<p>The subject of this thesis is interaction in the service encounter. The aim is to describe and explain the service encounter interaction with a special focus on the social and organisational context. The contextual focus is related to two overriding questions: What significance does the human interaction have for the service encounter? What significance does the organisational context have for the service encounter?</p><p>The result show that even though the communication consists of four discerned phases – salutation, the subject of the call, concluding the subject, and rounding off the call, each phase also displays contradictions. Consequently, there are both relational and instrumental utterances, as well as symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects of the conversations.</p><p>These contradictory results of the relational-instrumental and symmetrical-asymmetrical features are explained when interaction is viewed in terms of three different sets of logic – the commercial, the bureaucratic, and the social. Every logic is constituted by a number of characteristics, each contributing to the shape of the interaction and to the relationship between the customer and the employee.</p><p>Analytically speaking, the three forms of logic can be described in terms of their respective field of action and rationality, that is, what the actors talk about and what the purpose of the talk is. It is shown that the actors must prioritise between economic, administrative and personal areas within a limited time of action. It is also clear that the disparate rationalities, that is, economic, executive and recognition, all exercise influence over the service encounter, which means that acts aiming at a specific goal are restricted by the objectives of the other logics. Therefore there is a certain self-regulating function in the antagonism between the logics. The positions of the employee in relation to the customer, the organisation and the so-called collective customer mean that there are demands made from three qualitatively different directions. There is, in other words, a three-bosses dilemma for employees. The different positions of the employee also entail three different asymmetrical relationships in which either the customer or the employee has the advantage. This position constructs the hierarchy of dominance between employee and customer.</p><p>To conclude, the interaction constitutes a complex relationship between the characteristics of the logics and when these combine the interaction of the service encounter is shaped. The fact that the service encounter involves human interaction means that there is a counter balance against the organisational ascendancy.</p>

The subject of this thesis is interaction in the service encounter. The aim is to describe and explain the service encounter interaction with a special focus on the social and organisational context. The contextual focus is related to two overriding questions: What significance does the human interaction have for the service encounter? What significance does the organisational context have for the service encounter? The result show that even though the communication consists of four discerned phases – salutation, the subject of the call, concluding the subject, and rounding off the call, each phase also displays contradictions. Consequently, there are both relational and instrumental utterances, as well as symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects of the conversations. These contradictory results of the relational-instrumental and symmetrical-asymmetrical features are explained when interaction is viewed in terms of three different sets of logic – the commercial, the bureaucratic, and the social. Every logic is constituted by a number of characteristics, each contributing to the shape of the interaction and to the relationship between the customer and the employee. Analytically speaking, the three forms of logic can be described in terms of their respective field of action and rationality, that is, what the actors talk about and what the purpose of the talk is. It is shown that the actors must prioritise between economic, administrative and personal areas within a limited time of action. It is also clear that the disparate rationalities, that is, economic, executive and recognition, all exercise influence over the service encounter, which means that acts aiming at a specific goal are restricted by the objectives of the other logics. Therefore there is a certain self-regulating function in the antagonism between the logics. The positions of the employee in relation to the customer, the organisation and the so-called collective customer mean that there are demands made from three qualitatively different directions. There is, in other words, a three-bosses dilemma for employees. The different positions of the employee also entail three different asymmetrical relationships in which either the customer or the employee has the advantage. This position constructs the hierarchy of dominance between employee and customer. To conclude, the interaction constitutes a complex relationship between the characteristics of the logics and when these combine the interaction of the service encounter is shaped. The fact that the service encounter involves human interaction means that there is a counter balance against the organisational ascendancy.

This thesis is a study of the everyday communication of second language speakers in a major Swedish company. On the basis of eighteen interviews with permanently employed industrial and office workers, who came to Sweden as adults from countries outside the Nordic region where non-Germanic languages are spoken, five individuals were chosen for observation. The overarching aim of the study is to identify communicative factors with a positive impact on the integration of second language speakers in the workplace and in their immediate work team. Subsidiary aims are to map out the communication of the five participants and to analyse their involvement in communicative activities, both professional and social. The focus is on the interaction between participants and fellow employees, primarily in terms of what participants themselves do to promote mutual understanding and good relations at work. Theoretically and methodologically, the study has its basis in discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication. By means of fieldwork, a large body of empirical data was collected, comprising detailed field notes, audio and video recordings of naturally occurring talk, and texts read and produced by participants. The five participants’ day-to-day communication is shown to be influenced to a large degree by the type of occupation. At the company studied, whose corporate language is English, white-collar employees can manage without a knowledge of Swedish, so long as they know English. Factory workers, meanwhile, regard an inadequate command of English, rather than Swedish, as an obstacle to promotion. All the participants perform communicative acts designed to create and maintain group solidarity. In seeking to foster good relations in the workplace, they make use of jokes, compliments, narratives, swearing and greetings. The participants are shown to be metalinguistically and metaculturally aware, which aids everyday communication and integration. Linguistic and cultural asymmetries seem to be able to mitigate potential threats to face, making the participants a valuable resource in sensitive communicative situations. All co-workers provide linguistic scaffolding, but in interaction with the most career-oriented participant, markers of power can sometimes be observed. A high level of awareness and performance of relational communicative acts appear to facilitate and speed integration in the workplace and the immediate work team. / Den kommunikativa situationen för invandrare på svenska arbetsplatser (KINSA)