Electronic surveillance and resistance in call centers

Abstract

There is a widespread agreement in international literature that call centers are the ideal place to investigate conflicts in contemporary work. However, we did not found researches about resistance to electronic surveillance in these places in Brazil. Regarding the theoretical and practical relevance of the subject, this article identifies the activities monitored electronically by call centers managers’ and describes behaviours of informal resistance to electronic surveillance perceived by these managers in their subordinates. Based on the literature about resistance to control, semistructured interviews were conducted with nine managers working for call centers of different industries in a northeastern capital of Brazil. To analyze data were used categorical content analysis with support of software NVivo®. Our results demonstrates a intense use of technologies to monitor operators’ work. Most managers identified situations of resistance in their subordinates. Work slowly, cheat and gossip were the resistance to eletronic surveillance cited by most interviewers.

Keywords
Resistance; Electronic surveillance; Organizational control; Call centers