Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation

About the Journal

The globalisation of world trade in combination with the use of information and communications technologies is bringing about a new international division of labour, not just in manufacturing industries, as in the past, but also in work involving the processing of information.

Organisational restructuring shatters the unity of the traditional workplace, both contractually and spatially, dispersing work across the globe in ever-more attenuated value chains.

A new ‘cybertariat’ is in the making, sharing common labour processes, but working in remote offices and call centres which may be continents apart and occupying very different cultural and economic places in local economies.

The implications of this are far-reaching, both for policy and for scholarship. The dynamics of this new global division of labour cannot be captured adequately within the framework of any single academic discipline. On the contrary, they can only be understood in the light of a combination of insights from fields including political economy, the sociology of work, organisational theory, economic geography, development studies, industrial relations, comparative social policy, communications studies, technology policy and gender studies.

This journal aims to bring together insights from all these fields to create a single authoritative source of information on the new global division of labour, combining theoretical analysis with the results of empirical research in a way that is accessible both to the research community and to policy makers. 

Aims & Scope

The Journal aims to:

• Provide a single home for articles which specifically address issues relating to the changing international division of labour and the restructuring of work in a global knowledge-based economy.
• Bring together the results of empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative, with theoretical analyses in order to inform the development of new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the restructuring of work, organisational structures and labour in a global context.
• Be global in scope, with a particular emphasis on attracting contributions from developing countries as well as from Europe, North America and other developed regions.

• Encourage a dialogue between university-based researchers and their counterparts in international and national government agencies, independent research institutes, trade unions and civil society as well as other policy makers. Subject to the requirements of scholarly peer review, it is open to submissions from contributors working outside the academic sphere and encourages an accessible style of writing in order to facilitate this goal.
• Complement, rather than compete with, existing discipline-based journals.
• Bring to the attention of English-speaking readers relevant articles originally published in other languages.

Journal Information

The Journal is published twice a year, in July and December. The Journal is indexed in Scopus. The Journal’s website can be found here.

Editorial Board

Editor

Ursula Huws, Professor of Labour and Globalisation, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Editorial Board

Ludmila Abilio, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Labour and Trade Union Studies, University of Campinas, Brazil

Moritz Altenried, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Ricardo Antunes, Professor of Sociology, University of Campinas, Brazil

Chris Benner, Department of Geography, University of California at Davis, USA

Michael Brookes, Professor of Human Resources, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Enda Brophy, Associate Professor, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Manuel Castells, Emeritus Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Mikyung Chin, Department of Political Science, Ajou University, Korea

Nicole Cohen, Associate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada

Premilla D’Cruz, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India

Jörg Flecker, Professor of Sociology, University of Vienna, Austria

Brian Garvey, Lecturer in Work, Employment and Organisation, University of Strathclyde, UK

Sujata Gothoskar, International Union of Food Workers, Mumbai, India

Mark Graham, Professor of Internet Geography, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, UK

Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, UK

Christoph Hermann, Lecturer, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Jing Hiah, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Tsvetelina Hristova, Teaching Fellow in Global Media Management, University of Southampton, UK.

Greti-Iulia Ivana, lecturer in Sociology, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK.

Anne Jourdain, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Social Science Research Institute (IRISSO), Paris-Dauphine University, France

Eleni Kambouri, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Gender Studies, Panteion University of Social and Political Science, Athens, Greece.

Vassil Kirov, Institute of Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

Bettina-Johanna Krings, Head of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis Unit, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Wing-Fai Leung, Director of Research, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, UK

Tatiana Mazali, Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Polytechnic of Torino, Italy

Pamela Meil, Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung (ISF), Germany

George Morgan, Associate Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia

Rajneesh Narula, Professor of International Business Regulation, University of Reading Business School, UK

Manuel Nicklich, Researcher, Nuremberg Campus of Technology (NCT) at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

Maurilio Pirone, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Bologna, Italy

Sabine Pfeiffer, Professor of Sociology, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

Jaka Primorac, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Development and International Relations, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Markus Promberger, Head of Welfare, Labour and Social Inclusion Research, IAB (Institute for Employment Research), Federal Employment Agency, Germany

Monique Ramioul, Head of Labour Sector, Higher Institute of Labour Studies, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

Ned Rossiter, Professor of Communication, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia

Neil Spencer, Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK.

Paul Stewart, Senior Research Professor, Sociology of Work and Employment, Département, Homme Organisation et Société, Grenoble School of Management, France.

Aditi Surie, Consultant, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, India.

Geert van Hootegem, Professor of Sociology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Patricia Vendramin, Professor of Sociology, University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Instructions for Authors

Please see the submission guidelines here.

Special Edition: Call for papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Submissions is 30th September, 2024. This special issue proposes to explore the continuum of globalized domesticities by examining the various social and spatial boundaries that exist between employers and employees across a diversity of work settings. The editors This special issue will be edited by: Claire Cosquer, University of Lausanne (UNIL), Sébastien Chauvin, University of Lausanne (UNIL), and Julien Debonneville, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western Switzerland (HETSL | HES-SO).

Contact Information

Journal’s Editor, Ursula Huws, ursulahuws@analyticapublications.co.uk

Publisher Pluto Journals, evek@plutojournals.com

WOLG community & membership.

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation (WOLG) is more than just a journal. It has evolved into an extended global community of scholars interested in developing a dialogue about the changing nature of work and labour organisation that crosses disciplinary and national boundaries. Going open access and making all our articles free to read has more than tripled our readership and greatly increased this community. We receive positive feedback from many quarters. Policy makers tell us that they value the way WOLG makes them aware of new developments in the world of work. PhD students and early career researchers working in new or interdisciplinary fields say our articles help them to identifying the key authors and issues and more established scholars rely on us as a way of staying in touch with rapidly changing debates. We are also praised for helping to bridge the ‘North-South divide in academia’.

Become a member to join and support the WOLG community. Now that the journal is open access, with all articles available to read for free, we have no guaranteed flow of income and are reliant on voluntary contributions. You can help support our work by becoming a supporting member. There are three levels of membership.Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation has been published, by Pluto Journals, since January 2007 and from January 2021 it became a fully Open Access Journal meaning all articles are free to read, creating a wider, more diverse and truly international readership. In our first year of being Open Access, on ScienceOpen, more than 143,310 people around the world read one of our articles. Join as a WOLG member below or donation to support the journal, sharing learning and the dissemination of best practice and to be part of a movement for change. 

WOLG individual membership higher fee £25 Annual (WOLG Individual membership higer fee is for those on a full salary.)

WOLG individual membership lower fee £10 Annual (WOLG individual membership lower fee is for students or individuals on low-income. We invite you to select this category if you fit these categories.) 

WOLG Institutional membership fee £50 Annual (WOLG Institutional membership is for university departments, government bodies, trade unions or other institutions.)