Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market

Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market
Author: Juliet Webster
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137479191

The emerging world of virtual work is not tied to physical workplaces or particular locations, but is dispersed and footloose. It is frequently precarious, and blurs the boundaries between work and non-work, production and consumption. Contributors to this wide-ranging volume of case studies identify the growing and diverse army of virtual workers. Building from an overarching introduction which discusses the salient features of virtual work, this collection considers the challenges in analysing the class position of virtual workers. Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market features international examples of emerging occupations and working conditions in new media, gaming, journalism, advertising and branding, software development and offshore services. Cross-disciplinary insights from across the social sciences inform contributions on labour market entry, employment relations, precariousness, the dynamics of virtual teams, and cyberbullying, in order to illustrate the diversity of virtual work, its circumstances and its labour force.

Handbook of Research on Remote Work and Worker Well-Being in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Handbook of Research on Remote Work and Worker Well-Being in the Post-COVID-19 Era
Author: Wheatley, Daniel
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2021-04-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1799867560

With the introduction of policies to combat COVID-19, far greater numbers of employees across the globe—including those with limited job autonomy—have moved to undertake their entire job at home. Although challenging in the current climate, embracing these flexible modes of work such as working at home, including relevant investment in technology to enable this, will not only deliver potential organizational benefits but also increase the adaptability of the labor market in the short and longer terms. Although perhaps not the central concern of many in the current climate, “good” home-based work is achievable and perhaps even a solution to the current work-based dilemma created by COVID-19 and should be a common goal for individuals, organizations, and society. Research also has shifted to focus on the routines of workers, organizational performance, and well-being of companies and their employees along with reflections on the ways in which these developments may influence and alter the nature of paid work into the post-COVID-19 era. The Handbook of Research on Remote Work and Worker Well-Being in the Post-COVID-19 Era focuses on the rapid expansion of remote working in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts it has had on both employees and businesses. The content of the book progresses understanding and raises awareness of the benefits and challenges faced by large-scale movements to remote working, considering the wide array of different ways in which the large-scale movement to remote working is impacting working lives and the economy. This book covers how different fields of work are responding and implementing remote work along with providing a presentation of how work occurs in digital spaces and the impacts on different topics such as gender dynamics and virtual togetherness. It is an ideal reference book for HR professionals, business managers, executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers, students, practitioners, academicians, and business professionals interested in the latest research on remote working and its impacts.

Internet and Network Economics

Internet and Network Economics
Author: Amin Saberi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2010-12-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642175724

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, WINE 2010, held in Stanford, USA, in December 2010. The 52 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 95 submissions. The papers are organized in 33 regular papers and 19 short papers.

Space, Place and Global Digital Work

Space, Place and Global Digital Work
Author: Jörg Flecker
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137480874

This edited volume seeks to enhance our understanding of the concepts of space and place in the study of digital work. It argues that while digital work is often presented as 'placeless', work always takes place somewhere with a certain degree of local embeddedness. Contributors to this collection address restructuring processes that bring about delocalised digital work and point out limitations to dislocation inherent in the work itself, and the social relations or the physical artefacts involved. Exploring the dynamics of global value chains and shifts in the international division of labour, this book explores the impact these have on employment and working conditions, workers' agency in shaping and coping with changes in work, and the new competencies needed in virtual organisational environments. Combining different disciplinary perspectives, the volume teases out the spatial aspects of digital work at different scales ranging from team level to that of global production networks.

The Virtual World of Work

The Virtual World of Work
Author: K. J. McLennan
Publisher: IAP
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2008-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1607526123

The purpose of this book project is to analyze why the workplace is changing so rapidly, identify the enabling factors and understand what we can do to best prepare for the future. The analysis led to four significant factors which are all fundamental to the formation of the future world of work. They are the incredible enabling technologies, changing attitudes, workforce demographics and globalization. The rapid and irreversible coalescing of these factors is creating what is referred to in the book as, "The Virtual World of Work or VWOW." The book covers the changing workplace from the 1960s through to the present, and then looks to see what is emerging next and provides predictions for the future workplace. To assist the readers in tracking their progress, the book provides a segmentation of this time frame into four distinct stages. Each stage is identified by the capabilities specific to the majority of the worker force in each stage. As the work force transitions from one stage to the next, the accumulated enhancements or changes to who, how, where and when tasks are completed is explored. The book project introduces some original thinking and combines this with the knowledge and expertise from the leaders in this new field. The book is organized around five basic questions concerning the virtual world of work. The questions are: ² What is the Virtual World of Work? ² What Factors have Enabled the Virtual World of Work? ² Will the Virtual World of Work Continue? ² How will the Virtual World Work? ² How to Architect the Virtual World of Work? The book covers why the change is happening and how we can better plan for the future virtual world of work. Over 25 million workers in the U.S. work from home at least a few days per month. More and more workers are joining these virtual workers daily and the amount of time worked out of the traditional office is growing even more rapidly. There are literally millions of people who need the information in this book.

Labor in the Global Digital Economy

Labor in the Global Digital Economy
Author: Ursula Huws
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1583674659

For every person who reads this text on the printed page, many more will read it on a computer screen or mobile device. It’s a situation that we increasingly take for granted in our digital era, and while it is indicative of the novelty of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is also the key to understanding its driving force: the relentless impulse to commodify our lives in every aspect. Ursula Huws ties together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of the last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. She examines the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet. Labor in the Global Digital Economy is a forceful critique of our dizzying contemporary moment, one that goes beyond notions of mere connectedness or free-flowing information to illuminate the entrenched mechanisms of exploitation and control at the core of capitalism.

Labour in Contemporary Capitalism

Labour in Contemporary Capitalism
Author: Ursula Huws
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2019-05-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137520426

In this long-awaited book, Ursula Huws brings together the results of decades of prescient research on labour market transformation to provide an authoritative overview of the impacts of technological, economic, social and political change on working life in the 21st century. Placing current upheavals in global labour markets firmly in their historical context, she debunks myths about the impacts of artificial intelligence on labour, pointing to the processes whereby new employment is created, as well as old jobs destroyed, while never underestimating the contradictory impacts of digitalisation on work organisation, resistance, adaption and innovation. This book is underpinned by a clear conceptual framework, that analyses the dynamics of the restructuring of capitalism and labour, taking full account of unpaid social reproductive work, and integrating a feminist analysis whilst also pointing to new forms of commodification that will shape the future. Labour in Contemporary Capitalism will be an invaluable resource and point of reference for students and scholars studying the sociology of labour, economic structures, technology, and globalisation.

Work, Employment and Flexibility

Work, Employment and Flexibility
Author: Peter Holland
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2024-06-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 103530936X

This insightful book examines the evolving landscape of work in the context of rapidly developing information and communication technology and Artificial Intelligence. It argues that while in the twentieth century there was a standardisation of work style, the twenty-first century is seeing the creation of ever more flexible forms of work, epitomised by the rise of the gig economy.

The Making of a Cybertariat

The Making of a Cybertariat
Author: Ursula Huws
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2003-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

A new global labour force is being created working in call centres, homes and electronic sweatshops. New technologies are also transforming daily life. This book presents a coherent conceptual framework within which these developments can be understood.

Teleworking

Teleworking
Author: Paul J. Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2002-01-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134695624

Teleworking is an up-to-date, groundbreaking and comprehensive assessment of teleworking. It includes * multidisciplinary contributions drawing on sociology, management science, economics, philosophy and information technology * analysis of post-modern and post-industrial theoretical contexts * a selection of empirical studies from across the world * accounts of different modes of teleworking, from homeworking to centre-based working * examination of the links between teleworking and the virtual organisation Wide-ranging, detailed and original, this book is a valuable introduction to teleworking and an important contribution to the debate on the future of the labour market.