White-collar workers
A newly published study focuses on intellectual work in factories and workshops.
Work in factories and offices is changing, evolving, altering in both appearance and substance, finding new forms of expression. It bears witness to development in the times and culture of production. This applies to both manual and intellectual work: blue-collar and white-collar workers are united by a shared outlook, that of the company. The research of Emma Garavaglia, Serafino Negrelli and Valentina Pacetti, recently published in Sociologia del lavoro, focuses on precisely these changes in white-collar work.
“The transformations of white-collar work in advanced manufacturing: an empirical study” has a clear objective: to describe how the white-collar work in manufacturing companies has changed over time and how it may change, taking into account its new forms, starting from remote work.
The authors start from the observation that despite the growing relevance of service activities within manufacturing companies, studies on “white-collar” workers employed in contemporary factories are limited. The study therefore focused on this category of workers, observed in their main areas of activity: financial and commercial employees, production technicians and research and development technicians. Based on a selected number of Italian factories, the research therefore describes the current of white-collar work in factories in terms of autonomy, intensity and complexity, but also with regard to the relationship between employees, work, companies and trade unions, all leading up to relationships between employees working remotely.
This may be the exact reason why Garavaglia, Negrelli and Pacetti’s research retains a validity that extends beyond quantitative aspects to touch on relational and human characteristics that retain meaning even in the age of intense digitalisation.
Le trasformazioni del lavoro impiegatizio nel manifatturiero avanzato. Una ricerca empirica (The transformations of white-collar work in advanced manufacturing: an empirical study )
Emma Garavaglia, Serafino Negrelli, Valentina Pacetti
Sociologia del lavoro, 2024/168
A newly published study focuses on intellectual work in factories and workshops.
Work in factories and offices is changing, evolving, altering in both appearance and substance, finding new forms of expression. It bears witness to development in the times and culture of production. This applies to both manual and intellectual work: blue-collar and white-collar workers are united by a shared outlook, that of the company. The research of Emma Garavaglia, Serafino Negrelli and Valentina Pacetti, recently published in Sociologia del lavoro, focuses on precisely these changes in white-collar work.
“The transformations of white-collar work in advanced manufacturing: an empirical study” has a clear objective: to describe how the white-collar work in manufacturing companies has changed over time and how it may change, taking into account its new forms, starting from remote work.
The authors start from the observation that despite the growing relevance of service activities within manufacturing companies, studies on “white-collar” workers employed in contemporary factories are limited. The study therefore focused on this category of workers, observed in their main areas of activity: financial and commercial employees, production technicians and research and development technicians. Based on a selected number of Italian factories, the research therefore describes the current of white-collar work in factories in terms of autonomy, intensity and complexity, but also with regard to the relationship between employees, work, companies and trade unions, all leading up to relationships between employees working remotely.
This may be the exact reason why Garavaglia, Negrelli and Pacetti’s research retains a validity that extends beyond quantitative aspects to touch on relational and human characteristics that retain meaning even in the age of intense digitalisation.
Le trasformazioni del lavoro impiegatizio nel manifatturiero avanzato. Una ricerca empirica (The transformations of white-collar work in advanced manufacturing: an empirical study )
Emma Garavaglia, Serafino Negrelli, Valentina Pacetti
Sociologia del lavoro, 2024/168