From leisure to labour: towards a typology of the motivations,structures and experiences of work-related blogging

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 knowledge, an in-depth qualitative analysis of 10 blogs and 1,304 blog posts and a ‘total social organisation of labour’ framework. It contributes to the sociology of work by unpacking and nuancing our collective understanding of the relationships between blogging, labour market mobility and labour market trends such as the fragmentation of work, the heightened significance of unpaid labour and new forms of resistance and solidarity in the digital age.     

The price of corporate professionalisation: analysing the corporate capture of professions in the UK

Recent debates on the organisation of expert labour focus upon either the growing dominance of managerialism over traditional professions or the unwillingness/inability of new expert occupations to professionalise. Such arguments frequently disregard expert occupations that continue to deliberately pursue professionalisation to improve their status and influence in organisations and wider society, and therefore overlook the consequences of contemporary professionalisation for expert labour. Here we critically examine one ‘corporate profession’, project management in the UK, which has pursued ‘corporate professionalisation’ by renegotiating relationships with the state, individual members and private corporations, with some degree of success. Combining documentary analysis and interviews with professional association officials and practising project managers, this article analyses the pressures behind the corporate professionalisation strategies of this expert occupation, assessing the impact of moves towards a new model of corporate professionalism that marginalises the interests of professionals while embracing employer agendas.     

Online,on call: the spread of digitally organised just‐in‐time working and its implications for standard employment models

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non‐standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT‐related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce.     

The kill programme: an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ in a slaughterhouse

It has been argued that ‘dirty work’ is characterised by strong occupational and workgroup cultures. This literature has mainly focused on direct workers, but this article largely attends to indirect ‘dirty’ workers, specifically meat inspectors, through ethnographic research conducted in a UK slaughterhouse. Four arguments are developed; the first is that ‘dirty workers’ may not all display group cohesiveness; indeed, individualisation may be more evident depending upon the technology used, internationalisation and employment conditions. Second, there is complexity and diversity within ‘dirty work’ and even single occupations can contain considerable variety, rendering generalisations problematic. Third, we argue that much greater attention needs to be given to the wider contextual issues affecting ‘dirty work’, specifically changing labour markets, itinerant labour, economic conditions and technologies. Finally, we argue that stigmatised work may become more so if it is equated with the low wage economy and/or undercutting conditions of employment through exploiting migrant labour.     

The mythology of ‘Big Data’ as a source of corporate power

In this article, the author explores how companies leverage the mythology of their ‘Big Data’ as a source of power. Drawing on two case studies from the ‘gig’ economy, the author finds that the mythology of Big Data allows companies to claim a monopoly over truth about their industries, marginalizing external researchers. In doing so, companies position themselves as the only legitimate source of knowledge about labour conditions on their services, granting them influence over their regulatory environment.     

Knowledge networks for new technology–based firms: an international comparison of local entrepreneurship promotion

This paper reports on an international comparison of three organisations established to promote new business start–ups in the USA, UK and Canada. A ‘knowledge–based’ approach is adopted to examine how networks of would–be entrepreneurs interact with networks of experienced entrepreneurs and managers, venture capitalists, technical experts, consultants, IPR lawyers and other specialists. This interaction is promoted and mediated at the local level by the three organisations at the centre of the study: the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), Texas; Connect, Edinburgh; and the Canadian Environmental Technology Advancement Corporation (CETAC–West) in Canada. These act as local network–nodes or ‘knowledge integrators’, as well as ‘incubating’ new ventures to increase the new business ‘birth rate’ in their respective regions. The comparison is based on interviews and secondary data that describe the initiation, development, operation and local impact of these organisations. Findings stress the importance of the regional context as a source of particular kinds of knowledge and expertise that may promote or inhibit new technology–based business start–ups. In particular: the scale, scope and quality of ideas and business proposals in local networks; the availability of relevant expertise and experience for ‘intelligent selection’ and for successful mentoring; the nature of rewards and incentives for all players; and the importance of local champions or figureheads, are all factors that help explain differences across the example regions. The paper combines a variety of conceptual approaches around the idea of regional knowledge networks which underpin ‘distributed innovation’. Heightened technological and market uncertainty for new technology–based firms places a premium on the ability of entrepreneurs to integrate specialist knowledge and utilise expertise from a variety of local sources. Despite differences in the scale, scope and effectiveness of their efforts we conclude that all three organisations are supporting ‘accelerated learning’ amongst entrepreneurs.     

Potential for visual communications technology in business

The authors describe the methodology used in a survey conducted by NTT to assess the potential of visual communications technology in business and the conclusions drawn. Communications activities were investigated in detail at a selected manufacturing company, and several fundamental communication patterns suitable for the application of visual communications services were defined. It was concluded that the areas with the greatest potential for such services were ‘investigation/ inquiry’, ‘negotiation’, and ‘submitting information’. To confirm these needs, a questionnaire was mailed to major corporations throughout Japan. Finally, several services and systems were proposed.     

The Grid and CRM: from ‘if’ to ‘when’?

The ‘Grid’, an initiative of the distributed computing community, offers unprecedented levels of computing power for organisations to apply to solving their business problems. Uniquely it also offers the communications infrastructure required to overcome the ‘tyranny of distance’ observed by Blainey (The Tyranny of Distance, Melbourne: Sun Books) in his analysis of the socio-economic development of Australia. However, recent reports of the ‘death of distance’ and consequent strategies of trans-national companies to centralise their operations are tempered by reports of a growing ‘psychic’ distance with their customers. This paper reports the application of high-performance computing (HPC) to modelling consumer behaviour within a large UK financial services company in order to predict not only ‘if’ a certain type of customer behaviour was likely to occur, but also ‘when’. The resultant impact on their customer relationship management strategy leads to the observation that Grid Computing should offer many new opportunities for managing the problem of ‘psychic’ distance that attends a strategy of revenue growth through widening the geographic scope of operations, and scale efficiencies through physical centralisation.     

Generic manufacturing strategies: A conceptual synthesis

This paper provides a conceptual framework that links manufacturing to business unit strategy and focuses on developing the notion of ‘generic manufacturing strategies’ at the strategic business unit (SBU) level. Specifically, an explicit conceptual link is drawn between ‘generic’ business unit strategies and ‘generic’ functional structures in manufacturing. It is proposed that the alternate manufacturing structures implicitly represent ‘generic manufacturing strategies’. Drawing on ideas and concepts from the business strategy literature and manufacturing literature the paper links Porter's generic strategy framework to a complementary manufacturing structure framework that uses three dimensions: process structure complexity, product line complexity, and organizational scope. Viewed from different perspectives, the ‘manufacturing contingency theory’ concepts presented implicitly in the paper can be viewed as an extension of classic research on the interdependence between strategy and structure. The frameworks developed here provide a partial synthesis of knowledge in the broader disciplines of engineering and management without sacrificing academic rigor and practitioner relevance.     

‘From boom to where?’: the impact of crisis on work and employment in Indian BPO

This article locates Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) within the global supply chains of business services delivery and an international division of service labour. It acknowledges the BPO market's essential dependence on demand from lead firms in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on a conceptual synthesis of the Global Commodity Chain, Global Value Chain and Global Production Network frameworks, the article examines the impact of 2008's financial crisis on employment, work organisation and the experience of work in Indian BPO. Employer/industry sources and employee interviews reveal reconfigured local labour market dynamics, tightened work discipline, an extensification of working time, work intensification and unprecedented growth in job insecurity. Such changed characteristics suggest a watershed that raises questions concerning the sustainability of models of BPO work constructed in pre‐crisis years.     

Managing innovation for sustainability

‘Sustainability’ is a major and growing driver of business change. Its implications for innovation are clear – living and working in a world of up to 9 billion people with rising expectations, providing energy, food and resource security, dealing with climate change, ecosystem degradation, a widening economic divide and a host of other interdependent issues will require massive change in products, services, processes, marketing approaches and the underlying business models which frame them. The focus of this paper is to develop an understanding of new approaches to innovation management required to take account of the growing pressures and emerging opportunities in the ‘sustainability’ agenda. In particular, it draws on case studies of a variety of organisations to help answer the question of what practical actions might be taken beyond the rhetoric of moving towards greater sustainability or ‘greening’ of business.     

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.     

Managing Knowledge for Innovation: The Case of Business‐to‐Business Services*

The present study builds a typology of organizational knowledge in business services and empirically examines the effects of knowledge on innovation performance. It is suggested that firms differ with respect to their knowledge creation approaches and that these approaches have implications for firms' innovation activities. A conceptual framework of knowledge assets with degrees of tacitness and collectiveness as the principal axes is used to ground the empirical analysis. The organizational knowledge framework is empirically operationalized using survey data from 167 business service firms and supplementary case study evidence from 16 other firms. It is found that business service improvements and new service introductions are significantly associated with collectively held knowledge, such as codified service solutions or team‐based competences and procedures. In contrast, relying solely on tacit knowledge held by individuals may hamper innovation. The results also suggest that tacit collective knowledge is more closely associated with new service introductions, whereas explicit collective knowledge is associated with service improvements. Tacit collective knowledge is thus conducive. A managerial implication is that new service introductions necessitate team competences and routines, whereas incremental service improvements are more likely if procedures are in place to codify services into explicit solutions or technologies. Thus, the knowledge management approach should depend on the strategic orientation of the service firm toward continuous improvement of existing services or development of completely new services.     

Demand‐side strategy,relational advantage,and partner‐driven corporate scope: The case for client‐led diversification

Research Summary: We advance research on corporate diversification by joining insights from the demand‐side and relational views in strategy to offer a novel theory of client‐led diversification. We propose that client‐led diversification results from a combination of the customer‐driven opportunities emphasized in the demand‐side view and the creation of added value through relational assets that is a central tenet of the relational view. Furthermore, we hypothesize that suppliers’ client‐specific knowledge, clients’ relational commitment to suppliers, and growth opportunities in clients’ markets (relative to the suppliers’ own markets) will magnify the client‐led diversification effect. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset on patent law firms and their diversification into new domains of patent prosecution work for their corporate clients. Managerial Summary: Explanations of why firms diversify into new lines of business have largely concerned the redeployment of underutilized resources, with little regard to opportunities or influences stemming from firms’ existing customers. In our article, we show how the changing scope of business needs from a knowledge‐based supplier firm's set of existing clients is a central driver of supplier‐firm diversification, and this is especially the case when the level of relational assets shared between a supplier and its clients is higher. In a competitive landscape where suppliers compete intensively for the business of clients, our results show how managers can increase the likelihood of capturing additional business from its existing exchange relationships rather than bearing the risks of seeking new exchange relationships.     

Assessing the growth of remote working and its consequences for effort,well‐being and work‐life balance

This article critically assesses the assumption that more and more work is being detached from place and that this is a ‘win‐win’ for both employers and employees. Based on an analysis of official labour market data, it finds that only one‐third of the increase in remote working can be explained by compositional factors such as movement to the knowledge economy, the growth in flexible employment and organisational responses to the changing demographic make‐up of the employed labour force. This suggests that the detachment of work from place is a growing trend. This article also shows that while remote working is associated with higher organisational commitment, job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being, these benefits come at the cost of work intensification and a greater inability to switch off.     

Flexible Work and Immigration in Europe

Immigration has risen substantially in many European economies, with far‐reaching if still uncertain implications for labour markets and industrial relations. This article investigates such implications, focusing on employment flexibility, involving both ‘external flexibility’ (fixed‐term or temporary agency and/or involuntary part‐time work) and ‘internal flexibility’ (overtime and/or balancing‐time accounts). The article identifies reasons why immigration should generally increase the incidence of such flexibility, and why external flexibility should rise more than internal flexibility. The article supports these claims using a dataset of establishments in 16 European countries.     

It's all about games: enterprise and entrepreneurialism in digital games

This article aims to contrast benign notions of ‘free’ and ‘creative’ work in the context of labour market conditions and employment relationships. Empirical research reveals the exploitative and precarious nature of work in the experiences of self‐employed digital game developers and charts the responses of developers to unstable and insecure working conditions. Building on work by Pongratz and Voß, Haunschild and Eikhof, and Bergvall‐Kåreborn and Howcroft, this study finds that a typical response to increasing instability in the labour market is to adopt more enterprising and entrepreneurial behaviour in order to find work. This article illustrates the consequences for developers by highlighting examples of self‐exploitation, which is fuelled by a passion for work and is where entrepreneurial practices lead to long working hours, unpaid work and a blurring of work–life boundaries.     

The Impact of Suppliers’ Adoption of Voluntary Labour Codes/Certifications on Job Quality in Global Supply Chains: The Sri Lankan Case of Garments without Guilt

Codes of conduct and certifications on labour standards are designed to distinguish export manufacturing suppliers offering higher quality jobs from those offering poor quality jobs. However, previous research suggests that such codes/certifications have a limited impact on job quality. These studies do not differentiate between ‘compliance-based codes of conduct’ that retailers enforce on suppliers and ‘voluntary labour codes/certifications’ that suppliers adopt at their discretion. We examine the relationship between suppliers’ adoption of the Garments without Guilt (GwG) voluntary labour code/certification and job quality using fieldwork and longitudinal data on Sri Lankan export apparel suppliers. We find that GwG adoption is associated with higher base pay and safer work, while base pay is lower for GwG adopters that are simultaneously subject to retailers’ enforcement of compliance-based codes.     

Work Roles and Careers of R&D Scientists in Network Organizations

Despite the burgeoning literature on the network organization as a new mode of innovation, we know little about how the flow of knowledge across organizational boundaries is intertwined with careers. This study explores the implications of the network model of R&D organization for the work roles and careers of R&D scientists within the changing relationship between industry and the academia. It examines how firms seek to resolve the tension between science and business by developing closer human resource ties with universities. It argues that firms have sought to construct "extended" internal labour markets (EILMs) between themselves and the universities with which they collaborate, leading to the formation of a hybrid scientific community straddling the two sectors.     

The transition from product to service in business markets: An agenda for academic inquiry

In recent years, industrial manufacturers around the world have deployed growing efforts in developing services in addition to their traditional product business in order to secure long-term growth and to remain competitive in the marketplace. Against this background, the present article introduces the reader to this special issue. It first recalls key aspects of the emerging service-dominant logic of marketing and examines how it relates to the business marketing field. It then illustrates the challenges faced by top executives of industrial companies in the transition from a product-centric to a service-centric business perspective through an interview with the managing director of ThyssenKrupp Service AG. After discussing how the articles included in this special issue advance the extant literature on industrial services marketing, the article finally develops a number of directions for future research on services in business markets.