| 1. |
- Hansen Löfstrand, Cecilia, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Control or protection? Work environment implications of police body-worn cameras
- 2021
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 36:3, s. 327-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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 implications – control or protection of officers – we critically examine how expectations in relation to BWC introduction and its implications have been addressed to explain why so little attention has been devoted to the topic. We found a dominant control rationale facilitating (rapid) BWC implementation at the expense of officers’ work environment, health and safety.
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| 2. |
- Håkansta, Carin
(författare)
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Ambulating, digital and isolated : The case of Swedish labour inspectors
- 2022
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 37:1, s. 24-40
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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. The interviewed inspectors considered these problems a managerial responsibility to solve. Management, in contrast, considered isolation a passing phenomenon and judged standardisation and replicability through ICT more important than inspectors' discretion. This study illustrates how new technology in an organisation, although considered necessary, raises questions about how to maintain communities of practice and how to avoid negative effects on the discretion of street-level agents. It contributes to theory by introducing the concepts of Communities of Practice and street-level bureaucracy into the discussion of isolation by digitalisation.
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| 3. |
- Ivory, Chris, et al.
(författare)
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Getting caught between discourse(s) : hybrid choices in technology use at work
- 2020
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : WILEY. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 35:1, s. 80-96
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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' have been largely expunged from the contemporary STS analytical lexicon; with consequences, we believe, for our ability as researchers to interpret and explain the rapid change we see in contemporary work places. In this paper we make the case for the continued use of a strong structural-discourse theory alongside other emergent forms of discourse. We show how workers, responding to conflicting and different types of discourse, produce varying hybrid responses-actions that react to and combine elements of emergent and structural discourses. Our work considers the implications of this finding for contemporary STS theory.
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| 4. |
- Regin Öborn, David
(författare)
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Risks, possibilities, and social relations in the computerisation of Swedish university administration
- 2023
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 38:3, s. 434-452
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This mixed methods case study discusses how the introduction of new technology changed the work of departmental administrators at a Swedish university, drawing on Cockburn's theories on gender and technology, viewing organisations as fields of contestation. This paper argues that jobs seem more fragmented with less discretion, as a result of computerisation. However, time saved by a new division of labour enabled by digitalisation has increased the possibilities for specialisation and job crafting. This new division of labour also led to increased tensions between academics, administrators and management. As the risks and possibilities connected to computerization are matters of social relations, as much as being governed by technology, this paper adds to the debates on work and technology by exploring the complexity of social relations at work place level experienced by this overlooked group at the periphery of the managerial and academic power centres in academia.
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| 5. |
- Salminen-Karlsson, Minna, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Information systems in nurses' work : Technical rationality versus an ethic of care
- 2022
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 37:2, s. 270-287
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nurses increasingly interact with health information systems (HIS) in their daily work. This article examines how the problems that they confront in that interaction can be understood through the theoretical concepts of technical rationality and an ethic of care. The findings are based on a qualitative study of nurses in one Swedish hospital. They suggest that HIS did not support the holistic care of patients, and were not adapted to the varied and often urgent situations that nurses faced in their daily work, leaving them feeling isolated with their problems. In summary, HIS were found to serve the administrative aims of a hospital organisation, based on technical rationality, rather than supporting patients' needs as seen from an ethics of care perspective. The contribution of the study is to show how the use of these two conceptual tools connects nurses' daily problems with HIS to more fundamental issues about the values upon which healthcare is grounded.
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| 6. |
- Thulin, Eva, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Pacesetters in contemporary telework: How smartphones and mediated presence reshape the time–space rhythms of daily work
- 2022
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 37:2, s. 250-269
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examine how mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) and mediated interaction transform daily work activity in contemporary, extended telework. We expand on the concepts of mediated bundles and pacesetters to understand how the rhythms and employee control of work activity change. We draw on in-depth interviews with 22 teleworkers with varying skills and work tasks. We find that mobile technology not only relaxes the time–space constraints of telework but fosters countering processes of recoupling and fixity. New ICTs shift the relative importance of individually defined and work-related pacesetters. The rhythm of daily work is increasingly set by horizontal interaction between spatially dispersed coworkers. It is informally regulated through practices of the continuous-mediated interweaving of workflows and synchronised responsivity in relation to changing work intensity. Highly qualified teleworkers more often signal that they are in control and setting the pace compared to less qualified.
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| 7. |
- Uba, Katrin, Docent, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Political campaigns on YouTube : Trade unions’ mobilization in Europe
- 2021
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Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 36:2, s. 240-260
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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 of data about European trade union confederations’ political mobilisation on YouTube, 2007–2017. The results showed, expectedly, that resource-rich confederations in the organised corporatist regime (Scandinavia) use YouTube for political activism to lesser degree than in other regimes; when these confederations do pursue political activism, such videos are often related to elections and reflect the political party-union relationship. Unexpectedly, the resource-poor confederations in the transitional regime (Central and Eastern Europe) mobilised politically on YouTube to the same extent as have the confederations in the social partnership, liberal and state-centred regimes.
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