Labour Process Theory Research Articles

Fundamentos do processo de trabalho em terapia ocupacional: uma abordagem analítica a partir do diálogo entre Terapia Ocupacional Social e Saúde Coletiva Latino-Americana

Abstract Introduction This paper presents an analytical approach to occupational therapy practice grounded in historical dialectical materialism. It understands occupational therapy professional practice as work within a capitalist system, and thus subject to analysis through the labor process theory. Objective To propose an analytical approach to occupational therapy practice aimed at supporting the development of an emancipatory practice framework based on the dialogue between Social Occupational Therapy and Latin American Collective Health. Method Utilizing emancipatory action research methodologies, this study conducted 10 workshops with 10 occupational therapists aimed at collective knowledge production. Results Human activity is identified as the object of occupational therapy working process, defined by the category work in its ontological dimension. Radical participation is set as the intended product of this process, which entails engaging in efforts to transform the social determination of collective living conditions. The individuals in this process include occupational therapists and the followed-up individuals, groups, and/or communities, all viewed as social beings collaborating toward social transformation. Four theoretical-methodological tools are identified: emancipatory analysis of human activities, emancipatory proposition of human activities, operationalization of radical participation, and interventions in the social fabric. Conclusion Occupational therapy, as a form of social practice, offers a specific contribution to the development of a collective revolutionary praxis. This praxis, aimed at realizing a concrete utopia, seeks to generate the means to create a new society.

PISA and teachers’ reflexivities. A mixed methods case study

ABSTRACT Neoliberal educational reforms include extensive use of standardized tests. We examine the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) initiated and developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Examining previous research on teachers’ reactions to neoliberal reforms altering their work context, we have identified three theoretical frameworks in use: labour process theory, derived from structural Marxism; post-structuralism, relying primarily on Foucault’s conceptualizations; and ‘new professionalism’, which has emerged from the theory of professions. A major weakness in these frameworks is their inability to account for different reactions to the same structural and cultural conditions. Therefore, we suggest utilizing Archer’s theories of reflexivity and reflexive modes to understand these reactions. Presenting one Norwegian lower secondary school teacher’s reflexive engagement with PISA in the Norwegian school context as an example, our mixed methods case study indicates autonomous reflexivity as the prevailing mode. Meta-reflexivity rates second in prevalence.

Implications of algorithmic management on careers and employment relationships in the gig economy – a developing country perspective

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the implications of algorithmic management on careers and employment relationships in the Nigerian gig economy. Specifically, drawing on labour process theory (LPT), this study provides an understanding of the production relations beyond the “traditional standard” to “nonstandard” forms of employment in a gig economy mediated by digital platforms or digital forms of work, especially on ride-hailing platforms (Uber and Bolt).Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted the interpretive qualitative approach and a semi-structured interview of 49 participants, including 46 platform drivers and 3 platform managers from Uber and Bolt.FindingsThis study addresses the theoretical underpinnings of the LPT as it relates to algorithmic management and control in the digital platform economy. The study revealed that, despite the ultra-precarious working conditions and persistent uncertainty in employment relations under algorithmic management, the underlying key factors that motivate workers to engage in digital platform work include higher job flexibility and autonomy, as well as having a source of income. This study captured the human-digital interface and labour processes related to digital platform work in Nigeria. Findings of this study also revealed that algorithmic management enables a transactional exchange between platform providers and drivers, while relational exchanges occur between drivers and customers/passengers. Finally, this study highlighted the perceived impact of algorithmic management on the attitude and performance of workers.Originality/valueThe research presents an interesting case study to investigate the influence of algorithmic management and labour processes on employment relationships in the largest emerging economy in Africa.

The remaking of working classes: digital labour platforms and workers’ struggles in the Global South

This themed issue explores the impact of digital labour platforms on the conditions of work and social reproduction in the Global South. The collection of articles – most of which derive from research undertaken by the Future of Work(ers) research group, led by the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand – profile case studies from Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. The case studies focus on location-based platforms in food delivery, e-hailing, e-commerce and beauty and spa work. The collection of articles explores two broad and overlapping themes. The first is how platform business models are redefining the work process and the conditions of work. Here, labour process theory is particularly relevant because it allows us to identify both the points of value production and the sources of working-class power (Kenny and Webster, 2021). The second is the transformative possibilities and limitations of emerging forms of worker organisation. Here the power resources approach is especially useful because it allows us to analyse the extent to which organisations can leverage sources of power to transform the conditions of work and social reproduction. Ultimately, the contributions illustrate that the impact of digital technologies on the world of workers is neither predetermined nor linear. Rather it is shaped by struggle, the terms of which are themselves contingent.

‘Customer is king’: gig work in a small South African city and the varieties of digital control and workers’ responses

The digital revolution typified by pervasive intrusion of digital technology into our everyday practices raises questions concerning the impact on the organisation of work and workers’ experiences. Drawing from workers’ subjective views, this article examines how the intervention of digital technology in the gig food delivery sector in Kimberley, South Africa, shapes the organisation of work and patterns of workers’ experiences and responses. The article, informed by labour process theory, highlights the platforms’ diverse business models and how they embrace digital technology informs the nature of the labour process, employment relations and workers’ response. For example, the ‘paradoxical’ nature of customer rating systems, and a culture of tipping, which, while allowing workers to ‘extract surplus value outside the direct control of the platforms’ serves to control and manage workers’ performance. This individualisation of income determination further isolates workers from each other and ‘undermines their sense of collective solidarity’. This affirms the on-going importance of human interaction in the digital labour process and the ways in which these technologies intersect with racial inequalities, perpetuating discriminatory service delivery practices. The organisation of gig delivery work is not just about controlling the labour process to maximise capital accumulation. It is embedded in practices aimed at (re)configuring both the workers and societal norms, values and culture, and, in the process, produce new traditions of work and worker subjectivities. However, workers do not blindly surrender to this logic but have the capacity to subvert this by forging means which propels them to exercise some form of control in how their work is organised.

Reducing teachers’ workload or deskilling ‘core’ work? Analysis of a policy response to teacher workload demands

ABSTRACT Teacher workload is a growing problem internationally. In this article, we analyse an attempt by the state education bureaucracy of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to address this through the ‘Quality Time Program’. Drawing on labour process theory and Carol Bacchi’s framework of ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’, we analyse how the Quality Time policy documents conceptualise and aim to address a particular kind of teacher ‘workload problem’. We argue the policy defines the ‘problem’ as one of efficiency. At the same time, through use of the category of ‘administration’ the policy proposes the reduction of ‘core’ work, such as lesson planning, representing a potential deskilling of teachers. We argue that policies such as the Quality Time Program reflect the way in which teachers’ work is emerging as a site of contestation in the context of workload reduction efforts, requiring ongoing monitoring and analysis.

The Shifting Labour Process in Professional Care: Recreating Dominance and the Managerialised Mental Health Social Worker

Abstract Though the rationalisation of health care has been well documented, less is known about its impacts on mental health social workers. Drawing on qualitative data collected from 120 interviews and the qualitative comments on a Canadian four-province survey, the article explores the shifting labour process through profession-linked and organisational care strategies. The article argues that power is shifted from mental health social workers to management through stratagems including managerialism, biomedical hegemony and team-based care. These processes are complex and dynamic, travelling along professional divisions and logics, appearing neutral and scientific rather than as conduits reinforcing neoliberalised approaches to health care provision. Social workers’ resistance to these models of care is similarly complex and professionally based, though with strong elements of gendered altruism and social justice themes. Though this article draws on Canadian data, the analysis is likely highly applicable to other managerialised contexts including the UK. The article contributes to the intersection of Labour Process Theory and moral economy theory by highlighting the operation of a unique form of engagement referred to here as resistance-as-engagement. Overall, mental health social workers revealed strong oppositional narratives and identities pivoting on their marginalised position within team-based care, medical professional hierarchies and narrow, neoliberal approaches.

The Mobility–Immobility Dynamic and the ‘Fixing’ of Migrants’ Labour Power

Low-wage labour migration from lower- to higher-income economies has become a precondition for capital accumulation. As a part of this, neoliberal actors (businesses and states) strive to actively produce migrants with a strong work ethic. They do this in numerous ways. In this paper, we draw upon labour process theory to argue that a ‘mobility–immobility dynamic’ is a major way capital now controls precarious workers. The mobility–immobility dynamic relates to low-wage workers’ need to move (and often circulate) internationally but, once they have moved, a desire by businesses and states to keep them in place. The fixing of migrants both across space (through transnational mobility) and in place (through immobility) underlines the importance of a multi-scalar approach to understanding the control of the transnational working-class. We draw on evidence from European horticulture – 36 in-depth interviews with migrant workers, employers and community stakeholders in Norway and the United Kingdom – to highlight the mobility–immobility dynamic in practice.

Ride-Hail Drivers, Taxi Drivers and Multiple Jobholders: Who Takes the Most Risks and Why?

Little is known about how the use of ride-hail apps (e.g. Uber, Lyft) affects drivers’ propensity to engage in risky behaviours. Drawing on labour process theory, this study examines how algorithmic control of ride-hail drivers encourages risky driving (i.e. violating road safety rules, carrying weapons). Furthermore, the theory of work precarity is used to explain why multiple jobholders (MJHers), who work for ride-hail companies, drive taxis and hold other jobs, may be more likely to take risks while driving due to income insecurity and erratic work hours. The hypotheses are tested in a sample ( N = 191) of ride-hail drivers, taxi drivers and MJHers. The results suggest that MJHers are more likely to engage in risky driving in comparison to ride-hail and taxi drivers. Theoretical, practical and policy implications are discussed.

Consent, Resistance, and Gender Identity in Social Reproductive Work: The Case of Georgian Migrant Women in Turkey

ABSTRACT Taking Georgian migrant women who work in Turkish homes as a case, this article explores the material and ideological conditions surrounding the extraction of surplus value from live-in migrant domestic labourers. From the perspectives of social reproduction and labour process theories, it documents the migrant workers’ concerted consent and resistance strategies in the workplace with reference to domestic labour processes. Based on an ethnographic study, the findings show the contradictory nature of migrant women’s attainments due to their gendered migrant identities. Implications of these findings in relation to the collective organisation of domestic labourers are discussed.

Fragmented Control of Platform Game Work in China

AbstractThis article adopts a labour process theory approach to analysing distinct circuits of labour control in platform video game work in China, a novel manifestation of the platform economy rooted in the special formation of Chinese gaming infrastructure as well as in precarious labour regimes. Platform game work encompasses a broad range of online video game services such as live game streaming, paid boosting, and game companion, matching customers’ demands to workers who provide entertainment or assist play. Platform game work has drawn an estimated seven million young workers into precarious employment during the past decade. The article outlines three interwoven features defining the fragmented control of platform game work: the crucial function of extra-platform intermediaries in regulating labour processes; the deployment of relationship labour in order matching and community management; and the mutual reinforcement of platform diversity and fast-moving platform architecture. These three features co-create a decentralised yet resilient structure organised by a network of platform and non-platform, human and machine agencies. Positioning platform game work in the broad spectrum of gig work, the article illuminates new modes of labour control and workers’ embedded agency, adding to the nascent literature on diverse labour regimes and subjectivities in the platform economy.

Labor process theory and critical HRM: A systematic review and agenda for future research

Labor process theory (LPT) is a critical approach to studies on work and employment; it is rooted in the Marxist tradition, which addresses conflictual relations between capital and labor and connects work transformations with broader structural contexts. LPT has been one of the theoretical lenses through which critical human resource management (HRM) scholars have attempted to challenge taken-for-granted concepts and approaches introduced by mainstream, positivist, and functionalist HRM research. Yet, an effort to consolidate its significance in critical HRM is missing in the extant literature. Drawing on a systematic review of 103 research articles published from 2000 to 2021, the present paper identified four key themes in previous LPT-informed HRM research, including institutional forces, control regimes, solidarity and resistance, and the deskilling-upskilling paradox. Based on this review, the article discusses what critical HRM scholars can learn from this collective understanding of LPT and how they could also employ this theory to advance critical HRM research. The main argument brought forward is the idea that LPT is worthwhile to challenge the excessive optimism propagated by the pluralist approaches in HRM.

High-performance HR practices, job demands and employee well-being: The moderating role of managerial support.

Drawing on the labour process theory and the job-demands resources model, this study challenges the assumption of beneficial effects of high-performance HR practices (HPHRP). The study argues that such practices lead to heightened work demands, which in turn compromise employees' well-being. The study also argues that the negative consequences associated with HPHRP can be ameliorated when employees receive support from their managers. To test the study's moderated mediation model, multisource matched employer-employee data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011 is used. Results of generalised multilevel structural equation modelling in STATA revealed that the relationship between HPHRP and well-being (anxiety and depression) is mediated by Job demands (JD). Furthermore, the relationship between JD and both anxiety and depression is moderated by Managerial support (MS), such that when the level of MS is high, the positive relationship between HPHRP and both anxiety and depression via JD is weaker. Taken together, the findings of the study advance our understanding of why and when HPHRP may impair employees' well-being.

An Evaluation of Contributions of Selected Organizational and Sociological Theories to Managerial Accounting Research

Purpose: The drive of this research work was to evaluate selected organizational and sociological theories in regard to their contribution in management accounting research with the object of recognizing the gaps and areas for further study.
 Methodology: The study applied integrative review/critical review approach by relying on previous publications of which 28 publications were included in the study. Content analysis was used in data analysis.
 Findings: Contingency theory has received wider acceptance in the field of managerial accounting research. Its application has since been evidenced based on its contingent propositions which include; technology, organization structure, and the general operating environment of the organization. However, other studies suggested that contingency method has the look of being persuasive but momentary fashion and it is principally deceptive. That is, the exact and appropriate contingent elements have remained unclarified and thus the essence of in-depth theoretical, and realistic, consideration. Thus it provides a limited insight to organizational contingent factors. Moreover, Institutional theory as much as criticized of being political; it enables the organization to view itself holistically both from the angle of the task environment (technology, firm structure and work environment) and the external environment (political influences, public expectations, professional perspectives) implying management accounting programs implemented by the firm has to be in line with the social expectations of the company external clients. Resource dependency theory have highlighted on the role of governmental language, predominantly in budgeting procedures. Labour process theory has contributed toward management accounting in the sense that with the quest to shift from the old age production system to the contemporary company production; corporations required to appropriate profits. This could only be supported through employment of trained executives with knowledge in managerial accounting and book keeping. However the model has been disparaged on the foundation that its promoters believed on the adoption of the scientific approach which is simply but one aspect of the organizational view.
 Implications: The findings from the many empirical studies reviewed herein are therefore helpful in addressing the research objectives with supremacy that no single revision had done. This literature review is an outstanding way to expose gaps where more research work is necessary, and also being dire component of spawning original theoretic outlines and construction of conceptual ideas.
 Value of the Study: It contributes to management accounting research by evaluating the theories. Besides, it helped to suggest areas for further research plus offering recommendations based on the findings.

Manufacturing informality. Global production networks and the reproduction of informalized labour regimes in Europe’s peripheries

This paper investigates the drivers of informal employment persistence in Global Production Networks. Building on a structuralist perspective, it reframes informalization as a tool of labour control and argues that informalization – while influenced by structural economic pressures and local socio-institutional contexts – is ultimately shaped by the employer-employee relations at the workplace. Drawing on Global Production Networks analysis and Labour Process Theory, the paper builds a novel extended structuralist approach to investigate the reproduction of informalization in the garment-footwear production networks in Italy and Albania. Through a multi-sited qualitative fieldwork, the paper shows that informalization dynamics persist as a response to competitive structural pressures only as long as workers are unable or unwilling to resist them. Yet, the situated bargaining power relations at each node of the chain crucially determine the predominant forms of informalization leading to either coercive and despotic, or hegemonic and negotiated, informalized workplace regimes.

Skill redefinition and classification, capitalism, and labour process theory of work: evidence from Thailand

Skill redefinition and classification, capitalism, and labour process theory of work: evidence from Thailand

Labour Process Theory: From Taylorism to Algorithmic Management

Labour Process Theory: From Taylorism to Algorithmic Management

High demand, high commitment work: What residential aged care staff actually do minute by minute: A participatory action study.

This article explores staff work patterns in an Australian residential aged care facility and the implications for high-quality care. Rarely available minute by minute, time and motion, and ethnographic data demonstrate that nurses and care staff engage in high degrees of multitasking and mental switching between residents. Mental switching occurs up to 18 times per hour (every 3 min); multitasking occurs on average for 37 min/h. Labor process theory is used to examine these outcomes and to explore the concepts of high demand and high commitment as core components of work intensification. These conditions of work result in high levels of cognitive burden and stress on staff in managing the multitasking and mental switching, exacerbated by lack of knowledge about residents associated with labor force casualization. These new interpretations of data in relation to mental and manual labor can contribute to understanding, and, therefore, problem solving, in the aged care sector.

Contemporary class composition analysis: The politics of production and the autonomy of the political

The political and organisational routes opened up on the contemporary left following the financial crisis have seen a revival of class composition analysis as a means of comprehending a broad array of social and economic phenomena both within and beyond the workplace. Contextualising contemporary class composition analysis as a long-standing component of autonomist Marxism, this article argues that its application amid the left’s electoral turn exposes to scrutiny deeper-running weaknesses. The article first presents a history of class composition analysis through operaismo into postoperaismo. The second part of the article discusses four interconnected new directions in class composition analysis: Hardt and Negri’s Assembly; the analysis of social composition offered by the Notes from Below collective; Keir Milburn’s analysis of ‘generation left’; and, finally, the uptake of some of these ideas among commentators on the left of the British Labour Party like Paul Mason. The article then discusses the theoretical and strategic implications of these contributions through the prism of critiques of class composition analysis put forward by other theorists in the autonomist Marxist tradition. Noting the possible limitations confronting the application of class composition analysis to contemporary challenges faced by the post-crisis left, the penultimate section considers Labour Process Theory as a theoretical alternative implicit in recent critiques of contemporary class composition analysis, arguing that while Labour Process Theory’s analysis of the ‘politics of production’ captures the contingency of the connection between the workplace and formal politics, it leaves unresolved the lack of a distinctive theory of the latter on the contemporary left. The final section reconnects the discussion to the legacy of operaismo by exploring Mario Tronti’s recently translated work on the ‘autonomy of the political’ as a more substantial articulation of the specificity of politics against the backdrop of class conflict at the point of production. The conclusion relates this back to recent strategic issues in the Labour Party and broader labour movement.

Mechanisms of control and resistance in the devolved work of public school principals in New South Wales

ABSTRACT Globally, New Public Management reforms have transformed work in many areas of the public sector. A key aspect of these reforms has been devolution: the provision of greater local autonomy over resources and decision making as part of a broader decentralisation strategy. Important questions about managers’ work in devolved settings, not in the least in public education, remain to be addressed. The 2012–18 ‘Local Schools, Local Decisions’ reform to public education in the Australian state of New South Wales was framed by familiar aims: to achieve ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ through greater local control. Recognising principals as the nexus of this ostensible local authority, principals’ work in the final stages of the reform’s implementation were investigated. Through the utilisation of labour process theory to examine tensions in this focal employment relationship, three key control mechanisms in the work of principals were identified: a reduction of the indeterminacy gap through principals’ management of resources; the degradation of work under devolution; and the legitimation of the state through principals’ work.