[AISWorld] 2nd CFP: IFIP Joint Working Conference 2020, Hyderabad (India), 10-11 Dec. 2020

[Divya Sharma]

*The future of digital work: the challenge of inequality*



Second call for papers for Joint Conference of IFIP Working Groups:



8.2 Information Systems and Organization

9.1 ICT and Work

9.4 Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries



Hyderabad, India, December 10. – 11. 2020



Keynote speakers:



*Renana Jhabvala*, social activist associated with the Self-Employed
Women’s Association (SEWA)



*Michael Barrett*, Professor from U. of Cambridge, UK with a long-standing
interest in digital work and innovation



Program chairs: Rajendra Bandi, Eric Monteiro, Ranjini Raghavendra



Digital technologies, so much more than mere ‘tools,’ seep into and shape
our everyday lives in unprecedented, hence uncharted, manners.
Digitalisation is both an enabler and multiplier for far-reaching
transformation of private and professional lives, at individual, community,
organizational, industry-wide and societal levels.  However, digital
transformation also raises challenges of better or worse quality of life
and work, social inclusion/exclusion, (non)discrimination, (un)employment,
and civic (non)participation.



Digitalisation plays a key role in the way we live our lives and is
transforming what it means to work. From new ways of restructuring existing
work including an increasing ability to work from virtually anywhere, to
collaborating across geographical regions. At the same time, job-matching
sites are changing and expanding the way individuals look for work and how
companies identify and recruit talent. Independent workers are increasingly
choosing to offer their services on digital platforms challenging
conventional ideas about how and where work is undertaken. Advances in
robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are ushering a new
age of digitalisation and automation as machines match or outperform human
performance in a range of work activities, including ones requiring
cognitive capabilities. Digitalization will have far-reaching impact on the
global workforce involving independent contractors, freelance gig workers,
fissured work and outsourced services. The changing nature of work through
digital platforms is leading to new ways of control, coordination and
collaboration within and between organisations and individual workers.



The changes will not only challenge the existing work models, but also
influence wages, income and skills. Major transitions lie ahead and could
lead to income polarisation and inequality. Technology hubs and online work
centres tend to be located in urban areas and operate in English,
encouraging investment by policy makers in infrastructure such as roads and
transport while neglecting to support the more traditional sectors such as
agriculture or artisanal industry in rural areas. This implies
digitalization is deeply implicated in the changes required to address our
global challenges such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals
for health, education, wellbeing and security or as put by Thomas Piketty
(2014),* the challenges of inequality*.



The notion of the ‘digital divide’ between the global South and North,
while much discussed in academic and policy literature raises numerous
issues as a result of the changing nature of work (Allen 2017; Avgerou and
Walsham 2017; Roberts et al. 2014). Differences in opportunities are
presented to individuals, communities, or organisations by technologies,
mainly as a consequence of deficits in access to the technologies, capacity
to use them, relevant contextual content and appropriate application. How
then does inclusion into the digital economy operate? Inclusion is not just
a mirror image of exclusion, and that to achieve inclusion, it is not
sufficient to curb exclusion mechanisms, but to enhance positive measures
of inclusion. As Herbst (1974) put it to underscore the social significance
of work, “the product of work is men”. However, participation in work-life
is highly varied across a number of dimensions including gender, developed
vs developing regions, temporal vs permanent employment, migrant workers,
entrepreneurship opportunities. The dichotomy between online and ‘real’
life is dismantling, making our online behaviour embedded into rather
outside of our everyday lives (Faraj et al. 2011). Digital online platforms
are vehicles for community building and sharing, for instance in the form
of open source or crowdsourcing. Simultaneously, the traces we willingly if
not always consciously leave of our online lives is the source of tech
companies’ harvesting of behaviour data for their own commercial purposes
(Zuboff 2019).



The IFIP Working Groups 8.2, 9.1 and 9.4 have a long history of
supplementing the dominant technology-push accounts of digitalization with
socially informed ones. This joint conference brings together these three
groups for the much-needed analysis of the social pre-conditions,
engagement and consequences of digitalization visibility. With increasingly
vocal proclamations of the consequences of digitalisation, there is a need
for socially informed analysis of the uptake of digitalisation for work and
everyday life in the manner traditionally promoted by all three of the IFIP
working groups. The conference seeks to stimulate and encourage critical
discussion of potential shifts in the changing world of work, organisations
and its implications in the developing world.



The venue for the joint IFIP conference is Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad and
Bangalore are key manifestations of the ongoing struggle of the Global
South to tap into, not to say drive, the new digital economy. The
conference will facilitate a reflection and discussion about the
experiences with India’s efforts so far. With a population exceeding 1.2
billion, India is important in itself but even more so as an early and
ambitious example of engaging in the value generation of the digital
economy.



For the joint IFIP WG 8.2, 9.1 and 9.4 conference in 2020 we are
seeking rigorous
and relevant empirical (qualitative and quantitative) studies as well as
conceptual and theoretical papers apprising digitalisation in terms of the
future of work, organizing and development.



We solicit full research papers with maximum length of 8000 words. The
submission site will open in early March and close on May 27, 2020.
Notification about acceptance will be sent on July 30. The accepted full
papers will be included in the proceedings.



We also solicit research-in-progress papers in the form of extended
abstracts, with maximum length of 2000 words plus references. The
submission deadline for these is September 10, with notification of
acceptance a month later. These papers will be worked on in thematically
grouped Paper Development Sessions and they will not appear in the
proceedings.



If coming from a developing country as classified by the United Nations,
authors with accepted papers can apply for travel grants.



*Important dates*:



December 9, 2019                      Second call for papers distributed

May 27, 2020                              Deadline for submitting full
papers

July 30, 2020                               Notification of accepted full
papers

September 10, 2020                  Deadline for submitting research-in
progress papers

October 20, 2020                       Notification of accepted
research-in-progress papers

December 10 – 11, 2020          Conference in Hyderabad, India



*References:*

Allen, J.P. (2017). *Technology and inequality: concentrated wealth in a
digital world. *Palgrave.

Avgerou, C, and Walsham, G. eds. (2017) *Information technology in context:
Studies from the perspective of developing countries*. Routledge, 2017.

Faraj, S., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Majchrzak, A. (2011). Knowledge
collaboration in online communities. Organization science, 22(5), 1224-1239.

Herbst, P. G. (1974). *Socio-technical Design: Strategies in
Multi-disciplinary Research*. London: Tavistock Publications.

Piketty, T. (2014). *Capital in the Twenty-First Century*. Harvard
University Press.

Roberts, J.T., Hite, A. B. & Chorev, N. (Eds.) (2014). *The Globalization
and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change,*2nd
Ed.Wiley-Blackwell.

Zuboff, S. (2019). *The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for the
future at the new frontier of power*. Profile Books.

-- 
Thanks and Regards,
Divya Sharma

Assistant Professor, Management Information Systems Area
Indian Institute of Management Rohtak
Homepage:
https://www.iimrohtak.ac.in/index.php/faculty/31-faculty/138-divya-sharma

-- 


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