The high-quality academic books, upper-level student texts and journal articles on our Business, Management and Economics list offer fresh perspectives on the economy, the future of work and organisations, and the relationship between business and addressing global social challenges.
The list is home to a number of series including Organizations and Activism and Feminist Perspectives on Work and Organization, all of which are edited by leading scholars from the field, along with our journals in the area: Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, Work in the Global Economy and Global Political Economy.
Business, Management and Economics
One of the greatest impacts of Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital is the discovery of a ‘control imperative’ within the capitalist production process. Whereas his equation of capitalist domination and Taylorism has been heavily criticized early on, the capabilities of the expanded use of digital technologies at the workplace have raised the question of whether a Taylorist mode of control is on the advance once again. The article challenges this perspective by addressing managerial problems that go beyond the problem to transform labour power into actual labour. Taking up Sohn-Rethel’s theory of ‘dual economics’, we argue that the necessity to reconcile contradictory requirements of the ‘economics of the market’ and the ‘economics of production’ poses an equally crucial challenge for management. Whereas that ‘problem of reconciliation’ remained latent in the Fordist era, tensions between the two logics of economics have now increasingly become a problem to solve within the course of controlling the labour process. Drawing on our own research on ‘the inner marketization of the firm’ over the last 15 years, we discuss ‘indirect control’ as a mode of control that precisely addresses the problem of reconciliation and considers recent changes in the course of digitalization. On the basis of our empirical findings, we describe the contradictory forms of activating and restricting subjectivity in the digital workplace and its implications for the legitimation of managerial power and capitalist domination.
This article sets out to explore whether the amendment to the ILO’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work which, in June 2022, added a ‘safe and healthy work environment’ to the principles and rights already included, might help to address conditions leading to the disproportionate burden of work-related death, injury and disease estimated to occur in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). It does so by drawing on the findings of an extensive review of the literature to examine evidence for the influence and operation of (a) global and national regulatory standards and interventions; and (b) private standards and their role in influencing practices in export-oriented work. It situates its examination of this evidence in relation to the economic, social and regulatory contexts in which work and its poor outcomes for safety and health are experienced in many LMICs, and hence in relation to the challenges that confront the effective utilisation of regulatory action. The article argues that these contextual challenges are formidable, and evidence of the operational means of securing sustainable improvements to work health and safety in the face of them remains incomplete. But it concludes that the 2022 amendment could contribute a useful driver for the considerable strategic orchestration and leadership required to achieve such effective utilisation if, within the ILO, there were a tripartite consensus concerning its desirability.
Expansion of the platform economy has given rise to a paradox in the literature on gig work: Given capital’s imposition of algorithmic controls, why do so many platform workers express support and appreciation for gig work, viewing it as enhancing their autonomy? Approaches toward this question have advanced numerous explanations, such as gamification, neoliberal norms, and entrepreneurial culture. We find these efforts only partially successful, as they fail to explain why ideological incorporation so readily succeeds. We argue that responses to gig work are a function of the class positions that gig workers hold in the wider society, which lead to distinct orientations that they bring to gig work. For workers with a foothold in the middle class, gig work provides access to job rewards that may no longer be available via the conventional economy alone. They consequently experience gig work as a labour of affirmation – a stark contrast with the experience of those gig workers who hold subordinate positions in the class structure. Interview data with 70 respondents in the ride-hail, grocery-shopping and food-delivery sectors supports this approach. Consent to gig work is strongest among our better-off respondents, who hold more secure positions in the conventional economy and use gig work as a culturally-sanctioned mechanism of class reproduction. The implication is that class-based divisions among the platform workforce warrant greater attention than labour process theory has allowed.
Two frequently researched factors in the tax compliance literature are perceptions of fairness and trust. Nevertheless, what is known about the relationship between the two variables is limited. Different findings in the literature have encouraged further research. This study aims to examine the relationship between fairness and trust in tax compliance and the role of these variables with multivariate statistical tests. In this direction, survey data were collected from 540 self-employed taxpayers in Istanbul/Turkey. As a result of the multivariate statistical tests carried out by dividing the data in two, the following conclusions were reached: (1) in line with the findings in the literature, perceptions of tax fairness and trust in tax authorities are essential determinants of tax compliance intention; (2) tax fairness positively affects trust in authorities and trust in authorities positively affects tax fairness; (3) both the mediating and moderating role of trust in tax authorities in the relationship between perceptions of tax fairness and tax compliance intention are confirmed; and (4) although there is a mediating effect of perceptions of tax fairness in the relationship between trust in tax authorities and tax compliance intention, the existence of a moderating effect could not be detected.
China has undergone profound social and economic transformations over the last four decades. Deeply influenced by globalisation and capital-oriented marketisation, China has transitioned from a planned economy under state socialism to a market economy integrated into the global economy. As China becomes the ‘world’s workshop’, it has also experienced rapid industrialisation, the transformation of work and employment, and the reformation of the Chinese working class. Based on a review of the engagement of labour process theory (LPT) in China labour studies, this article suggests that the LTP has provided important insights and a theoretical framework for scholars to understand the empirical reality of the changing nature of work and employment in China in the reform era. The LPT’s capacity to connect the workplace to a broader political economy has allowed it to continue to expand its scope of analysis and engage with new developments and emerging issues in the Chinese workplace, such as the rise of digital platform labour, informal and precarious work, and workplace regimes in global value chains. Meanwhile, China labour scholars have made important contributions to the LPT by adapting it to the Chinese context and theorising the Chinese experience. Through a workplace-based approach, China labour scholars have theorised the role of the Chinese central and local states in shaping various factory regimes, expanded on Chinese workers’ diverse subjectivities in research on labour process, and developed new concepts such as the ‘dormitory labour regime’ that connects productive and social reproductive spheres.
As the demand for online freelance labour is on the rise, it is critical to have a thorough understanding of the implications for freelancers. This article contributes to this understanding by synthesizing the empirical, academic literature centering the narratives of freelancers working through online freelance platforms. In doing so, it aims to answer the question of what is known about how these freelancers experience and navigate their work. The analysis identifies four prevailing themes, that is: (1) employment opportunities and motivating factors; (2) challenges; (3) freelancer agency; and (4) livelihood outcomes, and uncovers that online freelance labour results in an uneven distribution of livelihood outcomes. It also shows that detailed knowledge on this distribution is lacking. To fill this gap, this article proposes an agenda for future research based on Heeks’ (2022) model of adverse digital incorporation and revolving around four dimensions: design inequality, resource inequality, institutional inequality, and relational inequality.
Entangled political economy views societal phenomena as featuring substantial interaction between economic and political entities, but questions have been raised about the conceptual properties of entanglement. The political economist Randall Holcombe has raised questions concerning the economic influences affecting uneven patterns of entanglement between entities. Drawing upon his own transaction costs-based framework of political stratification, Holcombe suggests that political elites incur relatively low transaction costs associated with bargaining over policies, whereas non-elites incur relatively high costs. This suggests that elites actively participate in policy design and implementation and can outmaneuver the non-elite public to externalize the costs of political decisions, yielding noticeable clustering effects within entangled network structures. This article seeks to build upon Holcombe’s insights, as well as the transaction cost politics of Charlotte Twight, illustrating how groups engaging in political processes attempt to manipulate transaction costs to secure favorable outcomes. Transaction cost manipulation by elites to secure advantages is commonly studied, but less so is how non-elitists succeed in adjusting the transaction costs of political exchanges to help prevent fiscal exploitation by elitists. The public finance case of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is used to illustrate how dynamic entanglements between elites and non-elites delivered institutional change better aligning with non-elite fiscal preferences.
Labour platforms such as UBER, PeoplePerHour and Rappi have become a global phenomenon. Their business model is affecting global labour markets and disrupting service industries such as ride hailing, cognitive work and food delivery. Labour platforms not only rely on a flexible labour supply but are also at the forefront of utilising new technologies such as algorithms to control labour. For this reason, scholarly analyses of labour platforms are increasingly employing an integrated approach that accounts for the different layers of control intersecting at the point of production. Following such an approach, an ethnographic case study in platform food delivery was conducted, aided by semi-structured interviews and digital artifacts. This case study shows that algorithmic control is able to reduce effort indeterminacy but is less equipped to cope with indeterminacy of mobility induced by flexible labour supply. As such, algorithmic control was integrated with two additional control mechanisms: first, core workers were put into a position of controlling peripheral workers; and second, attempts were made to craft a community that offered strategic managerial avenues. Altogether, given the interplay between effort and mobility power, the study contributes to an understanding of technological control internal to social and institutional relations.
In the years following Qatar’s successful 2010 bid to host the FIFA World Cup 2022, there has been a significant shift in its engagement with the migrant labour rights discourse, and subsequent embarkment on significant reforms as the result of intense international scrutiny and advocacy action. The core feature of Qatar’s historically evolved transnational labour management system, Kafala, has become a key focal point of international advocacy efforts. The objective of this article is to assess the extent to which the reforms constitute a break in Qatar’s historical (that is, pre-FIFA 2022) labour management system, and thus a meaningful disruption to the social reproduction regime that allowed the Kafala system to persist. We do so by probing the institutionalisation of those reforms, with a particular focus on the agency of labour through collective worker empowerment. Drawing on interviews with key transnational actors involved in the reform process in situ, we employ the ‘established-outsider’ relations concept in our analysis of the reforms, while highlighting the remaining challenges. Our ultimate argument is that although the reforms in Qatar seek to provide more labour rights and protections, they fall short of loosening the absolute control of sponsors (kafeels) over their employees. This is due to two main reasons: the absence of strong and effective institutions to convert the legal reforms into rights in practice; and the fact that laws outside of the labour ministry, that fall under the jurisdiction of the interior ministry, are the foundation of the relationship between citizens and migrants and remain largely untouched. These double-edged limitations guarantee the social reproduction of the highly unequal labour mobility system by firmly keeping in place ‘established-outsider’ relations.
Labour regime analysis is enjoying a resurgence as a way of (re-)centring workers at the heart of questions concerning the organisation of production and social reproduction in the global economy (Baglioni et al, 2022). Migrant labour, and specifically the regulation of migrant labour, is part and parcel of these dynamics yet is often left to the sidelines of labour process studies. Bringing together six papers presented at the 2023 International Labour Process Conference at Strathclyde University, this themed issue of Work in the Global Economy considers how our understandings of international labour migration and its regulation can be extended through a transnational labour mobility regime approach. The rationale is to bring together labour process approaches and theoretical insights from migration studies. These six contributions examine how transnational labour mobility within and from the majority world intersects with a variety of specific local labour control regimes (Jonas, 1996), collectively foregrounding how the bordering of capital-labour relations (within/ beyond the worksite/ state) informs workers’ individual and collective struggles for life and livelihoods.
