Online platforms have disrupted parts of the capitalist economy, but assessing the magnitude of this effect is difficult. Much is known about major platforms, but less about the conditions under which they take over—or fail to take over—a given market. Unlike explanations emphasising slow take-up by entrepreneurs or worker resistance, we argue that historical and organisational characteristics of markets

Emerging from the changing social, technological and cultural changes to work, coworking has been positioned as a new economic engine composed of collaboration and community, providing support for entrepreneurship, innovation and soft infrastructure for economic development. However, an alternative interpretation of coworking suggests it responds to the isolation and insecurity of self-employment by

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of front-line service workers’ experience of the worker–client relationship. It is based on a series of in-depth interviews with non-professionally affiliated workers in new front-line roles in UK mental health services. The findings cover three main areas: worker motivation and orientation; the nature of the worker–client relationship; and the role

The focus of this paper is the impact of digitalisation on a public sector organisation: the Swedish Work Environment Agency. Building on internal documents and interviews with labour inspectors and managers, it shows that ICT-enabled temporal and spatial flexibility increased the social isolation among the inspectors and that standardising technology negatively affected their work practice discretion

This article introduces the special issue of New Technology, Work and Employment titled “The Internet, Social Media and Trade Union Revitalization: Still Behind the Digital Curve or Catching Up?” The objectives of this special issue are threefold. First, to develop an analytical framework that can help researchers assess the role that internal and external factors play in mediating the nature and scope

This paper provides the first cross-platform examination of trade union social media posts, focussing on the online content of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union. Data scraped from the union's Facebook posts (n = 282) were compared with data obtained from the union's Twitter account (n = 1554) to investigate the extent to which social media reflects a union's identity and utilises the language

In Steven (2021), the following error was published on page 1. The article title’ A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond’ has been changed to “Working in the end times”. We apologize for this error.

Online social media activities constitute a (new) contested terrain of NTWE in the new digital workplace. This article explores the extent to which new social media (SM) digital technologies extend managerial control and, alternatively, give employees dissenting capacity to reverse or turn the digital panoptical gaze back on their employer – invoking both a contested terrain and counter discipline

Literature in the Performance Management (PM) field champions a shift to more continual forms of worker assessment. Advances in data analytic technologies are claimed to support such developments. However, critical literature finds that PM technologies induce malign consequences for workers and that unions should seek to organise an alternative agenda challenging employers. Based on findings from an

In the course of digitisation, work away from the principal office using information and communications technology (telework, telecommuting, and mobile work) has established itself in various segments of the labour market. Still, the impact of telework on employees’ health is far from clear and is often controversially discussed at the individual, organisational and political level—but also in social

In this paper, we explore the job crafting experiences of women who left permanent employment for contracting positions in Information Technology (IT), a sector widely considered male-dominated with limited career opportunities for women. This qualitative study is based on interviews with 24 female IT contractors. Findings show that through the flexibility and autonomy that come with contracting, numerous

One feature of ‘flexibilisation’ concerns the growth of more individualised employment arrangements and career trajectories less connected to employing organisations. Informed by the Varieties of Capitalism approach, which emphasises the embeddedness of employment practices within discrete types of capitalist market economy, and based on rich qualitative data from interviews with 32 self-employed and

This review paper critically examines the work environment implications of the use of body-worn camera (BWC) technology reported in research. We found that published peer-review studies (90 articles) pay very little attention to the work environment of BWC users – police officers. Departing from the notion of the two faces of surveillance and of BWC technology as a surveillance tool with uncertain

Advances in labour-saving technology have sparked a public debate about the ‘Future of Work’. An important role in this debate is played by policy-focused literature produced by institutions such as government agencies, international organisations, think tanks, and consulting firms. Using qualitative coding, the present study analyses this ‘grey’ literature (a total of 195 documents published in English

The use of internet-based tools during work for personal purposes is a widespread phenomenon in both private and public organisations. By analysing 30 in-depth interviews with cognitive workers in Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this study explores the ways in which contemporary workers engage in, experience, and rationalise personal Internet use at work. The results show

There is intense debate surrounding digitalisation and its implications for work. However, empirical research within established workplaces, especially international comparative studies, remains limited. This article uses cross-country research to further analysis of the relative importance of different institutions, actors and power relations in shaping digitalisation and worker outcomes. Through

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,

This paper aims to critically examine employee participation in Industry 4.0, with a systematic literature review. A total of 58 studies were reviewed, resulting in a categorisation of the literature into three perspectives. The ‘techno‐optimist’ and the ‘socio‐technical’ perspective dominate in the reviewed papers. They both confirm a trend that frames employee participation in a unitarist tradition

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

This study investigates work schedules in online labour markets, operating in 24/7 mode across spatial borders and time zones. Focusing on largely hidden and invisible work of freelancers such as searching for jobs and communicating with clients, the study documents how platforms put pressures and constraints on freelancers’ time through the mechanism of task allocation. We use data on 241,582 timestamped

Capitalism has always generated predictions of its demise. One common form such predictions take is the fear of an absence of sufficient work to go around. In an important new text, Daniel Susskind argues that revolutions in computational power are already bringing about such a condition, which will soon lead to a secular stagnation of employment. I argue that even if correct in its conclusions, Susskind’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

This study examined how entry‐level employees interacted with social media during three stages of organizational socialization. They navigated between four different media affordances (persistence, editability, visibility, and association) while experiencing them as both enabling and constraining in different socialization stages. Qualitative interview data analysis revealed during anticipatory socialization

Both shaping and shaped by technological, economic and social facets, the world of work has witnessed a wide array of changes. This review article sets out to provide a synthesis of some of the main directions and insights of existing research connected to the new world of work. In particular, we approached the topic of new work practices through four key dimensions: (1) Conceptual and methodological

Despite policy initiatives aimed at promoting female access to jobs, the information and communication technology (ICT) professions have traditionally been largely monopolised by men. Segregation, gendered stereotypes and environmental factors have a clear impact on educational and professional choices, as well as on working conditions. The spread of ICT to all economic activities has meant that ICT

This article addresses various ways that cybervetting recruiters (re)construct boundaries around the public–private division. Based on interviews with 37 recruiters in Sweden, we show how the practice of cybervetting is legitimised by the recruiters’ descriptions and accounts in relation to various notions of privacy and norms of information flow. We present this as a boundary work aided by especially

The literature on flexible work practices has not yet evaluated in detail how the characteristics of a job affect job satisfaction. This study makes a distinction between two types of flexible work practices according to their aims: the accommodation of employees’ personal lives (employment practice) and the operational reasons of a firm (work practice). Based on this distinction, we studied how

With the ever‐increasing popularity of social media, whistle‐blowing, which generally refers to the disclosure of organisational wrongdoing, has entered a new era. Whistle‐blowing via virtual platforms has transformed not just the channel of disclosure, but also the associated motives, processes and outcomes. The impact on the whistle‐blower, the organisation and the public can often be accelerated

This article adopts a work orientations perspective to consider how, through the medium of Twitter, employees voice the things they love and hate about their jobs. Using 817,235 tweets posted by 650,958 users in the calendar year 2014, the findings provide new insights into both employee voice and job satisfaction/dissatisfaction as well as an enhanced understanding of the employment relationship.

This paper offers a critical perspective on the debate surrounding autonomy at work for a specific category of non‐standard workers: independent professionals. The increasing numbers now working this way as well as their spread into all sectors, industries and occupations, mean that their work arrangements can no longer be dismissed as non‐standard or atypical. Defining them by what they are not is

We explore individuals who take some of their technology use ‘underground’, described as ‘bootlegging’, to enhance healthcare work. We find that healthcare professionals’ informal use of mobile applications in healthcare work sometimes ‘sticks out’ and this produces professional identity tensions: (1) conflict with perceptions of professional behaviour, and (2) defilement of expert judgment. Our analysis