When Reaching Our Potential Predicts Low Values: A Longitudinal Study about Performance and Organizational Values at Call Centres

doi:10.4236/jssm.2012.54037

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Journal of Service Science and Management, 2012, 5, 313-317

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jssm.2012.54037 Published Online December 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jssm)

When Reaching Our Potential Predicts Low Values: A

Longitudinal Study about Performance and Organizational

Values at Call Centres

Danilo Garcia1,2*, Trevor Archer3,4

1Centre for Ethics, Law and Mental Health (CELAM), University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden; 2Institute of Neuroscience and

Physiology, The Sahlgrenska Academy , University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden; 3Departmet of Psyc hology, Unive rsity of Goth -

enburg, Goth enburg , Sweden; 4Department of Psychology, Education and Sport Science, Linneaus University, Kalmar, Sweden.

Email: *[email protected]

Received September 5th, 2012; revised October 7th, 2012; accepted October 20th, 2012

ABSTRACT

The present study was executed using data from a call centre in Sweden in which ag ents answered questions regarding

financial advice. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship of call centre agents’ perceptions about the

work climate and the organizational values to their performance, as measured by the organization. In Study 1, agents (N =

106) reported their experience about the work climate and organizational values. Performance (i.e., percent of time on

the phone for each work day) was then assessed for the next six consecutive months. In Study 2, agents’ perceptions of

organizational values were measured among a new sample (N = 262) from the same call centre. Performance was

measured during the next two consecutive years. With regard to the working climate, workers’ autonomy was nega-

tively related to their own performance. The resu lts show also a negative relationship between organizational values and

performance during the two following years. Agents seem to maintain high productivity levels at the cost of organiza-

tional core values, perhaps due to the visible and rewarding nature of productivity.

Keywords: Call Centre; Organizational Values; Performance; Time Schedule

1. Introduction

Organizations that work with specific values are more

successful than the ones that do not emphasize values [1].

These core values need to be explicitly declared and

lived by the organizations leaders and employees [2], and

should reflect the organizations business plan and mar-

keting strategy [3]. Moreover, it might be crucial for the

organization to integrate the values into all management

process, such as, performance assessment, rewards, and

punishments [3,4]. If organizational values and measures

of performance don’t fit, the organization risks either low

productivity or that workers perceive valu es as shallow.

The call centre environment is a compelling and spe-

cial environment in which this hypothesis could be tested,

mainly due to high performance monitoring [5,6]. Most

call centres define performance as quantitative indicator s

such as length of call, number of calls, and the percent-

age of the scheduled “time on the phone” [5]. This spe-

cific type of work design might imply unfavourable

working conditions that might affect employees’ ability

to learn how to cope with the rapid external and internal

changes in working life. This work design perhaps even

minimize employees’ opportunities to org anize their own

work, diminish their sense of freedom for making deci-

sions and initiatin g actio n, and limit th eir opp ortunities to

learn from supportive colleagues with expertise. Indeed,

Taylor and Bain ([5], p. 102) suggest that “call centre

managements face a plethora of problems concerning

motivation and commitment, labour turnover, the effec-

tiveness of supervision and the delivery of quality and

quantity performance”.

The work climate (i.e., employees’ perceptions of how

they are treated and managed in their organization) is

important when the organizations try to motivate em-

ployees to allocate and enhance their efforts into their

work [7,8]. The effectiveness of an organization in cre-

ating a climate in which employees are able to learn from

each other or/and new experiences is crucial for the ef-

fectiveness of the development of the organization but

also for the well-being of employees [9]. Call centre

agents who experience less autonomy (e.g., follow with-

out deviations a scripted dialog, intensive performance

monitoring), for example, show higher levels of strain

[10].

*Corresponding author.

When Reaching Our Potential Predicts Low Values: A Longitudinal Study about Performance and Organizational

Values at Call Centres

314

The present study was executed using data from a call

centre in Sweden in which agents answered questions

regarding financial advice. The aim of the present set of

studies is to investigate the relationship of call centre

agents’ perceptions of organisational values, their work

climate, and their performance measured by the organi-

zation as percentage of “time on the phone” over a six-

month-period in Study 1 and two-year-period in Study 2.

This specific performance measure was used by the or-

ganization as the most important part of the reward sys-

tem, that is, agents that performed the best got, for ex-

ample, higher payments—a common reward system

among call centres [5]. It is plausible to suggest that the

core values might not be integrated in the reward system

in this specific case. Hence, although a positive working

climate was expected to be related to a positive view of

organizational values, performance was expected to be

negatively related to both variables. Due to the working

design of call centres, this negative relationship between

work climate and performance was particularly expected

with regard to workers’ experience of autonomy, that is,

opportunities for employees to organize their own work

and the opportunities given for making decisions and

initiating action.

2. Study 1: Learning Work Climate, Values,

and Performance

2.1. Method

2.1.1. P a rticipa nts and Procedure

The whole popu lation consisted of 135 call cen tre agents

who were invited to self-report their perception of the

work climate and organizational values. All agents, no

supervisors were invited to participate, were informed

that their participation was voluntary and confidential.

Agents were instructed to provide their “worker number”

in order to trace responses from the first and second part

of Study 1. All agents participated in the first part of the

Study and received cinema tickets for their collaboration.

Participants’ performance was then assessed for the next

six consecutive months by the same system handling the

calls. At the end of the six months, participants were

asked to retrieve their performance and to report it di-

rectly to one of the research ers along their “worker num-

ber”. Agents who provided their performance at the sec-

ond part of the study received a cinema ticket for their

collaboration. A total of 106 (mean age = 43.07 SD =

12.68) agents, 84 females and 25 males, retrieved this

information successfully.

2.1.2. Measures

2.1.2.1. Wo r king Climat e

The Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ) [11] was

used to measure agents’ experience of the working cli-

mate. The LCQ comprises 70 items (1 = extremely dis-

agree, 5 = extremely agree), organized in seven sub-

scales that provide means for looking at the working cli-

mate in more detail: Management Relations and Style

(e.g., “My immediate manager makes me feel like a

valuable member of the team”), Time (e.g., “I have time

to do my job properly” ), Autonomy and Responsibility

(e.g., “I feel free to organize my work the way I want

to”), Team Style (e.g., “If we ask each other for help it is

given”), Opportunities to Develop (e.g., “There are lots

of different ways to learn new jobs here”), Guidelines on

How to Do the Job (e.g., “Information relevant to my job

is kept up-to-date”), and Contentedness (e.g., “People

tend to put each othe r down”).

2.1.2. 2. Pe rception o f Organizational Values

The agents’ perception of organizational values was as-

sessed by simply asking agents to rate to what ex tent (1 =

not at all, 5 = extremely good) they thought th e organiza-

tion lived up to the three core values explicitly stated by

the managers and the organization: proactive, trustful,

and helpful.

2.1.2. 3. Pe rforma nce

Each worker’s performance was assessed by the same

system handling the calls each day over a six month pe-

riod. Basically each worker has a minimum of five hours

schedule each day for being logged in the system waiting

and handling inbound- and outbound phone calls (i.e.,

“time on the phone”). The system monitors these actions

and divides the cumulated “time on the phone” by the

time the agent was originally schedule to be on the phon e.

In other words, the performance measure is a percentage

of the time the organization expects the agents to be

working on calls or being ready to receive calls and the

actual time agents deliver. The system handles absentee-

ism, caused by sickness or other type of absenteeism

accepted by the organization, by simply not taking those

days or hours into account when the performance meas-

ure is computed.

2.2. Results and Discussion

All work climate subscales of the LCQ were positively

related to agents’ perception of the organizational values.

As predicted, the sub-scale of Autonomy was negatively

correlated to performance over the six month period (see

Table 1). In other words, low perceptions of control over

how one organizes one’s work and the opportunities

given for making decisions and initiating action were

related to high levels of “time on the phone”. These

agents do not see themselves as encouraged to take re-

sponsibility for learning and lack freedom to experiment

When Reaching Our Potential Predicts Low Values: A Longitudinal Study about Performance and Organizational

Values at Call Centres

315

Table 1. Correlations, means and standard deviations, and reliability for work climate, values, and performance in Study 1.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1) Management

Relations and

Style -

2) Time 0.24** -

3) Autonomy

and

Responsibility 0.44*** 0.65*** -

4) Team Style 0.39*** 0.42*** 0.45*** -

5) Opportunities

to Develop 0.55*** 0.47*** 0.69*** 0.41*** -

6) Guidelines on

How to Do the

Job 0.58*** 0.61*** 0.67*** 0.63*** 0.69*** -

7) Contenteness 0.22* 0.44*** 0.40*** 0.39*** 0.45*** 0.45*** -

8) Proactive 0.45*** 0.26** 0.31** 0.35*** 0.39*** 0.41*** 0.26** -

9) Trustful 0.45*** 0.30** 0.30** 0.38*** 0.43*** 0.49*** 0.36*** 0.50*** -

10) Helpful 0.35*** 0.16ns 0.23* 0.40*** 0.21* 0.29** 0.26** 0.43*** 0.51*** -

11) Performa nce –0.03ns –0.18ns –0.30** –0.12ns –0.18ns –0.08ns –0.27* –0.06ns –0.17ns –0.11ns -

ean and stand.

dev. (±) 4.13 ± 0.63 3.2 3 ± 0.81 3.27 ± 0.64 4.18 ± 0. 453.12 ± 0. 623.78 ± 0. 512.87 ± 0. 653.78 ± 0.723.99 ± 0.72 4.49 ± 0.65 79.4 7 ± 25.5 7

Cronbach’s α 0.8 7 0.90 0.81 0.77 0.80 0.73 0.81 - - - -

Note: nsnon-significant, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

and take risks. Moreover, also Contentedness was nega-

tively related to performance—low feelings of satisfac-

tion with the workplace climate in terms of there being

many complaints, moans, and negative attitudes from

colleagues led to higher performance through the six

month period. A low score in Contentedness arise when

colleagues do not get along well, when they tend to

blame each other for the work they do and people are

resistant to trying new ways of doing things [9,11].

Nevertheless, perception of the organizational values

was not related to agents’ performance. Study 2 aims to

explore t hi s re l ationship over a two ye ar pe riod.

3. Study 2: Values and Performance over a

Two-Year Period

3.1. Method

As part of an electronic survey regarding work climate

conducted by the organization two years earlier, 300

agents from the same call centre had self-reported their

perception of organizational values, using the same

measure as in Study 1. For Study 2, agents performance,

as measured in Study 1, was retrieved at two points in

time after the originally measurement of the agents’ per-

ception of organizational values. Data for 262 agents

could be traced at the group level for both value percep-

tion and performance.

3.2. Results and Discussion

Correlation analysis showed that perceiving the organi-

zation as not living up to the value of trustfulness was

negatively related to performance both in the first and

second year of the study (see Table 2). Nevertheless, the

perception of whether the organization lived up to being

proactive and helpful was not related to performance

during the two years.

As expected, experiencing that the organization did

not lived up to its core values led to high performance.

However, the results can also be seen the other way

around: seeing the organization living up to being trustful

was related to workers performing less. Perhaps, agents

that tried to live up to this specific value, delivering

trustful answers to the custo mers, deviated from the sche-

duled phone-time they were expected to deliver. Never-

theless, the results of Study 2 need to be interpreted cau-

tiously because only data at the group level was used.

4. Conclusions and Final Remarks

Call centers’ managers and decision makers might need

to emphasize the connection between performance

measures and the values of the organization. As sug-

gested by Taylor and Bain [5], call centers seem to

struggle with quality and quantity performance. Agents

at call centres seem to maintain productivity levels at the

When Reaching Our Potential Predicts Low Values: A Longitudinal Study about Performance and Organizational

Values at Call Centres

316

Table 2. Correlations, means and standard deviations for value perception and performance in Study 2.

Proactive Trustful Helpful Performance one year after Performance two years after

Proactive -

Trustful 0.42ns -

Helpful 0.19ns 0.40ns -

Performance one year after –0.09 ns –0.48* –0.20ns -

Performance two year after –0.12ns –0.48* –0.17ns 0.82*** -

Mean and stand. dev. (±) 3.9 ± 0.21 3.69 ± 0.21 4.27 ± 0.1982.93 ± 4.81 86.21 ± 5.28

Note: nsnon-significant, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.

cost of organizational core values, perhaps due to the

visible and rewarding nature of productivity.

Nonetheless, the results presented here suggest that

encouraging workers to take responsibility for learning

and being given the freedom to experiment and take risks

(i.e., autonomy) might lead to lower performance, at least

in a call centre environment. In order to compensate for

giving agents more autonomy, managers should encour-

age and create opportunities that are related to high per-

formance in call centres. Frequent physical activity, for

example, seems to boost up call centre workers’ per-

formance [12-14].

Finally, although the “time on the phone” that agents

spend is important in regard to customer satisfaction, the

most important is to receive a helpful and trustworthy

answer, even when the queue times are long [15]. Thus,

the concern with “time on the phone” should not override

living up to core va lues.

“Time is making fools of us again”

Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood

Prince by J. K. Rowling.

5. Acknowledgements

The development of this article was supported by The

Swedish National Centre for Research in Sports (CIF;

Grant No. P2012-0097). Appreciation is also directed to

Erik Lindskär for his assistance with the data.

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