The article offers a novel conceptualisation of unions’ digital audiences and considers how their characteristics affect the practice of organising. Data were collected from the central Twitter accounts of 33 British unions resulting in 167,658 tweets and information from their 357,687 followers. Using textual and network methods, the analysis shows how unions interact with large, diverse and unexpected

We discuss algorithmic control and nudges prevalent in the gig economy in relation to extant management control literature. We draw on an analysis of archival data and interviews with drivers and executives of app‐based cab companies in India. Comparing algorithmic control with direct control, we explain the increase in the scale and scope of automation that enables detailed driver profiling and segmentation

Redundancy and job loss in a context of precarity have become central to the experiences of journalists globally over the last decade. Previous research has identified the importance of networks to job seeking in these contexts. This article analyses responses of 225 journalists in Australia whose positions were made redundant between 2012 and 2014 to questions about their ongoing connections with

This article examines the affordances that digital technologies offer to labour unions. The results of our study of 13 trade unions in Canada contrast with the prevailing techno‐deterministic perspectives in the literature which describe digital technologies as fundamentally good, bad or neutral for unions. By adopting an affordance approach, our paper examines how union actors perceive digital technology

Pilot projects are increasingly used as a mechanism to enact organisational change, particularly government policy. Information technology's centrality to organisations often makes it key to the introduction of new processes. However, it can give rise to workarounds as employees circumvent impediments it presents by rejecting its prescribed use. Workarounds tend to be conceptualised dichotomously,

The article investigates the control of the platform labour process by means of the digital production of space and how workers resist it. The segment of German platform‐mediated food delivery is examined via qualitative interviews and auto‐ethnography. It is shown how the platforms create different spaces to efficiently coordinate and control mobile delivery gig work. Steered by geolocalisation and

Trade unions are called to increase their influence on policy‐making by becoming more politically active and use social media, but only a few studies investigate unions’ online political activism. We propose that industrial relations regime of a country relates to unions’ perceived opportunities for mobilisation and thereby also unions’ online political activism. We test this argument with the help

Artificial intelligence increasingly forms an essential context for the distribution of power within workplaces. Using the case study of an AI‐enabled chatbot initially created by IBM and subsequently developed by an alt‐labour network in the United States and a traditional union in Australia, this article outlines several distinctive ways in which the chatbot increased union resources and capabilities

The world of work is undergoing huge changes as a result of digitalisation. Part of this transformation process involves a growing demand for skilled employees—a section of the workforce that appears increasingly less reliant on the representative services provided by works councils. In the following article, we consider works council’s use of ICT tools to re‐engage with skilled employees, noting that

Beyond a purely social activity, mode of leisure or form of escape, blogging is an increasingly important form of labour that is becoming central to many jobs, occupations and forms of self‐employment. Yet, the labour dynamics of blogging remain poorly understood and articulated. To address this gap, this paper presents a novel typology of work‐related blogging based on the integration of existing

The U.S. tech industry has been going through a re‐shuffling of labour forces, which destabilises the previous masculine structure. Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic work and 46 interviews, this study finds that labour games have become a contested terrain where different groups of engineers promote their masculine selves. Brogrammers highlight their brogramming masculine habitus through initiating

This paper extends research on algorithmic management by examining mechanisms of compliance. Algorithmic management has predominantly been analysed in terms of the exercise of disciplinary power over workers and rational control of labour. Facing algorithms, platform workers would be in a situation of fear, passivity and frustration. In this paper, we utilise the Foucauldian framework of ‘dispositive’

This paper focuses on technical‐maintenance worker perspectives on the insertion of digitised drone technologies in the European steel industry. The industry is aiming for a ‘business model transformation’ by means of digitalisation, which includes the use of drone technologies for maintenance functions. In this paper, we explore on what basis might such workers embrace or resist this new technology

The outbreak of COVID‐19 is having a drastic impact on work and employment. This review piece outlines the relevance of existing research into new technology, work and employment in the era of COVID‐19. It is important to be retrospective and undertake both a historically and theoretically informed position on the impact of new technologies in the current crisis and beyond. Issues of control, surveillance

The issue of spaces for non‐organised employee resistance has attracted renewed attention due to the diffusion of new digital technologies in the workplace. The ability of new technologies to measure and restrict employee behaviour in new ways requires explanations of resistance that account for both technology’s material characteristics and employee agency, without descending into technological determinism

Technology has driven new organisations of work and employment relationships, rendering changes that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. The rise of digital platforms has not only enabled new forms of work activity but also transformed the way workers find new opportunities. This development, referred to as gig work, is distinct from traditional employment in that it is mediated through

This article analyses the design of an online mentoring platform—for women by women—in a high‐technology, male‐dominated UK industry: aviation and aerospace. Based on interviews with professionals and managers, we analyse the journey of the women involved and contribute to the understanding of the role of women (individually and collectively) in challenging gendered norms in a male‐dominated industry

Theorising the relationships between information communication technology (ICT), travel and work continues to preoccupy researchers interested in multinational corporations (MNCs). One motivation is the desire to understand ways of reducing demand for and the negative consequences of business travel. Existing studies offer, however, little in the way of theoretical explanation of why situations that

This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care‐workers' continuous

On‐demand service firms secure market power by cultivating and operationalising calculative asymmetries between the platform and labour. In this article, I analyse dynamic (or ‘surge’) pricing as an exemplary calculative technique. I show how the asymmetrical application of price‐setting allows firms to leverage control at the aggregate level while maintaining the façade of autonomy at the individual

Workers actively negotiate contradictions between discourses of flexibility and entrepreneurialism and actually existing conditions of risk and precarity endemic to online self‐employed work. This article examines how ride‐hail drivers counter‐branded UberPool—a carpool ride‐hail service—as ‘UberPoo’. While marketed as a solution to congestion, UberPool created risky and coercive working conditions

The article shows how linguistic criteria have become central when defining job categories in the outsourced call centre sector in Spain. Language occupies a central role in the production processes of informational capitalism: in call centres, language functions as the raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as a product. Yet the ways in which linguistic production affects key elements of

Labour‐management practices and workers’ experiences in the gig economy are topics of major interest for researchers, regulators and the general public. Platform companies project a vision of gig workers as autonomous freelancers, but pervasive features of their own labour practices, along with workers’ traits, create new vulnerabilities and risks. Efforts to improve gig workers’ conditions to date

Digital nomadism, a mobile lifestyle that encompasses a wide array of professional endeavours, ranging from corporate remote workers to digital entrepreneurs, has benefitted from a steadily growing appeal. Despite this, there is a dearth of research exploring the premises and development of digital nomadism. This paper is concerned with the image of digital nomadism, its underlying structure and practices

The role of digital platform workers, whether they are delivering fastfood or working remotely categorising photographs, has received much attention both in the media and among policymakers. However, there is a lack of comparable and consistent statistics, over time and across countries, on the number of platform workers, their characteristics and their types of jobs and tasks. This review article

This paper explores the way in which the youth sections of three British unions use social media. We contribute to both the literature on unions and young workers, and union engagement with social media by providing the first systematic examinations of union youth sections' social media usage in terms of method, scope and content. The paper examines differences in Twitter usage between the youth sections

The number of firms supporting work from home has risen dramatically as advances in communication technology have fundamentally transformed the way humans cooperate. A growing literature addresses working from home, but focuses only on individual workers, overlooking potential influence of co‐worker engagement. Our aim is to study the influence of co‐workers working from home on individual and team

Winner (1977, Autonomous Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 77), in defense of technology determinism, cautioned against ‘throwing out the baby with the methodological bathwater’. His concern was that in so doing STS research would underplay, or be unable to account for, the effects that technology change does have on society. We similarly now find that powerful explanatory concepts like ‘structural‐discourse’

Over the coming decades, technology and automation are expected to dramatically transform how work will be undertaken. While many of these developments will improve productivity and provide new opportunities, some jobs will likely disappear. In this article, we report data from in‐depth interviews undertaken with 51 young Australians about their strategies for managing the possibility of technological

Recent research on flexible office designs have shown that open‐plan and/or flex offices may not have the expected effects in terms of employees’ productivity, well‐being, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and retention. In this article, we propose to consider that the feeling of de‐humanization may explain such dark side of office designs. Adopting a mixed methods approach, we administrated

Current debates around robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are dominated by concerns over the threat to employment, amid widely varying estimates of potential job losses. Countries are expected to fare differently, but there is little comparative research that goes beyond analysing industry and occupational structures. This article rethinks ‘country effects’ by exploring the role of institutions

Growth of the platform economy has been accompanied by critiques of the fragmented, isolated and precarious nature of the employment it offers. Yet, little is known about how creative freelancers perceive the meaning of work on the platforms. Based on 40 interviews with freelancers, clients, platform owners and industry experts, this paper reveals that most freelancers are concerned about how operating