A safer, faster, leaner workplace? Technical-maintenance worker perspectives on digital drone technology 'effects' in the European steel industry

Stroud, Dean ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9174-8967 and Weinel, Martin 2020. A safer, faster, leaner workplace? Technical-maintenance worker perspectives on digital drone technology 'effects' in the European steel industry. New Technology, Work and Employment 35 (3) , pp. 297-313. 10.1111/ntwe.12174

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Abstract

This paper focuses on technical‐maintenance worker perspectives on the insertion of digitised drone technologies in the European steel industry. The industry is aiming for a ‘business model transformation’ by means of digitalisation, which includes the use of drone technologies for maintenance functions. In this paper, we explore on what basis might such workers embrace or resist this new technology. Drawing on data from a project investigating the use of drones for a ‘safer, faster and leaner’ workplace, we employ an analysis of technology ‘effects’ to discuss the risks and benefits to workers of drone technologies (see Orlikowski, Organ. Sci., 3, 1992, 398; Edwards and Ramirez, New Technol. Work Employ., 31, 2016, 99). The insertion and use of drone technology within the industry raises questions for the industry’s highly skilled workers and their representatives on the ‘effect’ of drone innovations on the industry’s existing structures and patterns of work.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0268-1072
Funders:	European Commission Research Fund for Coal and Steel
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 September 2020
Date of Acceptance:	21 September 2020
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 00:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/134970

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