Gérard Valenduc

Sustainable work and the ageing workforce

Socioeconomic conditions: Around 40% of women and 10% of men aged 55–59 work part time, a slightly higher number than among those aged 50–54. Among those over 50, 10% of men and 15% of women have fixed-term contracts, and a quarter have less than five years’ seniority in their current organisation. Feelings of job insecurity increase among women during their 40s and among men between 45–49 and 50–54.

Work in the Digital Economy: Sorting the Old from the New

This paper sets out to analyse the digital economy and changes in work by sifting elements of continuity from others that are radically new. Aspects examined are: genuinely new features encountered in the digital economy model; major instances of technological change observable in the working environment; new forms of work in the digital economy; distance and employment relationships; challenges entailed in regulating a labour world shorn of its customary structures. The study concludes with some considerations on the meaning of work in environments characterised by an increasing interplay of the virtual and the real.

Digitalisation, between disruption and evolution

This article questions the disruptive nature of the current process of digitalisation from a retrospective point of view. Four aspects of this process are considered: digitised information as a strategic economic resource; the nature and pace of industrial revolutions; the contested nature of the link between technology and employment; and the shift from flexible work practices towards virtual work. The article reviews some salient research findings from the past three decades and confronts them with recent publications concerning the future of work in the digital economy. It argues that the current wave of digitalisation combines, on the one hand, continuing trends in the analysis of the information society or knowledge-based society, and, on the other hand, significant breakthroughs the scope and impacts of which must be carefully assessed, avoiding any return to technological determinism.

New Forms of Work and Employment in the Digital Economy

To what extent does the accelerated development of the digital economy contribute to the political process of deconstruction of employment and reformulation of the category of ‘worker’? This paper considers some recent innovations in the digitalisation of the economy, which are intertwined with new forms of work and employment: Internet-based virtual work, on-demand work through online platforms, crowd working, and ‘prosumer’ work. Several dimensions of the employment relationship are called into question by these trends: concept of workplace (and its aspects related to working conditions); formation of wages; meaning and measurement of working time; blurring of reporting lines; representation of workers’ interests; and more generally the meaning of work and solidarity.

Innovation in services: a set of criteria to compare innovation support policies

The objective of this paper is to contribute to establishing banchmarks and Tools to be used at different levels in comparative analysis of innovation policies focusing on the service sector.