Working in Chinese digital fitness companies: alienated labour in a state-led neoliberal economy

It is argued that the application of digital technologies to various industries have changed capitalist production models and corresponding working conditions. One such model is often characterised as digital labour. Scholars highlight the importance of analysing digital labour, with the two most influential frameworks, Marxist and Foucauldian theories. Yet the question of whether the two can work together to elucidate digital labour requires further investigation. To explore the possibility of combining the two scholarships, I introduce a new case study of the digital fitness industry in China and investigate the working conditions in two small entrepreneurial companies. To collect data, I carried out participatory observation over a period of four months, collected three-months’ worth of social media content, and conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 participants. My key argument is that employees’ working conditions are characterised by alienation and neoliberalism, with the property relationship of means of production elucidating the co-existence of the two relationships. Both capitalists and workers can use means of production by paying the owners of those working tools, either through one-off purchase or rent. The payment to owners demonstrates that the rule of private property holds true. This rule means that employers can acquire employees’ labour power as private property by paying salaries, which legitimises the former’s private ownership of the products of the latter’s labour. Thus, the workers experience alienation in an employment relationship. Simultaneously, the workers can choose self-employment, paying to use the means of production themselves. Their payment for working tools becomes a self-investment, involving them in a neoliberal social relationship. I contribute to combining Marxist and Foucauldian theories and demonstrate the neoliberal interpretation of labour as self-investment motivates propertyless workers to work hard proactively, which veils and consolidate the unequal relationship between labour and capitalism

The appraisal of Facebook online community: An exposition of mobile commerce in social media reviews

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IFPOC Symposium:Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change.

IFPOC symposium: Discovering antecedents and consequences of complex change recipients' reactions to organizational change Chairs: Maria Vakola (Athens University of Economics and Business) & Karen Van Dam (Open University) Discussant: Mel Fugate (American University, Washington, D.C) State of the art Organisations are required to continuously change and develop but there is a high failure rate associated with change implementation success. In the past two decades, change researchers have started to investigate change recipients' reactions to change recognizing the crucial role of these reactions for successful change. This symposium aims at identifying and discussing the complex processes that underlie the relationships among antecedents, reactions and outcomes associated with organizational change. New perspective / contributions This symposium consists of five studies that extend our knowledge in the field by (i) providing an analysis of change recipients' reactions going beyond the dichotomous approaches (acceptance or resistance) (ii) revealing understudied antecedents-reactions and reactions-consequences patterns and relationships (iii) shedding light on the role of contextual factors i.e team climate and individual factors i.e emotion regulation on the adaptation to change. This symposium is based on a combination of both quantitative (i.e diary, survey) and qualitative (i.e interviews) research methodology. Research / practical implications This symposium aims to increase our understanding of the complex processes associated with change recipients' reactions to change. Discovering how these reactions are created and what are their results may reveal important contingencies that can explain how positive organizational outcomes during times of change can be stimulated which is beneficial for both researchers and practitioners

Your place or mine? Issues of power, participation and partnership in an urban regeneration area

This study sets out to explore what is characterised as the partnership process in an urban regeneration area. Rather than examine formal processes or policy, the intention was to explore the interaction between the active residents in the study area and the agents of some of the organizations with whom they came into contact. The area (Yoker) is at the western periphery of the city, but is neither a 'peripheral estate' nor until recently an area of formal policy intervention. It is typical of similar small areas in its industrial history and its difficulty in adjusting to changed economic circumstances. Its response has, however, been vigorous and based significantly on its own endogenous resources. In understanding the processes involved, the study has taken two broad approaches: the theoretical and the empirical, and is an attempt to relate the two as they can be seen to 'interact' on the ground. The theoretical approach has three strands (l) to understand the local working of power, (2) to examine the notions of social capital and collaboration and (3) to understand the local partnership process. Power, explored in terms of capacity and legitimacy and developed through consideration of 'circuits of power and 'hidden discourses', is seen not as a discrete entity but as providing the base on which social capital and partnership working might be constructed and as a signifier of other social and economic relationships. Social capital is seen as grounded in local power relations and as providing a matrix within which local networks might be activated, and trust developed; the cognate notion of collaborative planning is seen as a mechanism for bringing 'government' and 'community' into a process of active cooperation. Finally, partnership working is seen as the ideal outcome of the interaction between local power and social capital, dependant not on formal processes or discourses but on the harnessing of local skills founded on capacity and need. The three Yokel' case-studies are intended broadly to illustrate (rather than 'prove') some of these theoretical concerns in the field, but principally to allow local voices to articulate their perceptions of the issues within a semi-structured series of interviews. A brief comparative study in Drumchapel is intended to explore some of the differences between an area with a long history of policy intervention and an area like Yoker with no such history. The study concludes that a structured partnership approach will succeed best if founded firmly on local strengths and perceptions

Building The Hive: Corporate Personality Testing, Self-Development, And Humanistic Management In Postwar America, 1945-2000

This dissertation explores the creation, distribution, and use of five personality tests found extensively in corporate America from the mid-1940s to the end of the 20th century. The management techniques in which these tests—the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, California Psychological Inventory, Thematic Apperception Test, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and Stanford Shyness Survey—were embedded helped create a corporate environment that seemed at once more considerate of individual differences in personality and behavior and yet somehow also more constraining in the ways people were encouraged to live and work both inside and outside the office. In light of this tension, the problem my dissertation seeks to answer is: how and why did many come to see self-discovery and self-actualization as best achieved through self-management, self-discipline, and, in many cases, the narrowing of the possibilities of the self? This dissertation argues that the use of personality tests and self-assessments—alongside the rise of both humanistic psychology and new forms of neoliberal capitalism—carried with it a very particular rhetoric of personal freedom and individual liberation, one that had in fact been carefully crafted by psychologists and corporate managers in order to predict and control the behavior of the groups under their care. On top of this, self-assessments anchored a sociotechnical system that looked as if it illuminated unique parts of the individual, but which was in fact made up of routinized techniques for creating more efficient, productive, and perhaps more importantly, more profitable workers. By following these five tests from conception to development to their eventual use in corporate management, the power and influence of overlapping networks of researchers, universities, funding sources, publishers, and companies are seen in greater relief, and the outsized influence of Silicon Valley on postwar social scientific knowledge and management practice is made evident