Clotilde Coron, Isabella Scheibmayr, Pierre Lescoat
This study examines the performativity of using numbers in the context of human resource management (HRM). We use performativity as a theoretical lens to understand how such quantification affects individuals and work. We theorise three performative effects of quantification based on multiple case studies using internal documents and semi‐structured interviews. To do this we analysed six HRM quantification projects (including cases of algorithmic HRM) at a large French multinational corporation. Each use of quantification creates a specific form of performativity. Our work complements the sparse but growing literature on metrics, analytics and algorithms in Human Resources, focusing not on the kind of reality numbers represent but on how they impact different stakeholders.
{"title":"How to do HRM with numbers? A performative lens on HR metrics, HR analytics and HR algorithms","authors":"Clotilde Coron, Isabella Scheibmayr, Pierre Lescoat","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12306","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the performativity of using numbers in the context of human resource management (HRM). We use performativity as a theoretical lens to understand how such quantification affects individuals and work. We theorise three performative effects of quantification based on multiple case studies using internal documents and semi‐structured interviews. To do this we analysed six HRM quantification projects (including cases of algorithmic HRM) at a large French multinational corporation. Each use of quantification creates a specific form of performativity. Our work complements the sparse but growing literature on metrics, analytics and algorithms in Human Resources, focusing not on the kind of reality numbers represent but on how they impact different stakeholders.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141769872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Algorithmic management has been emerging in workplaces through human resource (HR) management technologies that allocate tasks, monitor work activity, and manage the productivity of employees. Growth of HR technologies has coincided with the rise of remote work, yet the role of technology providers in driving demand is under‐researched. Through a frame analysis of the marketing content on six HR technology websites, this article elucidates how technology providers frame algorithmic management and the frame effects for work, employees, managers, and the relations between them. The findings demonstrate that HR technology websites adopt the language of espionage to frame algorithmic management as a managerial imperative required to prevent organisational risks posed by unproductive employees. Applying a labour process lens, this paper demonstrates how the framing exploited tensions in labour–capital relations to place employees and managers in opposing positions, encouraging, and constructing an antagonistic employment relationship.
{"title":"Framing algorithmic management: Constructed antagonism on HR technology websites","authors":"Penny Williams, Maria Hameed Khan","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12305","url":null,"abstract":"Algorithmic management has been emerging in workplaces through human resource (HR) management technologies that allocate tasks, monitor work activity, and manage the productivity of employees. Growth of HR technologies has coincided with the rise of remote work, yet the role of technology providers in driving demand is under‐researched. Through a frame analysis of the marketing content on six HR technology websites, this article elucidates how technology providers frame algorithmic management and the frame effects for work, employees, managers, and the relations between them. The findings demonstrate that HR technology websites adopt the language of espionage to frame algorithmic management as a managerial imperative required to prevent organisational risks posed by unproductive employees. Applying a labour process lens, this paper demonstrates how the framing exploited tensions in labour–capital relations to place employees and managers in opposing positions, encouraging, and constructing an antagonistic employment relationship.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141744056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article applies Bourdieu's theory of fields and habitus to the platform economy, specifically through an analysis of interviews conducted with 27 Amazon Flex delivery drivers. Utilising interview data, it investigates how workers' habitus, informed by their social background, shapes their perceptions of the platform economy. The study extends current scholarship by theoretically enriching discussions on platform work dynamics. A key finding reveals distinct perspectives between workers with middle‐class and working‐class habitus. Middle‐class habitus frames the platform economy as a casual gig for quick income, while working‐class habitus perceives it as a genuine job with expectations of stability. These divergent viewpoints have significant implications, notably in relation to unionisation endeavours by platform workers. This research underscores how habitus‐driven perspectives influence engagement with the platform economy and its potential for labour mobilisation.
{"title":"A tale of two platforms: Habitus as the structuring force of gig workers' experience","authors":"Yana Mommadova","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12304","url":null,"abstract":"This article applies Bourdieu's theory of fields and habitus to the platform economy, specifically through an analysis of interviews conducted with 27 Amazon Flex delivery drivers. Utilising interview data, it investigates how workers' habitus, informed by their social background, shapes their perceptions of the platform economy. The study extends current scholarship by theoretically enriching discussions on platform work dynamics. A key finding reveals distinct perspectives between workers with middle‐class and working‐class habitus. Middle‐class habitus frames the platform economy as a casual gig for quick income, while working‐class habitus perceives it as a genuine job with expectations of stability. These divergent viewpoints have significant implications, notably in relation to unionisation endeavours by platform workers. This research underscores how habitus‐driven perspectives influence engagement with the platform economy and its potential for labour mobilisation.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141577266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Meraiah Foley, Rae Cooper, Ariadne Vromen, Talara Lee, Amy Tapsell
Digital workplace technologies have created a connectivity paradox in professional workplace settings. These technologies allow professionals greater spatial‐temporal control over their work, but also elevate expectations regarding responsiveness outside of working hours. This study examines how lawyers in Australia understand and navigate the connectivity paradox, given the rapid expansion of digital technologies during and after the Covid‐19 pandemic. We find that many lawyers experience digitally enabled flexibility as a welcome and emancipatory removal of gendered participation barriers and a potential facilitator of gender equality in the profession. At the same time, the intensity of work and pressure to be constantly connected means that digital presenteeism may be replacing physical presenteeism, reinforcing expectations of ultralong working hours and further eroding gender equality in the profession. Our study underscores the need for regulatory interventions, such as a ‘right to disconnect’, to balance the benefits of digital flexibility with protections against overwork.
{"title":"‘Everything now, all the time’: The connectivity paradox and gender equality in the legal profession","authors":"Meraiah Foley, Rae Cooper, Ariadne Vromen, Talara Lee, Amy Tapsell","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12300","url":null,"abstract":"Digital workplace technologies have created a <jats:italic>connectivity paradox</jats:italic> in professional workplace settings. These technologies allow professionals greater spatial‐temporal control over their work, but also elevate expectations regarding responsiveness outside of working hours. This study examines how lawyers in Australia understand and navigate the connectivity paradox, given the rapid expansion of digital technologies during and after the Covid‐19 pandemic. We find that many lawyers experience digitally enabled flexibility as a welcome and emancipatory removal of gendered participation barriers and a potential facilitator of gender equality in the profession. At the same time, the intensity of work and pressure to be constantly connected means that digital presenteeism may be replacing physical presenteeism, reinforcing expectations of ultralong working hours and further eroding gender equality in the profession. Our study underscores the need for regulatory interventions, such as a ‘right to disconnect’, to balance the benefits of digital flexibility with protections against overwork.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141507834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study investigates how education professionals balance their private and professional lives when using social technologies. Based on boundary theory and interviews with 57 education professionals, we identify which tactics they use to separate or integrate their private and professional life. We identified twice as many segmentation tactics compared to integration tactics and found that the education professionals struggled most with finding segmentation tactics that work. We argue that this is because social technologies are designed to support integration and therefore teachers using these technologies must work harder to separate their private and professional roles. There is a need to further investigate how boundary theory can be used, and segmentation tactics understood, when the object of study is social technology, which is specifically built to integrate time and professional and private spaces. For practice, there is a need to better support teachers in their use of social technologies.
{"title":"How education professionals manage personal and professional boundaries when using social technologies","authors":"Annika Andersson, Karin Hedström","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12301","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates how education professionals balance their private and professional lives when using social technologies. Based on boundary theory and interviews with 57 education professionals, we identify which tactics they use to separate or integrate their private and professional life. We identified twice as many segmentation tactics compared to integration tactics and found that the education professionals struggled most with finding segmentation tactics that work. We argue that this is because social technologies are designed to support integration and therefore teachers using these technologies must work harder to separate their private and professional roles. There is a need to further investigate how boundary theory can be used, and segmentation tactics understood, when the object of study is social technology, which is specifically built to integrate time and professional and private spaces. For practice, there is a need to better support teachers in their use of social technologies.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141507833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
{"title":"Unboxing reskilling narratives: Analysing practice, agency and signifier in social media","authors":"Elina Gobena","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12299","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141188134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It is often stated that algorithmic management disrupts control regimes and enables employers to dictate the work effort level. This article argues that control at work must be conceived through inherent tensions in employment relations and contradictions that result from the implementation of technologies in workplaces. Building analytically on two theoretical approaches (workplace regimes and power resources), conflicts over algorithmic management on the shopfloor are conceptualised through structural characteristics of workplaces and strategic factors related to workers' power. To illustrate these tensions, qualitative data is mobilised from a case study of the aluminium industry in Québec (Canada), where algorithmic management was implemented to advance efficiency and intensify work. The main contribution of this article is to highlight the persistence of an ‘embedded control regime,’ which we explain through the structural characteristics of the sector under study (technology, production, and market) and the power resources mobilised by workers and unions. This study advances knowledge of the deployment of algorithmic management beyond the ‘gig economy’ by exploring the avenues through which workers and unions can effectively contest such technologies in the workplace.
{"title":"Algorithmic management and control at work in a manufacturing sector: Workplace regime, union power and shopfloor conflict over digitalisation","authors":"Mathieu Dupuis","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12298","url":null,"abstract":"It is often stated that algorithmic management disrupts control regimes and enables employers to dictate the work effort level. This article argues that control at work must be conceived through inherent tensions in employment relations and contradictions that result from the implementation of technologies in workplaces. Building analytically on two theoretical approaches (workplace regimes and power resources), conflicts over algorithmic management on the shopfloor are conceptualised through structural characteristics of workplaces and strategic factors related to workers' power. To illustrate these tensions, qualitative data is mobilised from a case study of the aluminium industry in Québec (Canada), where algorithmic management was implemented to advance efficiency and intensify work. The main contribution of this article is to highlight the persistence of an ‘embedded control regime,’ which we explain through the structural characteristics of the sector under study (technology, production, and market) and the power resources mobilised by workers and unions. This study advances knowledge of the deployment of algorithmic management beyond the ‘gig economy’ by exploring the avenues through which workers and unions can effectively contest such technologies in the workplace.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141145744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the challenges surrounding the adoption of robotic automation and ‘AgTech’ in glasshouse agrifood production and considers ways in which growers and technology capital are seeking to transform the organisation of work at the point of production because of digital technological interventions. The article does so by examining the deployment by growers of ‘AgTech’ in the glasshouse agrifood sector in the context of the labour regime centred around seasonal migrant labour supply in the UK. The article makes three main contributions. Conceptually it centres technological transformation of the workplace within the context of wider labour regimes. Second, it argues that transformations of the labour process at the point of production through the introduction of ‘AgTech’ are one response by growers to labour supply shortages. Third, it examines the attempts by grower capital to intensify and fragment the nature of work as a result of the introduction of ‘AgTech’.
{"title":"‘AgTech’ and the restructuring of agrifood labour regimes: Digital technologies, migrant labour and the intensification of production in the UK glasshouse sector","authors":"Adrian Smith","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12294","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the challenges surrounding the adoption of robotic automation and ‘AgTech’ in glasshouse agrifood production and considers ways in which growers and technology capital are seeking to transform the organisation of work at the point of production because of digital technological interventions. The article does so by examining the deployment by growers of ‘AgTech’ in the glasshouse agrifood sector in the context of the labour regime centred around seasonal migrant labour supply in the UK. The article makes three main contributions. Conceptually it centres technological transformation of the workplace within the context of wider labour regimes. Second, it argues that transformations of the labour process at the point of production through the introduction of ‘AgTech’ are one response by growers to labour supply shortages. Third, it examines the attempts by grower capital to intensify and fragment the nature of work as a result of the introduction of ‘AgTech’.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141145740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin Krzywdzinski, Daniel Schneiß, Andrea Sperling
Understanding the role of human management is crucial for the debate over algorithmic management—to date limited to studies on the platform economy. This qualitative case study in logistics reconstructs the actor constellations (managers, engineers, data scientists and workers) and negotiation processes in different phases of algorithmic management. It offers two major contributions to the literature: (1) a process model distinguishing three phases: goal formation, data production and data analysis, which is used to analyse (2) the politics of algorithmic management in conventional workplaces, which differ significantly from platform companies. The article goes beyond surveillance to elucidate the role of the regulatory framework, various actors' knowledge contributions to the algorithmic management system, and the power relations resulting therefrom. While the managerial goals in the examined case were not oriented towards a surveillance regime, the outcome was nevertheless a centralisation of knowledge and disempowerment of workers.
{"title":"Between control and participation: The politics of algorithmic management","authors":"Martin Krzywdzinski, Daniel Schneiß, Andrea Sperling","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12293","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding the role of human management is crucial for the debate over algorithmic management—to date limited to studies on the platform economy. This qualitative case study in logistics reconstructs the actor constellations (managers, engineers, data scientists and workers) and negotiation processes in different phases of algorithmic management. It offers two major contributions to the literature: (1) a process model distinguishing three phases: goal formation, data production and data analysis, which is used to analyse (2) the politics of algorithmic management in conventional workplaces, which differ significantly from platform companies. The article goes beyond surveillance to elucidate the role of the regulatory framework, various actors' knowledge contributions to the algorithmic management system, and the power relations resulting therefrom. While the managerial goals in the examined case were not oriented towards a surveillance regime, the outcome was nevertheless a centralisation of knowledge and disempowerment of workers.","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140560270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making light work: An end to toil in the twenty‐first century By David A.Spencer, Cambridge: Polity Press. 2022. pp. 200. £15.99 (paperback/£14.99 ebook)","authors":"Mathew Johnson","doi":"10.1111/ntwe.12291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12291","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51550,"journal":{"name":"New Technology Work and Employment","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140560344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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