Digitalization of relational space of work: consequences on the quality of working life and on trade unions’ action. The case study of Italian banking sector

Abstract

Nicoletta Masiero, Institute of economic and social research (IRES of Veneto region), Italy Digitalization of relational space of work: consequences on the quality of working life and on trade unions' action. The case study of Italian banking sector. The ongoing exposure of the contemporary workplace to digital technologies and learning algorithms is a complex, heterogeneous and undergoing phenomenon that still needs to be investigated by scholars of different disciplines. Moreover, the current debate on the increasing digitalization of the workplace is rather reflective and speculative given the scarcity of empirical research. In the literature, opinions tend to be polarized between those who on the one hand see the potential of digital technologies to boost productivity (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014; Newell and Marabelli, 2015), and at the same time to improve the quality of jobs and enable social inclusion and integration (Barrett et al., 2015; DeVaujani and Vaast, 2015), and those who instead emphasize the risk of replacement of human labour by new technologies, the grow of inequalities, and the intensification of work for the remaining jobs (Constantinides et al., 2018; Frey and Osborne 2017; Neufeind et al. 2018). Beyond the macro-level counting on jobs gains/losses, what needs to be empirically explored is how people way of working is changing and with what consequences in terms of job quality and quality of working life (Gallie