As part of her Marie Jahoda Visiting Fellowship (2021), Wieteke Conen investigated ‘The value of work: working in the Digital Era’. Meaningful work, in essence, means work that enables people ‘to work as humans’. Work is improbable to be meaningful if it thwarts the ability of workers to meet their material needs, i.e. extrinsic values and rewards from work matter. In addition, meaningful work can bring intrinsic benefits of solidarity, community, purpose and satisfaction, adding to the basic advantage of being able to meet material needs through work. In this Fellowship, Wieteke examined how different conceptions of meaningful (and meaningless) work varies within and between different groups of workers, and how digitalization and automation affect values and rewards from work.
Digit researchers present at 40th International Labour Process Conference
There were more than 15 presentations involving members of the Digit community at the 40th ILPC in Padua.