The industrial relations of China’s internet industry: Politics, technology, and labour activism
This thesis is organised around a collection of articles on the work experience of technology workers in China’s internet industry. It adopts a pluralist industrial relations approach and comments on themes that go beyond the Marxist tradition of labour studies in sociology. Both macro- and micro-angles are deployed in the investigation of a leading Chinese internet company, Digitech (pseudonym); a separate case study of Alibaba also is included. Drawing on qualitative methodologies – including 61 interviews, workplace observations, policy documentation and analysis – this thesis investigates the work experience of China’s technology workers, particularly with regard to how this experience is affected by government policies and the implementation of digital management technologies in the workplace. It also explores motivations for collective action by technology workers and the challenges they face in reality. Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical tradition and explains the benefits of the pluralist industrial relations approach used in this research project. It also gives details of the research design and methodologies, including considerations of research ethics during the design, fieldwork and write-up stages of this doctoral project. The empirical chapters follow. Chapter 2 argues that the Chinese government plays a significant role in shaping the collective work experience in business reality by promoting competition within the business sectors. It also finds that the censorship of online labour activism and ambiguity in court decisions have lowered the interest of technology workers in organising and defending their rights. Chapter 3 documents how technology workers are managed through digital technology and details the impacts of this management approach on their working and living conditions, namely an increase in work intensity and an intensification of competition among workers. It also shows that workers gain higher incomes but proportionately lower shares of the gains from their increased productivity. All of these characteristics contribute to a new form of digital Taylorism. Chapter 4, a case study of the latest example of labour activism in China’s internet industry, argues that despite the Chinese government’s expanding efforts to exert authority over society, technology workers remain militant in defending their rights against workplace sexism. Chapter 5 reflects on the research methodologies deployed in this study, arguing that the state control and surveillance of citizens on both the physical and online terrain can have important yet scant-discussed implications for the conduct of academic fieldwork. Lastly, Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by revisiting the industrial relations system and job quality in China’s internet industry. It also provides recommendations for policy and academic communities, presents some limitations of the current research, and describes some directions that might be taken by research based on the foundation built by this dissertation.
China, digital management, Internet Industry, labour activism, pluralist industrial relations
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