Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Work, Employment & Society
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Smith, C.
Right arrow Articles by Gabe, J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Knowledge and the discourse of labour process transformation: nurses and the case of NHS Direct for England

Chris Smith

Royal Holloway, University of London, chris.smith{at}rhul.ac.uk

Raffaella Valsecchi

Brunel University, Raffaella.Valsecchi{at}brunel.ac.uk

Frank Mueller

University of St Andrews, frankmueller100{at}yahoo.co.uk

Jonathan Gabe

Royal Holloway, University of London, j.gabe{at}rhul.ac.uk

This article draws on fieldwork conducted with nurses in two sites of NHS Direct, the English tele-nursing service.Theoretically it has two objectives. Firstly to examine a group of professional workers in order to show how the discourse of work transformation associated with the call centre paradigm interacts in a non-mass, non-commercial public sector setting where workers remain attached to their occupational identity and institutional community which mediate call centre values and rationalities. In relation to this objective, the article shows how call centre values inform NHS Direct but do not produce the same outcomes as in commercial settings. Secondly, the article establishes that nurses, as knowledgeable actors, can control, manipulate and create knowledge, without having their autonomy subordinated to the clinical software they are required to use.The article contributes to the labour process approach of call centre working and debates on knowledge management in the workplace.

Key Words: call centres • knowledge • labour process • NHS Direct • tele-nurses

Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 22, No. 4, 581-599 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0950017008096737
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?