New Division Of Labor Research Articles

Designing Good Labour Market Institutions: How to Reconcile Flexibility, Productivity and Security?

The world of work is in constant change. Demographic shifts, technological innovation, institutional reforms and global economic integration affect the way people work. Technological innovations have a major impact on occupations and industries, changing the ways economies in different world regions, in both developed and developing countries, work along with new division of labour that are facilitated by global economic integration. This paper is based on the joint work within the International Panel on Social Progress. It highlights three main areas of attention: a) skill formation, d) the challenges to collective bargaining, and e) social protection and labour market policies. Based on an assessment of the existing evidence, the paper suggests some policy principles and concrete policy options that might further those objectives, not ignoring some tensions that might exist between flexibility and security in the different labour markets. The ultimate direction of reforms in line with an idea of social progress lies in institutional arrangements that facilitate the reconciliation of flexibility and productivity with access to decent jobs and social protection. We argue that distinct policy options are available that can be implemented more globally in order to achieve these goals simultaneously.

The Judicialisation of the Blockchain

This Chapter argues that blockchain technologies structurally tend towards ‘judicialisation’ and challenge the traditional, state-centric notions of jurisdiction and enforcement. The first part sets the scene by locating the emergence of blockchain technologies within the broader debate concerning the relationship between national and transnational law. Such a contextualisation is crucial, in order to develop a reliable understanding of the impact of this set of technologies on the state’s capacity to preserve its central role in the administration of justice through a system of courts. Against this background, the second part investigates the effect of blockchains and smart contracts on the notion of jurisdiction, drawing lessons from the historical evolution of the concept and applying them to the current technological reality. Relying on empirical data, it is argued that the growth of blockchain technologies has given rise to a proliferation of private arbitral systems, generating a new division of labour between state courts and private adjudication. Finally, the third part of the Chapter considers the emergence of self-enforcing smart contracts and its consequences for the traditional view whereby the state maintains a monopoly over the use of force.

Rediscovering geography in NATO defence planning

ABSTRACT This article explores the relevance of geography in NATO defence planning. Historical analysis of strategic concepts and other planning documents suggests a pendulum movement from treating geography as the central organising principle within the alliance, to downplaying its role in favour of functional considerations, and back. In view of mounting tensions alongside Europe’s eastern and southern flanks, this argument acquires contemporary relevance with regards to how alliance responsibilities can be (re)distributed. Rediscovering the early principle that allies should concentrate on those tasks for which they are the most geographically suited offers a promising approach for a new division of labour.

EL IMPACTO DE LAS EMPRESAS TRANSNACIONALES EN LA CONFIGURACIÓN DE LA CLASE OBRERA MEXICANA (2003-2017)

The purpose of this paper is to account for the transformations in the occupational structure in Mexico in the last fifteen years. The analysis focuses on the productive reconfiguration as a result of monopoly capitalism, which is expressed in the expansion of Transnational Corporations in the country. Some elements are presented to understand the new division of labor, in society and within the productive units. The issue of the impacts that the Transactional Companies generate on the world of work in Mexico is developed, based on two thematic lines: i) The growing concentration of capital and the consequent dominance of production, ii) The control of technological developments about the productive process. Subsequently, the main results of a quantitative analysis of the Mexican working class are presented, which implies an exercise of reflection on the concept of the working class.

Morrisian Spectres of Working and Learning in the Context of "The New Division of Labour"

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Urbanization, Work and Community: The Logic of City Life in the Contemporary World

Purpose: I initiate the discussion with a statement about cognitive-cultural capitalism and its concentration in large global cities. This is followed by an argument to the effect that the specificity of the city resides in the manner in which the diverse social phenomena that it contains are brought into a composite pattern of spatial integration. With these preliminaries in mind, I examine the economic structure of the city in cognitive-cultural capitalism, with special reference to the emergence of a new division of labor and the changing configuration of intra-urban production space. This account leads directly to consideration of the restratification of urban society and its effects on neighborhood development and social life. The final section of the paper picks up on the notion of the Common in cognitive-cultural capitalism and offers some speculative remarks regarding the implications of this phenomenon for the economic and social order of cities.Methodology/Approach: Historical and geographical narrative combined with appeals to the theory of political economy.Findings: Cognitive-cultural capitalism is emerging as a dominant force of social and economic change in the twenty-first century. This trend is also evident in new patterns of urbanization that are emerging on all five continents. These patterns reflect dramatic shifts in the structure of urban production systems and the significant restratification of urban society that has been occurring as a consequence.Research Limitation/implication: The paper is pitched at a high level of conceptual abstraction. Detailed empirical investigation/testing of the main theoretical points outlined in the paper is urgently called for.Originality/Value of paper: The paper offers an overall theoretical synthesis of the interrelationships between cognitive-cultural capitalism and processes of urbanization.

Do Computers Follow Rules Once Followed by Workers?

Do Computers Follow Rules Once Followed by Workers? Bjorn Westergard (bio) In his 2014 paper “Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth,” economist David Autor puts forward a very general historical thesis (emphasis added): When a computer processes a company’s payroll, alphabetizes a list of names, or tabulates the age distribution of residents in each U.S. Census enumeration district, it is “simulating” a work process that would, in a previous era, have been done by humans using nearly identical procedures. The principle of computer simulation of workplace tasks has not fundamentally changed since the dawn of the computer era. But its cost has. … This remarkable cost decline creates strong economic incentives for firms to substitute ever-cheaper computing power for relatively expensive human labor, with attendant effects on employers’ demand for employees. How could a historian of computing adjudicate this claim? How can we determine whether the procedures used by humans and computers are similar, let alone “nearly identical”? Part and parcel with this framing of the issue is Autor’s assertion that the inability of workers to articulate the rules they follow when carrying out a task constitutes an impediment to writing software to automate it and his suggestion that this impediment might be overcome with machine learning techniques, which putatively infer these “tacit rules” from a wealth of examples. Underwriting this view is a theory—henceforth, “the ALM theory”—first laid out by Autor, Levy, and Murnane in The Skill Content Content of Recent Technological Change (2003) and The New Division of Labor (2004), which builds upon Michael Polanyi’s epistemology and attendant conceptions of rule following. The ALM theory was developed in response to an economic literature that argued that adoption of computer technology—at the level of the industry, firm, or worksite—increases demand for the labor of those with a postsecondary education at the expense of those without. It was thought that in the race between education (supplying computer-complementary skills) and technology (creating demand for them), technology had and would prevail, driving up the wage premia of more educated workers.1 This “canonical model” of “skills-biased technical change” employed a binary classification scheme of “more-and less-skilled workers, often operationalized as college-and non-college-educated workers.” As the 1990s wore on economists found slowing growth in the college wage premium and nonmonotonic inequality growth difficult to account for in this framework. Subtler distinctions needed to be drawn.2 For these, economists pursuing the “task approach” looked to databases of job descriptions, such as the Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles and its successor O*NET, to “[measure] the tasks performed in jobs rather than the educational credentials of workers performing those jobs.”3 They would conclude, contrary to the existing skill-biased technical change literature, that beginning in the late 1970s, computerization had issued in “job polarization” or “the simultaneous growth of high-education, high-wage and low-education, low-wages jobs.”4 The task approach drops the assumption that educational attainment determines work activity in favor of two production functions: one characterizing how labor and computer capital inputs combine to perform tasks, another characterizing how task performances combine to produce outputs (i.e., goods, services). The firm is taken to be a locus of task assignment and execution in which managers play a key role in “organizing tasks into jobs.”5 The heart of the ALM theory, which is meant to provide an interpretation of the data collected using the “task approach,” is the “ALM hypothesis”:6 (1) that computer capital substitutes for workers in carrying out a limited and well-defined set of cognitive and manual activities, those that can be accomplished by following explicit rules (what we term “routine tasks”); and (2) that computer capital complements workers in carrying out problem-solving and complex communication activities (“nonroutine tasks”). [End Page 5] In addition to being “routine” or “nonroutine,” tasks are also either “manual” or “cognitive.” Example classifications include record keeping, calculation, repetitive customer service (routine cognitive), medical diagnosis, legal writing, managing others (nonroutine cognitive), picking/sorting, repetitive assembly (routine manual), janitorial work, truck driving, and removing paper clips from documents7 (nonroutine...

Cluster evolution and urban industrial dynamics in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy: the case of Beijing

ABSTRACTCluster evolution and urban industrial dynamics in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy: the case of Beijing. Spatial Economic Analysis. The transformation of the industrial structure of Beijing in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy integrated into global markets is examined through the lens of cluster evolutions and life cycles in 1987–2007. Cluster emergence, decomposition, stabilization, upgrading, restructuring and disappearance are identified using exploratory factor analysis of input–output tables. These evolutions are interpreted in the light of the way in which backward and forward linkages provide channels of communication, new intermediate goods, new divisions of labour and new patterns of co-location, and are related to the changing industrial geography of Beijing.

Update on "What" and "Where" in Spatial Language: A New Division of Labor for Spatial Terms.

In this article, I revisit Landau and Jackendoff's () paper, "What and where in spatial language and spatial cognition," proposing a friendly amendment and reformulation. The original paper emphasized the distinct geometries that are engaged when objects are represented as members of object kinds (named by count nouns), versus when they are represented as figure and ground in spatial expressions (i.e., play the role of arguments of spatial prepositions). We provided empirical and theoretical arguments for the link between these distinct representations in spatial language and their accompanying nonlinguistic neural representations, emphasizing the "what" and "where" systems of the visual system. In the present paper, I propose a second division of labor between two classes of spatial prepositions in English that appear to be quite distinct. One class includes prepositions such as in and on, whose core meanings engage force-dynamic, functional relationships between objects, with geometry only a marginal player. The second class includes prepositions such as above/below and right/left, whose core meanings engage geometry, with force-dynamic relationships a passing or irrelevant variable. The insight that objects' force-dynamic relationships matter to spatial terms' uses is not new; but thinking of these terms as a distinct set within spatial language has theoretical and empirical consequences that are new. I propose three such consequences, rooted in the fact that geometric knowledge is highly constrained and early-emerging in life, while force-dynamic knowledge of objects and their interactions is relatively unconstrained and needs to be learned piecemeal over a lengthy timeline. First, the two classes will engage different learning problems, with different developmental trajectories for both first and second language learners; second, the classes will naturally lead to different degrees of cross-linguistic variation; and third, they may be rooted in different neural representations.

The Impact of Privatization and Commercialization in Nigeria

This paper examined the activities/policies of privatization and commercialization of public enterprises in Nigeria and how they have affected the development of the Nation. Although, some of the problems facing public- owned enterprise were examined as well. It looked at the pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fully implement the structural adjustment program that leads to massive deregulation, privatization, and commercialization of public owned enterprises. In addition, it looked at the merits if any, of privatization and commercialization through extensive theoretical review of the performance of the private enterprise in Nigeria. Theories, rationale, and challenges of privatization and commercialization were addressed. The conclusion was that privatization is a good policy measure, which must be pursued with vigor, truth, sincerity, and transparencies even though the government is using such policies to foster a new division of labor between the public and private sectors in a bid to order, increase the efficiency and contribution to the development of both sectors. Privatization and commercialization in Nigeria will be a mirage unless institutional reforms take place. The government should create an environment favorable for private economic activity. This can be done by showing zero tolerance for corruption, nepotism, and misuse of public funds and property by both government and non-government officials.

How to construct an organizational field: Empirical educational research in Germany, 1995–2015

Over the past two decades, educational research in Germany has undergone unprecedented changes. Following large-scale assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and a political interest in evidence-based policy-making, quality assessment and internationalization, direct involvement of national decision-makers has led to the establishment of new organizations, programs, funding structures, professorships, and training programs. Thus, a markedly different educational research field has emerged in contrast to the traditional philosophy-rooted, hermeneutics-trained and humanities-based German pedagogy or educational science. Instead, the new paradigm refers to itself as empirical educational research (EER). Thus, we trace institutionalization processes of EER from 1995 through the foundation of the new Empirical Educational Research Association (GEBF), which rivals the long-standing German Educational Research Association (DGfE). Official documents shed light on policymakers’ and funding agencies’ motivations and rationales as they successfully engage in building new research infrastructure. Expert interviews conducted with (inter)national representatives illuminate perceptions of crucial actors involved in the organizational field’s institutionalization. What are the causes and consequences of the emergent EER field in Germany? Extending the neoinstitutionalist organizational field literature, particularly about incipient stages of such fields, we show that a new division of labor transcends national and international as well as governmental and non-governmental borders.

Changing the subject: putting labour into public relations research

In this article, I argue for a public relations research agenda which places new divisions of labour and worker subjectivities at the centre. While communication technology may be facilitating greater work flexibility, research is needed into how work processes interact with broader inequality regimes, producing new discourses and possibilities for resistance among public relations practitioners. I discuss the benefits of sociological frameworks which position work as a central organising process through which power relations are constructed and maintained. I then propose that Bourdieu’s theory of habitus complements Glucksmann’s ‘Total Social Organisation of Labour’ (TSOL) framework, combining a focus on power relations within a field with a feminist analysis of new divisions and processes of labour. After briefly discussing cultural and public relations scholarship which problematises work from a critical perspective, I conclude by framing a critical feminist public relations research agenda on labour, which utilises Bourdieuvian theory and Glucksmann’s TSOL.

Сопряжение евразийской интеграциии Экономического пояса Шелкового пути: возможности для России

This article considers the opportunities for Russia presented by the launch of China’s Silk Road Economic Belt initiative.This initiative is a comprehensive project for the rapid development of Central Asian countries, and not limited only to transportand logistics to guarantee the supply of Chinese goods to Europe. It is also China’s response to economic and political processes both within the country and in the Asia-Pacific region: the economic slow down and transformation of its social and economic model, diverging income levels, the growing presence of the United States in Asia, and the new divisions of labour within the region. The Silk Road initiative is based on China’s intention to create strong regional value chains, to outsource labour-intensive and environmentally harmful production, to foster the development of north west China including securing political stability in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and to guarantee the use of Chinese construction firms’ capacity. Goods transit is a secondary priority and justified not by commercial benefits from using land routes, but by the need to diversify export risks, arising due to the deteriorating military and political situation in the South China Sea. The 2015 Joint Statement on Cooperation on the Construction of Joint Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt projects resolves the issue of all egedly competitive goals of these complementary projects. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) provides an institutional base for cooperation while the Silk Road initiative provide investments for their development. Russia may benefit from participating in the Silk Road initiative. First, it would help integrate its transportation system into the region’s logistics network and provide additional opportunities for transit and associated logistical services as well as access to growing regional markets. Second, the Silk Road initiative offers opportunities to strengthen industrial cooperation among neighbouring countries to develop new economic clusters. Third, the EEU and the Silk Road may become the basis for more ambitious cooperation in greater Eurasia, which may transform into a new centre of economic development at the global level.

Direct foreign investments as the most important dimension of the globalization process

The process of globalization expresses the roll of modern production power in the integration of the world's economy, in the establishing of new division of labour, connecting and mutual dependence of the world. In modern social conditions, between the countries exists a high level of political, economic, technological, military, cultural, sports, legal and other mutual dependences. Economy globalization presents a spectre of different forms of connection between national economies. The intensity of globalization in field of economy is expressed by the quantity of foreign trade exchange of the goods, services, technology and capital. The most persuading indicators of economy globalization are the movement of foreign direct investments and participation of world's export in the world's GDP. Although, in the last twenty years by repealing the limitation of capital trends led to significant increase of direct foreign investments flow, the largest amount was directed toward developed countries. The aim of this paper is to show that the regions with developed technology are in the better position concerning the innovations and attracting direct foreign investments, which also demand a high sophisticated labour. However, for the countries which see the future in the increase of integration of world's economy, rapid information exchange and technology progress, globalization offers a new hope for human progress.

Migrant Mindworkers and the New Division of Academic Labor

The reorganization of higher education has been made possible by a new division of labor that is rationalizing and deskilling college teaching. These new relations of academic labor are disempowering the professorate by transferring control over teaching to a growing middle management and automating it as online distance learning. In order to respond to this threat to higher education, it is necessary to shift the focus from the commercialization of higher education to the adjunctification of the professorate. This requires a critical rethinking of organizational tactics, strategies, and objectives of academic labor organizing.

When Hephaestus Fell to Earth

Braverman’s analysis of the changing division of labor is crucial for understanding the impact of the neoliberal assault on higher education on academic labor. Much like Taylorism a century ago, adjunctification of the faculty, online education, and data driven planning are rationalizing academic labor. Teaching is being “unbundled” and its components parts automated, outsourced, and transferred to a growing middle level administration. As a result, faculty are becoming “just-in-time,” deskilled, disempowered, contingent labor. This newly emerging new division of labor is fundamentally transforming higher education. No longer merely subject to commercialization, academic labor is being reorganized to resemble the interchangeable contingent work that is ubiquitous throughout the labor market. To resist these developments it is necessary for faculty to study the new division of academic labor in order to devise new organizing tactics and strategies, such as the systemwide local and Metro organizing models.

Building Productive Links between the UNFCCC and the Broader Global Climate Governance Landscape1. This article reflects and builds upon discussions at a December 2013 workshop held in Neemrana, India, sponsored by the Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi) and the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) program of the Energy Research Centre (Cape Town). This article builds on pp. 14–19

This forum article outlines a research agenda focused on linkages between the UNFCCC and other governance arrangements that also address climate change. We take as our point of departure the recognition that the UNFCCC is no longer the sole site of global climate change governance, and thus the types of linkage across what we call the global climate governance landscape including as a central node the UNFCCC are important for thinking through how improved global responses to climate change may be pursued. The forum identifies two specific types of linkage: division-of-labor linkages and catalytic linkages. We illustrate these with some examples and raise questions we believe would be useful to pursue in future research.

The New Division of Labor as Lean Production

This issue of the International Journal of Sociology (IJS) focuses on lean production in the global economy. Given the muted reception of lean production in sociology, in this introduction I describe structural changes that led to lean production, how different versions of the division of labor have emerged, and how lean production has been implemented in different industries around the world. The four articles in this issue examine as-yet unanswered questions about this new division of labor. They investigate a combination of three important processes: (1) the spread of lean production beyond the United States and Japan into France, Canada, Mexico, and China; (2) the use of lean production in the services industries; and (3) an assessment of whether lean production is good for workers, society, and management.

Bison Algonquians: Cycles of Violence and Exploitation in the Mississippi Valley Borderlands

During climate changes of the early 1600s, a group of Algonquians moved west from the Great Lakes into a distinctive landscape—the tallgrass prairies of the midwest. Adapting themselves to this cultural and ecological borderland between the woodlands and grassland biomes of North America, these Algonquians created an identity as the Illinois and invented a new lifeway as pedestrian bison hunters. Their bison-based economy encouraged important changes in Illinois social life, including a new division of labor and conflicts with neighbors. When the contact era opened, these changes interacted in devastating fashion with the changes caused by the arrival of European colonists. Like other groups, the Illinois participated in mourning war, they suffered from disease, and they participated in trade which intensified their conflicts. But their actions cannot be fully understood without considering their bison economy, which shaped social and ecological realities for the Illinois. This essay shows how the Illinois’ adaptation to their distinctive prairie environment helped to influence their history.

The new challenges of organizing intellectual property in complex industries: A discussion based on the case of Thales

The defense industries in France and elsewhere have, in recent years, undergone important technological, organizational and institutional changes that have profoundly altered their architectures. These changes have introduced a new division of labor bringing new opportunities for interaction leading to the creation of additional assets. In this context, the issue of protecting innovations and their exploitation has become central. Managing intellectual property rights (IPR) requires industrial groups to draw on additional capabilities. This article analyzes these evolutions and focuses in particular on the new organizational arrangements that have accompanied them. Using the case of Thales, which in 2005 outsourced its Intellectual Property (IP), we answer questions such as: why should IP be outsourced; how should the outsourcing of IP activities be organized; and, how should capabilities involved in this new organizational arrangement be managed. These issues lie at the center of this research and illustrate new challenges inherent to in-house and outsourced IPR management strategies.