Domains of work and the impact of digitalization

Introduction

The world of work in recent months and years has seen an acceleration of change, and the most significant impacts are probably still to be understood and seen.

Think, for example, of the shift of large proportions of workers from agriculture to industry and services, the difference between clerical work in the 1980s and that of today, and finally the impact of Covid on office work (1).

There is a widespread conviction among the most attentive observers that the change concerns the very Nature of Work, not only where it is carried out, and that technology, especially digital technology, will have a great impact on the organisation of Work, on its structure and on its main components, leading some to express very negative forecasts, the end of Work, and others to highlight many problems (2).

Despite these facts, the way in which we think about, organise, contract and remunerate work is struggling to evolve in the light of the new context, posing serious socio-economic questions. (3).

I believe it is therefore necessary to analyse the nature of work from the bottom up in order to debate and update the way it is organised, contracted and paid for.

Finally, I believe that in the light of this reflection many of the problems mentioned above can be recomposed and Labour will be able to grow and resume providing more secure and less controversial prospects.

Definition of 5 Domains

The debate on the new nature of work makes it possible to identify five ‘domains’ on which work is articulated and the impact of digitalisation can be analysed (4) (5).

Of course, like all conceptual architectures, these can be changed, expanded or revised, but I believe they serve to shed light on trends and dynamics that we all see and to suggest organisational and institutional responses.

These categories are clearly interdependent on each other and somehow merge/overlap in people’s practice and lives, somehow maintaining a balance and coexistence:

- The first is what I would call the domain of Imagination.

Every project, product, service, physical space is first of all imagined. This imagination starts from the general culture of the individual and his experiences and knowledge, including ethics, values and a vision of the future. The ability to imagine in a free, innovative, detailed and unprejudiced way, with a solid base, is a capacity that needs to be developed and maintained. The quality of responses to the needs of individuals and communities, in addition to their concrete implementation, depends very much on the quality and extent of the solutions imagined (e.g. how to solve a global challenge or how to improve the life of a neighbourhood or how to cure a disease or how to foster the economic growth of a region etc).

- Knowledge Domain

The interaction between people and reality, and between products/services and consumers, generates data and knowledge that are then poured into Imagination as a new fuel to innovate and propose solutions. Observation and continuous learning make it possible to create models, concepts and limit cognitive bias, so that reality can be analysed and managed. Characteristic of this domain is the use of the scientific method (every theory/knowledge must be proven with objective data or must be falsifiable).

- Domain of Technique.

Imagination then needs Technique to evaluate the feasibility and concreteness of projects and to be able to realise them. Similarly, Technique, whose dimensions are well known (finance, law, engineering, information technology, marketing, etc.), needs Imagination in order to have a clear and long-term direction. Technology often tends to reproduce the past and set limits which new techniques will then replace, generating new opportunities. Technique in turn is the basis not only for the realisation of services and products but for the analysis of reality itself.

- Domain of Language or Communication (6) .

Then there is the domain of Language in which metaphors, meanings, concepts and messages are generated and disseminated as the basis for defining reality and for the exchange of information between individuals. The social nature of human beings and their constructs makes the dimension of Communication and Language intrinsic to the very nature of reality, becoming a constitutive dimension of it. Every activity needs the use of Language to be coordinated, disseminated and explained.

- Domain of Practical or Presence Work

Every creation and activity, however immaterial it may be, is “objectified” and becomes concrete at some point in space, making Work “evident”. This has its own execution in time and space, with control tools in sync with purchase or consumption. Today this Work is in some cases carried out by machines and in others by people, but it represents the conclusion of the activities of a chain of subjects, scattered in time, carrying out activities in different Domains. This conclusion is often characterised by registration on a physical and concrete support, located in time and space (7).

To visualise these domains, you can imagine any activity, product or service we have around us.

Let’s think for example of when you make a design; first you imagine it, you find the supports and methods to make it, then you make it concrete, you disseminate it and finally you record the feedback from the environment. From these elements of knowledge, other people get new ‘fuel’ for their imagination and the circuit continues (8).

Impact of Digital and Technology on Work

We have all seen in recent months the potential ‘remotionalisation’ of large areas of Work, with overall positive effects on productivity, work/life balance and the environment (9).

Well, the impact of Technology, in particular with the advancement of Machine Learning and AI, is likely to be even more profound, helping to define the very structure and organisation of Work.

In fact, one of the dynamics of Technology is to allow a continuous evolution of Techniques and their efficiency, making it increasingly easy to create new products, services and ventures, provided that one knows how to imagine them and how to anticipate their impacts. This is also due to the possibility of supporting multidisciplinary collaboration between individuals with different skills and attitudes.

Market competition will therefore focus heavily on Imagination. In fact, the technical domain will allow fewer and fewer “monopolies” and the diffusion of collaborative practices will increase the degree of continuous evolution of techniques in the various specific fields.

Similarly, the diffusion of Knowledge, and the homogenisation of Language will allow for a widespread dissemination of culture, data and information, making knowledge and know-how increasingly transferable between different individuals.

It can be continued by discussing how the Presence Work phase is also continuously optimised by Technology that makes it faster and more efficient, eroding in some cases the need for human intervention or reshaping it over time.

Digital also has an impact by automatically and simultaneously recording the workflows of different actors in different domains, thus allowing for greater partitioning of individual activities, even asynchronously, abundant data collection and ultimately a new and more detailed division of labour.

General remarks

It is important to note that in all five domains we are talking about Work, albeit with different characteristics. Each Domain requires a specific organisation, contractualisation (10)and remuneration (11).

Analysing and getting to know the various Domains is therefore fundamental to organising work in a correct way, increasing productivity, innovation and the involvement of people.

It is therefore necessary to establish what skills, attitudes and organisations are needed to deal with each Domain effectively (12).

It is quite evident that up to now Imagination is a bit of a “Cinderella”, despite being probably the most scalable activity, dense in intellectual property and exposed to competition. Our future and the solution to our needs depend heavily on this domain.

It is interesting to note that traditional organisations, the domain of Technology, tend to stifle the space for Imagination, which is becoming increasingly important in the future.

Perhaps it is precisely an unclear definition of Work, in the light of the changes brought about by Technology, that is one of the causes of the low involvement of workers in organisations (13).

In the light of this analysis it is possible to reconsider the very negative predictions of the “End of Work” and instead contemplate a shift of the workforce from the domain of Presence to the domains of Knowledge, Technology and Imagination.

Future actions and Trends

The understanding of the nature of Work and the conscious use of Technology allow great opportunities to make people autonomous and free in creating/imagining/providing their own Work, providing them with the support of Technology, and allowing them to live a better life (14).

One can therefore imagine a Future of Work in which people are increasingly independent of their roles and past experiences and organisations are much freer to successfully organise projects in different areas and sectors, distributing responsibilities and promoting bottom-up initiatives.

In general, institutions, through the use of Technology and the consequent new organisation of Work, should aim to move as many people as possible from routine and in presence tasks to activities in which it is necessary to imagine, analyse data and use techniques.

Organisations will need to automate in-presence activities, structure themselves to allow continuous learning of Techniques and make the most of People’s Imagination capacity.

In this way, the physical presence of the person at the workplace can be reduced and optimised, while their remuneration can faithfully follow the productivity of the person according to their creativity, learning capacity and flexibility.

The evolution of our society and its sustainable growth will depend on our ability to imagine the future and to correctly remunerate work and activities in the various domains.

It will be possible to achieve greater social mobility and distribution of wealth according to each person’s talents, without gender, age or nationality discrimination.

A future in which everyone can imagine freely and be paid for it may already be on the horizon. For those who do not know or do not want to imagine the future, the “end of work” could be a scenario that gets closer every day.

Nicolò Boggian

1. The share of workers employed in agriculture is now below 10% in almost all ‘western’ countries, while the majority of those employed work in the service sector. The situation was diametrically opposed at the beginning of the 20th century. https://www.statista.com/statistics/256563/share-of-economic-sectors-in-the-global-gross-domestic-product/
2. Think, for example, of the decline in jobs in traditional sectors, the environmental crisis, the need to reskill large numbers of workers, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, or the difficulty of reconciling work and motherhood for women. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.SRV.EMPL.ZS?end=2019&start=1991
3. Yet there is a wealth, quality of life and productive capacity never before recorded in human history.
4. stimulated also by a recent speech by Massimo Cacciari on the “Work of the Spirit” at a conference organised by EY, see also https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020
5. The domains are simple conceptual constructs that occur in the reality of Work in a non-sequential and randomized way. they are not deepened from a philosophical point of view but are useful to support the theory of work indicated in the article.
6. Be careful not to confuse the nature of communication with the technical tools of communication (e.g. social media, TV, video, etc.).
7. Be careful, however, not to necessarily see a rigid sequencing of this kind, which I propose only to facilitate understanding. The various elements can intersect in a more complex and continuous way.
8. Think of the work of a software developer when he writes the code that powers a platform, a delivery man who brings us pizza or an ATM or the barrier that registers a toll crossing.
9. At global level, the Wef report, Future of Jobs, speaks of 44% of activities.
10. I do not agree with analyses that assert that social network users are working when they enter their data and therefore should be paid. The remuneration of Work depends on a client commissioning or deciding to buy the product and service.
11. Up to now the Presence/Concrete phase has been paid by exchanging the time of presence in the workplace for the work done to generate that value, to be able to practice it and make it “profitable”.
12. Clearly, it should not be an expert in administrative law who imagines the future any more than it can be a philosopher who manages the construction of a bridge. It makes no sense to pay for imagination ‘by the hour’, but for its depth and detail. We can then reason about locations, about the numerical composition of the teams needed to carry out the activities of the individual domains in the best possible way.
13. Gallup polls indicate a share of actively engaged company employees under 20%.
14. The definition of the role of technology is also to be imagined among several possible horizons. The proposal set out in the article is clearly not deterministic and reality may follow an opposite path.