As an editorial team, we usually aim to develop thematic issues of Futures of Work within the overarching meta-theme of work. Organising themes can be satisfying for several reasons. They reveal similarities, connections or shared underlying ideas across different texts or artefacts. Themes can be identified in films, books, music, parties and any number of other things, including, of course, academic work. We have had a pretty good run of achieving coherent themes, but sometimes things don’t exactly go according to plan. The person who showed interest in guest editing no longer has capacity; lists of ideas and contacts not already drawn upon shrink; marking deadlines approach; article revision or review deadlines press down; and programme reviews or departmental restructuring place unusual strain on all of the above. The result for our April issue? A bricolage of articles brought together with less coherence than we might usually like.
Of course, we could argue that trying to aim for a themed issue each time is unnecessary and only results in placing self-imposed restrictions upon ourselves. We are, as a result, hoisted with our own petard. After all, special issues in academic journals are the exception rather than the norm. Sometimes one might wonder if you have ended up in the wrong room at an academic conference, only to check the schedule and realise that, yes, this talk really has been put in this session. Perhaps you scratch your head, but accept it and enjoy the presentation anyway. Maybe themes don’t really matter.
While we don’t have a cohering theme for the issue, we do have some subthemes. Two articles address the importance of unions for protecting workers in large technology companies. In the first, Andreas Kornelakis argues that Big Tech companies have exported their anti-union model across Europe, with profits maximised at the expense of working conditions. Andreas contends that the response must transcend the national level, because it is only a united Europe that can push back against the power of Big Tech. Stuart Richards and Tom Vickers also address Big Tech, but this time by exploring how workers at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse attempted to achieve union recognition but ultimately failed due to Amazon’s aggressive anti-union tactics. However, the fight did lead to some legislative changes that will benefit workers more generally, highlighting how individual battles can influence legal changes that have the potential for wider impact.
Financialisation is our second subtheme. Specifically, two articles tackle the assetisation of workers. Pau López-Gaitán argues that football players’ bodies have been turned into assets, facilitated by the work of health professionals. Various forms of data are used to measure health and performance, which translate bodily conditions into financial worth. Similarly, Paul Richard investigates how LinkedIn is used to turn workers into assets for their employers. We all recognise the ‘performative professionalism’ of humble bragging and the sycophantic posts about how incredible one’s employer is, turning employees into unpaid brand ambassadors. Both authors ask the question of who is benefiting from this form of assetisation.
Finally, Xiaoting Luo and Christopher Pesterfield’s article analyses how international postgraduate students at a business school are using artificial intelligence (AI). They argue that students see AI as both friend and foe, because it is both a personal tutor available 24/7, but is also not trusted by students to produce accurate and reliable outputs. Despite this, students continue to use AI because they feel it is required for the workplace, even if this might undermine their ability to develop important knowledge and skills that employers look for.
In sum, our bricolage is comprised of articles on unions and Big Tech, assetisation and AI. In some ways, this bricolage is indicative of the breadth of concerns that are currently at play for the future of work. And while we might have suggested above that themes do not really matter, we already have plans for them in forthcoming issues. In other words, we reserve the right to argue for or against the importance of themes, depending on our workloads and luck with putting them together.
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