Both shaping and shaped by technological, economic and social facets, the world of work has witnessed a wide array of changes. This review article sets out to provide a synthesis of some of the main directions and insights of existing research connected to the new world of work. In particular, we approached the topic of new work practices through four key dimensions: (1) Conceptual and methodological dimensions in the study of new work practices; (2) Spatial and temporal manifestations of new work practices in the collaborative economy; (3) Individuals, organizations and new work configurations; (4) Power and control. The review article critically discusses the future of work and argues that the ‘new’ world of work simply repeats asymmetrical power relations and inequalities that characterise work activities, with the potential of exacerbating even further disparities, inequalities and precarity.

University governance is becoming increasingly autocratic as marketization intensifies. Far from the classical ideal of a professional collegium run according to academic norms, today’s universities feature corporate cultures and senior leadership teams disconnected from both staff and students, and intolerant of dissenting views. This is not a completely new phenomenon. In 1960s America, senior leaders developed a technocratic and managerialist model of the university, in keeping with theories around the ‘convergence’ of socio-economic systems towards a pluralist ‘industrial society’. This administrative-managerial vision was opposed by radical students, triggering punitive responses that reflected how universities’ control measures were at the time mostly aimed at students. Today, their primary target is academics. Informed by Critical Theory and based on an autoethnographic account of a university restructuring programme, we argue that the direction of convergence in universities has not been towards liberal, pluralist, democracy but towards neo-Stalinist organizing principles. Performance measurements – ‘targets and terror’ – are powerful mechanisms for the expansion of managerial power or, in Marcuse’s words, ‘total administration’. Total administration in the contemporary university damages teaching, learning, workplace democracy and freedom of speech on campus, suggesting that the critique of university autocracy by 1960s students and scholars remains highly relevant.

Organizational life consists of an ever-changing world of encounters, experiences and complex sociomaterial relations. Within this context, standard routines can be seen as a solution to problems of inefficiency within organizations, especially when associated with images of stability, repeatability and standardization. This can bring a sense of order where there is disorder; and stability in the face of change. However, while standard routines may be seen as providing solutions within complex and everchanging organizational worlds, they can also be viewed as sources of organizational problems. Through an ethnographic examination of two routines within a newspaper-printing factory, our paper seeks to build on and add to contributions within Routine Dynamics (RD) by highlighting the emergence and coexistence of change and stability and the enactment of standard routines through a performative process of difference and repetition. In particular, our paper examines how organizational stability and change emerge through the dynamic relations underlying the enactment of difference and repetition and how these relations involve various-sometimes hidden-micro processes that include the simplification and amplification of facts, scripts, and concerns. By drawing together the findings from our ethnographic research, studies within the area of RD and concepts relating to the work of Deleuze and Latour, our paper therefore contributes to the work on the repetition of routines by further unpacking the generative socio-material dynamics, creative forces and micro-processes that underlie the emergence of stability and change through difference and repetition.

An ever-increasing range of work activities occur in open spaces that require collective discipline, with silence emerging as a key feature of such workplace configurations. Drawing from an ethnographic examination of a makerspace in Paris, we explore the ways in which silence is incorporated into new work practices in the context of their actualization, embodiment and apprenticeship. Through its engagement with the conceptual work of Merleau-Ponty, this paper does not posit silence as the opposite of sounds or as a passive achievement. Silence is inscribed in a learning process and requires numerous efforts to be maintained (e.g. body postures to avoid staring into the eyes of someone entering into an open space, wearing headphones, etc.). It is also the envelope of numerous noisy acts that take place in the phenomenological body and in the embodied practices of workers. We argue that 'silencing' is an event ordering and giving directions to what 'happens' in collective work activities and central to the process of embodied learning in collaborative spaces.

Digital nomadism, a mobile lifestyle that encompasses a wide array of professional endeavours, ranging from corporate remote workers to digital entrepreneurs, has benefitted from a steadily growing appeal. Despite this, there is a dearth of research exploring the premises and development of digital nomadism. This paper is concerned with the image of digital nomadism, its underlying structure and practices, and its relation to the current world of work. In order to explore these aspects and problematise digital nomadism, the paper traces the development of digital nomadism and takes inspiration from the Deleuzo‐Guattarian image of the nomad. Adopting a qualitative approach to content analysis, this paper argues that digital nomadism is becoming increasingly institutionalised and professionalised, and, as such, is distant from the emancipatory dimension underlying its discourse and many of its cultural representations. Overall, digital nomadism appears as an extension of capitalist logics, rather than an alternative to them.