In Work’s Intimacy Melissa Gregg argues the condition experienced by workers today “is to be invested in work as and when required but without the reciprocal assurance from employers that commitment will be rewarded. Such a scenario risks losing the goodwill of employees permanently” (2011: 165). In other words, there is a shifting of standards and expectations by employees and employers – that employees will engage in what McRobbie (2016) describes as “passionate work” – but without any guarantees that this will be rewarded with security or better conditions. This shifting of standards and expectations by employees and employers, in norms of reciprocity, has been referred to as shifts in the nature of the “psychological contract” of work (Rousseau and Schalk 2000).
For this essay you are to discuss the changing expectations and subjective involvement of employees in their work. Examining the case that your group presented, please write a 3,000 word essay. You should include empirical examples or cases, at least one, in your discussion and analysis.
– Focus more on the connection between your case / area and the
framing questions around the psychological investment in work, the
psychological contract of work, how people’s relationship and
expectations around work have changed (or not changed). The idea for the
presentation is that you are to use the materials from your case / area
in order answer those questions.
– Draw more from module materials, in particular the module’s
required readings (which are all listed on the module outline). The
required readings are materials you should have already read and which
it should be possible to make connections with your area/topic (though
which materials to use and how they connect to your area vary between
groups)
Your second assessment of the individual essay follows on from the
presentation and covers much of the same ground but in a different
assessment format.
**My group presentation has chosen to focus on Free labour / Unpaid digital labour, I have attached notes from group presentation.**
**Reading List that my group has used: (please use all of them)**
Thompson, D. (2012) “Why the Social Media Revolution Is About to Get a Little Less Awesome” The Atlantic.
Gregg, Melissa (2011) Work’s Intimacy. London: Polity. Chapters 4-6.
Terranova, T. (2000) “Free Labor: Producing culture for the digital economy,” Social Text, 18(2): 33-58.
Peters, M. & E. Bulut, Eds. (2011) Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor. New York: Peter Lang. Chapter 7.
Galloway, Alexander and Eugene Thacker (2007) The Exploit A Theory of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Terranova, T. (2004) Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto.
Wark, McKenzie (2004) A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Ross, A. (2000) “The Mental Labor Problem,” Social Text, 18(2): 1-31.
Arvidsson, A. (2007) “Creative Class or Administrative Class? On Advertising and the “Underground”.’ ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 7(1): 8-23
Coté, M. and Pybus, J. (2007) “Learning to Immaterial Labor 2.0: MySpace and Social Networks,” ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 7(1): 88-106.
Beverungen, A., Böhm, S., & Land, C. (2015). Free labour, social media, management: Challenging Marxist organization studies. Organization Studies, 36(4), 473-489.
