Tag Archives: Knowledge Workers

Interesting Call for papers

A special issue of SSM – Qualitative Research in Health – titled The Sociology of Health Professions Education is under preparation. Manuscripts are welcome before the deadline of August 15, 2022. Details:

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/ssm-qualitative-research-in-health/call-for-papers/the-sociology-of-health-professions-education

Job opening in Aarhus, Denmark

The Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, invites applications for two positions as assistant professor or postdoctoral researcher offering applicants an exciting opportunity to join the REACTOR research project on citizens’ reactions to knowledge authorities.

REACTOR is relevant for applicants with strong research qualifications in one or more of the adjacent scholarly fields such as the sociology of science, professions and expertise, authority, health policy, political legitimacy, political psychology and/or public opinion.

Read more about these positions, the REACTOR research project and apply here.

Application deadline is Monday. February 1st 2021.

Special issue The Precariousness of knowledge workers (Part 1): hybridisation, self-employment and subjectification

The first special issue themed “The Precariousness of knowledge workers (Part 1): hybridisation, self-employment and subjectification” has been now published by Work, Organization, Labour & Globalisation. This first collection of articles (a second will arrive in Spring) has originated from a very interesting discussion of the  namesake session promoted in Yokohama, during the XVIII ISA World Congress in Yokohama.

Please find the TOC:

Introduction: The precariousness of knowledge workers: hybridisation, self-employment and subjectification (pp. 1-8)
Annalisa Murgia, Lara Maestripieri and Emiliana Armano

Effects of project-based research work on the career paths of young academics (pp. 9-26)
Maria Norkus, Cristina Besio and Nina Baur

Knowledge work intensification and self-management: the autonomy paradox (pp. 27-49)
Oscar Pérez-Zapata, Amparo Serrano Pascual, Gloria Álvarez-Hernández and Cecilia Castaño Collado

Dimensions of precariousness: independent professionals between market risks and entrapment in poor occupational careers (pp. 50-67)
Paolo Borghi, Guido Cavalca and Ivana Fellini

Rejection, adoption or conversion: the three ways of being a young graduate auto-entrepreneur (pp. 68-83)
Elsa Vivant

Invisible, solidary, unbranded and passionate: everyday life as a freelance and precarious worker in four Italian radio stations (pp. 84-100)
Tiziano Bonini and Alessandro Gandini

New forms of employment in a globalised world: three figures of knowledge workers (pp. 101-112)
Marie-Christine Bureau and Antonella Corsani

Inventing new rights: precarity and the recognition of the productive dimension of life (pp. 113-130)
Carolina Salomão and Solange Jobim

Articles are accessibile via JSTOR at the following link

Special Issue on The Precariousness of Knowledge Workers

Special Issue on The Precariousness of Knowledge Workers: hybridisation, marketisation and subjectification in global value chains, volume 10, n. 2, 2016 of the Journal Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation.
 
The notion of ‘knowledge worker’ has become the focus of a rich range of debates in a variety of scientific approaches and disciplines, from sociology to economics, from political science to neomarxism, all offering their own particular conceptual tools and perspectives.Unlike the traditional professions that were consolidated in the last century, 21st knowledge work is undergoing a process of  hybridisation. With a growing variety of different types of work contract, knowledge workers constitute a type of professional work that is increasingly exposed to the logic of the market and are increasingly required to auto-activate their own resources, empathy and individual autonomy (Gorz, 2003; Morini, Fumagalli, 2010). The ambivalences embedded in these forms of production – in which new forms of exploitation and control and new sense constructions coexist at the same time (Rullani, 2004; Bologna, 2011) – show the double face of  contemporary capitalism, which urges subjects to put their own lives into production but also leaves room for passion and creative capacities (Boltansky, Chiappello, 1999; Marazzi, 2010; Karppi et al., 2014). Following this perspective, global capitalism can continue to accumulate but can also overflow, spreading pervasivelyr through different (technological) devices, while simultaneously opening up a multitude of times and spaces (Thrift, 2005) in which subjects struggle to find their position.
 
In knowledge based industries, work is circumscribed by the cognitive frames of creativity the imagery of subjects, but simultaenously demands adaptability, in a context in which deregulation and individualisation are now normal. The ethics of self-activation are therefore inextricably intertwined with the demands of intensification, neostandardisation and self-commodification. In this framework, the organisation of knowledge work is increasingly subordinated to the disciplines imposed by global production chains (Berger, 2008; Huws,2014) leading not only to the intension of work and the transformation of the capabilities required of workers, but also to the creation of new forms of affective labour (Hochschild, 1983; Hardt, 1999; Hesmondhalgh, Baker, 2008) which blur the boundaries of work (Gill, Pratt, 2008; McRobbie, 2011).
The aim of this Special Issue is to develop a critical discussion on knowledge workers’ conditions and subjectivities in the new global division of labour. We welcome paper submissions from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives on the following themes:
 
– representations and experiences of knowledge workers in the global tertiarised societies;
– mechanisms of subjectivation and strategies to seek to avoid and to resist them;
– risks of precariousness and proletarisation that might derive from a professionalisation driven by global and glocal markets;
– knowledge workers’ collective practices, with particular attention to new forms of collaboration, sociality and social features of welfare and their limitations and potentialities.
 
Please visit the journal’s website.
 
This issue will be edited by:
– Annalisa Murgia, University of Trento, Italy
– Emiliana Armano, University of Milan, Italy
– Lara Maestripieri, Fondazione Feltrinelli, Italy
 
Please submit an abstract not exceeding 500 words to the editor by July 28th, 2015. The deadline for full articles is March 15th, 2016.

The profession of Social Media Manager in the radio: A case study of public and commercial radio in Italy and France.

di Giovanipaolo Ferrari

Nonetheless the attempts of private agencies (IWA/HWG 2014) to classify the professions of the Web, the process of professionalization of these biographic professional directions (Dubar 1998, 2010; Demaziere & al. 1999, 2001) is everyday more complex and not easy to standardize in categories.

Social Media Manager (SMM) is one of the most required professional profiles. Companies need professionals as SMM to manage contents and interactions on social media and virtual communities, but they also need someone who generates social media contents adapted to commercial targets of different companies.

In the last ten years mass media corporations (MMC) reorganized their business around digital market and they developed new strategies to be more competitive (Castells 2008). MMC start to offer several web services to users: Technical support, customer service, multimedia contents, etc.

However, the rise of social media changed even more the way of broadcasting in mass-media communication (Lovink 2012; Morozov 2011; Carr 2011; Castells 2008). The worldwide pervasiveness of social media forced MMC to invest economic and human resources to social media team in order to open and manage a dedicated forum, official profiles and pages on different and several platforms. All that brought a change also in professional practices where companies had to adapt their communication one-to-many to one-to-one and many-to-many communication (Castells 2008).

Also national and commercial radio networks changed their working practices and they started to need additional professional profiles in their organization chart (Bonini 2006, 2014; Brochard 2006; Colombo, 2007; Diana et al. 2012; Menduni 2012). For fifteen years radio evolved and some different professional figures appear in the radio context. Indeed, radio need someone that tries to manage all accounts and contents of social media (Bonini 2006; Zanchini 2011; Stockment 2009). For beginning the main problem, was just manage their profiles: Open, manage separate accounts on Facebook, twitter, forum and try to answer sometimes or just manage this account like a blog or like a website. They were interested in social media just to give and take information about customers; but after that they understood that social media is not a one-way communication media (one-to-many), but it is « social ». Social media communication is a continuous interaction with customers, users, auditors, so relationships between radio networks and auditors/users changed completely. They build together communities of practice (Wenger 1998; Wenger et al. 2002). Nevertheless, what happened after this change? It happened that public and private radio started to income some additional professional profiles like the SMM.

This paper shows the professional profile of SMM in national and private radio networks in Italy and France and tries to answer to these questions: What is SMM in a radio network? What kind of educational background SMM needs to have? What are SMM professional practices? What skills this professional figures must have and how this figure interacts with others in the radio context?

We collected several SMM profiles on professional social media (LinkedIn and Viadeo) and job seeker advices. We observed, moreover, interactions between SMM and users of four virtual radio communities: two public (Radio France and Radio RAI) and two commercial (Virgin Radio France and Virgin Radio Italy). The observation shows different ways and different styles to manage social media radio communities. We observed micro-interactions and situated actions (Hughes 1958; 1963; 1971; Suchman 1987; Gherardi 2007; Barley 1996; 2001) to bring out situated professional practices. Researchers need to go on the field to study these professional phenomena and observe practices in all single virtual workplaces. The latter, in our case, is social media communities and the action is situated on the screen, on the interface (Wenger et al. 2002; Gherardi 2007; Demaziere 2011).

Nowadays, also national radio with a celebrated history as Radio France or Radio RAI needs to integrate in their organization chart these figures that are Web professional profiles and they are not part of radio broadcasting tradition. They are also required to open their world with the integration of Web professionals. The SMM is a very important role in a radio network to include social media in broadcasting platforms. In the last ten years, the skills of SMM changed: the « classical » profile of SMM was linked to an idea of professionals close to the marketing and communication sector (Holmes 2013; Claveria 2014). Instead, the market requires other skills from a SMM. Analysis of job seeker advises, for instance, support the idea that radio networks require not just technical skills, but grammar, orthography and educational skills. The point of view is about change, is about being displaced in another field: the field of contents and continuous interactions with users. A SMM in a radio network needs to have extensive skills from his background. In Radio France or Radio RAI, recruiters ask a broad musical culture and pedagogical skills. The SMM has to do more than a technical support or customer service manager. The analysis depicts a different frame between community strategies and practices of public and commercial radio networks. The Facebook profiles, indeed, are completely different between them: the contents published, but also the style of communication, the grammar structure of sentences, the interactions structure (question/answer) and the timing of intervention in the discussion. Therefore, the analysis of interactions shows that is difficult for SMM with a work experience in Virgin Radio France or Italy, to be recruited in Radio France or Radio RAI. The SMM is supposed to talk about products not just with passion or competences, but also with specifically mind-set identity. In this perspective, the SMM cannot exist as a stable and defined professional profile and technical skills are just a small and peripheral component of SMM professional profile.

To conclude, in the age of the Internet maturity there is no place for beginners also if they have appropriate informatics skills. It is finished the Internet of nerds and geeks and it is started the Internet with « everyone ». The latter would be less an impoverishment of the Web, rather than an enrichment of a process of professionalization of web professions (Bureau et al. 2006) with additional competences: Everyday more connected with humanities rather than informatics. It emerged, from the analysis, that cultural and technical skills are not the same: the SMM is not anymore just a « technical technician » (a community expert with some informatics skills) (Barley 1996), but he must be a « humanist » too, namely an expert in contents, with a humanist sensitivity. Currently, the rise of semantic web and simplification of programming languages, thanks to evermore friendly interfaces (Gane et al. 2008), is changing the Web in a « content and interactive universe ». In this context, a SMM must be able to master concepts and ideas, to manage and generate the contents and not just to administrate accounts and solve technical matters. It seems a job more adapt to a philosopher than to a developer of HTML5 or CSS. For these reasons, it is not feasible to put all these various professionals under the same category.

 

References 

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Barley, S. R., & Kunda, G. (2001). Bringing work back in. Organization science,12(1), 76-95.

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Bonini, T. (2013). La radio in Italia: storia, mercati, formati, pubblici, tecnologie. Carocci, Roma.

Bonini, T. (2006). La radio nella rete: storia, estetica, usi sociali, Costa & Nolan.

Brochand, C. (2006). Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France: 1974-2000 (Vol. 3). la Documentation française.

Bruni, A., & Gherardi, S. (2007). Studiare le pratiche lavorative. icon, 39(051), 256011.

Bureau, S., & DeSanctis, G. (2006). A professionalization view: A framework for research on information technology and organizational form evolutions. The Case of Webmasters. In World Wide Web Conference, Intrawebs, Edimbourg, Ecosse.

Castells, M. (2013). Communication power. Oxford University Press.

Castells, M. (2011). The rise of the network society: The information age: Economy, society, and culture (Vol. 1). John Wiley & Sons.

De Biase F., Garbarini A. (2003). High tech high touch. Professioni culturali emergenti tra nuove tecnologie e relazioni sociali. Milano, Franco Angeli.

Demazière, D., & Dubar, C. (1999). L’entretien biographique comme outil de l’analyse sociologique. UTIVAM–Revue de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie, 1(2), 225-239.

Demazière, D., & Dubar, C. (2001). Parcours professionnels, marchés du travail et formes identitaires: une théorisation. Contribution to the 8th” Journées de sociologie du travail.

Demazière, D., Horn, F., & Zune, M. (2011). Ethnographie de terrain et relation d’enquête. Observer les «communautés» de logiciels libres. Sociologie, 2(2), 165-183.

Diana, P., Addeo, F. (2012). Italian University Webradio: a Training Ground for New Professions in Media (La Webradio D’Universités Italiennes: Un Atelier Pour De Nouvelles Figures Professionnelles). Available at SSRN 2012988.

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Gherardi, S. (2009). Organizational knowledge: The texture of workplace learning. John Wiley & Sons.

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Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge university press.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.

New publication about Management Consultant

Consulenti di Management. Il professionalismo organizzativo nel lavoro di conoscenza. Edited by Lara Maestripieri, Torino: L’Harmattan Italia, 2013. Book in Italian.

In the recent years, there has been a transformation in the way the knowledge work is considered, above all when we focus our attention on the boundaries between the profession inside the organizations (i.e. management) and what is outside (i.e. freelance professionals). Usually considered irreconcilable (Freidson, 2001) (1), organizations and professionalism have started to built new forms, new strategies and new cultures in order to communicate with each other. Such progressive hybridization (Noordegraaf, 2011) (2) put in question the traditional assumption by which intellectual work within organisations is proletarized or deprofessionalized, but on the contrary it favours the construction of a professional and organisational culture at the same time, which uses the organisation as a new space of dialogue (Evetts, 2010) (3). Professionalism is not anymore an alternative form of integration into the labour market, but it must be considered as a plural mechanism: performed within the organisations, the organized professionalism claims at the same time the need for autonomy in its own job, it promotes entrepreneurship, it requires managerial and commercial skills (Faulconbridge, Muzio, 2008) (4).

The management consultancy is a privileged field in which observe such tendencies. Even if it is a job that started consolidated in the industrial society, in the last three decades it benefited from a robust growth due to the increasing demands of advanced business services. The consulting services offered by management consultants are paradigmatic forms of the contemporary model of work organising, as long as they are based on projectification, on immateriality, on the globalisation of the biggest corporation of the sector, and on the strategic use of knowledge.

Starting from a critic of the traditional approach to professions, in this book Lara Maestripieri propose an analysis based on management consultancy as professional. In fact, this approach can offer the possibility to investigate the professional identities of management consultants, problematizing the issues of boundaries within and outside organisations. At the same time, because of the privileged relationships that they have with managers and other relevant cadres in the organisation, management consultancy can help scholars in highlighting the strategic use of management principle in professional activities, thus stressing the role of organisational professionalism (Kipping, 2011) (5).

On the theoretical side, these facts have raised the need for a new understanding of the different shapes that the relationship between organisation and professionalism can take in specific working contexts. This book contributes to fulfil these empirical and theoretical gaps by proposing an analysis based on 55 in-depth interviews with management consultants in Italy, analized with the methodology of biographical trajectories and of positioning. Stemming from individual and institutional factors, Lara Maestripieri proposes an investigation of how workers experience being a management consultant and the results will show how management consultants define themselves as workers in constant reference to managers and professionals simultaneously. Different biographical trajectories, however, underline different weight of those references in defining the professional projects of consultants.

This book is the result of a PhD project about Management Consultant in Italy, conducted by Lara Maestripieri. The book is promoted by L’Harmattan Italia and the publication is in Italian.

(1) Freidson E (2001) Professionalism. The third logic. Polity Press & Blackwell Publishers.

(2) Noordegraaf M (2011) “Risky Business: How Professionals and Professional Fields (Must) Deal with Organizational Issues,” Organization Studies 32(10): 1349-1371.

(3) Evetts J (2010) ’Reconnecting professional occupations with professional organizations: risks and opportunities’, in Evetts J & Svensson L (eds) Sociology of professions. Continental and Algo-SaxonTraditions. Göteborg: Daidalos.

(4) Faulconbridge J & Muzio D (2008) ‘Organizational professionalism in globalising law firms’, Work, Employment and Society, 22(1): 7-25.

(5) Kipping M (2011) “Hollow from the start? Image professionalism in management consulting,” Current Sociology 59(4): 530–550.

“Green” professionals

In the next edition of Italian National Environmental Sociologists to be held in Naples, 4th-5th October 2013 there will be a session dedicated to “Environment and Expert Knowledge”. Local organizers Mirella Giannini and Dario Minervini invite theoretical and empirical contributions on professionals and expertise of the environemental sector.

Please find here the call for paper: Naples Call for Paper

Special Issue Call for Papers: When “passion” and precariousness come face to face in knowledge work

Journal: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
Special Issue Call for Papers
Deadline for abstract submissions: 30 April 2013
The texts, of a maximum length of 500 words, may be proposed in French or English.
Guest Editors
Magali Ballatore, Maria Del Rio Carral, Annalisa Murgia (Universitè de Louvain)
 
Subject
In the last few decades, employment stability has been brought into doubt and this fact, associated with a reduction in the forms of social protection, has increased the number of people considered as “vulnerable” or in a “precarious” situation (Castel 1995, Bourdieu 1998, Sennett 1998, Beck 1999). Social policies, however, as well as the research carried out by sociologists, have mostly focused on the least qualified sectors of the population. Yet, in a context in which the level of education is rising, intermittent employments, temporary contracts, the oscillation between periods of employment and unemployment, or between training courses and employment, concern a population so far considered as having been spared from all this: that of graduates. The future of young graduates has long been ignored by public actions, inasmuch as it did not seem problematic in a context where certain courses had restricted access and social origins in these categories and in the so-called highly skilled professions were relatively homogeneous. Although unemployment amongst “intellectuals” is not really a novelty – particularly in certain regions of Europe (Eurofund 2011, Samek, Semenza 2012) – the precarisation in the careers of graduates seems to be a phenomenon that is gaining ground. As a result, what has changed in this scenario is not only the geography of the labour world, but also the different forms of social vulnerability that have been incorporated into it (Castel 1995, Chicchi 2001).
 
As a consequence, precariousness becomes a pertinent notion for describing the careers of many graduates who hope to enter highly competitive sectors of the qualified labour market. Precariousness refers to the increase in uncertainty with regard to a life course, as well as the way in which this uncertainty can be perceived by the subject as a degradation of his or her professional and social conditions (Bresson 2011, Standing 2011). It also appears as certain professional practices and activities, that require a high level of education or qualification and specialisation, become a source of pleasure at work and can result in the subject developing a “passion” for his or her job, without there necessarily being any contradiction between personal growth and personal commodification.
 
Hand in hand with this new configuration of work, various authors have highlighted the particularly significant development of sectors of activity based on “knowledge”, which then become central to processes of valorisation (Gorz 2003, Ross 2009). Within these sectors of cognitive and financial capitalism, in which performance is associated with higher levels of education than those of traditional industrial workers (Drucker 1994), what is put into production is a heterogeneous set of informations, imaginations and social relatedness (Hesmondhalgh, Baker 2011, Armano 2012). The category of “knowledge professions” thus focuses on the capacities of a living subject rather than on material production. Knowledge is always know-how and knowing how to communicate, capabilities and habits that are difficult to transpose into words and which are acquired through experience, from the fact of being plunged into interactions and situated activities.
 
In this type of profession and “greedy” work contexts, which require exclusive commitment and total availability (Coser 1974), qualified workers with high levels of education are often driven to interiorise the constraint of profitability, and to no longer take into consideration the distinction between their interests, the interests of their superior(s) and/or those of the organisations they belong to. The “new spirit” or “new culture” of capitalism (Boltanski, Chiapello 1999, Sennett 2006) seems to put into place an invisible chain maintained by those it alienates. Whilst up till now exploitation has been defined as the extortion of surplus value, in these employment contexts it takes the form of a “tyrannical choice” (Salecl 2012) accompanied by forms of “voluntary servitude” (Durand 2004).
 
Given this complex scenario, there are many questions that have not been much studied in a comparative fashion and at international level. In which way are graduates of the upper echelons of higher education, who are deeply committed to their work, subject to paradoxical injunctions and illusions of control, which conceal all the conditions that determine their choices? What are the motivations behind these choices, beyond the material aspects? Who are the key players who over-invest in their work? What are the forms of self-production, and what are their limitations? Won’t these situations eliminate the dimension of collective commitment to the fight against inequality? Is it possible to find amongst these knowledge workers the beginnings of a dissent to capitalism and a potential to create an economy based on self-organisation and knowledge sharing?
We would like to receive proposals that fall within the bounds of the analysis of the phenomena described above. It is expected that the articles be based on original research and that they analyse empirical results in a critical manner. However, theoretical frameworks may be varied. We will also consider more theoretical articles on the concepts of “precariousness”, “passion at work”, “voluntary servitude” and “knowledge works”. We will also take care of including a wide variety of areas of analysis in terms of the professional domains and geographical sites. Comparative international studies will be preferred.
 
Submission criteria for proposals
 
Proposals should be sent by 30 April 2013 simultaneously to: magali.ballatore@uclouvain.be maria.delrio@uclouvain.be ; annalisa.murgia@uclouvain.be
Each proposal, of a maximum length of 500 words, should contain:
– a self-explanatory title (provisional);
– a presentation of the covered issue;
– a description of the field or fields studied and the methodology used;
– mention of the main results of the research;
– the institutions to which the author or authors belong.
The texts may be proposed in either French or English. The full articles should be of between 50,000 and 55,000 characters, spaces and bibliography included. A short abstract of 1,200 characters and a longer, more structured summary (1 page) will be requested at a later date for the contributions that have been accepted.
 
Calendar
– Late April 2013: reception of proposals
– Late May 2013: notification to the authors of the selected proposals and sending out of editorial instructions
– Late September 2013: reception of the full texts
– Mid-December 2013: transmission to the authors of the evaluations
– Mid-February 2014: reception of the final texts (subject to acceptance by the reading committee)
– Mid to late June 2014: publication

Call for Paper. Special Issue: FREE AND UNPAID WORK, GRATUITY, COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY AND PRECARIOUSSNESS

The Italian Journal of Sociology of Work is accepting contribution in the the weeks on the topic: “FREE AND UNPAID WORK, GRATUITY, COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY AND PRECARIOUSSNESS. Processes of subjectivity in the age of digital production”.

Editors are looking for theoretical and empirical contributions on works and its precariousness in the digital age. The aim is to encourage discussions on new ways of working that, unlike industrial work, totally involve the lifeworld (subjectivity, personality, gender, and so forth) of individuals and are characterized by the fact that subjects invest and value their emotions, creativity, experience and communicability even when they are not rewarded.

The call closes 15th April 2013. The special issue is edited by Federico Chicchi, Elisabetta Risi, Eran Fisher, Emiliana Armano.

For those interested, please look at the call for paper.

Freelance professionals at time of crisis

The transformation of labour in last decades is strictly connected to the processes of outsourcing by which several services have been outsourced by public administrations and firms, even at high professional content. Such trend has resulted in a strong growth of freelance professional activities in Italy but also globally (1), quite often without a correspondent increase of protection of the temporary working relations. At the same, there has been a progressive devaluation of knowledge work (2), which has been incentivized by the deregulation of job contracts and the precarization of professional profiles. In the actual panorama, the issue of public regulation of freelance contracts and the correct remuneration of knowledge work have been associated to those of temporary workers, which are usually characterized by scarce social protection especially in Southern European countries as in Italy.

In the last weeks, ACTA – an Italian freelance association that represents professionals of advanced business services – have conducted an interesting research among its members which can give us an insight of this constituent of labour force, made of freelance, consultants, independent workers and micro-firms. In Italy, according to some scholars it does represent nowadays about 8 millions of workers and it is going to grow in the next future (3).

The results of ACTA research are quite interesting for scholars who want to study the phenomenon of new professional: it highlights the invisible reality of knowledge work, but also the intrinsic vulnerability of freelance work within crisis. In fact, knowledge workers are more and more vulnerable to pressures from their customer and the competition is increasingly based on prices, without any reference to the quality of work and products.

Demand for professional services is decreasing.

Diapositiva1

The first phenomenon to emerge from the research is the reduction of the demand of consultancy services: more than half of ACTA interviewees at the end of 2012 thinks that the relative demand for his/her services is falling, plus 10% that declares a strong reduction. Just 32,3% of them thinks that the 2012 have shown a turnover similar to 2011. So, crisis in Italy has been harsh even for advances business services and for freelance in particular the scenario is in contraction.

Customers wants reduced prices, not quality and reliability

Diapositiva2

The price of service is now one of the most important element together with trust, network and expertise, elements that usually scholars associate to professionalism. More than two third of ACTA interviewees (67,2%) agrees with the statement “Pressures on prices are increasing and the negotation phase is increasingly longer and more tiring”.

Then the importance of interpersonal networks and trust relationships with customers and partners looks reshaped in its relative role, even if it has been the core issue of the organisational debate of ‘90s, as in example for the theory of cluster (4) in cooperative relationships or the milieu innovateur approach (5), which valorises informal networks as the privileged space for learning and uncertainty’s management (6). Quite often scholars have argued that the construction of a strong trust network between professionals and customer played a fundamental role in the production of innovation, even betraying the simple logic of markets. Now in the contemporary context of crisis, the informal pact of interpersonal relationships is put in questions and it is not able anymore as effective model of regulation. In this situation, freelance are obliged to choose if to devaluated their own competence providing specialised services at low-cost or if to refuse this competition to the lower, thus risking to be soon out of the market.

The consequence is that different professionals adopt different strategies: if the majority of them (54,6%) prefer to safeguard their own expertise, but a consistent minority (38,3%) has chosen to adapt force by the fear of losing customers and of being substitute by competitors. This might result in a depletion of their resources, experiencing a progressive misalignment between the expertise and the professional activity performed. This risk is amplified by a contraction in the space of autonomy, as it has already been underlined in previous researches (7). Nevertheless, it isn’t a generic process of deskilling, but it is caused by process that force the knowledge work to erode their own prerogatives, as a mechanism of subjectification and proletarization inside the crisis.

Free work has to be taken in account

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Another additional elemento that supports the thesis of the knowledge workers depletion is proved by the increasing spread of free work. ACTA interviewees work more hours in 2012, but at the same time the paid work has diminished. At least one freelance professional every two has been asked by customer to provide work for free as extra to the normal professional service. This cumulate with the “normal” free work that professionals have to provide before, during and after the standard work contract, in the research for new business, in the debt collection and in the further education.

Income emergency

Diapositiva4

One of the most insidious aspects of freelance professional work in Italy is related to the collapse of income during 2012. Specular to the insufficient demand, the delay in the payments is the most important cause of this situation. The result is that 22,6% of ACTA interviewees declares that their income is insufficient to survive on the market, paying basic costs for work and self-maintenance, while another 47,7% earns just the income enough to pay them.

Conclusions

From ACTA research, it clearly emerges the general process of economic and social depletion of professional work. It is often a generational issue: among freelance professionals that works in advanced business sectors it is possible to find young and adult that have strong human capital that is not enough to protect them from precariousness or a more insidious blackmail: you must accept the deskilling if you don’t want to renounce to express your own personality in your work and society.

Freelance professionals are the most vulnerable in this situation, because they are forced to accept the market pressures because of their solitude. That’s because they should try to plan new forms of coalition to overcome the present situation. Deskilling and precariousness can be overturn by the construction of shared networks that allow individual freelance worker to protect their rights and to demand for new ones. ACTA research gives us precious knowledge to motivate the necessity of this claim.

Author: Emiliana Armano, emi_armano (at) yahoo.it

(1) Blanchflower, D.G. “Self-employement in OECD countries”, Labour Economics, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 471-505, 2000.

(2) S.Bologna, Ceti medi senza futuro, Deriveapprodi, Roma, 2007.

(3) Littler & Mendelson, Littler Mendelson Guide to International Employment and Labor Law, http://www.littler.com/publication-press.

(4) Porter, M. The competitive advantages of Nations, Free Press, New York, 1990.

(5) Aydalot, P. Trajectories Tecnologiques et milieu innovateur en Europe, GREMI, Paris, 1987.

(6) Powell, W. “Neither Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization”, Research in Organisational Behaviour, Vol. 12: 295-336, 1990.

(7) Ranci, C. (a cura di) Partite Iva. Il lavoro autonomo nella crisi italiana, Studi e Ricerche, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2012.