Documents Gnisa, Felix 4 results

"Introducing this special issue, this article gives an overview of recent debates around tech workers in the global economy, with a focus on their subjectivities and labour conflicts. The role of IT professionals has gained new importance through the rise of big tech firms and the diffusion of tech business models across the economy. The more influential role of these new professions has not only created new investment and employment, but also conflict. Economic turbulence, political struggles and industrial disputes have transformed the once-hailed profession into a more contested field of employment. After a general introduction, the article gives an overview of the contributions to this special issue."

"Since 2017, new conflicts for tech workers in the digital economy have been emerging. These mobilisations have included speaking out against the unfavourable social outcomes of the digital technologies they develop. Against this backdrop, this article asks how the role of technical experts as producers of technology in social conflicts can be understood. In order to examine this question, historical and contemporary research on the political interests of engineers and tech workers is reviewed. Utilising class theories of the new middle classes, three research strands are distinguished: proletarianisation studies, technology studies and profession studies. Whereas the first is mostly applied to the analysis of contemporary conflicts in tech, the latter two carry the potential to understand the role of tech workers as producers in social conflicts. The article discusses how these concepts can be updated to investigate conflicts around technology in digital capitalism."

"Contested digitalization in the hospital: Work change, power actions and conflict constellations in the design of new technologies of medical practitioner labor processes

The technological bundle known as E-Health aims at a comprehensive transformation of business models and labor processes within hospitals. The discussed implications for qualifications and the work of doctors vary between optimistic diagnoses of new treatment possibilities and pessemistic forceasts involving deprofessionalization. In contrast, this article emphasizes the negotiability of how technology is used in the hospital. Drawing on qualitative interviews with technical decision makers and doctors at a university hospital as well as applying power approaches of a sociology of professions and the Laboor Process Theory, the article attempts to understand the (conflictive) negotiation of current digital technologies as well as different strategies of legitimation and gaining influence of these professional actors. We do this by reconstructing the use of the doctor's digital letter. It can thus be shown that the introduction of the doctor's digital letter as a key technology in EHealth srategies is intended to undermine doctors' monopoly regarding the healthcare process. Equally, though, we demonstrate that it cannot override the professional interest of them."

"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."