Research Agenda
Modern slavery: towards finding dignity and meaning in work
2023 - ongoing: Starting from exploring modern slavery in corporate settings, I also expanded my research to study
the work lives of blue-collar workers, such as migrant workers (East-European agricultural and construction workers in Western Europe) and workers from the Roma community.
I am interested in studying:
- the impact of working in conditions that are exploitative, including stress, trauma, and its effect on well-being.
- how individuals and groups of workers resist conditions of modern slavery and exploitation
- how technology can be used or misused in the context of modern slavery at the organizational level, including surveillance, worker tracking, and digital platforms for worker engagement and reporting.
- how workplace culture and practices can either foster environments conducive to exploitation or prevent them.
AlgoCon: How algorithmic control shapes the future of work and private life
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2022-2025: Funded by a CY Emergence grant, €40,000 (principal investigator)
Team members: Marie-Léandre Gomez & Thomas Huber
How does algorithmic control shape the future of work and private life? With the emergence of new digital technologies, companies have a growing set of tools powered by algorithms at their disposal to monitor and manage employee performance, well-being and motivation. Employees themselves, often encouraged by their employers, also regularly monitor and intervene on their bodily performances and energy levels. However, due to the evolving and fluid nature of algorithmic control, which is distinct from traditional forms of control, the consequences of these tools, as well as their temporal, ethical, and performance implications, remain unresolved issues in research and practice. Better understanding of algorithmic control is important because of its powerful implications at the individual, organizational and societal levels. Building on my previous research and the complementary expertise of the research team members, the aim of the AlgoCon project is to produce novel insights into the use of algorithmic control as well as employees’ experiences and response to them in both their work and private lives.
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This project is interdisciplinary. It builds on state-of-the art research in management, accounting, information systems and consumer research to produce insights that cannot be obtained within any single discipline.
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The project’s scope is ambitious. First, it is ground-breaking in that it will study algorithmic control and its consequences in both the organizational and the private spheres as well as their interplay. Second, to obtain both depth and breadth of insights, it will consist of three different, but inter-related, work packages (two empirical-qualitative and one theoretical), and will use innovative research methods such as visual ethnography.
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2016-ongoing: Control & temporality in professional service firms (PSFs)
This research project is a continuation of the Marie-Curie Project (2014-2016) and involves conducting longitudinal interviews with some of the professionals I met in London.
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Themes explored:
- how organizational and performance controls can produce overwork and their impact on professionals' well-being
- exploring the culture of busyness in organizations and their impact on workers' mental-health and well-being
- how busy work lives shape consumption and lifestyles outside work.
- exploring and theorizing how consumption is accelerated as a result of being entrained by accelerated work
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2014-2016: Marie-Curie Project: Work-life conflict and identity in professional settings
Funded by a IEF Marie Curie Fellowship, € 232,000
This project involved conducting 146 in-depth, semistructured interviews with 81 professionals during 2015 and 2016. These interviews aimed to explore work-life conflict by understanding professionals’ daily work practices. Participants were drawn from two knowledge-intensive firms: a leading global auditing firm and a law firm, respectively.
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During this research, temporality emerged as a very important theme as busyness, overwork and intense work were pervasive in these settings. Thus, papers based on this project explore how organizational controls such as deadlines and timetables shapes professionals’ experiences with temporality. We coin the term “optimal busyness” a specific kind of temporal experience that professionals search for because it makes them feel energized and productive as well as in control of their time.
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Doctoral thesis (2011): La construction de l’identité des femmes experts-comptables en France
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The doctoral thesis (in French) can be downloaded here: https://theses.hal.science/tel-01161462
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The thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of women public accountants’ identity construction. The empirical data presented in this dissertation is based on over 40 semi-structured biographic interviews with women and men, public accountants and trainees. Based on my findings, I highlight the existence of an approved organizational path characterized by linear, constant upward mobility and submitted to organizational norms. This professional model, constructed as masculine, does not appeal to a majority of women, and especially mothers, who decide to have recourse to alternative professional models. These models lack the legitimacy of approved routes and often imply a derailment of women’s careers right from the early days. Moreover, this study focuses on the interaction between professional identity and motherhood. I show that in constructing their identity women dwell on socially defined roles and organizationally available discourses that may be in contradiction with each other. Nevertheless, their identities are not fragmented, but are the result of a continuous effort to integrate contradictory discourses in an ongoing biography. In addition, I highlight two types of strategies that women professional accountants use: strategies to deal with motherhood and strategies of work management. Their analysis allow me to draw the conclusion that women accountants impose new work practices that are mostly adaptive and do not really succeed in altering the current ones.
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My doctoral thesis received a publication prize and appeared as “Carrières de femmes” at Vuibert Editions in 2014:
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