`A Different World': Shifting Masculinities in the Transition to Call Centres

This article explores how business process reengineering (BPR) is informed by a masculine discourse that emphasizes competition, control and conquest while simultaneously appealing to care, trust, nurturing, creativity and teamwork. We explore how this contradiction is reflected in the language and practice of management. We demonstrate some of the ways in which this contradiction infuses with, subverts and may ultimately undermine BPR. We locate the debate within a contextual consideration of how reengineering is displacing an earlier form of masculinity within financial services which we understand and describe as paternalism. It is apparent that the pre-eminence of masculinity was never questioned. Indeed, both paternalism and reengineering simply fought over which masculinity would predominate.