The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy (Studies in Social Harm)

This book provides a qualitative account of working conditions within the contemporary service economy. As the largest employer in the modern labour market, investigating its realities demonstrates a number of problematic issues. The quest for profitability, efficiency and customer satisfaction drive a number of practices that can be interpreted from a social harm perspective. The use of zero-hours contracts, temporary work agencies, just-in-time management, lean working, and emotional labour, underpinned by targets and performance management reflect the imperatives of capital and the requirement for profitability. In relation to the employees who work in such precarious forms of employment, a number of harms appear. The ‘Victorian’ working conditions noted at individual operators such as Sports Direct are not anomalies but instead represent the normal functioning of the sector. In considering work from a social harm perspective, the book offers a unique contribution to the sociology of work and criminological or social harm studies. The social harm consideration of systemic violence is extended by an ultra-realist perspective that accounts for the symbolic violence of ideology and the problematic subjectivities willing to inflict harm on others. In its conclusions, the book asks for a consideration of the role of ideology and political economy in debates which seek to fix the harms of work. THE HARMS OF WORK Contents About the author Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction Service economy Harm and ultra-realist criminology Structure of the book 1. Reinterpreting social harm Introduction Social harm: traversing the legal and illegal Appraising social harm Harm from what? Finding an ontological grounding Towards an ultra-realist schema Ontology and the transcendental materialist subject Towards a new direction? 2. Restructuring labour markets Introduction Shackling the ‘animal spirits’ Capital ascendant Restructured labour markets Emergence of consumer capitalism From security to flexibility Crash and burn: the limits of debt-fuelled spending Labour markets in austerity Conclusion 3. Profitability, efficiency and targets Introduction Management strategies Targets, incentives and bonuses Maximising profitability ‘Facilitating the customer experience’ Conclusion 4. Absence of stability Introduction Contractual instability Rotas Progression Transitions Conclusion 5. Positive motivation to harm Introduction Bullying at work Cliques at work: inclusion and exclusion in the workplace Stealing sales Harmful customers The rise of the bailiff: special liberty at work Conclusion 6. Absence of protection Introduction Working for free Physical and legal protection Redundancy Mental ill health Conclusion 7. The violence of ideology Introduction Ideology From political economy to ‘tinkering at the edges’ Fixing the harms of work Facing reality Conclusion Conclusion Returning to harm References Index

As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of 'affective labour'. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur. Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.

"This is the first book to discuss workplace harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. It investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility - a central tenet of neoliberalism - and highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur. Reconnecting ideology and political economy with workplace studies, it uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy"--Back cover This book discusses workplace harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. It investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift to flexibility and highlights working conditions and organisational practices within which multiple harms occur. Discussing workplace harm through an ultra-realist lens, this text examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. It investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift to flexibility and highlights working conditions and organisational practices within which multiple harms occur