Documents Nierling, Linda 3 results

"Drawing on both the quantitative and qualitative research findings of the WORKS project, this report analyses the impact of global restructuring processes on the organisation of working time and also examines its contribution to the creation of work-life balance. With a special focus on gender relations, it illustrates how men and women are dealing with changing temporal demands in different sectors and occupations.

In relation to working time, the results highlight a tendency towards destandardisation and increasing differentiation of temporal models: with an increase in atypical hours, flexi-time, and shortened as well as lengthened working hours.

Besides this differentiation, the most important impact of restructuring seems to be a growing intensification of work - not necessarily as a prolongation of working time but as a speeding up of pace and workloads.

In terms of work-life balance, intensified work profiles increase demands on the combination of work and family, a field which remains strongly gendered. Here, occupational contexts are crucial for assessing change processes. A high autonomy in working time offers some women in high-skilled occupations the option of developing emancipated strategies. Women working in lower skilled occupations follow traditional gender rules and depend much more on temporal frameworks laid down by the employers.

In both fields, country differences underline the importance of institutional support in times of globalisation."

"Global restructuring processes mean that temporal models of working time are becoming increasingly differentiated across Europe, as elsewhere. In order to balance work and life, employees have to accommodate these changes, not necessarily by prolonging their working time, but through an accelerated pace of work and increased workloads. Intensified working time patterns increase the challenges of combining work and family. This paper argues that changing demands on working time have enormous impacts on establishing work-life balance and that – to a great extent – the consequences are shouldered by women. In assessing these changing demands on working time, it is crucial to consider the occupational context: a high level of autonomy in determining their working time as well as great dedication to their work provides women in highlyskilled occupations with the option of developing strategies for emancipation. Women working in semi-skilled and low-skilled occupations are more likely to adhere to traditional gender roles and suffer much more from externally-imposed temporal frameworks and organisational changes. These results underline the need to reflect on contextual categories such as occupational affiliation, skilllevel, gender, and institutional settings in evaluating the individual impacts of the changing demands of working time and work-life balance across Europe."

"Der Beitrag beleuchtet Ansätze für die aktive Gestaltung technologischer Innovation im Sinne von Beschäftigten. Dazu werden zwei Szenarien demokratischer Technikgestaltung im Betrieb rekonstruiert. Anhand des historischen Falles von Lucas Aerospace und des aktuellen Arbeitskonflikts von GKN Florenz wird gezeigt, wie im Rahmen belegschaftsgetriebener Konversionspläne eine konfliktive Aneignung von Innovationskompetenzen durch Belegschaften erfolgen kann, die auf die Demokratisierung betrieblicher Entscheidungsfindung abzielt. Anhand der baskischen Industriegenossenschaft Mondragón MCC und der Plattformgenossenschaft CoopCycle wird das Potenzial demokratischer Unternehmensführung für eine progressive Arbeitspolitik und Technikgestaltung im Betrieb erläutert. Beide Szenarien geben Hinweise darauf, wie der digitale Wandel eigenständig durch Beschäftigte und Mitbestimmungsakteure gestaltet werden kann. Der Beitrag endet mit dem Plädoyer für eine doppelte Transformation betrieblicher Innovation, die sowohl zur gelingenden Gestaltung der Digitalisierung als auch zur Demokratisierung betrieblicher Governance dienen kann."