IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v33y2019i5p829-845.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Discourses of Professionalism in Front-Line Service Work: Insights from a Case Study in an Italian Bank

Author

Listed:
  • Luca Carollo

    (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)

  • Luca Solari

    (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)

Abstract

The article draws on the literature on the triangular employment relationship in the service industry, as well as on the debate on contemporary forms of professionalism, to explore the varied uses of the discourse of professionalism in a banking company. Methodologically, it is a single-case study based on 61 semi-structured interviews, company documents and observational data. The research results show how, in the company studied, the notion of professionalism was used both by individual employees and, at the collective level, by union organizations to advance front-line employees’ and customers’ interests vis-a-vis the management. Moreover, rather than a single discourse, several discourses of professionalism coexisted within the company, and they were subject to constant debate and contestation. The article thus advances extant research on both contemporary forms of service work and professionalism, while providing a bridge between these two streams of literature which, to date, have barely talked to each other.

Suggested Citation

  • Luca Carollo & Luca Solari, 2019. "Discourses of Professionalism in Front-Line Service Work: Insights from a Case Study in an Italian Bank," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(5), pages 829-845, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:5:p:829-845
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017019846413
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017019846413
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017019846413?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marek Korczynski & Ursula Ott, 2004. "When Production and Consumption Meet: Cultural Contradictions and the Enchanting Myth of Customer Sovereignty," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(4), pages 575-599, June.
    2. Damian Hodgson, 2002. "Disciplining The Professional: The Case Of Project Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 803-821, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Netta Avnoon, 2021. "Data Scientists’ Identity Work: Omnivorous Symbolic Boundaries in Skills Acquisition," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 332-349, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura Good & Rae Cooper, 2016. "‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 447-469, September.
    2. Saxena, Gunjan, 2018. "Scarborough based study on bodies’ affective capacities," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 100-110.
    3. Svenja Keele, 2019. "Consultants and the business of climate services: implications of shifting from public to private science," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 9-26, November.
    4. Jos Gamble, 2007. "The rhetoric of the consumer and customer control in China," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 21(1), pages 7-25, March.
    5. Kushagra Bhatnagar & Julien Cayla & Delphine Dion & Gregorio Fuschillo, 2024. "Consumer Sovereignty and the Ethics of Recognition," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 1-19, June.
    6. Fellesson, Markus, 2011. "Enacting customers--Marketing discourse and organizational practice," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 231-242, June.
    7. Jacques-Bernard Gauthier & Lavagnon Ika, 2022. "The rigor-relevance gap in Project Management research: It's time to stop the lament and think and act reflexively," Working Papers hal-03563085, HAL.
    8. Gazi Islam & Roberta Sferrazzo, 2022. "Workers' Rites: Ritual Mediations and the Tensions of New Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 284-318, March.
    9. Joe O’Mahoney, 2011. "Advisory Anxieties: Ethical Individualisation in the UK Consulting Industry," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 104(1), pages 101-113, November.
    10. Fellesson, Markus & Salomonson, Nicklas, 2020. "It takes two to interact – Service orientation, negative emotions and customer phubbing in retail service work," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    11. Mortimer, Gary & Wang, Shasha & Osorio Andrade, María Lucila, 2023. "Measuring customer aggression: Scale development and validation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    12. Fellesson, Markus & Salomonson, Nicklas, 2016. "The expected retail customer: Value co-creator, co-producer or disturbance?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 204-211.
    13. Tracey Yeadon-Lee, 2012. "Doing Identity with Style: Service Interaction, Work Practices and the Construction of ‘Expert’ Status in the Contemporary Hair Salon," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 17(4), pages 56-66, November.
    14. Sofianne Messaoudi Escarabajal & Régis Meissonier, 2017. "Autonomy of Information System project managers: A research of institutionalized practices," Post-Print hal-01992787, HAL.
    15. Alain Asquin & Gilles Garel & Thierry Picq, 2007. "Quand les individus et les collectifs sociaux sont mis en danger par le travail en projet," Post-Print halshs-00687924, HAL.
    16. Ian Kessler & Stephen Bach, 2011. "The Citizen‐Consumer as Industrial Relations Actor: New Ways of Working and the End‐user in Social Care," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 49(1), pages 80-102, March.
    17. Monica Calcagno & Francesco Casarin, 2014. "Mercati reali vs mercati virtuali? Uscire dalla crisi ripensando gli spazi della relazione con il consumatore," MERCATI & COMPETITIVIT?, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(3), pages 13-17.
    18. Ricardo Colomo-Palacios & Israel González-Carrasco & Jose Luis López-Cuadrado & Antonio Trigo & Joao Eduardo Varajao, 2014. "I-Competere: Using applied intelligence in search of competency gaps in software project managers," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 607-625, September.
    19. Paton, Steve & Andrew, Barrie, 2019. "The role of the Project Management Office (PMO) in product lifecycle management: A case study in the defence industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 43-52.
    20. Fred Rugenyi, 2016. "Assessment of the Influence of Project Management Competence on the Triple Constraint in Projects in Nairobi," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(4), pages 295-309, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:5:p:829-845. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.