Collaboration, Co‐operation or Collusion? Contrasting Employee Responses to Managerial Control in Three Call Centres

This article draws on ethnographic studies of three call centres in a single, medium‐sized insurance company to explore how employees responded differently to similar techniques of managerial control. Considering recent discussions of compromise in the workplace, we identify a response to control that sits between implacable resistance and supine acquiescence. We style this collusion and distinguish it from other states of compromise, such as collaboration and co‐operation. Drawing on the work of E dwards et al ., we argue that a dynamic and politically sophisticated collusive compromise can exist between parties whose control and developmental concerns are in conflict. From this position, we extend existing theories of compromise: (a) to accommodate different permutations of control and developmental concerns; and (b) to predict when collaboration, co‐operation and collusion are likely to occur under ostensibly similar conditions of managerial control.