Failures of Digitalization in the Workplace

Éditeurs invités

• Heiner Heiland, University of Göttingen
• Annemarie Kern, University of Göttingen
• Sarah Nies, University of Göttingen
• Samuel Rieger, University of Göttingen
• Matthias Sommer, University of Göttingen

Synthèse

This special issue examines widespread failures of digital technologies in the workplace, challenging narratives that treat digitalization as a solution to organizational challenges. Despite promises of improved efficiency and work conditions, major systems failures, abandoned IT projects, and everyday workplace malfunctions are common. The issue argues that examining these failures reveals fundamental contradictions in how digital technologies are designed and implemented within work organizations.

Research on digitalization failures remains sparse in labor studies despite their ubiquity in workplaces, with most attention directed toward technical aspects rather than the intersection of work processes and technology. This special issue seeks contributions analyzing failure as a systematic phenomenon embedded in operational contexts, power relations, and conflicting interests—not merely as technical malfunctions but as windows into structural contradictions in work organization.

Thèmes proposés

• Theoretical examination of failure in digital work processes, including concepts of technical rationality, solutionism, and sociological perspectives on inscription and closure
• Empirical investigation of processes and consequences of failure in digitized work, service, and production processes
• The role of technological expectations and promises in digital transformations and their relationship to actual outcomes
• Conflicts of interest and class dynamics in digitalization and their influence on success and failure
• Standards and measures of success for digital processes and attribution of failure
• Management and negotiation of digital technology failures within work processes
• Contradictions between technological promises and actual effects on work