Financialization and the workplace: extending and applying the disconnected capitalism thesis

You have found out something: The hand that knows his business won't be toldTo work better or faster -those two things. Robert Frost, Collected PoemsNow you see it, now you don'tThere is little that more graphically indicates the normative character of much social science than its handling of misbehaviour. There is a great deal of evidence, particularly gathered from ethnographic research, indicating that misbehaviour at work is prevalent at all levels and amongst all types of employment (Fleming and Spicer, 2007). Research has revealed tendencies to misbehave -and especially for employees to innovate non-sanctioned ways of responding to work and of evading attempts to control what they do. Yet, at the same time, there are also tendencies amongst social scientists and others to overlook such behaviour or to minimize its importance.

show abstract

“…Drawing on our existing work (Thompson, 2013;Ackroyd and Murphy, 2013) we can identify a number of overlapping contextual changes.…”

Section: Rediscovering Misbehaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unruly Subjects: Misbehaviour in the Workplace

Ackroyd¹,

Thompson²

2015

The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment

Self Cite

190

347

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This managerial, rather than operational, innovation is an attempt to exploit institutional conditions in a low-skill context, but also to the more general tendency towards "financialization" (e.g. Thompson, 2013;Leyshon and Thrift, 2007;Dawley et al, 2008;Peetz and Murray, 2013). Here, sources of profit are increasingly secured through utilization and exploitation of financial instruments rather than production and product markets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Thompson, 2013: 475). At enterprise level, the quest for enhanced shareholder value and short-term profit maximization means that labour costs are squeezed and workforces experience greater insecurity and intensified working conditions, whilst employers increasingly retreat from investment in human capital (Thompson, 2013)-a situation which Brazilian trade unions, hampered in part by fragmented forms of organization, lack of workplace representation and low rates of membership, have struggled to challenge by themselves. In other contexts, unions have had to enter coalitions with locally dominant non-employment actors, such as the Catholic Church (Ramalho, 2012), or work through political channels (Anner and Veiga, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Varieties of Capitalism? The Greening of Steel Work in Brazil and Germany

Doering

Stroud

Evans

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The aim of this article is to investigate the sustainability agenda and its implications for employment and managerial practices within different institutional contexts. The article uses the comparative capitalisms literature and, in particular, the Varieties of Capitalism framework to examine how multinational corporations (MNCs) can exploit different institutional contexts to achieve competitive advantages. We explore one multinational steel company’s i.e. SteelCo.AG varied responses to the emerging constraints of the sustainability agenda in Germany, as an example of a Coordinated Market Economy, and Brazil, as an example of a Hierarchical Market Economy. In particular, we focus on evidence concerning training, environmental practices and policies in the different company sites.We demonstrate how different institutional contexts favour different corporate strategies from an approach that exploits negative institutional complementarities, such as the “low-skill/low-cost trap,” to one that benefits from strong institutional coherence facilitating skills formation and innovation in response to environ-mental legislation. Our analysis argues for the importance of incorporating the green agenda as a marker of difference into the existing VoC framework. This allows for nuanced readings of unstable institutional complementarities in terms of operational, managerial and social innovation in different institutional contexts – with such analyses essential for understanding workers’ experiences of employment and work. Our contribution to the extant literature on the employment relationship, within the context of VoC analysis, therefore offers empirical material on understandings of employment relations within the HME category, as a new type within the VoC framework, through our discussion of a multinational’s activities in Brazil. This also allows us to focus on the way companies and other actors’ impact upon institutional frameworks and the distribution of power between different actors within particular contexts, thereby addressing recent discussions of the stability and homogeneity of institutional arrangements.Cet article se penche sur le programme de développement durable et son incidence sur les pratiques d’emploi et de gestion dans différents contextes institutionnels. S’appuyant sur la littérature sur le capitalisme comparé, plus particulièrement sur le cadre d’analyse des variétés du capitalisme (VdC), il souhaite découvrir comment des multinationales peuvent exploiter différents contextes institutionnels pour en tirer des avantages concurrentiels. Les auteurs examinent les diverses réponses d’une grande aciérie multinationale, la SteelCo.AG, aux nouvelles contraintes imposées par le programme de développement durable en Allemagne — à titre d’exemple d’une économie de marché coordonnée (EMC) —, ainsi qu’au Brésil — exemple cette fois d’une économie de marché hiérarchique (EMH). Leur analyse s’appuie sur des données probantes relatives aux programmes de formation, aux pratiques environnementales et aux politiques...

show abstract

“…Such work restructuring and reorganisation is far from paradigm break claims, but they represent managerial attempts to harness more aspects of labour power and access tacit knowledge and skills (Thompson 2013). Or, as…”

Section: Effort and Intensitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary work: Its meanings and demands

Findlay

Thompson

2017

Journal of Industrial Relations

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The questions that social scientists ask concerning the meaning of work can be initially separated into what work wants from us and what we want from it. The former relies on identifying recurrent objective trends in how we are managed and rewarded, the kinds of jobs that are being created and the challenges they do or do not offer, and how secure or precarious they are. The latter tends to focus on subjective measures of satisfaction, (dis)engagement, attachment and identity. Both are highly contested in academic research and public discourse.Not so long ago there was considerable optimism about emergent work trends in post-industrial service or knowledge economies, with its symbolic analysts, self-programmable workers, creative class and immaterial labour. At the same time, we hear repeatedly about the growth of zero hour contracts, stagnant or declining real wages, rising levels of work stress and punitive performance regimes. Tech giants such as Amazon are embarrassed by exposures of 'bruising' work cultures at its offices and warehouses. Meanwhile, pessimistic discourses of a 'crisis of work' are predicated not just on gloomy forecast about a new wave of automation, but of a generalised precariousness and proliferation of 'bullshit jobs ' (Srnicek and Williams 2015;Mason 2015).What about the subjective side? As we illustrate in a later section, there seems to be some support for prognoses in reports of falling employee engagement levels and rising cynicism at work.However, survey research still picks up high levels of employee self-reported satisfaction with their work. For all the talk of the end of work society or identity, employees, even in routine jobs, draw satisfaction from aspects of their work such as social interaction with customers and workmates (Kalleberg 2009;Doherty 2009). Female workers' satisfaction levels are higher than men's despite unequal treatment (Bolton and Houlihan 2009), with Hochschild (1997) reporting that some employees, especially women, are choosing longer hours because they 'love their work'. 2How do we explain these apparent paradoxes? Research questions are not random. We have to choose what, who and where to study. One distorting factor is that social theory frames our understanding of work trends, yet such theorising frequently gains prominence through the promotion of novelty or binary opposition between the old or new rather than more grounded, qualified accounts. One aspect of this is the identification of 'exemplary' industries -in the recent period web design or games -that supposedly lead economic and workplace change. There are indeed some very interesting developments, but there is a certain amount of digital delusion in the view that they tell us much about typical trends. Though games is a multi-billion dollar industry, it employs fewer than 10,000 people in development in the UK. Glasgow City Council alone has 20,000 employees. Supermarkets and care services, with their mostly female, low paid workforces, are amongst the largest job growth sectors in many cou...

show abstract

Financialization and the workplace: extending and applying the disconnected capitalism thesis

Cited by 166 publications

References 66 publications

Unruly Subjects: Misbehaviour in the Workplace

Unruly Subjects: Misbehaviour in the Workplace

Sustainable Varieties of Capitalism? The Greening of Steel Work in Brazil and Germany

Contemporary work: Its meanings and demands

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About