Unions
 Role played by trade unions in the service sector in Europe impacts directly
on working and employment conditions
Conclusions
 Two points shown
 Very different routes being taken in Europe towards service
activities
o Service society takes no one single form

Economic Sociology
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Each of various forms of service work from autonomous knowledge
work to repetitive forms of work can be organised v
...
Sector
o Influence of women (labour supply shaped by household
structures/welfare state)
State also exerts considerable influence
o Cost disease
o Key role played by state in this regard points up
responsibility politicians bear for quant
...
Evolution
of service work
There are correspondences but also contradictions in the macro
and micro level structures of service work
Some areas (gender pay gap, social protection of part time work)
high road (route to service society supported by welfare state) is
reflected in working/employment conditions of service workers
But even when infrastructure for high road, still contradictions
Discontinuities seen more so in services than manufacturing
Many service activities still in engagement phase
Low level of TU density

Reading II; Korczynski (2002) Understanding the Contradictory Lived Experiences of Service
Work; The Customer Oriented Bureaucracy
o
o
o

o

o
o

Existence of deep-seated contradictions within lived experiences of customer
service work
Simultaneous pleasures and pains
Ref
...
store had deeply contradictory r’ship with customers
 One hand, could be key source of dissatisfaction- humiliation, pain
 Our friend, the enemy
 Other hand, key source of satisfaction
 Customer service worker r’ships can be socially embedded
Language
 Workers talk about helping others
 Helping people, mothers, children rather than customers
 When asked about specific satisfying moments, workers talk about “this old
man” or “this nice woman”
 Relating service recipient primarily as socially embedded
Ref
...
: Bishop (2008)
 Unemployment benefit staff being threatened, sworn at, yelled
 Can have deep effects

Economic Sociology
o
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Not only does research show it as source of pleasure and pain, also shows that these
two happen simultaneously in many service workplaces
Australian flight attendants
 Working with people dominant reason for liking/starting job
 But passenger attitudes worst part
 Again, our friend the enemy
Service work can be tension ridden if workers caught between demands of
management and customer
Most commonly experienced as tension between quantity and quality targets
 E
...
call centre workers-good quality interview but must reach targets
 Service Work Organisation as Customer Oriented Bureaucracy (COB)
 Need for theoretical lens to view these systematic contradictions
 Simple argument is that customer work is dominated by
McDonaldisation or Taylorism (assembly line in the head)
 Don’t allow us to grasp these contradictions
Contradictory experiences of service workers informed by dual and potentially
contradictory logics underpinning how service work is organised and managed
One hand, service firms compete on basis of price and efficiency of service delivery
 To compete, must rationalise work structures to lower costs and maximise
efficiency
 Therefore important logic pushing them towards bureaucracy
Other hand, service firms compete on basis of service quality
 Can no longer just treat customer as number
 Involves orientation to non-rational elements of customers, towards sense
of emptions, individuality and power
Services organised such that customers feel sense of sovereignty in two ways
 Sense of relational superiority over server
 Sense of being in charge
COB can be seen as an extension of Weberian thinking
Rational legal rules come to be seen as key to authority
But not just bureaucratic logic at play but also customer oriented logic
Key dimensions to this relationship
 Dominant organising principles
 Ideal type of customer oriented bureaucracy contains dual logics of
rationalisation and orientation to formally irrational aspects of
customers
 Work organised to be completely efficient to enchant sensibility of
the customer
 Concept points to tension at heart of service work
 One hand, rationalisation implies routinisation
 Other hand, orientation to formally irrational customers means
embracing and coping with unpredictability and variability
o Customer may step outside routines that management try
impose on him/her
 Present service work thus organised to cope with systematic
potential variability of the customer output
 Labour Process

Economic Sociology






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Model of COB highlights that management that demands service
workers have both quant and qual approach
 Must maintain enchanting myths of customer sovereignty but do so
as efficiently and quickly as possible
 E
...
call centre workers – quan v qual
 This tension – key contradiction
 Tensions; dual process clashes
Basic Division of Labour
 Key aspect of democracy is complex division of labour based on aim
of maximising efficiency of task completion
o Ref
...
: Gutek (1999)
o Encounter/r’ship difference
 Ref
...
: Weber (1968)
o In bureaucracy, basis of authority is rational-legal authority
o Power legitimised because those rules are seen as
encapsulating formal rationality
 COB, authority also drives from customer
o Power can become legitimate if seen as acting for customer
 Dual basis of authority – perception of two bosses
 Total quality management
o Process used to draw together two potentially contradictory
bases of authority
o Conforms to the requirements of the customer
o Fragile social order of the dual logics
Means/End Status and Emotions
 Important attribute of COB is prioritisation of means of action over
ends of action
 COB highlights that the tendency to prioritise the ends of action
exists alongside the bureaucratic prioritisation of the means of
action
 To cope for irrational part of customer, firm must prioritise ends of
action and thus front line staff expected to cope with emotions, e
...

empathy towards customer
 Emotional labour
 Front line worker; bureaucratic code of impersonality to deliver
rationalised emotional labour

Economic Sociology




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Increasingly acknowledged by management
o Maintain fragile social order
Key Management Role
 Management is placed in the structural position of attempting to
keep tensions latent to facilitate the creation of profit through
orderly functioning of the organisation
 COB suggests that key management role is establishment of surface
calm above the dual logics of organisation
 Order created should be seen as fragile
o Does not do away with the emotional tension underlying the
organisation
 Contradictions and tensions are there ready to surface at any time
 Management will also attempt to fashion situation in which tensions
are more latent than overt
 COB approaches may not eliminate tensions but simply alter the
place and manner of its manifestation
 Key management tool likely to be rhetoric and symbolism
 HR approach of win; win; win for management customer and worker
 Power of HRM lies in language

Reading III; Hochschild (1983) The Managed Heart; Chapter One
o

o

o
o
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o

The one area of her occupational life which she might be free to act the area of her
own personality must now also be managed, must become the alert yet obsequious
instrument by which goods are distributed
 Ref
...
Wright Mills
20 y/o trainee air hostess in Delta Airlines Stewardess Training Centre
 “Use your smile…really lay it on”
 Smile as asset, tool for profit
 Smile reflected so much
 Confidence plane would not crash, reassurance dept
...
: Bell (1973)
o Central work r’ship today is communication and encounter
o Fact that individuals now talk to each other rather than
interact with a machine is the fundamental fact about work
in the post-industrial society
 Display of Feeling
 Rules of face to face interaction
o Ref
...
The demand for services
was seen as the “great hope” of the 20th Century
...
Fourastie,
like many commentators at the time, believed the rise in incomes experienced by countries
in the 20th Century had led to a change in consumer demands
...
At the same time, high quality production that stemmed from the industrial era
meant that there was a need for services to aid new production techniques such as research
and development services
...
At present, over 50% of employees in the European Union
work in the service sector (Bosch and Lehndorff, 2005)
...
In this essay I argue that while there has been
similarities in the tertiarisation processes of some countries, there has not been a
convergence towards one model
...

Bosch and Lehndorff (2005) state that institutions play a key role in the process of
tertiarisation within countries
...
Institutions play an
important role in shaping work and structuring labour markets (Rubery, 2002)
...

The State itself exerts considerable influence on the service sector
...
This point is illustrated by Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of
Welfare Capitalism
...
Esping-Andersen’s (1990)
Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism provides a classification system of welfare states into
three regimes; Liberal, Conservative or Corporatist, or Social Democratic
...
For example, under the Social Democratic Regime in countries such as
Norway, Sweden and Finland, the State provided high levels of social services such as care of
the elderly and child care
...
In Liberal models on the other hand, the State emphasised the market and
encouraged private insurance
...

The Welfare Regime of each country also influenced the level of female labour force
participation
...

This is due to the provision of child care by the State and the emphasis on paternity leave
and fathers’ roles in childrearing
...
So, with more women in paid employment outside the home, there is an
increased demand for care services such as child minders, carers and cleaners
...
Therefore there is less need for paid care service workers as this
work is done by members of the family
...

There are clear differences in the share of service activities in the economy of each
State
...
Even manufacturing firms tend to be made up of multiple different
departments, each of which responsible for a different service
...
The number of large
corporations and firms within a country will therefore influence the level of service workers
needed in these areas
...
The differing influences from
country to country have led to variations in how the process of tertiarisation has occurred
...
These
different influences have called the argument that there has been a convergence towards
one model of service sector into question
...
Many service jobs are seen to be poorly paid, offer no promotion
opportunities, or security of payment
...
Many critics today
associate the transition to the service economy with the beginning of a period of instability
and uncertainty
...
I argue that while service jobs may be less secure than the traditional
manufacturing job of the industrial society, they are not necessarily “bad” jobs, providing
huge employment and economic growth, new job opportunities for more workers and
advancements for other sectors
...

One of the reasons for this insecurity is the lack of regulation within the service sector
...
Full time,
employment for life with stable companies in regulated markets protecting workers from
risks of labour market is less common today
...
Mainstream examinations say that a highly developed
service sector is not compatible with rigorous labour standards (Bosch and Lehndorff, 2005)
...
Like any industry,
within the service sector there are both stable, secure employment opportunities and more
uncertain, insecure jobs
...

The main opportunities for employment growth now lie in the service sector
...
The shorter working
hours in service activities which critics argued to be the cause of much uncertainty and
instability have increased the employment intensity of growth (Bosch and Lehndorff, 2005)
...
Average working
times are shorter in the services sector than in manufacturing in all EU states (Bosch and
Wagner, 2002)
...
Within the service sector, women and students can

Economic Sociology
work part time in more flexible service jobs such as in retail, call centres, care work, child
minding, or in hotels or restaurants
...
According to
Gatta et
...
(2009) within these jobs, attributes as style and social skills take precedent over
qualifications
...
When asking service workers about their jobs, Korczynski
found that they frequently talk about “helping others
...
When asked about specific
satisfying moments, workers spoke about “this old man” or “this nice woman”
...

Service sector jobs have been branded as “bad” jobs, partly as they’re perceived to
have caused a loss of employment in the manufacturing industry as the demand for jobs has
shifted from manufacturing to services
...
The decline in
manufacturing employment has been predominantly due to the development of digital
technologies
...
However this has led to an increase in service workers needed to support
the manufacturing industry such as IT workers or research and developers
...

This is not to say that service sector work is easy, labour-free work
...
He stated that service workers experienced simultaneous pleasures
and pains
...
On one hand, customers could be a source of
dissatisfaction, causing humiliation and pain for service workers
...
On the other hand, interaction with customers was a key source of job satisfaction for
service workers
...
As Korczynski put it, service workers saw customers as “our
friend, the enemy
...

Service work can be tension ridden if workers are caught between demands of
management and customers
...
For example, call centre workers can be torn between
conducting good quality interviews which aren’t rushed, whilst meeting their targets for
each shift
...
On one hand,
service firms compete on the basis of price and efficiency of service delivery
...
On the other
hand, service firms compete on basis of service quality
...
These contradictions can be the source of much tension for service workers
...
Hochschild (1983) examined two workers; one
in the 19th Century and one in the 20th Century
...
He is carried to work by his
mother as he is too tired and weak to walk and eats his lunch by the machine he works at so
that he does not have to stop his task whilst eating
...
Hochschild then describes a 20 year old trainee air hostess at the Delta Airlines
Stewardess Training Centre
...
Their smile is seen as an asset, a tool
for profit
...
The flight attendant does physical
labour when she pushes heavy carts through the plane’s aisles and does mental work when
she prepares for/organises emergency landings and evacuations
...
Emotional labour requires one to induce or
supress feeling in order to sustain outward countenance that produces the proper state of
mind in others (Hochschild, 1983)
...
But there is some common ground also in that there is the danger of
alienation
...

Most service jobs involve some form of emotional labour
...
She had to appear happy, calm and
welcoming at all times
...
She was so used to forcing herself to smile and be happy
that she found it difficult to stop the “performance” when she went home (Goffman, 1959)
...
The
stress and emotional exhaustion experienced by many service workers is a clear example of
the downside to service work
...
It is true to say that many
service workers are faced with significant challenges
...
This leads to considerable tensions for service
workers
...
Many service workers also endure emotional labour as
their employers control their emotions as well as their physical presence
...
The expansion of the
service sector has been a key source of both economic and employment growth in the postindustrial era
...
At the same time, the expansion of R&D and IT services has
facilitated the growth of other industries, aiding both manufacturing and medical or health
services
...




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