Factories can’t run, farms can’t produce, mines can’t be mined, supermarkets can’t be stocked, and call centres can’t accept calls if workers don’t go to work. Even though the decks are often stacked against workers, the basic fact that workers can withdraw their labour with strikes, and encourage others to do so with picket lines,… Read More: Digital work marketplaces impose a new balance of power »
For decades, large firms have been outsourcing and offshoring jobs. Work flowed from developed economies to developing ones, where wages were lower and regulations were of a lighter touch. Europeans and North Americans lost jobs, and Asians, South Americans, and Africans gained them. But the nature of these processes meant that business activities had to… Read More: Organising in the “digital wild west”: Can strategic bottlenecks help… »
The Digital Transformations of Work Conference that Alex Wood and I organised brought together a room full of brilliant and passionate speakers and 80 guests to have a wide-ranging and critical conversation about what digital transformations mean for the future of work (and workers). Sadly, the room could only accommodate 80 and we had a huge… Read More: ‘Digital Transformations of Work’ 🎬 Conference Webcasts 🎬 »
As part of the Green Templeton College Future of Work Programme we are bringing together leading researchers to consider the ways in which digitalisation and the internet are globally transforming work, employment and labour markets. This one-day conference features: Professor Saskia Sassen (Columbia University) and Professor Linda McDowell (University of Oxford) on digital work and exploitation;… Read More: Digital Transformations of Work [Conference, March 10 2016] »
I recently had the opportunity to give a plenary talk at the Global Conference on Economic Geography. The talk was part of a broader session on digital economies that Matthew Zook and I put together with Rebecca Enonchong, Robin Teigland, and Jack Qiu. My talk (that you can watch below) covered our research on information geographies, as… Read More: Digital Economies: Video of Keynote at the Global Conference on… »
With the rise of online work platforms like Odesk, Elance, and Freelancer, a lot of work can, in theory, be done from anywhere on the planet. This has led to a lot of hopes that digital work can be used as a tool of development: bringing jobs (and income) to parts of the world where… Read More: Mapping the geographies of digital work »