New Digital Technologies, Power and Work: Labor Control and Resistance (Part 2)

Friday, 11 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: SJES002 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC44 Labor Movements (host committee)
RC04 Sociology of Education

Language: English

The rapid development of new digital technologies, up to and including AI, has added both intellectual and policy urgency within sociological traditions of labor and employment relations studies. This panel will track the effects on labor of the implementation of new digital technologies in varied national, sectoral, and organizational contexts. Though platform-based organizations have attracted much attention, digital technology is transforming work far beyond such organizations, and this panel seeks to represent a range of cases, including “traditional” sectors and organizational forms. Papers will focus on how the adoption of new digital technologies is transforming the nature and quality of work, looking at a range of outcomes including work intensification, changes in workers’ autonomy and discretion, and workplace conflict. The goal is to explain how the design and implementation of a given technology is likely to shape the balance of power, coercion and legitimation used by management to govern labour in a way that reflects the social context (and the nature of the employment relationship) in which technologies are embedded. While employers currently have the upper hand in most settings, we also welcome analyses of actual and potential responses by workers and their collective bodies as well as government. We aim for both an update of recent empirical and theoretical work on these topics and an opportunity to engage in comparative analysis and theorization.
Session Organizer:
Chris TILLY, UCLA, USA
Oral Presentations
Exploring the 'zone of Contestation': Quality of Working Life amid Technological Change in the Automotive Industry
Valeria PULIGNANO, KU Leuven University, Belgium; Lorenzo Frangi FRANGI LORENZO, UQAM, Canada; Yennef Vereycken YENNEF VEREYKEN, KUL, Belgium; Tod Rutherford TOD RUTHFORDE, Syracuse University, USA; Lander Veermerbergen LANDER VERMEERBERGEN, Rudbound University, Netherlands; Lynford Dor LYNFORD DOR, KUL, Belgium
Well-Intended but Badly Done—Digitalization in the Skilled Craft Sector Betwixt Competition and Employees’ Interests
Lianara Patricia DREYER, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany
Automation and Migrant Workers: Redefining Hierarchies of Skill?
Olga GHEORGHIEV, Norway
Skills Transition within the Reconfiguration of the Automotive Industry: Between Anticipation and Reality
Giuseppe D'ONOFRIO, University of Salerno, Italy; Gabriela JULIO MEDEL, University of Padua, Italy; Devi SACCHETTO, University of Padua, Italy
Shaping Techno-Organisational Change? Trade Union Responses to Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 in the Italian Automotive Sector
Angelo MORO, École normale supérieure, France; Maria Enrica VIRGILLITO, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy
See more of: RC44 Labor Movements
See more of: RC04 Sociology of Education
See more of: Research Committees
<< Previous Session | Next Session >>