Disruption and re-regulation in work and employment: from organisational to institutional experimentation

Abstract

This article proposes experimentation as a framework for understanding actor agency in the changing regulation of work and employment. This involves contrasting institutional change with organisational and institutional experimentation approaches in order to understand how, in the context of uncertainty, actors in the world of work experiment with new ways of organising and seek to institutionalise them into new understandings, norms and rules. The article describes the fault lines of disruption that are generating a vast range of experiments in the world of work. These fault lines invite resilient responses and the development of collective capabilities at two levels: first, organisational experimentation, where social actors seek to modify or renew their organisations, networks and alliances and reflect on, assess and learn from their experiments; second, institutional experimentation, where these responses are scaled up and institutionalised over time through more general understandings, norms and rules. A key challenge for comparative research and strategising is to find the appropriate institutional conditions that will facilitate and enable organisational experiments, whilst overcoming constraining institutional conditions. This challenge is illustrated through the examples of co-working and the development of new forms of collective representation.

Introduction: institutional experimentation for better (or worse) work

“…A key point, illustrated by the SMart case, is how such experimentation can generate a range of new collective capabilities. Rather than seeing co-working as just more collateral damage from the neoliberal fissuring of the workplace, Murray et al (2020) argue that it also presents the seeds of hybrid experimentation, opening up the possibility of new forms of solidarity and collective capability. So too for their example of UE Local 150 which, drawing on the repertoires and identity of a range of social and religious movements rooted in the black community in North Carolina, redefines itself in a creative strategy to organise workers in hostile environments like those of the southern states in the US.…”

“…Murray et al (2020) seek to frame our understanding of these processes. In what they label hybrid experimentation, they set out how a variety of actors experiment with new ways of organising and seek to institutionalise them into new understandings, norms and rules in the regulation of work and employment.…”

“…Pulignano et al (2020) analyse paired cases of experimentation and counter-experimentation in the global logistics industry where, enabled by digital technologies, new business models experiment with institutional constraints and increasingly bad forms of work to gain competitive advantage and drive productivity and profitability, albeit at the cost of heightened work intensity and diminished control over work processes. The cases they analyse provide a good illustration of what Murray et al (2020) label neoliberal experimentation, as exemplified by the worse work and super-exploitation of the so-called ‘self-employed’ in parcel delivery. However, the resulting disruption and uncertainty also spark counter-experimentation as the objects of these experiments become its subjects.…”

“…In the UK union branch explored by Connolly (2020), full-time officials from above and activists from below engaged in a process of democratic experimentalism that challenged the existing ‘insider’ relationship between branch officers and management. For Murray et al (2020), experimentation in co-working represents a hybrid potential for new forms of solidarity between atomised workers, but can just as easily legitimise a model of fissured and displaced work in the absence of participation and deliberative capacity.…”

“…Third, experimentation is both strategic and reflexive . Although some experimentation is emergent, as in the case of the UE Local 150 and the co-working dynamics explored by Murray et al (2020), experimentation is most often the result of a continuous process of strategising and learning from doing. That other unions and communities are learning from these examples and are now experimenting with their own versions highlights this dynamic.…”