Labour Process Theory Research Articles

‘The petri dish and Russian roulette’: working in UK contact centres during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article analyses the dynamic interaction of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, and its epidemiological characteristics, with an expansive conception of the contact centre labour process, integrating the contact centres’ socially-constructed built environment with distinctive qualities of the social organisation of work. Based on an online survey conducted in April–May 2020 of 2,226 call handlers in, largely, the telecoms and financial services sectors, it provides compelling evidence of the risks facing workers from inter alia dense building occupancy, compromised social distancing, inadequate cleansing and sanitisation, heating ventilation and air conditioning systems and from the outcomes of management control systems. A crucial element in explaining widespread virus transmissibility lies in understanding how the broader political economy that produced the dominant mass production contact centre paradigm is intertwined with its ‘inner workings’, leading to a ‘business-as-usual’ default that prioritised value-generating service continuity at the expense of any precautionary principle. The article contributes additionally by re-affirming the utility of labour process theory.

Understanding the experience and meaning of app-based food delivery from a mobility perspective

Online food delivery service has developed rapidly and expanded the boundaries of the catering industry. Being a food delivery rider in the gig economy attracts workers with the premises of flexibility and freedom. However, existing studies based on labor process theory revealed that freedom is fictitious. The study sheds light on how the individual rider finds meaning in their work from the mobility perspective. A mixed-method approach based on questionnaires, interviews, and mobile ethnography is applied. Findings showed that food delivery riders gain the experience of freedom in many aspects, from flexible working hours, body movement, immediate cash transfer to freedom from many other regulations. Being a rider represents a free lifestyle and a way to control one’s fate. Yet, it is perceived as a transitional job. This study contributes to making connections between the mobility perspective and work-related studies.

Structural demand for migrant labour: a bottom-up analysis of labour market segmentation in Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT Combining insights from the new labour market segmentation approach and the labour process theory, this qualitative case study research critically examines how workplace dynamics shape the divisions of labour in Saudi Arabia. It draws upon secondary sources and in-depth investigation in a joint venture in the Saudi petrochemical sector. The results question the prevailed institutionalist explanations on the reliance on migrant labour in the Arab Gulf capitalisms. Analyses of secondary data on the Saudi labour market and the case study firm show the need to account for both, (1) the institutional structure that controls the standards of living of migrants (exemplified in the Iqama and Kafala systems), and (2) employers’ discriminatory practices to ensure the lowest cost of labour, in particular contracting, pay and training. Both factors have resulted in the employer not only limiting upskilling for migrants but also avoiding the employment of high-cost labour i.e. Saudis, which feed back to the labour market at large. Theoretically, the paper highlights the need to consider the ‘value of labour power’ to grasp the reality of the migrant division of labour in the Arab Gulf countries.

Who’s Milking It? Scripted Stories of Food Labour

This article explores representations of food labour at different stages in the supply chain through a labour process theory perspective. Employing multi-modal critical discourse analysis it analyses visual data collected from three television programmes focused on dairy production and consumption. The research sheds light on the power relations inherent to food production and the devaluing of manual food labour in supply chains, which are shaped by the current capitalist socio-political environment. The findings expose ways in which media can reinforce dominant understandings of food supply chains, while making aspects of food labour invisible.

DIGITAL PLATFORM DELIVERY GUYS: EXTENDED PRODUCTION POINT IN THE CITY

This visual essay uses accompaniment methodology to address the urban experience of a digital platform delivery guy in Valdivia, in the south of Chile. Through images, we question the notion of of production, which is fundamental for Labor Process Theory (LPT) studies. In this sense, this perspective has identified the place of production as a physical, unitary, and stable space for both traditional industries and services economies. Our urban journey, accompanying a digital platform delivery guy, observes the place of production as the attempt to suppress the physical space between the customer and the desired product, which can only be done by activating a vast urban experience by those who transport the products.

Neither timeless, nor placeless: Control of food delivery gig work via place-based working time regimes

Working time regimes in platform labour are so far either ignored as a topic in research on gig work, or they are framed as an allocative instrument only. This article argues that working time regimes instead have both a coordinating and controlling effect. Adopting the analytical framework of labour process theory, the article hence focuses on the interrelation of working time and control regimes. The empirical material presented stems from research on platform-based food courier work in Germany and is based on a mixed methods research design consisting of interviews, multi-sited ethnography and a survey. The findings show that platforms implement hybrid control regimes that are not only based on the sufficiently analysed algorithmic management, but also on complementary control through working time regimes: temporal control. Platforms organise intra-platform markets where workers compete for shifts by means of performance. Thus, platforms are able to ensure an efficient and simultaneously reliable use of an autonomous and spatially distributed workforce. Furthermore, it is shown that platform labour is not placeless, either. The effects of its control regime vary according to different local conditions. As a result, platforms cannot be analysed only as techno-cultural ecosystems, but also as local-specific socio-economic structures.

Glokalisierung und Feminisierung: Zur strukturellen Krise von Lohnarbeit im europäischen Raum

Abstract. The article discusses the glocalized socio-spatial form of European production as socially crisis-ridden. Combining literature from transnational production network theory, critical political economy, labour process theory and feminist geography the article shows that a European production regime has developed which is based on the transnationalization of economic and competitive parameters on the one hand and multiscalar social fragmentation of labour processes on the other. Its very logic is, hence, functional economic integration based on labour's socio-spatial disintegration. The regime pushes for what we can call the feminization of work because it systematically cuts the former, patriarchal and uneven connection between waged work and socio-political integration. As feminist debates show, progressive perspectives have to be transnational and multiscalar and they have to include fundamental questions about the concept and status of work in society.

“It’s Not Us, It’s You!”: Extending Managerial Control through Coercion and Internalisation in the Context of Workplace Bullying amongst Nurses in Ireland

This article investigates why workers submit to managerial bullying and, in doing so, we extend the growing research on managerial control and workplace bullying. We employ a labour process lens to explore the rationality of management both engaging in and perpetuating bullying. Labour process theory posits that employee submission to workplace bullying can be a valuable method of managerial control and this article examines this assertion. Based on the qualitative feedback in a large-scale survey of nurses in Ireland, we find that management reframed bullying complaints as deficiencies in the competency and citizenship of employees. Such reframing took place at various critical junctures such as when employees resisted extremely pressurized environments and when they resisted bullying behaviours. We find that such reframing succeeds in suppressing resistance and elicits compliance in achieving organisational objectives. We demonstrate how a pervasive bullying culture oriented towards expanding management control weakens an ethical climate conducive to collegiality and the exercise of voice, and strengthens a more instrumental climate. Whilst such a climate can have negative outcomes for individuals, it may achieve desired organisational outcomes for management.

Industrial policy-making after COVID-19: Manufacturing, innovation and sustainability

This article critically analyses the opportunities for Australia to revitalise its strategically important manufacturing sector in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers Australia’s industry policy options on the basis of both advances in the theory of industrial policy and recent policy proposals in the Australian context. It draws on recent work from The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work examining the prospects for Australian manufacturing renewal in a post-COVID-19 economy, together with other recent work in political economy, economic geography and labour process theory critically evaluating the Fourth Industrial Revolution (i4.0) and its implications for the Australian economy. The aim of the article is to contribute to and further develop the debate about the future of government intervention in manufacturing and industry policy in Australia. Crucially, the argument links the future development of Australian manufacturing with a focus on renewable energy. JEL Codes: L50; L52; L78; O10; O13: O25; O44; P18; Q42

Situating service work in action: A review and a pragmatist agenda for analysing interactive service work

AbstractResearch on interactive service work has paid close attention to how organizations and frontline employees deal with the inherent complexity of the customer–employee–employer triangle. This raises questions about the agency of interactive service workers with respect to the indeterminacy of service interactions. Our meta‐narrative review finds that the theorization of worker agency in service interactions remains underdeveloped in the two dominant research streams of mainstream management and labour process theory studies. Implicitly or explicitly, these streams either subsume agency under managerial prescription or view it through the binary polar of control and resistance. There has been less focus on service workers’ efforts to overcome practical difficulties in everyday service interactions. To address this lacuna, we offer a conceptual framework that draws on a less prominent, third research stream, which we label pragmatist. This stream includes scholarship largely unfamiliar to the international English‐speaking community, published mainly in French and German academic journals. We propose three contributions in this paper. First, we contribute to the interactive service work literature by mapping the theoretical plurality within and beyond the English‐speaking community. Second, we problematize established streams of research by articulating the intellectual axes of the field; this allows us to present a new research area to account for the concrete dynamics of service interaction and to capture frontline employee agency. Third, we propose a pragmatist research framework coupled with a future research agenda more attentive to the embeddedness and materiality of frontline workers’ situated actions. This way, we address the indeterminacy of interactive situations.

Anita Hammer and Adam Fishwick, The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process Theory

Anita Hammer and Adam Fishwick, The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process Theory

‘You are free to choose . . . are you?’ Organisational punishment as a productivity incentive in the social science literature

This article investigates the theoretical and empirical relationships between organisational punishment and productivity. We do so by highlighting the contributions of two academic fields to this topic: management and economics. We underscore the many common theoretical and empirical grounds across management and economics. We heighten, in particular, how motivation and learning theories have contributed to the development of both theoretical and empirical research on this topic. This article also argues that this debate could be significantly advanced if insights stemming from industrial relations and labour process theory were also considered, as these disciplines have traditionally focused on macro-issues such as how changes in the economic/institutional contexts may affect the likelihood that organisations will resort to punishment. In order to foster future research on this topic, three research themes were developed: (a) freedom of choice and the role of contract completeness; (b) perception of punishment, monitoring and productivity; and (c) punishment, productivity and exogenous variables.

Work reorganization in the neoliberal university: A labour process perspective

This article maps the major changes taking place in academic work within the broader context of the neoliberalisation of universities. Recognising the great variability in the form and pace of neoliberalisation across institutions and national contexts, the article identifies a set of features and indicators to aid in the comparative assessment of the extent and effect of neoliberal processes at different institutions. The authors use conceptual tools from labour process theory to highlight the ways that neoliberalisation has resulted in academic work that is fragmented, deskilled, intensified, and made subject to greater levels of surveillance, hierarchy, and precarity. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the importance of combining political economy and Foucauldian approaches to neoliberalism, to highlight the way that external structural conditions and subjective processes combine to create new labour processes to which participants find themselves consenting and actively reproducing.JEL Codes: J5, L2

An eco-Marxist reinterpretation of formal abstraction in Ecological Economics

An eco-Marxist reinterpretation of formal abstraction in Ecological Economics

How can millions of Chinese food delivery riders be managed in an orderly way: Based on the labor process theory

Ordering food through smartphones brings millions of laborers into a new occupation -food delivery rider. To date, insufficient research has focused on this group of population in platform economy. This paper examines the management mechanism of Chinese food delivery industry based on Marxist labor process theory and its extensions. Three main findings are revealed. First, the food delivery platform strictly set online and off-line institutions to manage food delivery riders; second, riders are involved in an illusion of flexitime but indeed provide more labor forces; third, riders are not free as they are constantly monitored by platform’s algorithm driven by big data. Given this, the conclusion suggests that all platform enterprises should abide professional ethnics and undertake social responsibility and to liberate food delivery riders’ nature.

Cyber Workplace Bullying: An Empirical Study

Previous research on cyber workplace incivility (CWPI) is dependent and severely limited by psychological and social-psychological perspectives. This research builds on the previous studies by applying the Labor Process Theory with its core characteristics of power, control, and exploitation of labor so that further exploration of workplace incivility issues could be carried out. This research also uses Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory to explain the devastating long term negative impact of cyber workplace incivility on employees. The researchers also look at the role of technology due to increased connectivity, such as email, social media, mobile communication, blogs, and internet message boards at the workplace. This article contributes by looking at individual and institutional antecedents of CWPI and provides empirical support using a survey study.

Means of Control in the Organization of Digitally Intermediated Care Work

Digital platforms that facilitate care work are new entrants to the intermediary marketplace and they are growing in number in response to rising demand for care services. This study examines, through the lens of labour process theory, the means of control utilized by digital platforms operating in Australia which organize and direct disability and aged care. The analysis of terms and conditions and website content reveals four means of control that influence the enactment of the labour process: Shifting risks and responsibilities from the platform to workers and clients; Apportioning the costs of doing business to workers; Dictating contractual arrangements; and Monitoring quality standards of service work. The findings advance knowledge of how power relations embedded in platform business models and the organization of work direct a precarious, freelance workforce. More broadly, the study demonstrates the explanatory power of labour process theory for understanding emergent forms of work and labour.

Constructing legality: theorizing work and the challenges for mobilization of home care workers

Aides providing long-term care in home- and community-based settings in the US experience low wages and poor conditions. Worker advocates seek to improve care jobs through policy change, a multifaceted endeavour given the complexity of health and labour policies in a federal system. This theoretical overview draws on labour process theory to delineate domains of work and legal consciousness theory to highlight challenges related to ‘sources of authority’ governing each domain. For the context of publicly funded care provided through agencies, we identify aide actions related to these sources that could support rights claiming and suggest research to inform policy improvements.

The Settlement and Integration Experience of Temporary Foreign Workers Living in an Isolated Area of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

This study explored the settlement and integration experiences of 12 current and former Filipino temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in the low-wage service industry residing in a remote and isolated area of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The study employed a qualitative research approach that involved five in-depth semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions, with data analyzed using thematic analysis. Informed by labour process theory, four major themes emerged from individual interviews and focus group discussions: (1) the importance of employment, (2) settlement and integration challenges, (3) looking forward-looking back–transnational navigation and (4) settlement and integration support. These themes help to tell the stories of TFWs in the service industry, including the challenges and opportunities of transnational migration. The findings highlight minimal organizational support available to TFWs in the settlement and integration process, with the lion’s share of this responsibility falling on other Filipinos within the community to provide tangible and emotional support. Recommendations for how to support TFWs’ settlement and integration needs in remote and isolated communities are discussed.

Accounting's role in resisting wage theft: a labour process theory analysis

PurposeIn 2015, one university student in KC – a small town in regional Australia – unknowingly launched a resistance movement and national debate on modern wage theft. We apply labour process theory to analyse accounting's role in this case.Design/methodology/approachWe study multiple instances of wage theft in one Australian town. This case site reveals how wage theft can emerge in a developed economy with well-established legal and institutional constraints. We use Thompson's “core” labour process theory to analyse accounting's role via two interrelated dialectics: (1) structure and agency and, (2) control and resistance.FindingsAccounting was “weaponised” by both sides of the controversy: as a tool of employer control and as a vehicle for student resistance. Digital technologies enabled employee resistance to form unconsciously and organically. Proponents mobilised informally, with information and accounting the ammunition.Social implicationsWage theft affects industrialised as well as developing economies, especially “precarious” workers. We show how accounting can conceal exploitation, but also how – with the right support – accounting can help vulnerable workers enforce their rights and entitlements.Originality/valueThe paper uncovers novel dynamics of exploitation and resistance at work under contemporary economic and technological conditions. Labour process theory can provide a more dialectical perspective on accounting's role in these dynamics, including the emancipatory potential of informal and opportunistic counter-accounts.