Digitalisierung, soziale Klasse und Corona: Berufliche Ungleichheiten in der Organisation des pandemiebedingten Homeoffice

Niehoff Steffen () and Holst Hajo ()
Additional contact information
Niehoff Steffen: Universität Osnabrück, Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Seminarstr. 33, 49074 Osnabrück, Deutschland.
Holst Hajo: Universität Osnabrück, Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, Seminarstr. 33, 49074 Osnabrück, Deutschland.

Arbeit, 2023, vol. 32, issue 3-4, 305-328

Abstract: Contributing to the research on inequalities in the digitalization of work, this article focuses on remote work during the Corona pandemic. Using Daniel Oeschʼs class approach, it examines the influence of the occupational position on the organization of the digitally enabled home office during the Corona crisis. Logistic regressions show that class position not only determines access to the home office and the extent to which people work from home. Class position also has a strong influence on work design in terms of quality of the workplace at home, the governance of remote work and its integration into the firm’s systems. On the one hand, lower classes are multiply underprivileged: Workers in skilled and unskilled jobs are significantly less likely to have the opportunity to work from home during the pandemic, and when they do have the opportunity, they spend less time in home office. In addition, they suffer more often from deficits in work design including incomplete technological equipment, lack of ergonomics, low autonomy, distrust by supervisors and integration deficits. On the other hand, technical experts, academic jobs with technical background, enjoy the most comfortable situation. They have higher odds of ending up in home office during the pandemic, spending larger shares of time there, and working under appropriate conditions. Empirically, the paper is based on qualitative interviews (n = 35) and a survey in which more than 10,000 employees participated in spring 2021 and 2022.

Keywords: Digitalization; remote work; work conditions; social class; SARS-CoV-2; Digitalisierung; Homeoffice; Arbeitsbedingungen; soziale Klasse; SARS-CoV-2; Digitalization; remote work; work conditions; social class; SARS-CoV-2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/arbeit-2023-0019 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:arbeit:v:32:y:2023:i:3-4:p:305-328:n:7

DOI: 10.1515/arbeit-2023-0019

Access Statistics for this article

Arbeit is currently edited by Gerhard Bosch, Katrin Hansen and Arne Heise

More articles in Arbeit from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().