Work organisation, labour & globalisation
Volume 17, Number 2, 2023
Produced and distributed by
Produced and distributed by
Pluto Journals
Edited by Ursula Huws
Designed by Andrew Haig Associates
ISSN: 1745-641X
© the authors 2023
Copyright Notice
This journal is published under the Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0. This license allows users, scholars and readers to read the content or any part of the content without charges. This license allows scholars to download and use the contents for educational purposes. This license does not allow the content or any part of the content to be used for commercial purposes.
About this journal
The globalisation of world trade in combination with the use of information and communication technologies is bringing into being a new international division of labour, not just in manufacturing industry, as in the past, but also in work involving the processing of information.
Organisational restructuring shatters the unity of the traditional workplace, both contractually and spatially, dispersing work across the globe in ever more attenuated value chains.
A new ‘cybertariat’ is in the making, sharing common labour processes, but working in remote offices and call centres which may be continents apart and occupying very different cultural and economic places in local economies.
The implications of this are far-reaching, both for policy and for scholarship. The dynamics of this new global division of labour cannot be captured adequately within the framework of any single academic discipline. On the contrary they can only be understood in the light of a combination of insights from fields including political economy, the sociology of work, organisational theory, economic geography, development studies, industrial relations, comparative social policy, communications studies, technology policy and gender studies.
Work organisation, labour and globalisation aims to:
bring together insights from all of these fields to create a single authoritative source of information on the new global division of labour, combining theoretical analysis with the results of empirical research in a way that is accessible both to the research community and to policy makers;
provide a single home for articles which specifically address issues relating to the changing international division of labour and the restructuring of work in a global knowledge-based economy;
bring together the results of empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, with theoretical analyses in order to inform the development of new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the restructuring of work, organisation and labour in a global context;
be global in scope, with a particular emphasis on attracting contributions from developing countries as well as from Europe, North America and other developed regions;
encourage a dialogue between university-based researchers and their counterparts in international and national government agencies, independent research institutes, trade unions and civil society as well as policy makers. Subject to the requirements of scholarly peer review, it is open to submissions from contributors working outside the academic sphere and encourages an accessible style of writing in order to facilitate this goal;
complement, rather than compete with existing discipline-based journals;
bring to the attention of English-speaking readers relevant articles originally published in other languages.
The editor welcomes comments, criticisms, contributions and suggestions for future themes. For further information, visit the website: wolg.wordpress.com.
Editorial board
Work organisation, labour and globalisation is edited by Ursula Huws, director of Analytica Social and Economic Research, UK. The editorial board includes:
Ludmila Abilio, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Labour and Trade Union Studies, University of Campinas, Brazil
Moritz Altenried, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Ricardo Antunes, Professor of Sociology at University of Campinas, Brazil
Chris Benner, Department of Community Development, University of California, Davis, USA
Michael Brookes, Professor of Marketing and Management, University of Southern Denmark
Enda Brophy, Associate Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Manuel Castells, Emeritus Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Mikyung Chin, Department of Political Science, Ajou University, Korea
Nicole Cohen, Associate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada
Premilla D’Cruz, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India
Jörg Flecker, Professor of Sociology, University of Vienna, Austria
Brian Garvey, Lecturer in Work, Employment and Organisation, University of Strathclyde, UK
Sujata Gothoskar, Programme Officer, Committee for Asian Women and Researcher, International Union of Foodworkers, Mumbai, India
Mark Graham, Professor of Internet Geography, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, UK
Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus professor, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, UK
Christoph Hermann, Lecturer, Sociology Department, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Tsvetelina Hristova, Researcher, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia
Greti-Iulia Ivana, lecturer in Sociology, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK
Anne Jourdain, Université Paris-Dauphine, France
Eleni Kambouri, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Gender Studies, Panteion University of Social and Political Science, Athens, Greece
Vassil Kirov, Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
Bettina-Johanna Krings, Head of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis Unit, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Wing-Fai Leung, Director of Research, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, UK
Tatiana Mazali, Researcher, Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Polytechnic of Torino, Italy
Pamela Meil, Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung (ISF), Germany
George Morgan, Associate Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia
Vincent Mosco, Emeritus professor, Queens University, Canada
Rajneesh Narula, Professor of International Business Regulation, University of Reading Business School, UK
Manuel Nicklich, Researcher, Nuremberg Campus of Technology (NCT) at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Maurilio Pirone, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Bologna, Italy
Sabine Pfeiffer, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany
Jaka Primorac, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Development and International Relations, Dubrovnik, Croatia
Markus Promberger, Head of Welfare, Labour and Social Inclusion Research, IAB (Institute for Employment Research), Federal Employment Agency, Germany
Monique Ramioul, Head of Work, Organisation and Social Dialogue, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
Ned Rossiter, Professor of Communication, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia
Neil Spencer, Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
Paul Stewart, Senior Research Professor, Sociology of Work and Employment, Département, Homme Organisation et Société, Grenoble School of Management, France
Aditi Surie, Consultant, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, India
Geert van Hootegem, Professor of Sociology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Patricia Vendramin, Professor of Sociology, University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Contents
Digital reputation, skills and uncertainty reduction on global digital labour platforms 7
Niels Beerepoot, Bart Lambregts and Jorien Oprins
Industrial platform capitalism: Outsourcings, syntheses and resistances 27
Henrique Amorim, Ana Claudia Moreira Cardoso and Maria Aparecida Bridi
Work on through the storm: Platform work in the pandemic 47
Nelli Kambouri, Neil H. Spencer and Tracy Walsh
Searching for a better job: Indonesian gig workers and the limits of decent work agendas 71
Arif Novianto, Anindya Dessi Wulansari and Yeremias T. Keban
But which skills? Natural Language Processing tools and the identification of high-demand skills in online job advertisements 91
Gianni Anelli
The minimum wage in Ecuador: Its impact on poverty, inequality and labour market structure 105
Susana Herrero Olarte
Attitudes of international non-governmental employees towards working from home in Jordan 128
Khleef A. Alkhawaldeh and Ala’a Al-Oran
Influence of career commitment and employee competency on career management: Evidence from IT workers in Nepal 143
Abhishek Risal, Niranjan Devkota, Krishna Dhakal and Udaya Raj Paudel
Job security in the apparel industry in Sri Lanka: A study of determining factors 165
Wasantha Rajapakshe and T.G.S.D. Chandrasiri
A new subjectivity in digital platform capitalism? Marginal notes on power and conflict in the time of algorithms 197
Federico Chicchi and Marco Marrone