New Technologies at Work: Situated Knowledge, Collaboration and Voice

A webinar by Dr Kendra Briken (University of Strathclyde)

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Abstract

This paper suggests using the idea of the ‘social self as a working self’ (Déjours 2018) to understand  technologically driven changes at the workplace and their consequences for social and collective organisation of work. In combining three interrelated aspects of doing work – suffering, fulfilment, and socially facilitated norms and values – Déjours’ concept is useful in understanding the newly emerging relationship between humans and machines. One important aspect is the impact of new technologies – wearables, wristbands, assistive robots - on human knowledge and workers identity as well as the connected work collective. With the example of findings from Industry 4.0 projects in the German context I discuss how the integration of new technologies in existing work systems diminishes the role for workers’ situated knowledge. Given this is an important pillar for workers’ resistance, new technologies threaten the potential for collectivism and collaboration at work.

Speaker

Dr Kendra Briken

About the speaker

Kendra Briken is a trained sociologist of work and lecturer at Strathclyde Business School. Her research focusses on the varieties of automation, related power structures, and how they are impacting on work and life. Her latest publications include ‘Welcome in the machine. Human-machine relations and knowledge capture‘ In: Capital & Class, and ‘Beyond constrained choice – labour market coercion and oppressive work in Amazon fulfilment centres’, Industrial Relations Journal, 49 (5-6), with Phil Taylor.

Forthcoming CERIC Webinar

Wednesday 29 April 2020, 16:00 – 17:30

Dr Mariya Ivancheva (Liverpool) Platform academic labour? New divisions and vulnerabilities in online higher education.