Sales Work under Marketization: The Social Relations of the Cash Nexus?

Abstract

In lightly regulated economies many jobs are becoming subject to a process of ‘marketization’ involving an externalization of the employment relationship in the context of intensified product market competition. At the same time, a number of front-line jobs are becoming redefined to encompass more proactive sales aims. This study examines two sites at an intersection of these trends — sites where financial service jobs have been marketized and redefined to revolve around proactive sales activity. It examines the key social relations of the sales workers — relations with managers, immediate colleagues, back-office staff, customers and referrers — in considering how far marketization leads to the social relations of the cash nexus along bare market principles. It is found that one group of workers is enmeshed in a dehumanized, instrumental and antagonistic set of relations, while another, smaller, group of workers is insulated against such relations by the functioning of tight trust-based referral networks. It is concluded that the texture of the social relations of sales work under marketization is centrally influenced by the social constitution of the specific product market in which sales workers act. In addition, it is argued that the process of marketization tends to corrode the factors that support the functioning of tight trust-based networks.