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The battlefields of leisure: simple forms of labor control in the Turkish hospitality sector

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Hüseyin Yener Erköse Open the ORCID record for Hüseyin Yener Erköse [Opens in a new window]
Hüseyin Yener Erköse*
Affiliation:
İzmir University of Economics, Department of Sociology
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Abstract

This article is based on an ethnographic study in the Turkish hospitality sector and examines the employment of simple forms of labor control in hospitality service work from the perspective of labor process analysis. It introduces ethnographic data from two holiday villages on the southern coast of Turkey serving international customers. The two holiday villages were workplaces that employed mostly young workers for low-skill, routine tasks that demanded intense physical and emotional labor, but without due remuneration, career chances, and employment security. Data based on participant observation and in-depth interviews point to an increasing managerial reliance on simple forms of labor control. This happens as a result of intensifying competition among hospitality firms in a market with volatile demand and managerial perceptions regarding employees’ lack of customer service skills due to routinization and simplification of tasks after the introduction of the all-inclusive boarding system. Such market-related developments encourage employers to use simple control mechanisms that help in adjusting staffing levels, imposing loyalty, cutting costs, and ensuring efficiency.

Keywords

labor processtourism industryhospitality sector in Turkeysimple labor control
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 63 , November 2020 , pp. 4 - 31
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Author’s note: The author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this paper.

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