A smart place to work? Big data systems, labour, control and modern retail stores

Abstract

The modern retail store is a complex coded assemblage and data‐intensive environment, its operations and management mediated by a number of interlinked big data systems. This paper draws on an ethnography of a retail store in Ireland to examine how these systems modulate the functioning of the store and working practices of employees. It was found that retail work involves a continual movement between a governance regime of control reliant on big data systems which seek to regulate and harnesses formal labour and automation into enterprise planning, and a disciplinary regime that deals with the symbolic, interactive labour that workers perform and act as a reserve mode of governmentality if control fails. This continual movement is caused by new systems of control being open to vertical and horizontal fissures. While retail functions as a coded assemblage of control, systems are too brittle to sustain the governmentality desired.

New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of COVID‐19: reflecting on legacies of research

“…Supermarket workers have seen their jobs become 'stripped down, highly rationalized, tightly controlled… [and] extreme' (Bozkurt, 2015: 478). These workers are often on insecure contracts, dealing with flexible scheduling (Wood, 2020b) and subject to the introduction of new technology (see Evans and Kitchin, 2018), which can lead to 'a greater likelihood that employees report mild or acute anxiety over unexpected changes to their work schedules' (Felstead et al, 2020: 54). Winton and Howcroft (2020) note how many employers 'are accelerating plans to automate roles… [and] future uncertainty is of concern for women as they are likely to be disproportionately impacted by processes of automation given their concentration in particularly vulnerable roles, such as sales and cashier roles'.…”

Home as riskscape: Exploring technology enabled care

“…As Maalslen and Sadowski (2019, p. 119) suggest: Smart systems, many have argued, have shifted society from one of discipline to one of control (Gabrys, 2014;Sadowski & Pasquale, 2015). Yet, at the same time, it is important to recognise that these different power relations are not exclusive but rather overlapping, coproduced, and context dependent (Iveson & Maalsen, 2019;Evans & Kitchin, 2018).…”

The Smart Home on FIRE: Amplifying and Accelerating Domestic Surveillance

“…Smart systems, many have argued, have shifted society from one of discipline to one of control (Gabrys 2014;Sadowski and Pasquale 2015). Yet, at the same time, it is important to recognize that these different power relations are not exclusive but rather overlapping, coproduced, and context dependent-the individual can be reassembled from its dividualized form (Iveson and Maalsen 2018;Evans and Kitchin 2018). The simultaneous transition to control and the intensification of discipline has significant implications for the use of data-driven, networked, automated domestic environments to mold and modulate our behavior, turning us into good occupants of smart homes.…”