Sociální studia / Social Studies

The Future of Work

2025-11-25T11:29:56+01:00

Meaningful Work Formed by a Class Struggle. The Experience of Meaningful Work among Platform Workers Engaged in Forming a Labour Union

2025-11-25T11:39:47+01:00

Many individuals experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as a situation characterised by working from home, zoom calls, and isolation. Nevertheless, this experience for many was only enabled by a significant upsurge in the delivery sector. The platform economy, as a dominant organisational form of the delivery sector became a lived reality for a significant part of the population. This paper explores Viennese platform workers who are self-employed in an Austrian food delivery service called Mjam. The topic focuses on meaningful work, which is an increasingly significant concept in both popular and expert discourse, to describe one’s relationship to their workplace. The study is based on semi-structured interviews analysed using a phenomenological analysis method. The paper investigates how meaningful work is experienced by workers in a precarious low-income sector and shaped by emerging labour unions against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study concludes that meaningful work is an ethical and political concept enabling or preventing one’s actions. The concept of meaningful work is applicable in the context of emerging labour unions at the workplace of the studied platform. The engagement of some of the workers with the labour union increased their identification with the workplace, effectively leading to a stronger and more refined experience of meaningful work.

Generation Y And Z's Perspectives on Their Future Employment Relations and Organizational Cultures against the Background of the Digital Transformation of Work

2025-11-25T11:46:37+01:00

Digital transformation is fundamentally changing organizational cultures and attitudes towards work, particularly through the blurring of boundaries between work and private life. This study is part of the research project “Work of the future” and contributes to a better understanding of attitudes towards, and acceptance patterns of new work arrangements among Generation Y and Z students. Using an online survey, it analyzes perceptions of digitally-transformed workplaces, working hours, and responsibilities for lifelong learning and further training. The results reveal three interesting insights. First, no significant differences emerge between the generations in terms of the acceptance of digital working models and preferred working hours. Second, Generation Z positions itself more clearly by holding employers more accountable for individualized further training schemes and career opportunities. Finally, statistically significant gender-specific differences are confirmed regarding preferred working hours and attitudes towards digitally-transformed employment relations, with lower acceptance levels among females.

Digitized Work. New Skills in the Age of Datafication

2025-11-25T11:57:08+01:00

“Data cultures in human resources management in SMBs in North-Rhine Westphalia” is the title of the author's current project, which is researching the opportunities and challenges of digital transformation in small and medium-sized companies. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with human resources managers. In light of findings from work and organizational sociology, the following basic thesis of this article emerges: Human resources management and employees in SMBs alike will produce completely new data cultures during digital transformation, which they will have to “manage”. Future skills of (digitalized) workers include data literacy, which includes dealing with data (including personalized data) as well as a new perspective on errors, the ability to recognize algorithmic (pre-) decisions, the willingness to take on one's own leadership responsibility. and the critical and reflexive handling of data in general – not just one's own.

“If Your Career Was a Week, Unemployment Would Be the Weekend”: Structural Influences on the Meanings of Work and Unemployment

2025-11-25T12:03:02+01:00

Social structure helps shape the perceived rewards from work and the challenges that come from losing a job. This study uses in-depth interviews with 36 employed and unemployed non-manual workers living in and around Prague to ascertain the subjective meanings of work and unemployment, and the factors that participants believe helped shape those meanings. Participants identified the meanings of work as: making money; using skills; connecting with colleagues; and serving the community. In striking contrast to previous literature on United States (US) non-manual workers, participants generally did not strongly connect work to their identities and thus did not suffer from identity threats during unemployment. Finally, participants often contrasted the Czech economic system and policies with those of the US to explain their own beliefs about differences in the meanings of work in the two countries, especially those meanings involving identity. The results can be used to craft policies that are best suited to achieve desired community outcomes – most notably a mentally healthy workforce with a good work-life balance – during workforce and economic transitions.