PERCEIVED RISKS REGARDING THE IMPACT OF DIGITALIZATION ON THE FUTURE OF WORK Towards a gap between the concerns
of academics and workers’ attitudes?
It has become a widespread belief that the future of work will necessarily involve digitalization. We often only present the good aspects of digitalization, namely innovation and added value. Service design, design thinking and living lab techniques
... [Show full abstract] are all based on the notion of co-production of new products and services, but co-production means that every employee should be involved in the innovation process of the company. However, little effort has been made so far to listen to people on the front line. Do they have an opinion on the issue? Do they perceive any risk in relation to these frantic developments in work automatization? We wanted to give them a voice in this exploratory inquiry without restraining them. Thus, we sought to collect opinions and comments on the risks perceived by white collar workers without judging or verifying whether these risks were relevant or whether they had any chance of materializing.
Thanks to 88 semi-directed interviews conducted in 2017, we were
able to take the digital pulse of the Geneva region, which is dominated by a service economy. We wanted to question the classic excuse
of project leaders in the field of digital transformation, who too easily
tend to point the finger at employees and their resistance to change as
an excuse for project failure. Since innovation in the service industry is
said to be more non-technological than technological, the perceptions of employees who resist change cannot be overlooked. The human factor must be taken into account to accompany the rather disruptive changes brought on by digitalization. It is also important to consider the notions of co-production that are at the core of the improvements and benefits that companies and their customers expect from digitalization. Through this survey, we aim to contribute to the field by understanding what employees think of and fear about digitalization at different levels, i.e. the individual, organizational and societal levels
