Call centres have been described as an enabling resource for enhanced customer service, as a cost saving strategy, and a combination of both. Call centres are people intensive, resource demanding environments with complex management challenges. The call centre industry is growing rapidly and South Africa is fast becoming a desired destination for outsourced call centres. The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of outsourced call centre management specifically regarding their roles and challenges experienced when executing their daily activities. This study contributes to the understanding of the challenges outsourced call centre managers encounter and provide suggestions to help address major challenges faced in relation to effective call centre management. The methodology used was of a qualitative nature as data was gathered through semi-structured interviews. Inductive reasoning was applied in this study. The call centre managers were purposively selected for the study based on their experience within the industry. The data gathered was transcribed, coded and organised into themes, categories and sub-categories. The study had five objectives and once analysed the following results were obtained: profiles of call centre management was determined, people management surfaced as a major challenge for call centre managers, numerous strategies are in place to deal with challenges, however they are limited due to company policies, cost efficiency was not the main reason organisations outsource their call centres and finally call centre managers perceive their roles to be the overall responsibility of the call centre, its employees and performance. The results revealed that scientific management principles and continuous improvement are major focus areas within the call centre environment. This is mainly driven by the fact that outsourced call centres have contractual obligations that need to be met otherwise they face financial penalties. The findings also revealed that being a manager in an outsourced call centre today is a dynamic and challenging task with many pressures both internally and externally. The study recommends that outsourced call centre managers be empowered and supported by the relevant support divisions as they assume a great responsibility while operating in a dynamic environment and they play a pivotal role in ensuring the success of outsourced call centres. The main limitation of this study is that it relies on outsourced contact centres situated in the Gauteng area that only services one telecommunication organisations customer queries limiting the ability to generalise to other populations. / Business Management / M. Tech. (Business Administration)

There has been a stunning build-up of prisons and a growing trend in prison privatization in the last 30 years, including the rise of maximum security units. The goal of my dissertation is to understand the ideological, historic, political, and economic processes behind the changes in the criminal justice system of the United States. I analyze this problem from multiple angles—labor and policy history, discourse and public opinion, and race in America. The aim of this analysis is to uncover the reasons why crime legislation became progressively more punitive, reaction to African Americans gains in post-Civil Rights more hostile, and the manifold ways in which these phenomena drive the expansion of the prison system and its increasing privatization. In the process of this expansion, a racial caste system which oppresses young African Americans and people of color has become recast and entrenched. Specifically, I offer the notion that in the last three decades, punitive crime legislation focused on African Americans and served to deal with labor needs and racial conflict with harsher penal legislation; in doing so, it depoliticized race, institutionalized racial practices, and served the interests of private prison businesses in new ways oppressive ways. Using interdisciplinary methods which weave together qualitative and quantitative analysis, I find that punitive crime policies in the last thirty years used the concept of crime as political currency by government officials in order to appear tough on crime, and by business representatives interested in exploiting the prison industry. The conflation of business and political interests, and the recasting of crime as a race problem, served to taint public institutions and media dissemination with racist imperatives which stereotyped poor African Americans. The end result is a constant re-positioning of young black males as fodder for economic exploitation. The dissertation also addresses the high cost of imprisonment and the multiple social problems brought from shifting inmates from wards of the State to profit-making opportunities in the hands of private entrepreneurs. The result is high numbers of recidivism, and a growing underclass of people who will always be unemployed or underemployed and return to low income communities that suffer from the endless cycle of poverty and imprisonment. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Orientador: Roseane Andrelo / Banca: Maria Eugenia Porem / Banca: Paulo Roberto Nassar de Oliveira / Resumo: Diariamente nos deparamos com a utilização de serviços, e este é o setor investigado por esta pesquisa. Especificamente o ambiente organizacional mediado pela prestação de serviços entre empresas prestadoras e tomadoras dos mesmos. O perfil de uma empresa de terceirização apresenta desafios culturais e comunicacionais, pois além de formar a sua identidade, precisa ser flexível e interagir com outras culturas em períodos sazonais. Apresenta-se o objeto de pesquisa a partir da análise sobre a comunicação organizacional e sua influência no processo de formação de identidade entre os funcionários de empresas terceirizadas e suas tomadoras de serviço. Para isso, o objetivo geral pretendeu compreender o papel da comunicação organizacional na relação entre empresas tomadoras multinacionais e prestadoras de serviços terceirizados, considerando a construção de identidade corporativa. Como objetivos específicos tem: observar como se dá a gestão da comunicação adotada pelas tomadoras e terceirizadas no que tange a relação entre elas; compreender os desafios que compõem a relação entre as empresas tomadoras e terceirizadas; e inferir sobre a influência da cultura do país de origem das multinacionais no processo de comunicação organizacional, no que se refere à construção de identidade corporativa no empregado da prestadora. As metodologias utilizadas foram a observação participante, o que resultou no diário de campo; pesquisa qualitativa, no formato de entrevistas abertas com gestores da... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The profile of an outsourcing company presents cultural and communication challenges, as well as forming their identity, needs to be flexible and interact with other cultures in seasonal periods. Thus, the object of this research is based on the analysis of organizational communication and its influence on the process of identity formation among employees of outsourced companies and their service takers. For this purpose, the general objective is to understand the role of organizational communication in the relationship between multinational borrowing companies and outsourced service providers, considering the construction of corporate identity. As specific objectives it has: to observe how the communication management is adopted by the borrowers and outsourced in relation to the relation between them; understand the challenges that make up the relationship between borrowing and outsourcing companies; and to infer about the influence of the culture of the country of origin of the multinationals in the process of organizational communication, regarding the construction of corporate identity in the employee of the provider. The methodologies used were the participant observation, which resulted in the field diary, qualitative in the format of open interviews with managers of the borrowing and providing companies and quantitative from the application of a semi-structured questionnaire with the employees. In the perspective of concepts related to identity, organizational communic... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Orientador: Leila de Menezes Stein / Banca: Ricardo Luiz Sapia dos Santos / Banca: Ângela Cristina Ribeiro Caires / Resumo: As transformações no universo do trabalho vêm afetando de modo intenso às sociedades industriais de todo o mundo, de modo que o processo de reestruturação das atividades produtivas inclui inovações tecnológicas e novas formas de gestão da força de trabalho, o que resulta num aumento significativo nos índices de produtividade, profundas alterações no relacionamento entre as empresas e nas formas de organização da produção, interferindo nas relações de trabalho e no processo de negociação com as instituições de defesa dos trabalhadores. Este trabalho analisa a flexibilização das relações de trabalho, consubstanciado no processo de terceirização da mão de obra no segmento econômico da construção civil em Araraquara/SP. Para tanto, propomos uma análise inicial sobre as técnicas de produção fordista/taylorista, para compreendermos o processo de flexibilização das relações de trabalho tal como se apresenta atualmente. Neste contexto, a terceirização assume especial relevância por retratar uma das formas que melhor demonstra o mundo do trabalho flexível, com todas as implicações que lhes são inerentes, sobretudo o enfraquecimento dos direitos dos trabalhadores. Escolhemos o segmento da construção civil para realizarmos o nosso estudo, por tratar-se de um setor fortemente marcado pela terceirização de mão de obra, além de trazer consigo complexidades inerentes à própria atividade. A partir da pesquisa empírica realizada em canteiros de obras de duas construtoras de Araraquara/SP, constatamos várias faces da terceirização, o que torna ainda mais complexo o tema em questão e fomenta pesquisas nesta área / Abstract: The transformations in work in the universe are affecting intensely to industrial societies around the world, so that the restructuring of productive activities, including technological innovations and new management of the workforce resulting in a significant increase in rates productivity, profound changes in the relationship between companies and ways of organizing production, interfering in labor relations and negotiations with the institutions that protect workers. This research aims to analyze the flexibility of labor relations, embodied in labor outsourcing process in the economic segment construction in Araraquara / SP. Therefore, we propose an initial analysis of the Fordist / Taylorist production techniques, to understand the process of flexibility of labor relations as currently at present. In this context, outsourcing is particularly important for portraying one of the ways that best portrays the world of flexible working, with all the implications inherent to them, especially the weakening of workers' rights. To do this we chose the construction segment to accomplish our study, because it is a strongly marked by sector manpower outsourcing, and bring complexities inherent in the activity. From the empirical research conducted on construction sites of two construction of Araraquara / SP, we see many faces of outsourcing, which makes it even more complex the topic at hand and encourages research in this area / Mestre

Thesis (MBA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / The research is focused on outsourcing versus in-house staff in the case of the University of Limpopo. Since the outsourcing path was adopted in 2002, no formal study was instituted by UL to ascertain whether the decision had positive effects on the university’s financial status and former employees’ welfare. One of the impediments that posed a real threat to the UL’s outsourcing agenda was the lack of a guiding document to adequately direct the negotiation process. Lack of feedback and lack of a vibrant communication plan as the main variables that triggered a climate of mistrust between the PCS and stakeholders were identified. This study seeks to determine which option, namely outsourcing versus in-house staff complement will be the most advantageous to UL. The idea taken by the UL in 2002 to outsource what was perceived as non-core operations was an idea that was never easy to implement and ultimately failed to achieve its originally intended purpose. This study opted for the qualitative method because it relied on the views of UL’s former employees who were directly affected by the university’s 2002 outsourcing arrangement. The population of this study consisted of one hundred and fifty (150) people comprising of UL’s in-house employees in the UL. The process of selecting the participants was based on the purposive sampling method. The sample size for this study was 38 of the outsourced operational support staff From the results obtained from the study, a conclusion was drawn that the outsourcing arrangement did not provide any significant benefit to any of the affected parties. The recommendations on measures to improve the effectiveness of UL’s outsourcing arrangement were made and described in detail in chapter five of this study. Recommendations for further studies were also made in chapter five as being inevitable because there is no research that is complete in itself

This study identifies the impacts to the internal Information Technology (IT) department's policies and procedures caused by outsourcing selective IT functions and assesses the threats and opportunities to an internal IT group, presented by outsourcing selective IT functions. The trend to selectively outsource IT functions implies that this can be done with minimal disruption and risk to the IT departments policies and processes. This research investigates whether this assertion is valid and develops a model for internal IT departments to respond to the challenges presented by selective outsourcing. Existing models of outsourcing currently in use and available to organizations are reviewed to assess their suitability or adaptability for `selective outsourcing' and from this identifies which areas of internal IT policy and procedures are most impacted. An analysis of the threats and opportunities presented to the internal IT department is also provided. Research was conducted into one organization's experience with selective outsourcing to investigate how internal IT departments could approach selective outsourcing of internal IT functions and how internal IT departments could develop strategies for responding to the challenges posed by selective outsourcing. A case study was conducted of a recent selective outsourcing arrangement within the IT group of the target organization. The personal interview method was adopted to survey a cross section of management and staff from the work groups involved in the selective outsourcing arrangement. The results obtained revolved around the major themes of: 1. Planning (identified as time constraints, resource constraints and work load). 2. Management control (which encompasses the structuring of the outsourcing relationship, human resource concerns, level of ownership, communication, structure of the internal IT group and inter-departmental concerns). 3. Process (which applies to the quality of the procedures, inherent internal knowledge required, the informality of the procedures and concerns over adherence to procedures). For an IT group to develop strategies to respond to the challenges of selective outsourcing it was identified that the IT group needs to remove internal barriers to process and strive to achieve single ownership of processes within functional work groups; nurture a shift in internal groups thinking to more planning rather than doing; improve the quality of internal IT procedures and implement appropriate project team structures for task specific selective outsourcing engagements and for ongoing vendor relationship management.

A central feature of public sector reform in Australia in the past decade or so has been the introduction of competition into service markets that were previously monopolised by public agencies. The adoption of more competitive strategies by these agencies has usually been accompanied by changes in their organisational culture - found in their structures, modes of operation and in internal and external relationships, as well as in the underlying values orientation of the organisation. The introduction of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) in local government in the state of Victoria reflected criticisms of the performance of traditional local government bureaucracies and a determination by the state government to secure a change in local government culture. This study investigates the impact of CCT on local authorities in Victoria, and explores the changes to organisational culture that have occurred. It assesses the extent to which the changes are consistent with a 'post-bureaucratic' conception of public organisations. The study presents evidence that cultural change has occurred in Victorian local authorities, particularly in the establishment of new organisation structures, a more entrepreneurial or outward focused orientation, and the development of more market focused and customer oriented service delivery systems. While cultural changes may not have progressed as far as intended by the Victorian government, they represent a more radical approach to local government reform than in other Australian states - so radical that they present a serious challenge to long-held views of the role of local government in the community. The thesis reveals that the new competitive environment may itself generate new problems such as transactions costs and erosion of trust within local councils and enables senior managers to assert stronger control over the council. It is this control, together with the technocratic or top-down approach to reform taken by the state government, which has constrained the development of model post-bureaucratic local government organisations in Victoria. In particular, it seems that senior managers are more intent on reshaping their organisations than in encouraging the greater market responsiveness anticipated in the post-bureaucratic model.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-123).