Project Details
Projekt
Politics of Inscription in the digital transformation: The Labour Process in the intersection of firm strategies and technology design
Applicants
Professor Dr. Nick Kratzer; Privatdozent Dr. Christopher Neumaier; Professorin Dr. Sarah Nies
Subject Area
Empirical Social Research
Modern and Contemporary History
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442236620
Following the first project phase, the aim of the project is to deepen and expand the analysis of digital transformation by linking developments in working and performance conditions – in our vocabulary of "politics of performance" – back to the analysis of technology-centred strategies of firms. Specifically, we ask about the mutual influence and conditionality of firm strategies of digitalisation and the state of technical possibilities as enabling and constraining factors. Using the chemical industry as an example, we examine this relationship in an interdisciplinary approach from two angles: Historically, we ask about the relationship between general rationalization strategies and technological developments in the chemical industry; sociologically, we ask about company strategies for shaping or “inscribing” technology. On a conceptual level, following empirical results from the first funding phase, we thus extend our heuristics of company digitization strategies to include strategies that do not directly aim at the application of technologies conceived as 'ready-made', externally given or completed, but at influencing technology development and design according to company problems and strategies. Analogous to work and performance conditions, we understand inscription and technology development as a contested field that is shaped not only by firm strategies, but also by all actors involved and their (often contradictory) interests. The contested field of the "politics of performance" is thus complemented by the "politics of inscription", in which companies, supplying companies and labor policy actors struggle over the concrete design of technologies. The results of this process also influence the work and performance conditions, because as certain (im-)possibilities of technology appropriation are inscribed in them in the process of development. However, we do not consider technology to be complete even after its implementation in the workplace but look at the ways in which it is appropriated, repurposed, and interpreted by employees. The vanishing point of our analysis remains the politics of performance, whose analysis we supplement, however, with the essential factor of technology inscription, to be able to analyse those conflicts and negotiations that precede and follow the application of concrete technologies in the workplace.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
