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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Sociol.
Sec. Work, Employment and Organizations
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1419021
This article is part of the Research Topic Organizations between Continuity and Disruption – The Organization and Management of Perpetual Change in Times of Digitalization View all 3 articles

Unveiling Organisational Influence: Conceptual and Empirical Reflections on Doing Inequality in Digital Work Organisations

Provisionally accepted
  • Division of Organisational Pedagogy, Department of Education and Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The impact of digitalisation at work on existing inequalities is a growing concern. Social inequality is not solely determined by material circumstances, but also by the new social practices that arise in the workplace. However, the discourse about the digitalisation of work lacks specific organisational references. From an organisational theory perspective, it is important to note that digitality always takes place in an organisation-specific manner. Therefore, digitality and organisation are in a reciprocal relationship, resulting in the development of new organisational practices that impact organisational actors as structural conditions of organisational digitality. How the changes at the organisational level affect the mechanisms of production of social inequality in the course of digitalisation has not yet been taken into account, which means that previous research on inequality in digitalised work only allows an organisation-unspecific view of the subject. In contrast, this article places the organisation at the centre of the debate and presents a methodical approach for researching social inequality in the digitalisation of work from the perspective of organisational theory.

    Keywords: organisational digitality, doing inequality, Work organisations, organisational technography, Digitalisation

    Received: 17 Apr 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Vollmar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Leoni Vollmar, Division of Organisational Pedagogy, Department of Education and Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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