Abigail Marks

This article examines how remote and hybrid work reshape the spatio-temporal organisation of labour through the dynamics of intensification and extensification. Drawing on three waves of survey data, each with over 1000 participants during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside longitudinal interviews with 90 participants, the analysis shows that information and communication technology (ICT)-driven intensification undermines wellbeing by generating work–life conflict. Extensification – the temporal, spatial and psychological diffusion of work – both enables and is reinforced by intensification. Gendered differences emerge, especially for women with care roles who experience greater cumulative burdens once hybrid work becomes established. Material resources, such as housing and digital infrastructure, can also stratify experiences. The article concludes that ICT-enabled hybrid work produces a new spatio-temporal regime in which intensification and extensification interact to deepen inequalities.

This article considers how discord between dominant and alternative moral economies has contributed to the decline of the home credit industry in the United Kingdom. Drawing on qualitative data from over 70 interviews, as well as media reporting and grey literature, authentic historical analysis is utilised to examine how collective values and perceptions shape discourse and reproduce inequalities. It is argued here that media, political, academic and business actors operating within the dominant moral economy may perpetuate hegemonic (mis)understandings of alternative practices. This article advances Graeber’s work on debt and develops Polanyi’s and Thompson’s theorising on the moral economy, by arguing that social and cultural relations should be understood as being connected to – but separable from – economic relations. Analysis of the decline of home credit illustrates how cultural and economic behaviours converge to create unjust and partitioned moral economies.

This chapter develops an understanding of increasing work pressures by using the term ‘work (over) burden’ to explain both work intensification and extensification. It explores how the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the work burden. It sets out conceptually and with a range of empirical examples, the nature of work intensification and extensification and how they have developed through changes brought about to accommodate home-based working during the pandemic. It then explores the gendered nature of some of these changes. The chapter concludes by considering some of the longer-term implications for the (over) burden of work.

Purpose: The purpose of this review is to understand whether “The Great Resignation” has emerged as a concept within the popular media and academic because it is based on fact or whether it has emerged because it broadly aligns with a dominant neoliberal ideology.Design/methodology/approach: This paper critically reviews United Kingdom (UK) government data to establish evidence for “The Great Resignation”. Thus, the purpose is to understand whether there has been an increased propensity for workers to leave or change their jobs due to attitudinal changes emerging from the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.Findings: Based on this review, there is limited evidence that “The Great Resignation” has been occurring within the UK. Nonetheless, there have been extensive commentries in both the popular press and academic outlets that have been attempting to evidence the phenomenon. Some of academic writing is drirven by narratives emerging from the press which should thus warrent consideration of the extent to which academics are losing control over conceptual and theoretical development.Originality/value: The key contribution that is made by this piece is the questioning of concepts that have entered the common vernacular. Concepts such as “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” have, for the most part, gained popularity through social media. This paper looks at “The Great Resignation” and warns of the possibility that social media maybe a significant threat to robust academic theorisation.

This article contributes to the unresolved concern about the relationship between habitus and reflexivity. Using Sri Lanka, a postcolonial social context, as the research ground, the article provides a contemporary interpretation of individuals’ reflexive and habitual behaviour that displaces Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as inappropriate for the representation of 21st-century social dynamics. While Sri Lanka is often labelled a traditional society, where habitual, routine, pre-reflexive action is thought to be more common, studies that question this generalised view appear to be largely absent. Therefore, based on a critical realist morphogenetic perspective that offers the analytical possibility of both routine and conscious action, this article investigates the role of habitus and reflexivity through 75 work and life histories gathered from Sri Lanka. The findings suggest that even the reproduction of traditional practices has increasingly become a reflexive task; thus, this work supports the position that habitus fails to provide reliable guidance to understand social action, even within a society labelled as traditional.

The article examines the relationship between restructuring and work-based identity among older workers, exploring occupational identity, occupational community and their roles in navigating transitions in the life course. Based on working-life biographical interviews with late career and retired telecoms engineers, the article explores the role of occupational identity in dealing with change prior to and following the end of careers at BT, the UK’s national telecommunications provider. Restructuring and perpetual organizational change undermined key aspects of the engineering occupational identity, inspiring many to seek alternative employment outside BT. For older workers, some seeking bridge employment in the transition to retirement, the occupational community not only served as a mechanism for finding work but also provided a sustained collective identity resource. Distinctively, the research points to a dialectical relationship between occupational identity and the navigation of change as opposed to the former simply facilitating the latter.

Information and communication technology (ICT) workers rarely join trade unions. This is usually explained by the individualized nature of work. This article examines broader forms of collectivism for these workers, drawing on survey and interview data. The focus is on social class, attitudes towards unions and professional bodies and participation in the broader ICT community – specifically Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). The findings reveal absence of formal collective frames of reference or organization, yet the creativity, autonomy and initiative central to the identity of ICT workers may offer opportunities for collectivization particularly with regard to participation in FLOSS communities.

Evidence from male‐dominated sectors points to high levels of disability and the disabling nature of working environments. However, research of this nature assumes a medical model of disability that does not account for the social construction of disability or the lived experiences of disabled employees. Using data from seven focus groups (n = 44) and semi‐structured interviews with professional transport employees with life‐long hidden ‘impairments’, including dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, ADD/ADHD and Asperger syndrome (n = 22), this paper explores the lived experiences of men and women working in a sector traditionally dominated by men, the transport industry. Key themes include homosociality, public–private divide and the impact of changing work practices. Further, the data revealed how those with hidden ‘impairments’ in part construct their identities in relation to both non‐disabled colleagues and those considered stereotypically representing disability (wheelchair users). This study furthers understandings of the relationality of gender and disability in the workplace, and the lived experiences of disabled employees.

The paper focuses on a long-neglected subject - the experience of work for employees with mental health conditions. Taking an employee perspective and using semi-structured interviews with employees with depression or anxiety, this paper looked at the process of management, disclosure and stigmatisation for employees with a mental health condition. The findings provide insights into the complexity of disclosure in the work setting, as well as the inconsistent and often poor levels of support afforded to employees with a mental health condition. The findings suggest much more needs to be done in terms of improving the experiences of employees with mental health conditions and research related to such practices.