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This chapter examines the fourth kind of intangible capital, which is the capability to transform a heterogeneous aggregate of people, first into a group and then into a team. This is useful both on a macro- and micro-scale. This is shown through the case of people involved in an urban transformation with its endogenous and exogenous complexities. Following the definition of sustainability, people can be divided into three different kinds that use language differently to be understood. Communication happens only on each personal boundary line, which is dynamic, and acts on two levels: the technical and the relational. The presence of a connector, mediator, translator, and negotiator, who has both human and technical training, is essential.

This chapter outlines how the academic field in Germany, particularly universities as institutions of research and education, became a constitutive element in the process of digitalization. Institutions in higher education created long-lasting networks not only by scientific relations in the academic field but also by the establishment of business-oriented and application-oriented disciplines. This chapter focuses on the case of business information systems (BIS) and reconstructs the structural conditions under which BIS evolved from an initially marginal data-centric subfield of business administration into an independent discipline. This discipline has had a major influence on the transformation of work processes in recent decades and is an important player in the digital transformation in Germany. This chapter therefore also outlines the far-reaching implications of the paths taken, which are eventually not limited to the academic field but manifested in transformed work processes in almost all professional fields.

Despite two decades of discussion and debate, key issues regarding the transformation of work have remained highly uncertain, largely because of the limitations in the theoretical frameworks with which team systems have been approached. In this paper, I draw loosely on my own fieldwork to articulate a series of propositions regarding features of the new managerial regimes that have remained only poorly explored. These center on the structural tensions and contradictions that team systems elicit, the contested and negotiated nature of the new regimes, and the complex interplay between the new work-systems and the identities that workers import from the old-managerial regimes. The paper suggests that the overarching concern with rates of diffusion and the performance effects of team systems should give way to more culturally nuanced approaches that can bring to light the divergent and often inherently contradictory forms the new regimes assume in an era marked by increasing demands for labor market flexibility.

The introduction to Volume 17 of Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, reviews prior literature and issues in the studies of time at work. It provides a brief summary of the chapters in this volume and addresses some of the major themes, particularly those with which sociologists might be unfamiliar, since this volume is, quite deliberately, interdisciplinary. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the complexities of workplace temporalities in the new economy and suggest that incorporating inquiry about time will inform understanding not only of the contemporary workplace, but also of social life more broadly.

The world today is predicated on constant change driven by globalisation, economic restructuring, climate change, conflict crises, and the Covid-19 pandemic. People, businesses, and government are swiftly impacted by job and profit loss, a shift in knowledge, learning poverty, pressures, and adaptability. In addition, the twenty-first-century labour market is increasingly asking for advanced skills as many jobs experience digital transformation in the workplace.

The nature of work and the structure of employment are reinventing. The Covid-19 pandemic has created challenges that require responsive safety nets critical to prevent these hardships. An option of working from home was only for a relatively privileged segment of the labour force and colleagues may never meet personally. A new pattern of work may emerge changing how people worked and live. Such circumstances could be psychologically and financially taxing. Accordingly, businesses and individuals need to navigate this challenging space by developing different skills and resilient attitudes to be relevant in the new world of work.

Resilience is a positive attitude that is built to help people overcome significant challenges to achieve their goals. In the present context of work, resilient attitudes can necessitate proactively growing skills in such areas as adaptability, persistence, problem-solving in addition to foundational literacy. Building resilience will not only benefit the individual but the business also gains continued success.

This chapter provides a rich and thick description of a collaborative, place-based, interorganizational process in the domain of social, ecological, and economic sustainability. Governmental agencies, businesses, philanthropic organizations, NGOs, consulting firms, and private citizens tried to move from an underorganized and tacit set of ineffective relationships toward a structural collaboration in service of a “place” known as the Cuyahoga River Valley. While the process built momentum and expectations among its participants and other stakeholders, an important outcome of the collaboration did not materialize as planned. The leading actors struggled with scaling a “negotiated order” and leveraging the high levels of commitment among the participants. Despite the setback, many of the aims of the collaboration continue to be achieved, albeit at a slower pace and without a high regional priority. The chapter explores whether the trans-organization development (Cummings, 1984) perspective is a useful model for intentionally intervening in a multi-stakeholder collaboration and the roles that negotiated order (Nathan & Mitroff, 1991) and referent organizations (Trist, 1983) play.

The emergence of the platform economy is reorganizing work, employment, and value creation. The authors argue that the digital platforms are fracturing work itself as the places and types of work are being reorganized into a myriad of platform organized work arrangements with workplaces being potentially anywhere with Internet connectivity. The authors differ from most traditional narratives that focus solely upon either work displacement, a single type of platform-organized value-creating activity, or David Weil’s concentration solely upon the workplace. The authors recognize that even as some work is replaced, other work is being transformed; new work and old work in new arrangements is being created and recreated. The taxonomy begins with the workers employed directly by the platform and its contractors. The authors then introduce the category, platform-mediated work, which we divide into three groups: marketplaces such as Amazon; in-person service provision such as Uber and Airbnb; and remote service provision such as Upwork. The next category, “platform-mediated content creation,” is complex. The authors identify three groups of activities: consignment content creators that include services such as the app stores, YouTube, and Amazon Self-Publishing; non-platform organization content producers, which refers to the enormous number of workers occupied with creating and maintaining websites; and user-generated content which is the non-compensated value creation that ranges from content uploaded to Facebook, Instagram, etc. to reviews on sites such as Yelp. It is only when work and value creation is considered in all of these platform-based manifestations that we can understand the ultimate dimensions of the platform economy and comprehensively understand its implications for work.

The aim of this chapter is to illustrate and discuss — through a case study of Sandvik Corporation — how business practices with focus on sales can improve with regard to effectiveness and efficiency by utilization of IT tools. This approach challenges the traditional view of doing business in big industrial corporations where sales experts known as sales stars have traditionally developed relationships with customers. In order to do this, the chapter initially delineates the traditional business practices and the main issues associated with this approach.

The following section brings up the case of Sandvik Corporation. This part of the chapter first discusses problems with unorganized business practices as a source of business inefficiency. These problems are represented by (1) offer and order management, (2) pricing and value, and (3) customer planning and daily work routines. The consequent part of this section illustrates how the company improved its business by organizing business practices using CRM tools. The discussion of the new efficiencies is supported by elaboration on the Sandvik’s Sales Program that the organization launched in order to address the above mentioned problems of inefficiencies is sales work. The chapter ends with potential new challenges that the implementation of IT tools brought about and a summary of the chapter.

The employment practices of major American companies underwent a marked transformation in the fifteen-year period dating roughly from the beginning of World War I to the oncoming of the Great Depression in late 1929 (Jacoby, 1985; Lescohier, 1935). At the start of World War I, the practice of personnel management was unknown in American industry. Instead, employment practices were largely informal, unscientific and administered in a decentralized, often heavy-handed and capricious manner by foremen and gang bosses. Labor was typically viewed as a commodity to be bought for as little possible and used for only as long as needed, leading to an employment relationship that was short-term and insecure. The prevailing methods of management were also highly autocratic and arbitrary, with workers expected to obey whatever orders were given and at risk of being fired for any offense real or imagined.