Due to unforeseen circumstances, this lecture has been cancelled. Apologies for any inconvenience.

 The academic study of work and employment has a long history and has helped us to understand the dynamics of employment relations, what makes for meaningful work and how work might be better organised for productivity and employee wellbeing.

Ethnographic approaches, rooted in industrial sociology have played an important role in this endeavour. Yet in the UK, studies of work tend to focus on the manufacturing often at the expense of the service economy. In this lecture, I will explore the importance of the service sector to the UK and global economy through the work of scholars that have paid attention to the specific relationship between employers, employees and customers. I will discuss the current challenges the service economy faces in the context of increasing automation, artificial intelligence and Brexit.

BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Brannan is Professor of Work, Employment and Organisation Studies at Keele Management School having joined Keele as a Lecturer in Management in 2004 from the Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester. His PhD was awarded from the University of Wolverhampton for a thesis that explored workplace resistance in a call centre environment. His research focuses on the growth of the service sector and the implications this has for contemporary experiences of work. His work often makes use of ethnographic techniques to gain an immersive insight into the world of work. He is currently working on understanding the processes of Employee Branding more fully and forms of misconduct at work, especially in relation to the Financial Services Industry.  He is founding editor of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography and a founder member of the Annual Liverpool, Keele Ethnography Symposium.

 

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