Work Futures Research Centre

Projects

The WFRC is a hub for research on work futures across the University of Southampton, providing a focus for collaboration on projects internally and with external partners. We welcome ideas for future research project bids and consultancy. Please email workfutures@soton.ac.uk.

Current Projects

Beyond organisational boundaries: open source digital infrastructure in the delivery of products and services.

  • Researchers: Dr Rebecca Taylor; Dr Anthony Quinn; Dr Mark Weal
  • Funding body: Digit Innovation Fund

Our cross disciplinary study investigates the organisational location of OS software. We compare commercial and public sector case studies to understand OS work from the perspective of employers and their workforce. Our innovative research design involves web scraping contributor data and qualitative interviews with software developers and senior staff. We explore where, why and how OS software reconfigures work practices and cultures within and beyond organisational boundaries. This study promises valuable insights into both the sustainability of OS digital infrastructure and the future of work.

Team Rubicon/RE:ACT – Connecting military and civilian communities

  • Researchers: Silke Roth

My project develops a sociology of military-civilian relations and links two unconnected debates: the blurring relations between the military and civilian organisations in the humanitarian context on the one hand and the integration of veterans into civilian work and life on the other hand.

Addressing inclusivity in the spatial and social impacts of COVID-19 on the self-employed in the UK

  • Researchers: Dr Darja Reuschke (University of Southampton); Victoria Price (University of Southampton)
  • Research partners: Prof Andrew Henley (Cardiff University); Prof Elizabeth Daniel (Open University); Dr Mark Lang (Independent Researcher)
  • Funding body: UK Research Innovation (UKRI) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

The UK's flexible labour market model has produced high levels of self-employment. The self- employed are predominant in those sectors most hit by shutdown and distancing measures. This study is to provide a systematic identification and understanding of the disparate spatial, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on the self-employed in the UK using secondary analysis of nationally representative UK survey data and qualitative interviews with self-employed people focussing on coping strategies and experiences with the Self-employed Income Support Scheme.

How is the COVID-19 accidental experiment around working from home changing the way the UK will work after lockdown?

  • Researchers: Dr Jane Parry, Professor Yehuda Baruch, Dr Mina Beigi, and Dr Michail Veliziotis
  • Research partners: Half the Sky, Institute for Employment Studies
  • Funding body: ESRC

Using online surveys, organisational case studies and secondary analysis of national datasets, a team of experts, three of who are associated with the Work Futures Research Centre, will review employer actions, practices and strategic decision-making, as well as employee experiences of working from home (WfH) during lockdown. As organisations re-orientate towards economic recovery, it will be vital to understand the significance of contrasting business models and how working practices are changing post-lockdown.

Engineering the Revolution: A Social Approach to Digitisation in the Infrastructure Industry

  • Researchers: Prof Pauline Leonard, Dr Roger Tyers
  • Research partners: Mott MacDonald
  • Funding body: ESRC

Developments in digital technologies such as 3D modelling, AI and ‘digital twins’ offer transformative potential to the infrastructure industry. Yet to date, the industry has been slow to digitise. In 2019, Professor Pauline Leonard and Dr Roger Tyers, of the Work Futures Research Centre at the University of Southampton, collaborated with the global engineering consultants Mott MacDonald to investigate the human and social issues challenging the digitisation of the infrastructure industry, through 49 interviews with key informants in Mott MacDonald and other stakeholder organisations.

Completed Projects

Free labour and the sustainability of open-source software in digital infrastructure

  • Researchers: Dr Rebecca Taylor (PI), Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology  Dr Mark Weal (CI), Electronics and Computer Science, Dr Anthony Quinn (RF)
  • Funding body: Web Science Institute - University of Southampton

Scholars have long debated the motivations for the ‘free’/unpaid labour of open-source contributors and volunteers. These debates have gained increasing significance as the scale of public benefit of digital infrastructure, built on free and open source code, becomes apparent. Questions about the sustainability of this labour and the communities that support it, the cross-subsidising of unpaid work by commercial interests and the implications for the development and maintenance of open source digital projects and infrastructure have become increasingly pressing. This study seeks to answer the sustainability question by addressing important gaps in how we understand the unpaid labour of open-source contributors. Building on existing research and debates on ‘free’ labour it focuses attention on both the economic underpinnings and divisions of labour that support unpaid work of individuals and the organisational and social location and boundaries of that work. 

Social and Solidarity Economy in Crisis: An Ethnographic Analysis of New Forms of Organizing

  • Researchers: Prof Maria Daskalaki (Southampton Business School) Prof Marianna Fotaki (Warwick Business School)
  • Funding body: British Academy of Management, Transitions 2 Grants Scheme: 2015-2017 (Grant Reference Number: BAMTRANS2_2015_14

This project studied social and solidarity economy initiatives in response to the Global Financial crisis of 2008. We focused on three social and solidarity economy initiatives, part of a wider landscape of alternatives emerging in crisis-stricken Greece, and explored their capacity to constitute new organizational forms.

The New Dynamics of work

  • Researchers: Susan Halford, Maria Hudson, Pauline Leonard, Jane Parry and Rebecca Taylor
  • Funding body: ESRC

This scoping study, commissioned by the ESRC in 2013, and conducted by a team of researchers at WFRC, explored the changing world of work and contemporary work futures in light of globalisation, digitisation, demographic change and labour market restructuring. The main aims were twofold: first, to review existing knowledge and the established research base and identify where gaps and synergies occur; and second, to identify priorities for future ESRC research on the ‘new dynamics of work’.

Space, Power and Communication – The Dynamics of Convergent ICT in the Norwegian Health Care Sector

  • Researchers: Susan Halford, Aud Obstfelder, Ann Therese Lotherington and Kari Dyb
  • Funding body: Norwegian Research Council

This project explores the introduction of new applications for ICT in health care delivery, following two ‘telemedicine’ projects (live broadband links for ultrasound and CTG between midwives and obstetricians and an e-mail clinic for paediatric eczema) and two new information systems in health care (an integrated electronic patient record and an electronic booking system allowing GPs to book appointments directly for hospital interventions).