Labour Process Theory Research Articles

Can the Two Karls – Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx Meet? A Critical Examination of Chinese Vocational Education, Internship Regimes, and Labor Forms

Can the two Karls – Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx meet? Sociological debates tend to provide a negative answer and prioritize Karl Polanyi in current education and labor studies. This article poses an alternative approach by examining how the commodification of human life, the central postulation of Karl Polanyi, can be bridged into Karl Marx’s labor process theory where different forms of commodified student-labor will eventually end up in the production sphere, producing variegated internship and labor regimes. Using China’s vast vocational education system as an anchor to ground the theoretical dialogue, I contribute not only to raising an intellectual puzzle, but disclosing complex school-to-work phenomena that internship regimes, namely, the dual-despotic, market despotic or hegemonic, shapes the world’s largest young working class. By studying the complex configuration of the student-labor regimes, I argue that commodification process of human life could hardly escape the class perspective, as Karl Polanyi put it.

Role of workforce analytics in fulfillment experience of employees through work volition

Purpose Labor process theory explains that employers prefer technology and systems over employees for efficiency gains. However, the mechanisms explaining the influence of technology and systems on different work-related employee outcomes are still a question mark. The purpose of this study is to test a mediation mechanism explaining how workforce analytics influence the work fulfillment experience of employees through work volition. Design/methodology/approach This study collected dyadic data from 55 HR managers and 350 employees serving in 55 different subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations in Pakistan. Findings The statistical results demonstrate that workforce analytics negatively affect fulfillment at work. However, work volition may reduce the negative relationship between workforce analytics and fulfillment at work. This study also found a significant but negative relationship between work volition and fulfillment at work. Originality/value This study found that integrating the use of workforce analytics with the work volition of employees is critical for positive employee outcomes.

Labour process theory: in and beyond the core: continuities, challenges, and choices

Since the publication of Braverman’s seminal Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), labour process theory (LPT) has become a successful theory-building project driven by empirical expansion and conceptual innovation, operating as the equivalent of a normal science, with a distinctive scope and specific empirical focus on workplace regimes in the context of capitalist political economy. It’s toolkit or conceptual architecture combines underpinning and ordering principles with contingent and flexible operational categories concerning labour power and control. Though LPT has built stronger conceptual connections between workplace and accumulation regimes, changes in the global order have brought new theoretical and empirical challenges that are requiring it to adjust some of its core concepts and boundaries to consider development such as new sources of labour power, migration, and mobility.

Doing labour process theory after Braverman

Doing labour process theory after Braverman

The universality of the machine: labour process theory and the absorption of the skills and knowledge of labour into capital

This article contends that deskilling is best understood not as a distinct phenomenon, but as a component of a process Marx (1993: 694) called ‘absorption’. Absorption involves not only the extraction of capacities from labour but also their implementation in machines. The article reads Braverman’s (1998) analysis of Taylorism as a demonstration of how absorption entails a specific labour process of its own, which I call the absorption process. The nature of the absorption process is contingent on many social factors. This article focuses on a technical factor: the particular machines used to implement captured skills and knowledge, called here the infrastructure of absorption. Since technological capacities are ever-evolving under capital due to the continual revolutionizing of the means of production, infrastructures of absorption change over time and this necessitates new absorption processes. Braverman (1998: 132) pointed to a qualitative change in absorption with the digital computer, which he described in terms of a new ‘universality of the machine’. While Braverman rightly pointed out the computer as a novel infrastructure, he did not discern qualitative changes to the absorption process, seeing instead the extension of Taylorist processes of capture of knowledge and skill. I contend that a qualitative shift has become apparent since the rise of machine learning in around 2015. Machine learning enables a different absorption process of emergence which does not require the codification of captured knowledge. Much labour process theory (LPT) (and adjacent) research presumes that deskilling and automation operate in terms of a process of capture, however, I show that emergence presents qualitatively different means for both. I suggest that the infrastructure of machine learning presents the possibility of task-agnostic automation.

Labour platforms as mechanisms of class reproduction: middle-class interests as the basis of worker consent

Expansion of the platform economy has given rise to a paradox in the literature on gig work: Given capital’s imposition of algorithmic controls, why do so many platform workers express support and appreciation for gig work, viewing it as enhancing their autonomy? Approaches toward this question have advanced numerous explanations, such as gamification, neoliberal norms, and entrepreneurial culture. We find these efforts only partially successful, as they fail to explain why ideological incorporation so readily succeeds. We argue that responses to gig work are a function of the class positions that gig workers hold in the wider society, which lead to distinct orientations that they bring to gig work. For workers with a foothold in the middle class, gig work provides access to job rewards that may no longer be available via the conventional economy alone. They consequently experience gig work as a labour of affirmation – a stark contrast with the experience of those gig workers who hold subordinate positions in the class structure. Interview data with 70 respondents in the ride-hail, grocery-shopping and food-delivery sectors supports this approach. Consent to gig work is strongest among our better-off respondents, who hold more secure positions in the conventional economy and use gig work as a culturally-sanctioned mechanism of class reproduction. The implication is that class-based divisions among the platform workforce warrant greater attention than labour process theory has allowed.

Labour process theory and research on the changing nature of work and employment in China

China has undergone profound social and economic transformations over the last four decades. Deeply influenced by globalisation and capital-oriented marketisation, China has transitioned from a planned economy under state socialism to a market economy integrated into the global economy. As China becomes the ‘world’s workshop’, it has also experienced rapid industrialisation, the transformation of work and employment, and the reformation of the Chinese working class. Based on a review of the engagement of labour process theory (LPT) in China labour studies, this article suggests that the LTP has provided important insights and a theoretical framework for scholars to understand the empirical reality of the changing nature of work and employment in China in the reform era. The LPT’s capacity to connect the workplace to a broader political economy has allowed it to continue to expand its scope of analysis and engage with new developments and emerging issues in the Chinese workplace, such as the rise of digital platform labour, informal and precarious work, and workplace regimes in global value chains. Meanwhile, China labour scholars have made important contributions to the LPT by adapting it to the Chinese context and theorising the Chinese experience. Through a workplace-based approach, China labour scholars have theorised the role of the Chinese central and local states in shaping various factory regimes, expanded on Chinese workers’ diverse subjectivities in research on labour process, and developed new concepts such as the ‘dormitory labour regime’ that connects productive and social reproductive spheres.

Cogs in the code: Applying labor process theory in algorithmic management of platform-mediated gig work

This article examines the evolving work landscape in the context of technological advancements, addressing a significant gap in understanding the foundational principles of algorithmic management. Employing labor process theory (LPT), this study focuses on power dynamics and control mechanisms within algorithmic management systems in platform-mediated work settings. By exploring managerial aspects such as task assignment, work organization, monitoring, surveillance, and performance evaluation under algorithmic management, this research utilizes LPT to meticulously explore the social relations of production, technological deskilling, division of labor, potential alienation and exploitation, and complex dynamics of control and resistance in the gig economy. By emphasizing the pivotal role of algorithms, this study reveals their influence on shaping the structural aspects of the gig economy, highlighting the intricate interplay between technological advancements and fundamental labor processes. This work also contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary work dynamics by offering valuable insights into the evolving intersection of technology and labor in the modern workplace.

Control and Flexibility: The Use of Wearable Devices in Capital- and Labor-Intensive Work Processes

The use of wearables in the workplace allows for close monitoring of work processes and might also have consequences for work content and skill requirements. Past research has emphasized the detrimental effects of wearables, particularly those caused by the standardization of work and monitoring of workers. By contrast, this study asks under what conditions the implementation of wearables as part of digital assistance systems is beneficial for workers. Based on recent contributions in the field of labor process theory, this study analyzes the implementation of new technologies using the concepts of the regulatory regime, organizational first-order factors, and workplace second-order choices. The analysis is based on findings from 48 interviews with 83 interviewees in 16 German manufacturing workplaces along with making site visits. It examines the implementation of wearables and the impacts on work content, skills, working conditions, and employment. Besides showing how labor agency affects the implementation of new technologies, the particular contribution of this study lies in analyzing the differences in the implementation of wearables in capital- and labor-intensive organizations. While standardization of work and reduction of work content prevailed in labor-intensive processes, capital-intensive processes were most often characterized by the extension of skill requirements and the risk of work intensification.

Braverman and Labor and Monopoly Capital: A Retrospective

Abstract This paper appraises the work of Harry Braverman (1920–76), specifically his classic, Labor and Monopoly Capital, published in 1974 and remaining an influential reference for what has become the labour process approach to the study of work in capitalist societies. Labor and Monopoly Capital (LMC) reshaped what was then known as industrial sociology in the English-speaking world and was impactful across a range of disciplines, including history, organisation and management studies, comparative political economy, and labour geography. It is widely regarded as the foundational text of labour process theory (LPT). Fifty years after the initial publication of LMC, that theoretical approach is not only alive and well, but in the past decade, undergone something of a resurgence, influencing global communities of scholars. The paper takes a close look primarily at the text in its context, examining the genesis of the arguments, the distinctive biography of the author, and the structure of the book drawing out its major and minor themes, including a critical assessment of sources and evidence. We argue that the enormous impact of LMC can be explained by its successful challenge to existing orthodoxies about trajectories in work, technology, and management dominant in the social sciences and orthodox Marxism. This is followed up with a discussion of the reception, diffusion, and development of LMC comparatively and across different geographic domains and academic disciplines. As the debate on LMC eventually became a much broader programme of theory and research on the labour process, we consider some of the key points of differentiation from one of the foundational texts. Whilst acknowledging its enduring legacy, the final section argues that there is only a route forward from, rather than back to Braverman, given the profound changes to global capital and labour in the 50 years since LMC appeared.

Audience analytics and tensions in digital news work: evidence from Swiss news media

PurposeTracing audience preferences via audience analytics software has become a vital strategy for many news organizations to ensure their competitiveness in media markets. Extant research also confirms the growing presence of these tools in digital news work in recent years across many local and international news media. However, little is understood about the analytics-driven tensions emerging among journalists and media managers. This paper aims to address this gap by drawing on the labor process theory, which critically analyzes labor and workplace transformations under capitalism.Design/methodology/approachThe present study employs an interview-based qualitative methodology to deeply understand the factors at the base of the emerging tensions between news workers and managers brought about by audience metrics tools.FindingsResults show how some perceptions, activities and contextual triggers related to analytics could make relationships between workers and managers problematic. The pressures felt by some journalists stemmed from the way their media managers introduced, interpreted, communicated and applied analytics in the workplace, which were not tied to the quality and learning goals related to journalists’ aspirations. As our evidence suggests, the analytics-induced tensions among news workers were rather an outcome of managerial deficits than of systematic plans to exploit journalists.Originality/valueBy identifying the nature of fundamental analytics-driven tensions in newsrooms, this paper contributes to our understanding of how media managers can embrace more effective approaches toward audience analytics, workforce and organizational performance.

Make Slot not Art: Creativity and Burnout in U.S. Local Television Newsrooms

ABSTRACT Journalism is considered a creative industry, but newsroom workers can only incorporate creativity into their stories if they have the time, tools and support for such endeavors. The structural conditions of capitalism, however, often leave workers without creative opportunities as ownership focuses on increased output and income expectations over storytelling. Instead, many workers find “one more thing” continually being added to their workloads, contributing to role overload and increasing levels of burnout. Using a labor process theory lens, this study seeks to explore the role of creativity in news gathering and distribution and its relationship with burnout in local television newsrooms. Through semi-structured interviews, forty-seven large market newsroom workers in the United States share their experiences with creative support, role overload and burnout. Those with the ability to “make art” and incorporate creativity into their routines generally speak more positively about their jobs than those who simply “make slot” to get their story on air or online. In a time of increasing newsroom worker attrition, recognizing the potential positive impact of creativity in news routines can influence how newsrooms handle staffing and storytelling into the future.

Is Managerial Homeworking New? Assessing strategic, technological and political influences before, during and after coronavirus

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is often assumed that working at home represents a fundamental transformation in the way managers work. But is managerial homeworking that new? To answer this question, we draw on labour process theory and three empirical studies to place post-pandemic homeworking in historical sociological perspective. Overall, we find that homeworking is not a novel phenomenon, but has been driven by various logics. Explaining these, we contend initially that recent studies of managers working at home have focused on the mandated temporal present of the practice under Covid-19, which has resulted in homeworking being portrayed idiosyncratically. In contrast, and to attain a more comprehensive understanding of what homeworking means for managers, we argue that it is necessary also to understand both the underappreciated past of the phenomenon as well as options for its projected future. A comparative – past, present, future – inquiry therefore portrays how a range of explicit (e.g. corporate restructuring, digital technology, government legislation) and implicit (e.g. responsible autonomy, cultural resistance, work–life balance) factors have influenced and affected the practice of managers working at home in recent times. Through content analysis, these factors are related to broader forces of strategic change, technological innovation and political regulation in describing the ‘contested terrain’ of modern managerial work. Amid a context of economic neoliberalism, work extensification and shifting spatio-temporal (home/work) boundaries, the paradoxical nature of homeworking – symptomatic of managers’ contemporary ‘struggle for a normal working day’ – is documented through a series of interview-based narrative investigations (conducted in 2002–2006, 2015–2019 and 2020–2021). Ultimately, the paper makes a case not only for greater historical retrospection, but also for deeper critical reflection, in studies of managerial homeworking, and notably when considering whether the practice will likely be extended, ended or otherwise in the coming decades.

Influence of Workplace Technology on Job Skill in selected Food and Beverage Firms in Lagos, Nigeria

This study investigated the influence of workplace technology on job skills among employees of the food and beverage industry in Lagos, Nigeria, using the Labour Process Theory. Data were collected through questionnaire administered to 447 respondents who are working at two food and beverage companies in Lagos and in-depth interviews with 38 Units' Heads. Burawoy's classification of technological levels into low, medium, and high was adopted. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and One-way ANOVA, while qualitative data were analyzed with content analysis. The results indicated that workplace technology had different influence on job skills across the three technological level units and was statistically significant in Firm A. Technological transition led to decreased job skills, particularly when moving from low-speed line to high-speed line and Information and Technology-support equipment. The evolution of food and beverage analyzers from manual to semi-automation and full-automation also decreased job skills. Workplace technology had negative influence on job skills in both Firm A and Firm B. Therefore, capacity-building programs should be implemented by enterprise owners to help workers adapt to the emerging challenges posed by workplace technology shaping the activities of firms. Organisations’ management should ensure adequate human capital development for employees to adapt to the emerging technological trend and make proper use of the equipment adopted by organizations. Overall, developing one's skills is a solution to prevent technology from causing a decline in skills because people possessing creativity, inventiveness, imagination, innovation, and ambidexterity are not affected by technological advancements in the post-Fordist era.

The game of Ride-Pass in platform work: Implementation of Burawoy’s concept of workplace games to app-mediated ride-hailing industry in Poland

The article provides an argument that the platform is the site of Burawoy’s workplace games. The game observed on the platform used a pattern quite similar to one diagnosed by Burawoy, successfully employing coercion and consent to control the workforce. Control on the platform has a general nature which combines technological, organisational and normative aspects. Work on the app is coordinated by adopting a co-optation strategy, reducing conflicts by enabling mobility, and remuneration from the platform is based on a piece-rate system. Yet, the modern game, labelled in the paper as Ride-Pass, is different from the one described by Burawoy. Due the game is taking place in the service sector, the article argues that it is structured around two mutually connected stakes: working time and self-recognition. The article contributes to the Labour Process Theory, supporting its conclusions with a long-lasting study among Polish platform workers (53 interviews with Uber’s drivers).

Why are employee assistance programmes under‐utilised and marginalised and how to address it? A critical review and a labour process analysis

AbstractThe exploding employee demands on mental health services and the under‐utilised employee assistance programmes (EAPs) stand in stark contrast. Despite widespread coverage and awareness of EAPs, their low utilisation rates have marginalised them in organisations' human resource strategies. This study explores why employees are resistant to using EAPs from the perspective of dynamic contention, drawing on insights from labour process theory. Through a critical review of the literature, it yields a picture of neither perfect managerial control nor condition‐altering resistance in EAPs. In addition, despite their potential to mediate between labour and management, EAPs often align too closely with management, fail to provide avenues for employee input, and struggle to adapt to changing work dynamics. The study concludes with suggestions for effectively leveraging EAPs' constructive broker role to strategically bridge labour and management and address their under‐utilisation and marginalisation.

‘You can book an interpreter the same way you order your Uber': (re)interpreting work and digital labour platforms

ABSTRACT The gig economy, encompassing on-demand work via platforms, has grown exponentially with significant consequences for the interpreting industry. Arguing that this tendency of the interpreting industry towards gig work reflects wider shifts in both labour-capital relations and the role of technology in the economy, this study explores ‘gig’ interpreting work from a labour process theory perspective. Leveraging a qualitative case study of three platforms in Northwestern Europe, as well as interviews with platform companies’ managers and interpreters, the study indicates that platformisation is impacting business models, organisation, and intermediation of interpreting work, with implications for interpreters’ working conditions. The study finds that engaging in platform work exposes interpreters to risks related to monetary factors, algorithmic control, individualisation of employment relations, on-demand availability, and subjugation to a digital form of supply-demand intermediation. In contrast, platform companies push towards maximising interests of profit and flexibility, harnessing the potential of gig work as the natural, entrepreneurial extension of interpreters’ self-employment status. The study contributes to interpreting and sociological studies on workplace developments in digital capitalism, suggesting that the configuration of interpreting in platform-mediated production lubricates an exploitative labour-capital relationship.

From Labour Process Theory to Organisational Political Economy: A Response to Benassi, Ikeler and Wood

From Labour Process Theory to Organisational Political Economy: A Response to Benassi, Ikeler and Wood

Labour Process Theory and the legacy of operaismo. New directions, old problems

Simultaneous with the rise of Labour Process Theory (LPT), Italy was the centre of a parallel and prominent theorisation of the labour process in an overlapping intellectual and social context: operaismo. Both have undergone a recent resurgence. This paper provides a critical commentary on the development and claims of operaismo, drawing out some comparisons with LPT. Diversity in the operaist traditions and trajectories are recognised, but the paper focuses on areas where contrasts and conflicts between LPT and aspects of operaismo continue to have salience. There are similarities in the ideas and goals of the two approaches, with both focusing on the dynamic interplay between labour and capital in the hidden abode of production. But operaismo is also an explicitly political project in that it seeks to identify privileged class subjects that can act as the vanguard of broader social transformation. Through an examination of a range of issues concerning changing workplace regimes and how to study them, we find this and other differences have significant analytical, normative and methodological dimensions.

Some reflections on the capitalist labour process, nature and social reproduction

This article suggests that Labour Process Theory (LPT) could engage more substantially with the spheres of ecology and social reproduction. By drawing on ecological and feminist Marxist literatures, it seeks to recast a materialist analysis of the capitalist labour process, which is reconstructed as an ecological process as well as a process structurally shaped by spaces and institutions where the social reproduction of workers and the working class take place. Drawing from the collective and individual work done over the last few years within these areas, the article translates abstract observations in more operative analytical categories by reinstating the relevance of socio-ecological indeterminacy of the labour process, the materiality of the body, the commodity and the workplace, the intertwining between exploitation and disciplining and by introducing the notion of reproductive subsumption.