Digitalized Drones in the Steel Industry: The Social Shaping of Technology

Author:

Stroud Dean1,Timperley Victoria2,Weinel Martin2

Affiliation:

1. Senior Lecturer, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

2. Research Associate, Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

Abstract

New digital technologies are often framed as an inevitable and determining force that presents the risk of technological unemployment and the end of work (Lloyd and Payne, 2019). In manufacturing specifically, digitalization is referred to as Industry 4.0, a term that emerged in Germany as a central economic and industrial policy and has taken on a wider resonance across Europe (Pfeiffer, 2017). In this article, we explore the workplace implications of a specific Industry 4.0 innovation. We examine the insertion of drone technology—as a timely and topical example of industrial digital technological innovation—in the steel industry. The article brings to debates on the digital workplace a discussion of the relationship between the material forces of production and the social relations within which they are embedded (Edwards and Ramirez, 2016). Drawing on interview data from two European industrial sites, we suggest that the increasing use of drones is likely to be complicated by a number of social, economic and legal factors, the effects of which are, at best, extremely difficult to predict. Introduced for their potential as labour-saving devices, drones seemingly offer a safer and more efficient way of checking for defects in remote or inaccessible areas. However, whilst employers might imagine that digital technologies, like drones, might substitute, replace, or intensify labour, the workplace realities described by our interviewees make insertion highly contingent. We highlight several such contingencies, with examples of the ways that the steelworkers’ interests differ from those of their employers, to discuss how the insertion of digital technologies will ultimately be shaped by the power, interests, values and visions prevailing in the workplace, as well as in the wider polity and public culture.

Publisher

Consortium Erudit

Subject

Management of Technology and Innovation,Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management,Strategy and Management

Cited by 3 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Negotiating limits on algorithmic management in digitalised services: cases from Germany and Norway;Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research;2022-12-23

2. Collective regulation and the future of work in the digital economy: Insights from comparative employment relations;Journal of Industrial Relations;2022-05-18

3. Exploring contributions of drones towards Industry 4.0;Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application;2021-11-30

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