Playing with Space to Deal with the Contradictions of Customer Sovereignty
An Ethnography of Service Workers' Spatial Tactics in Train Stations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2374835 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Albane Grandazzi (0000-0001-6571-7668, Grenoble Ecole de Management), Oriane Sitte De Longueval (0000-0002-4973-6436, University of Geneva), Jean-Baptiste Suquet (0000-0001-5905-129X, NEOMA Business School, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 615-635 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Work Employment and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0950-0170 • E-ISSN: 1469-8722 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09500170241282630 |
| OpenAlex | W4403559877 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
While the existing literature on service work allows us to understand how customer sovereignty policies constrain service work by transforming servicescapes, we need a more agential approach to how service workers use space as a resource to deal with the tensions resulting from the promotion of customer sovereignty. This article draws on de Certeau's thinking to fill this gap by looking at how workers play with space constraints and opportunities and deploy spatial tactics to walk a fine line with their customers. Through an ethnographic study of service work in train stations, this article offers a fine-grained empirical account of the spatial tactics used by workers in their daily work. We show how they use space to cope with the tensions in their daily interactions with customers, and how spatial tactics constitute micro-practices of resistance to customer sovereignty policies
Business · Customer service · Ethnography · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Service (business · Sociology · Sovereignty · Anthropology · Computer Science · Emotional Labor in Professions · Law · Marketing
Human Resource Management in Service Work
Liminality in Management and Organization Studies
Spaces that Matter
Organizational Entrepreneurship
‘The Work You Want, The Help You Need’
Organizations and their consumers
Communities of Coping
Reworking Qualitative Data
Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique
The Customer is Always Right
But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’
Telling tales
Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre
Preserving masculinity in service work
Liminality, space and the importance of ‘transitory dwelling places’ at work
Living Space’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Reconstructing Organization
Organizational Ethnography
The practice of everyday life
Discipline and Punish
Subterranean Worksick Blues
On the Materiality of Service Work
Invisible Room Attendants
Customer Abuse and Aggression as Labour Control Among LGBT Workers in Low-Wage Services
Resisting Patriarchal Cultures
Cool' Meanings
Evidence from the 'Frontline'? An Ethnographic Problematisation of Welfare-to-Work Administrator Opinions
Doing the brand
The nature of front-line service work
Customer abuse to service workers
The open-plan academy
Sales work and the situated constitution of legitimate economic exchange
Networks of aestheticization
Workers, Managers, and Customers
Bermuda Revisited
Client Abuse to Public Welfare Workers
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |