I've recently revised a paper I wrote last year on workers and Web 2.0 communication technologies.
Instead of outlining and describing new trends I have linked such activities to self-organization, or what workers may do when denied access to trade unions or when worker grievances fall outside employer-trade union bargaining arrangements.
A title and abstract:
‘Doing good and useful things’: Web 2.0, self-organized workers and Cyberspace.
The paper assesses how new Internet communication technologies (associated with the term ‘Web 2.0’), and the (Cyber) spaces associated with Web 2.0, can augment the powers of self-organized labour.
In the first instance, evidence of workers’ organizing activities in Cyberspace are explored and compared to the activities associated with a conventional framework for self-organization (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999).
In a wider sense, the paper engages with debates that surround the tightening of management control over the labour process, and the long-term decline of professionally organized labour, by discussing the possibilities for action, and identity formation, to occur in Cyberspace.
The findings indicate self-organized workers are currently exploring a wide range of employment interests, through an array of joined-up activities, in Cyberspace.
The findings also suggest employers are increasingly concerned with the threat such activities pose for an industrial relations climate broadly based on sophisticated organizational control initiatives designed to reduce physical spaces for counter or apposite identities to take root.
However, only a partial assessment was possible with the methods applied, and it is not appropriate at this moment to judge whether or not such activities are becoming more common or effective.
The paper ends with a call for all existing debates that surround the labour process and organized labour to be revised to include opportunities for labour in Cyberspace.
A range of suggestions on this matter is included in the conclusion.
Comments are encouraged and welcome!
Instead of outlining and describing new trends I have linked such activities to self-organization, or what workers may do when denied access to trade unions or when worker grievances fall outside employer-trade union bargaining arrangements.
A title and abstract:
‘Doing good and useful things’: Web 2.0, self-organized workers and Cyberspace.
The paper assesses how new Internet communication technologies (associated with the term ‘Web 2.0’), and the (Cyber) spaces associated with Web 2.0, can augment the powers of self-organized labour.
In the first instance, evidence of workers’ organizing activities in Cyberspace are explored and compared to the activities associated with a conventional framework for self-organization (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999).
In a wider sense, the paper engages with debates that surround the tightening of management control over the labour process, and the long-term decline of professionally organized labour, by discussing the possibilities for action, and identity formation, to occur in Cyberspace.
The findings indicate self-organized workers are currently exploring a wide range of employment interests, through an array of joined-up activities, in Cyberspace.
The findings also suggest employers are increasingly concerned with the threat such activities pose for an industrial relations climate broadly based on sophisticated organizational control initiatives designed to reduce physical spaces for counter or apposite identities to take root.
However, only a partial assessment was possible with the methods applied, and it is not appropriate at this moment to judge whether or not such activities are becoming more common or effective.
The paper ends with a call for all existing debates that surround the labour process and organized labour to be revised to include opportunities for labour in Cyberspace.
A range of suggestions on this matter is included in the conclusion.
Comments are encouraged and welcome!
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