Consumers' Reports: Management by Customers in a Changing Economy

Abstract

Under recent conditions of economic competition, customer/worker interactions increasingly are a source of profitability in service firms. Companies may employ refined methods for making these interactions a source of information about workers' performance. This paper investigates how managers and employers use customer feedback to monitor, evaluate and discipline service workers. We argue that management by customers may deepen and complicate authority and power relations in the workplace, and may also give rise to new forms of workplace conflict.

Tendências na Mudança Organizacional e Tensões na Gestão de Pessoas

“…Keat & Abercrombie, 1990;Fuller & Smith, 1991;du Gay & Salaman, 1992). O surgimento destes novos valores foi acompanhado por uma preocupação em reduzir custos; aumentar a flexibilidade dos trabalhadores no local de trabalho; incrementar a atenção ao cliente; e aumentar a permeabilidade das fronteiras organizacionais, quer internas, quer externas (Legge, 1995).…”

The nature of front-line service work: distinctive features and continuity in the employment relationship

“…The need to 'locate call centres within the wider political economy' was also stressed by Taylor and Bain (2005: 264). In their important contribution on customers as agents in the development of management control, Fuller and Smith (1991) already gave an insight into the mechanisms by which customer feedback was sought after and used by the employer. More recently, Sherman (2011) has shown the influence of customers' demands on the work of luxury hotel employees.…”

“…The contribution of Fuller and Smith (1991) was to uncover the many practices by which management proceeds to gain such feedback, one of these being the use of 'mystery shoppers'. In call centres, technology obviously makes the use of mystery callers readily available.…”

Experiencing patient-experience surveys: a qualitative study of the accounts of GPs

“…In short, this concerns a tension described by these participants between patients' wants and needs. When evaluative tools for patient experience are used to lead practice, akin to consumers as surrogate managers, [37][38] there is potential for patient wants to be reproduced in practice over and above the doctor's clinical definition of patient need. This is an issue that has not been adequately addressed in the literature relating to patient-evaluation tools previously.…”