11. |
- Cicmil, Svetlana, et al.
(author)
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The project (management) discourse and its consequences : On vulnerability and un-sustainability in project-based work
- 2016
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 31:1, s. 58-76
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper, we examine how the discourses related to project-based work and management are drawn upon in the organising of contemporary work, and the implications they have for project workers. We are interested in how project workers and projectified organisations become vulnerable to decline, decay and exhaustion and why they continue to participate in, and so sustain, projectification processes. The critical perspective taken here, in combination with our empirical material from the ICT sector, surfaces an irreversible decline of the coping capacity of project workers and draws attention to the addictive perception of resilience imposed on and internalised by them as a condition of success and longevity. Under those circumstances, resilience is made sense of and internalised as coping with vulnerability by letting some elements of life being destroyed; thus re-emerging as existentially vulnerable rather than avoiding or resisting the structures and processes that perpetuate vulnerability.
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12. |
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13. |
- Gobena, Elina
(author)
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Unboxing reskilling narratives: : Analysing practice, agency and signifier in social media
- 2024
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper explores reskilling, appearing both as a practice and a signifier in social media. By investigating reskilling narratives, this paper describes origins, actors and relation to skill. It contributes by first suggesting that reskilling is a process rather than a specific training form or about specific skill content. Second, individuals and organisations are simultaneously and paradoxically sold reskilling, but their interests do not always align. On social media, reskilling stands as a corporate (and societal) signifier of action as well as an opportunity for advertising employer brands. Third, through a technology-deterministic frame, reskilling can be understood as a signifier of optimism, that is, turning pessimism in the shape of possible displacement into optimism where society, organisations and people may ‘keep up’ with technological change. Thus, reskilling can be understood to materialise optimism, and that optimism is an attempt at the restoration of human agency on an inevitabilist path.
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14. |
- Hansen Löfstrand, Cecilia, 1974, et al.
(author)
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Control or protection? Work environment implications of police body-worn cameras
- 2021
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 36:3, s. 327-347
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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16. |
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17. |
- Håkansta, Carin
(author)
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Ambulating, digital and isolated : The case of Swedish labour inspectors
- 2022
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 37:1, s. 24-40
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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18. |
- Ivory, Chris, et al.
(author)
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Getting caught between discourse(s) : hybrid choices in technology use at work
- 2020
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : WILEY. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 35:1, s. 80-96
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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19. |
- Messenger, Jon C., et al.
(author)
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Three generations of Telework : New ICTs and the (R)evolution from Home Office to Virtual Office
- 2016
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 31:3, s. 195-208
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- New ICTs', such as smartphones and tablet computers, have revolutionised work and life in the 21st Century. Crucial to this development is the detachment of work from traditional office spaces. Today's office work is often supported by Internet connections, and thus can be done from anywhere at any time. Research on detachment of work from the employer's premises actually dates back to the previous century. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jack Nilles and Allan Toffler predicted that work of the future would be relocated into or nearby employees' homes with the help of technology, called Telework'. Analysing technological advancementsthe enabling forces of change in this contextover four decades sheds new light on this term: they have fostered the evolution of Telework in distinct stages or generations'. Today's various location-independent, technology-enabled new ways of working are all part of the same revolution in the inter-relationship between paid work and personal life.
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20. |
- Olofsdotter, Gunilla, 1957-, et al.
(author)
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Gender (in)equality contested : externalising employment in the construction industry
- 2016
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In: New technology, work and employment. - : Wiley. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 31:1, s. 41-57
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In construction and engineering, workers from different organisations work together, often on a project-by-project basis. Drawing on the theoretical framework of inequality regimes as presented by Acker (2006a), and the externalisation of employment relations presented by Kalleberg et.al. (2003), this article investigates the gendered implications of the externalisation of technological work in the construction industry. The empirical material is based upon interviews and a questionnaire answered by regular employees, contracted staff and independent contractors working in the construction industry. The data reveal how non-standard employments are parts of the organising processes that produce gendered inequalities between core and peripheral workers. This finding does not suggest that peripheral work indicates poor working conditions, to be more presise, peripheral workers can be in the most priviledged positions.
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