Automation and the future of work: A social shaping of technology approach

Recent years have seen enormous attention paid to automation and its potential implications for the future of work. This study rejects unhelpful speculation and, instead, poses the question ‘what is shaping automation and its predicted effects?’ In contrast to the technological determinism framing much of the current debate, this study utilises the social shaping of technology (SST) approach, a theoretically informed body of research largely overlooked by sociology of work scholars. Compared with mainstream commentary, which treats technology as separate from the social world, SST facilitates examination of how the development and use of technology are shaped by broader socioeconomic concerns and politics. The analysis presented is based on an understanding of how technology is shaped by existing technology, economics, social relations, gender and the state.     

Information technology change,work complexity and service jobs: a contingent perspective

We examine the contingent impact of implementing an enterprise‐wide information technology system (Enterprise Resource Planning) on perceptions of work complexity in clerical, technical and managerial service sector jobs. Using matched and control samples of employee survey data, we compare pre‐ and post‐intervention perceptions of work complexity and importance of analytical skills across three hierarchical job levels: clerical, technical and managerial. We find that employees in clerical jobs, at the lowest level in the hierarchy, experience a significant increase in work complexity and need for analytical skills, whereas those in technical and managerial service jobs do not. Implications for theory, management of technology and employment policy are discussed.     

New new technologies: the future and the present of work in information and communication technology

This paper outlines a selection of technological and organisational developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector and analyses their likely challenges for workers and trade unions around the globe. It addresses the convergence of telecommunications and information technology, the related developments of ubiquitous computing, ‘clouds’ and ‘big data’, and the possibilities of crowdsourcing and relates these technologies to the last decades' patterns of value chain restructuring. The paper is based on desk research of European and international sources, on sector analyses and technology forecasts by, for instance, the European Union and Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, and some national actors. These prognoses are analysed through the lens of recent research into ICT working environments and ICT value chains, identifying upcoming and ongoing challenges for both workers and unions, and outlining possible research perspectives.     

Fear and hope in an age of mass automation: debating the future of work

Alternative perspectives from economics and political economy now agree that work is set to disappear through the impact of mass automation. Some worry about the negative effects on unemployment and inequality, while others see the opportunity to extend free time. This paper confronts and criticises these perspectives. It addresses previous visions of an automated (‘workless’) future presented by Marx and Keynes and shows the enduring barriers to working less in capitalist society. It then questions whether work will be reduced by technological progress; rather, it argues that work will likely persist, despite and indeed because of the wider use of new technology. The threat to workers from technology is seen to come more from the erosion in the quality of work than from the loss of work. The paper argues that a better future for work and workers ultimately depends on broader changes in ownership.     

Designing flexible work practices for job satisfaction: the relation between job characteristics and work disaggregation in different types of work arrangements

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 the characteristics of a job, which reflect the use of ICT to support the spatial disaggregation of business processes, influence the relationship between the two types of flexible work practices and job satisfaction. We show, through a survey conducted on 987 workers, that the characteristics of a job that favour work disaggregation positively moderate the influence of flexible work as a work practice on job satisfaction, but they do not moderate the influence of flexible work as an employment practice. The implications for managers, workers and scholars are discussed.     

Risks,possibilities, and social relations in the computerisation of Swedish university administration

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 computerisation 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.     

Defining technology and technological education: A crisis,or cause for celebration?

This paper originated from a two-year technological education teacher development project at the Faculty of Education, The University of Western Ontario. The authors searched for an understanding of technology and technological education through traditional scholarly means, i.e., a literature review, and through an action research venture that, it was thought, would reveal the parameters of ‘technology’. The paper, beyond helping to give the authors and the reader a better understanding of what it means to define an elusive concept, serves to give technology educators a conceptual starting point from which to build insight into the elements of their life's work. The function and form of the paper evolved from the project process. They [the function and form] were determined by the nature of and ambiguities associated with technology. The reader is invited, for example, to consider the historical, social, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of technology. Rather than draw parallels about technology from those diverse disciplines, a daunting task, the paper charts a terrain from which investigators who seek a definition of technology and a framework for the subsequent study of technology, might get their bearings. The paper includes approaches to defining technology, a literature review, a comparison of science and technology, and an epilogue. While a definition is offered as part of the epilogue, the larger purpose of the paper is to improve one's understanding of an ubiquitous phenomenon. The central question of the ongoing debate, in Ontario and elsewhere, about the role and direction of technological education, is inherent in the paper and in the mandate of the teacher development project. What is technology and where and in what form does it belong in the curriculum of the schools?     

Neo‐bureaucratic organisational forms,technology, control and contingent work: the case of UK TV

A feature in contemporary labour markets has been the growth of non‐standard work. This has to be set within a context of evolving new organisational forms and the ways that large organisations control these forms. Based on a qualitative study of freelance work in television, we have witnessed considerable vertical‐disintegration of the industry and a substantial growth of freelance working. Control over the network is maintained by employing former large broadcaster staff, and in turn their own preferred freelancers. This has significant implications for the nature of freelance work. While work is characterised as more insecure, generally the degree varies. This is based, in part, on occupation but also on access to social capital. Freelancers also reported a positive attitude to work, but more negative findings on working hours, work intensification and on related benefits.     

Re-examining technology's destruction of blue-collar work

Despite research suggesting certain death of blue-collar work due to technological advancements, blue-collar jobs continue to be in demand. Through a study of the blue-collar dominant Transport and Logistics sector in Australia, we apply a Critical Realist framework to consider the tendencies contributing to, and limiting, technological uptake and worker displacement. Our analysis of interviews with sector managers demonstrate how technological uptake decisions to enact labour saving technologies are often constrained by other causal mechanisms and associated (counter) tendencies. Causal mechanisms related to geographical artifacts, industry structure and established business models, along with class structure, mitigate against ‘big bang’ technological transformation and the demise of blue-collar work. We conclude that tracking the future of work is important, but it cannot be done solely on the basis of technological capacities to displace labour or without consideration of the complex interplay of causal mechanisms and tendencies shaping employer decisions about technology.     

Parasitic universes: Organisational and technological meddling in the social

Debates about technology theorising ‘the social’ solely on dyadic and fixed positional terms fail to grasp important ways that new financial technologies participate in work organisations. As an alternative, we build on the work of Michel Serres to propose that these technologies already inhabit triadic and relational parasitic universes in which they introduce interruptions that do much more than mediate between degrees of technological and social determinism. To understand the forms of agency this affords, we analyse two contrasting studies of workplaces where financial technologies were introduced. In a UK non-profit social care organisation, relations of care were fundamentally disrupted by disorderly, dysfunctional forms of agency, whereas in UK retail banking, management used disorder to strategically obscure their own agency. Technological innovation and ‘future of work’ narratives are shown to feed each other, in service to interests that benefit from the repurposing of technologies, people and organisations.     

Emotions and the spatialisation of social relations in text‐based computer‐mediated communication

This paper advances our knowledge of emotions in virtual teams using text‐based computer‐mediated communication. The literature's preoccupation with the absence of physical cues of emotion has meant we lack both an understanding of how emotions are co‐constructed through interaction and an explanation of their role in the social relations of virtual teams. Adopting a communicative view of emotion, we present the findings of a longitudinal study of a virtual team within a transnational collaborative project. We present three aspects of interaction that demonstrate how team members' experience and understanding of the emotions expressed through, and suppressed from, text‐based messages are influenced by the styles and patterns of interaction enabled by technology. Where our three aspects tend towards stasis, we argue that emotion provides a temporal dimension to a process of ‘spatialising’ social relations by connoting what should change, or what should endure, between people.     

Articulation work from the middle—a study of how technicians mediate users and technology

This article studies the work performed by technicians in a large demonstration project, EcoGrid 2.0, in the Danish island Bornholm. Based on observations of household visits conducted by technicians, we demonstrate how these act as ‘middlemen’, mediating and linking together the smart technology of the demonstration and the involved users. Formally, technicians’ work is to keep users online; however, they also perform a number of invisible tasks to keep users engaged and active. Our ethnographic study shows two broad categories of invisible work: first, technicians continually facilitate the willingness of users, recurrently affirming the social contract between users and demonstration project. Second, technicians facilitate the abilities of users by improvising informal training sessions of how to operate the system. These findings are used to discuss the importance of invisible articulation work of technical service workers in large scale real‐world experiments.     

Autonomy at work in the gig economy: analysing work status,work content and working conditions of independent professionals

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 quite simply no longer an option. Our paper examines the various components intertwined behind the taken‐for‐granted concept of autonomy. Drawing on debates from the legal through to the sociological and HR literatures, we identify three underlying dimensions to autonomy. When combined, they provide the basis for an analytical matrix that may assist policy makers, practitioners and individual workers to understand the challenges and opportunities linked to new ways of working.     

Beyond dichotomy: the curvilinear relationship between social responsibility and financial performance

A central and contentious debate in many literatures concerns the relationship between financial and social performance. We advance this debate by measuring the financial–social performance link mutual funds that practice socially responsible investing (SRI). SRI fund managers have an array of social screening strategies from which to choose. Prior studies have not addressed this heterogeneity within SRI funds. Combining modern portfolio and stakeholder theories, we hypothesize that the financial loss borne by an SRI fund due to poor diversification is offset as social screening intensifies because better‐managed and more stable firms are selected into its portfolio. We find support for this hypothesis through an empirical test on a panel of 61 SRI funds from 1972 to 2000. The results show that as the number of social screens used by an SRI fund increases, financial returns decline at first, but then rebound as the number of screens reaches a maximum. That is, we find a curvilinear relationship, suggesting that two long‐competing viewpoints may be complementary. Furthermore, we find that financial performance varies with the types of social screens used. Community relations screening increased financial performance, but environmental and labor relations screening decreased financial performance. Based on our results, we suggest that literatures addressing the link between financial and social performance move toward in‐depth examination of the merits of different social screening strategies, and away from the continuing debate on the financial merits of either being socially responsible or not. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MNC foreign investment and industrial disasters: The moderating role of technological,safety management,and philanthropic capabilities

Research Summary: We investigate how industrial disasters can discourage FDI and how MNCs' technological, safety management, and philanthropic capabilities can moderate these effects. Using two unique panel data sets of entry and expansion of U.S. wholly‐owned manufacturing subsidiaries overseas, we found that industrial disasters are associated with reduced foreign entry of wholly‐owned subsidiaries in the disaster industry, but not for all firms in the host country experiencing the disaster. We also found that MNCs' technological, safety management, and philanthropic capabilities can, in some cases, positively moderate the negative relationships between industrial disasters and the foreign entry and expansion of wholly‐owned subsidiaries. Additionally, three‐way interactions with government stability suggest that technological and safety management capabilities substitute government stability in managing industrial disasters, while philanthropic capability complements government stability. Managerial Summary: How can MNCs' technological, safety management, and philanthropic capabilities overcome the effects of industrial disasters such as chemical spills and explosions in host countries? Our results show that industrial disasters are associated with reduced foreign entry of wholly‐owned subsidiaries in the industry in which the industrial disaster occurs, but not for other firms operating in the country experiencing the disaster. However, an MNC's technological capability can, in general, lower the negative consequences of industrial disasters in both the entry and expansion of its wholly‐owned subsidiaries. Regarding the institutional quality of a host country, the results imply that MNCs should develop philanthropic capability when the government stability of the host country is strong, and develop technological and safety management capabilities when the government stability is weak.     

Mapping themes in the study of new work practices

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 dimensions in the study of new work practices; (2) Spatial and temporal manifestations of new work practices in the collaborative economy; (3) Individuals, organizations and new work configurations; (4) Power and control. The review article critically discusses the future of work and argues that the ‘new’ world of work simply repeats asymmetrical power relations and inequalities that characterise work activities, with the potential of exacerbating even further disparities, inequalities and precarity.     

Hybrid social media: employees’ use of a boundary‐spanning technology

Improved employee collaboration and communication can be facilitated by social technologies that extend within and beyond organisations. These social technologies have increasingly come to be represented by social media sites, which are used to extend workplace relationships across personal and professional boundaries in a hybrid role. This presents opportunities and risks as those boundaries are collapsed. Using boundary management as a theoretical lens, we evaluate the associations of relationship initiation between colleagues at different levels of organisations with employees’ strategies and their well‐being. We also investigate relationships with social media usage, age and propensity to self‐monitor and group employees using cluster analysis. We consider implications of our findings for developing more sophisticated policies, training and guidance for employees on the use of social media as a workplace tool.     

In search of meaningful work on digital freelancing platforms: the case of design professionals

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 through the platform, and their dependence on it, is undermining the meaningfulness of their work. Freelancers find that the platforms are eroding both the manifest (i.e. monetary) and latent (i.e. non‐monetary) meaning of their work although they are mostly concerned about the latent element of meaning. The analysis reveals that the small group of freelancers who pursue meaningful work and earn a sustainable income on platforms are those with strong entrepreneurial orientation.     

推广施工新技术提高工程科技含量

在建筑工程施工新技术推广与应用现状宏观分析的基础上，以“2004年建设部科技示范工程项目”大连开发区文化中心施工新技术应用与推广为实例，分析了如何结合工程实际采用新技术来提高工程科技含量、保证工程质量，并提出了一些措施和对策。     

The relationship between technology and science: Some historical and philosophical reflections. Part I

This essay offers a detailed review of the literature on the relationship between technology and science. It is in two parts. Part I begins by describing science and technology, and the differences between them. It then discusses the commonly-held technology-as-applied-science (TAS) view; the origins of this view, the support for it, and the strong historical and philosophical challenges to it, beginning more than half a century ago, are explored. The development of the steam engine is then offered as a brief case study to illustrate that science-technology relations are more complex than implied by the TAS view. Part I concludes with a consideration of ontological arguments supporting the reverse view, namely that technology is often a necessary precursor to science.Part II, to be published in a following issue, explores some of the consequences of the TAS view. One consequence is that it has generated a story-line in which scientific ideas are emphasised and other factors necessary for technological innovation have been down-played. Another consequence is that, even in cases where technology does apply scientific knowledge, the process of application is often considered obvious; the difficulties of translating ideas into artefacts may not be appreciated. The essay argues for the telling of a more complex story of science-technology relations, one which recognises their historical independence in the past, and their mutual, two-way interaction in many modern fields of endeavour. It concludes with a consideration of some economic and educational implications.