The Indian Call Center Experience: A Case Study in Changing Discourses of Identity, Identification, and Career in a Global Context
http://job.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/1/31
  access restricted (by the publisher) to members/subscribers/customers only
  peer-reviewed

Pal, Mahuya and Patrice Buzzanell
JBC
2008

Abstract:

This study examines the processes by which workers in a particular Indian call center located in Kolkata expanded on, negotiated, and chose among an array of possible, especially new, identities and identifications and the ways that these choices affected changing social discourses. Our case study depicted a workplace that was simultaneously casual and urgent, temporal and spatially free and constrained, situated in both Indian and U.S. cultures, and oriented toward business and night-club ambiances. Within this particular workplace, call center employees (re)constructed and negotiated among an array of discourses that bracketed opportunities for particular identities and identifications. Through these negotiation processes, they (a) engaged in strategic identity(ies) invocations and (b) reframed work, career, and family discourses and practices.