{"title":"Voices Beyond the Road: Comparison of Online Employee Voice in Traditional Transport and the Ride-Sharing Industry","authors":"Elisabeth Bethge","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343275","url":null,"abstract":"This study applies Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework to examine the dynamics of employee voice in the gig economy, emphasizing the role of digital platforms. Using an exploratory mixed-methods approach, the research analyses Glassdoor data to compare the voice of gig workers to that of traditional employees in the United Kingdom transportation industry. The findings reveal that gig workers’ voices reflect a nuanced balance between autonomy and flexibility, juxtaposed with financial insecurity and precarious working conditions. Conversely, traditional employees often voice dissatisfaction with rigid management and limited flexibility. The study contributes three key insights. First, it proposes viewing Exit, Voice and Loyalty as a continuum, reflecting gig workers’ dynamic decision-making. Second, it identifies digital platforms as critical arenas for employee voice, shifting expressions from internal to public discourse. Third, it demonstrates the value of mixed methods, integrating social evaluation techniques to understand employee voice across different employment models.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"590 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144328855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Care Inequalities are Reproduced in ‘Carer-Friendly’ Jobs: The Case of Employer-Led Carer’s Leave","authors":"Camille Allard","doi":"10.1177/09500170251337682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251337682","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how working carers – workers with care responsibilities for a long-term ill, ageing or disabled relative – negotiate their care responsibilities when employed in a ‘carer-friendly’ job with access to paid carer’s leave. Based on narrative interviews with 17 working carers in the UK, the article explores how the availability of carer’s leave influences carers’ perception and legitimisation of their roles as ‘carers’ within their families. By drawing on, and extending Acker’s concept of ‘inequality regimes’, the article uncovers the organisational processes, discourses of legitimisation and normative pressures that shape carers’ roles both in their workplaces and at home. It argues that having a job supported by a ‘carer-friendly’ employer – but without a right to statutory paid carer’s leave – can reinforce the normative perceptions of ‘who’ should be a carer at home.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Security Capital in the Field of Work: A Bourdieuian Perspective on Precarity and Social Inequality","authors":"Yue Qin","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343280","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, this article proposes the concept of security capital for a better understanding of precarity in the field of work. Three indicators are put forward to characterise the level of precarity – employment-based security capital, citizenship-based security capital and embodied security capital. Additionally, the notion of security capital stresses the reproduction of precarity, an important case of precarisation, and this article provides two important mechanisms underlying this process – the embodiment of precarity and the conversion between security capital and other forms of capital. Moreover, the Bourdieuian perspective on the state and its relations with security capital sheds light on how people can mobilise the state to shift neoliberal policymaking and safeguard labour security.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Young is Fun: Examining the Inter-Relations of Play and Age at Work","authors":"Cara Reed, Helen C Williams, Katrina Pritchard","doi":"10.1177/09500170251343276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251343276","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses current limitations in theorisations of fun, introducing Turner’s liminoid/liminal distinction of play and work. This suggests engaging in play – liminoid phenomena – releases individuals from everyday societal structures, like age-based identity memberships. Featuring participant data from a large UK-based insurance firm, the research highlights how play activities are underpinned by age-related assumptions. The study makes three contributions. First, conceptualising the ‘pseudo-liminoid’ – a space between work and play where the potential for play to be freeing is curtailed. Second, it problematises common positive attributes of organisational play, suggesting play can reproduce social norms, thus undermining why it was introduced to the organisation. Finally, it highlights how play and fun can be ‘aged’, with implications for how organisations conceive of play’s role in creating an inclusive workplace.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Support or Exploitation? Workfare Implementation and Migrants’ Resistance within the Swiss Reception System","authors":"Agnès Aubry","doi":"10.1177/09500170251344717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251344717","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores the daily implementation and lived experiences of workfare-inspired programmes designed for migrants seeking protection, who are living in Swiss reception centres. It examines how they are compelled to perform a wide range of unpaid work in exchange for their support and how they negotiate that work. Using a situated intersectional approach, the article shows how workfare-inspired programmes become a tool for channelling the behaviours of racialised migrant men and underlines the everyday resistance practices and survival strategies migrant claimants use to face exploitation. This case study takes a critical stance towards mainstream accounts of migrant workfare that frame it as a pathway to integration and empowerment. It brings new empirical insights to critical welfare studies and contributes to research on contemporary social security reform by showing how migrant claimants routinely resist the implementation of workfare.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is Workplace Flexibility Penalised? The Gendered Consequences of Working from Home for the Wages of Parents and Childless Employees in the UK","authors":"Johanna Elisabeth Pauliks","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336943","url":null,"abstract":"Working from home has been discussed in terms of reconciling work and family life and reducing gender gaps in the labour market. However, its implications for wages remain the subject of debate, with some researchers arguing that flexibility stigma disproportionately disadvantages certain groups, particularly mothers. This article uses data from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, to investigate whether working from home has different consequences for individual wages according to gender and parental status. Inverse probability weighted fixed-effects regression models are used with a sample of up to 8552 employees. The results suggest that working from home is associated with higher earnings for mothers, suggesting that the benefits of flexible working arrangements may outweigh potential disadvantages.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Precarious Masculinities: Migrant Working Men’s Masculinities as Self-Exploitation in a Mediterranean Restaurant in Glasgow","authors":"Panos Theodoropoulos, Sam Lawton-Westerland","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336990","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a covert ethnography of a Mediterranean restaurant in Glasgow, this article analyses how practices characteristic of hegemonic masculinity are incorporated by male migrant workers in the process of crafting labour identities. Building on Connell’s framework of hegemonic masculinity, the researchers found that performances of masculinity operated in a way that, while allowing subjects to feel some degree of power, also ultimately reinforced the individualising pressures promoted by the labour process. It is therefore argued that hegemonic masculinity is critical in providing an avenue through which experiences of exploitation are naturalised by precarious labour workforces.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144290172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yin Liang, Jiaming Li, Jeremy Aroles, Edward Granter
{"title":"Content Creation within the Algorithmic Environment: A Systematic Review","authors":"Yin Liang, Jiaming Li, Jeremy Aroles, Edward Granter","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325784","url":null,"abstract":"While research on platform work has grown exponentially in recent years, the power dynamics between creators and algorithms on digital platforms, as well as their role in shaping online visibility, are yet to be fully understood. Against this backdrop, we ask: <jats:italic>How does algorithmic power maintain its dominance and shape the nature of work for content creators?</jats:italic> Through a systematic review of the literature on the relationship between algorithms and content creators, this article identified four core themes, namely: (i) market rationality underpinning visibility, (ii) potential power dislocation caused by folk theories, (iii) neo-normative control of creators through algorithms and (iv) subversion of beatific fantasies. Drawing from Tirapani and Willmott’s framework to theorise the power relations framing interactions between algorithms and creators, we argue that the fantasies fabricated by neoliberalism justify, endorse and ultimately support the dominance and dynamic power of algorithms over creators in content creative platforms.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144210982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alex J Wood, Nicholas Martindale, Brendan J Burchell
{"title":"Beyond the ‘Gig Economy’: Towards Variable Experiences of Job Quality in Platform Work","authors":"Alex J Wood, Nicholas Martindale, Brendan J Burchell","doi":"10.1177/09500170251336947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251336947","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘gig economy’ encompasses a wide range of jobs, platforms and workers. In this article, we provide the first quantitative evidence in support of the model of job quality developed by Wood et al. that predicts divergence across local and remote platform work. Specifically, we find that remote platform work entails significantly better pay, more flexibility, greater influence over how to do the job, a greater sense of doing useful work, better health and safety, less pain, and less work-related insecurity. In contrast, local platform work entails greater organisational influence and less physical isolation. We explain these disparities by considering how divergent organisational forms emerge across the local/remote divide as a result of specific differences in platform technologies and worker skills.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144202176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anna Matysiak, Agnieszka Kasperska, Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska
{"title":"Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Work from Home on Careers in the Post-Covid Context","authors":"Anna Matysiak, Agnieszka Kasperska, Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska","doi":"10.1177/09500170251325769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170251325769","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the role of two mechanisms – perceived workers’ performance and commitment – in shaping the career opportunities of teleworkers and office-based workers in the post-pandemic context of the United Kingdom. We outline a theoretical framework that integrates economic and sociological literature on work from home (WFH) and careers, and accounts for workers’ gender and parenthood obligations. We test it utilizing data from a discrete choice experiment conducted between July and December 2022 with 937 managers. Our findings reveal that hybrid workers face poorer career prospects than office-based workers because managers perceive them as underperforming. Among full-time teleworkers, reduced career opportunities stem not only from managers’ perceptions of their job performance but also from assumptions that full-time teleworkers are less committed to work. Finally, we demonstrate disparate impacts on promotion and earning opportunities based on gender and parenthood, primarily due to differing employer perceptions regarding work performance and commitment.","PeriodicalId":48187,"journal":{"name":"Work Employment and Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}