This seminar explores how surveillant concepts can help draw together accounts of worker control and resistance in Industry 4.0. It draws upon the findings of a systematic review on the extension of workplace surveillance in recent times. Across professions, hierarchies, and organizational boundaries, worker performance, location, behaviour and reputation are now more visible to organizations. Although remote working has caused a spike in this visibility, broader innovation in analytical techniques, wearable devices, the platformisation of work and the cheap availability of worker monitoring apps are contributing to what is seen by many an intensification of workplace surveillance. With research findings scattered across the social sciences, the seminar draws together and theorises this new body of work using a surveillance studies lens.
