This paper explores the limitations of using algorithmic management on gig platforms in the Swedish basic service sector. We critically examine how the behaviour of all three actors in the triangular relationship between worker, platform and client deviated from the logic of app-based competitive bidding over the allocation of work; each being agential in bypassing the algorithmic management to engage in out-of-app activity. Our findings suggest the utility and limitations of algorithms differ between sectors of the gig economy. Crucially, the paper contributes to debates on gig worker agency by introducing the concept of opportunistic agency in the analysis of worker non-compliance. In focusing on more instrumental motivations for out-of-app activity our analysis offers a critical perspective on the pervasiveness, omnipotence and universality of algorithmic management.

The debate on regulation and employment relations covers a variety of academic approaches. Regulation theory has been important to widening the way we perceive regulation; going beyond the focus on institutional manifestations to understand the purpose and form of regulation in any given context. Notwithstanding various critiques, regulation theory encourages us to think of change across time and the shifts in the way the state intervenes and the manner in which regulation is structured in relation to both the economy and society. The chapter focuses on various debates within earlier French approaches to regulation theory, its later development within discussions on the state, and the emergence of a broader school of thought on regulation, especially in relation to regulatory space. The way we understand regulation varies, and the manner in which it is structured and contested is explained and evaluated. 

This paper compares responses to crises through analysis of labour market policy in Sweden and the UK between the Global Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic. In drawing on 'restructuring regimes', we offer insights into the dynamics of change in the two countries, focussing on the development of short-time working schemes. We argue that Sweden learned lessons from the GFC that helped prepare for future crises, whereas the UK's muted response left it ill-prepared for the COVID-19 crisis. The paper contributes to debates around restructuring regimes through an analysis of the journey between two crises in which we characterise Sweden's approach as proactive and pre-emptive and the UK's as reactive and ad hoc. By locating analysis in traditions of self-regulation and voluntarism in Sweden and the UK, respectively, we expand upon the role that industrial relations play in maintaining the stability, or not, of national restructuring regimes.

This article examines different orientations to planning in the context of the post-redundancy transition of workers in the Swedish steel industry. The aim of the article is to extend our understanding of the role of planning in careers transitions. Drawing on careers transitions theories, the article explores the qualitative experience of the journey between a redundancy event and the employment situation several years later. Within the careers literature planning is regarded as important to transitions, yet there is a tendency to present planning as an ongoing and lifelong process. By going beyond the prevalent focus within the career literature on managerial, professional or creative industries workers, the article raises the question of whether highly agential, ongoing, lifelong approaches to planning apply to everyone. Data are based on working-life biographical interviews conducted several years after redundancy. The findings show that although some participants resembled assumptions within the careers literature, there are key variations relating to ongoing planning, reflecting differences in the expectations of agency and perceptions of structural constraint. The analysis identifies three orientations to planning - strategic, episodic and truncated - and explores these in relation to both post-redundancy transition outcomes and, crucially, the experience of the transition journey.

This paper demonstrates the dynamics of legitimacy in integrative bargaining over restructuring. Through a case study of SteelCo, we show that cognitive legitimacy is essential to the identification of integrative potential, which interacts with pragmatic and moral legitimacy as bargaining evolves. Our findings also reveal the two-way interrelationship between legitimacy and bargaining: just as legitimacy impacts the bargaining process, the conduct and outcomes of bargaining impact legitimacy. Our analysis highlights the risk integrative bargaining presents for unions, as it can involve not a single act of compromise but a gradual weakening of resources predicated on their moral legitimacy among workers.

This article presents a study of how and to what extent gig workers in Sweden experience a mediatization of work. We contend that previous mediatization research has assumed extensive and unified effects of mediatization, and that previous gig work research has focused on users of large-scale, transnational platforms. We conducted a set of qualitative, semi-structured interviews (N = 28) with Swedish users of four different gig apps (all produced by very small companies active only in Sweden). We analyzed their experiences of mediatization along five dimensions: extension, substitution, amalgamation, accommodation, and datafication. We found that our respondents had much more varied, far less all-encompassing, experiences of mediatization than indicated in previous research. We also found respondents' experiences clearly framed by the smaller size of the local, Swedish gig work companies.

The chapter looks at how certain activities and related tensions have developed within the state with regards to decent work. It argues that attention needs to be paid to analysing the changing role of the state across four dimensions: how the state operates across boundaries; how different forms of regulation co-evolve; how the state sustains and builds on crisis moments in terms of the changing nature of its roles; and finally, how the state is able to sustain itself and its relative autonomy within a context of extreme political challenges. While the state remains important and has been innovative in various ways, it has begun to diversify its roles and relations –and to some extent fragment. © Jason Heyes, Janine Leschke, Kirsty Newsome, Michael Reich and Adrian Wilkinson 2025.

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the role of union strategic influence on the adoption of High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in organisations and examines how the effects of job security and then in turn the industrial relations climate, mediate this relationship in a serial manner. Design/methodology/approach: The research analyses an original quantitative survey of union negotiators and representatives in 382 workplaces in England. The analysis employs structural equation modelling techniques to examine the relationships between union influence, job security, industrial relations climate and HPWS. Findings: Union strategic influence has a positive effect on the take up of HPWS in unionised workplaces. Job security and the industrial relations climate demonstrate a serial mediation effect between union strategic influence and the take up of HPWS: union strategic influence has a positive effect on job security, which in turn positively impacts the industrial relations climate, thereby increasing the likelihood of the adoption of HPWS. The findings for the industrial relations climate are particularly strong. Practical implications: Findings suggest that organisations will benefit from focussing on the development of positive industrial relations, where unions have genuine strategic influence, because this maximises the likelihood that HPWS can be adopted and sustained. Originality/value: The paper provides a novel focus on the take up of HPWS within unionised workplaces. It focusses on the role of union strategic influence and the mediating effects of job security and the industrial relations climate, which are contextual factors that have been underexplored in the HPWS literature to date.

This chapter examines employer strategies in relation to migration. Drawing on literature within migration studies, HRM, employment relations and the sociology of work, it situates and explore the actions and strategies of one individual actor - the employer - within broader frameworks of regulation and migration governance and recognising the interactions between employers and other actors in the employment relationship. The chapter examines various aspects of research developed to investigate the relation between labour migration and employers, exploring the role of employer associations in shaping labour market regulations, the role of labour market intermediaries both in their capacity as employers and recruiters of migrant labour, and employers’ strategies in relation to refugees. The chapter argues for the need for a multi-level, multi-actor approach to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex ways that employer strategies and migration are related. © Guglielmo Meardi 2024.