Browsing by Person "Ruiner, Caroline"

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Digital technologies at work: On the role of the human factor in a digital work environment using the example of truck drivers in Germany
(2024) Straub, Sarah Maria; Ruiner, Caroline
Digitalization as a megatrend and enabler for increasing efficiency has long been the focus of research concerning competitiveness and the optimization of economic processes. However, the use of digital technologies in the workplace facilitates and necessitates novel forms of interaction between humans and technology. This is associated with transformations in the nature of work regarding working conditions, work processes, and employment relationships, posing new challenges for workers and organizations. The use of digital technologies imposes new demands on the human workplace, accompanied by both positive and negative changes in working conditions, and occupational health and safety, which are often overlooked. On the one hand, the emergence of new employment models entails risks such as insecurity, exploitation, and excessive workload. On the other hand, digitalization has the potential to alleviate workers from demanding tasks, thereby improving working conditions. Within this controversial debate, the precursors and consequences of the use of digital technologies remain ambiguous, as does the role of the human worker in this context. Consequently, the question of what factors determine the role of workers in digital workplaces is an ongoing topic in the discourse surrounding digital transformation in the work context. Concurrently, the transition from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 demonstrates an increasing focus on humans and their needs as the foundation for designing digital workplaces. Central to this is the consideration of human-machine collaboration, where the human factor contributes significantly to the successful and efficient use of digital technologies. In the logistics sector, the discussion around the human factor has primarily encompassed empirical studies involving warehouse workers, such as order pickers or workers in packaging. However, truck drivers, their working conditions, and their role in the context of utilizing digital technologies have received little attention. Truck drivers play a pivotal role in the supply chain, serving as key actors in delivery processes and contributing to efficient transportation links. Their working conditions are characterized by high demands, responsibility, and a multitude of stressors, including time pressure, high physical and mental strain, lack of social interaction, unpredictable factors along the route, and conflicting expectations from various stakeholders in the supply chain. The use of digital technologies in the profession of truck driving exhibits ambivalent effects, with limited research exploring the impact on their working conditions and their role in the digital transformation. Furthermore, there are new modes of control that play a decisive role in connection with reorganized employment relationships and work processes. The implementation of digital technologies on the basis of the human factors’ needs contributes to maintain efficient and safe operations. Empirical studies focusing on truck drivers’ perceptions, experiences, challenges, and needs in relation to digitalization are thus necessary to ensure a human-centric approach when designing digital workplaces in the logistics industry. Against this background, the dissertation aims to explore the working conditions of truck drivers and their implications within digital work environments. The decent work approach thereby provides reference points for realizing humane workplaces. Moreover, this research delves into the multifaceted role of truck drivers, encompassing labor relations, work processes, and structural hierarchies within and beyond organizational boundaries. The Labor Process Theory provides the conceptual underpinning for this exploration. The overarching research question “How do digital technologies shape the human factor’s work environment, considering their perspectives on work, their role in work processes, labor relations, and organizational structures??” is answered by four papers. The findings of this dissertation offer an in-depth investigation of truck drivers’ individual perspectives concerning the impact of digital technologies. An expanded framework that correlates working conditions molded by digitalization with the attainment of decent work is presented, whereby the human factors’ perspectives form a crucial element within the digital workplace. All four research papers included in this dissertation serve this purpose by providing new insights into the perception and use of digital technologies, the resulting workplace characteristics, the emergence of workload in digitalized workplaces, and clues for the design of human-centered workplaces. The findings underscore the importance of truck drivers in the work process and reveal their dependence on uncontrollable factors such as traffic and weather conditions, which impact agreed-upon schedules, and consequently, their overall work planning. This gives rise to new modes of control and the possibility of exerting pressure on drivers. These factors influence the position of truck drivers in the supply chain and affect their working conditions in relation to the use of digital technologies. Thus, the findings provide a foundation for the design of humane digital workplaces, taking into account the perspectives and experiences of truck drivers. In answering the overarching research question, this dissertation essentially contributes to firstly, a better understanding the relevant criteria that should be considered from the workers’ perspectives when designing humane workplaces, and secondly, emphasizing the relevance of the individuals in socio-technical systems and their perception of digital technologies, as the perception determines whether the consequences of using digital technologies pose a risk or a benefit. Third, this dissertation contributes to exploring the role of human workers in digital workplaces from a labor process theory perspective.
Labour market collectivism: New solidarities of highly skilled freelance workers in medicine, IT and the film industry
(2022) Apitzsch, Birgit; Wilkesmann, Maximiliane; Ruiner, Caroline; Bassyiouny, Mona; Ehlen, Ronny; Schulz, Lena
Highly skilled freelance workers are mainly depicted as a challenge to trade unionism because of their mobility, market power and specific interests in organisational support. The authors explore the manifestations of collectivism of highly skilled freelance workers on the basis of semi-structured interviews with 14 highly skilled freelancers and 35 representatives of intermediaries such as trade unions, professional associations, staffing agencies and cooperatives in medicine, IT and film in Germany. The results reveal new forms and dynamics of labour market collectivism arising from concurrent conflicts and negotiations of job access and working conditions.
The problem of embedding: Towards a concept of embedding in the context of the triadic work relationship between freelancers, hiring firms, and agencies in German medicine and IT
(2025) Ehlen, Ronny; Ruiner, Caroline
In social sciences as well as in politics, there has been growing interest in the phenomenon of triadic work relationships between solo self-employed, hiring firms, and agencies in recent years. Most debates focus on rather low qualified work contexts, usually characterized by an oversupply of work. Instead, knowledge-intensive industries nowadays tendentially face a lack of qualified work supply. Thereby, these industries provide initial conditions that tend to favor freelancers. This holds in particular for German medicine and IT, where freelancers are offered better earning opportunities and working conditions than they would have as permanent employees in the same job. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid so far to triadic work relationships under those initial conditions. Therefore, this dissertation investigates the relationship between highly qualified solo self-employed (i.e. freelancers), hiring firms, and agencies in the knowledge-intensive industries of German medicine and IT. Moreover, existing research on triadic work relationships requires analytical instruments to understand and conceptualize the practices of solo self-employed, hiring firms, and agencies in and with regard to their triadic work relationship. In critical engagement with the embeddedness approach, the dissertation elaborates on this issue. While usually applied in a way that (post )rationalizes an actor’s practices as consequential regarding her or his social relations, here the active side of embeddedness is especially emphasized. It is argued that even though an actor is embedded somehow, she or he is nonetheless capable of reflecting on their embeddedness, developing sophisticated strategies, and intentionally exercising practices aiming at shaping their embeddedness in a – from the actor’s perspective – purposeful way. Thus, understanding an actor’s practices as an active dealing with her or his embeddedness according to the actor’s interests leads away from the rather theoretical problem of embeddedness, i.e. the question of how actors are embedded in social relations. Instead, it leads to the practical issue of how actors actually become embedded in a purposeful way. This issue is defined as the problem of embedding. Based on the consideration, that the problem of embedding in particular holds for contingent work relationships, this dissertation applies the basic conceptual framework to the empirical background of triadic work relationships between freelancers, hiring firms, and agencies in German medicine and IT. Against this background, the dissertation asks how the aforementioned triadic work relationship actors are related to the problem of embedding, how they deal with it, and what regularities and structures can be identified. It answers these questions by regarding to the findings of four papers that empirically address the triadic relationship between solo self-employed, hiring firms, and agencies in German medicine and IT. As a result, it develops the idea of embedding as a practice that strategically and intentionally aims at shaping an actor’s own embeddedness or the embeddedness of others, as far as it is intended to serve the actor’s own interests. Moreover, it shows that an actors’ embeddedness and embedding is related to a structural, political, and/or a cultural-cognitive dimension on a micro-, meso-, and/or macro-level. These dimensions and levels are interrelated and can be combined or played out against each other by the actors. Beyond that it is worked out that an actor’s derivation of embedding practices from her or his embeddedness is a (socio-)cognitive process that is related to perception and reflection. In contrast, shaping the actor’s embeddedness by embedding is a practical process that is related to legitimacy and context. Based on these findings a conceptual model of embedding is developed. In sum, the dissertation provides three major contributions: a) By working out the problem and the concept of embedding, it provides a novel perspective on (triadic) work relationships based on the embeddedness concept of Granovetter. b) By investigating the triadic relationship of freelancers, hiring firms, and agencies in medicine and IT, this dissertation extends our knowledge of triadic work relationships in knowledge-intensive fields. Thereby, it also examines the generalizability of existing findings on triadic work relationships in contexts characterized by rather low qualified work. c) By transferring the embeddedness approach to (triadic) work relationships, this dissertation examples the potential of relating the sociological subdisciplines of the sociology of work and the new economic sociology to each other.
Rahmenkonzept der Universitäten des Landes Baden-Württemberg für das High-Performance Computing (HPC) und Data-Intensive Computing (DIC) für den Zeitraum 2025 bis 2032
(2023) von Suchodoletz, Dirk; Heuveline, Vincent; Farrenkopf, Stefan; Neumair, Bernhard; Kohl-Frey, Oliver; Pfister, Alexander; Beutner, Jörg; Resch, Michael; Walter, Thomas; Nau, Thomas; Dorn, Raphael; Frank, Martin; Ruiner, Caroline; Schneider, Gerhard; Wesner, Stefan
Unlocking the power of generative AI models and systems such asGPT-4 and ChatGPT for higher education
(2023) Vandrik, Steffen; Urbach, Nils; Gimpel, Henner; Hall, Kristina; Decker, Stefan; Eymann, Torsten; Lämmermann, Luis; Mädche, Alexander; Röglinger, Maximilian; Ruiner, Caroline; Schoch, Manfred; Schoop, Mareike
Generative AI technologies, such as large language models, have the potential to revolutionize much of our higher education teaching and learning. ChatGPT is an impressive, easy-to-use, publicly accessible system demonstrating the power of large language models such as GPT-4. Other compa- rable generative models are available for text processing, images, audio, video, and other outputs – and we expect a massive further performance increase, integration in larger software systems, and diffusion in the coming years. This technological development triggers substantial uncertainty and change in university-level teaching and learning. Students ask questions like: How can ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence tools support me? Am I allowed to use ChatGPT for a seminar or final paper, or is that cheating? How exactly do I use ChatGPT best? Are there other ways to access models such as GPT-4? Given that such tools are here to stay, what skills should I acquire, and what is obsolete? Lecturers ask similar questions from a different perspective: What skills should I teach? How can I test students’ competencies rather than their ability to prompt generative AI models? How can I use ChatGPT and other systems based on generative AI to increase my efficiency or even improve my students’ learning experience and outcomes? Even if the current discussion revolves around ChatGPT and GPT-4, these are only the forerunners of what we can expect from future generative AI-based models and tools. So even if you think ChatGPT is not yet technically mature, it is worth looking into its impact on higher education. This is where this whitepaper comes in. It looks at ChatGPT as a contemporary example of a conversational user interface that leverages large language models. The whitepaper looks at ChatGPT from the perspective of students and lecturers. It focuses on everyday areas of higher education: teaching courses, learning for an exam, crafting seminar papers and theses, and assessing students’ learning outcomes and performance. For this purpose, we consider the chances and concrete application possibilities, the limits and risks of ChatGPT, and the underlying large language models. This serves two purposes: • First, we aim to provide concrete examples and guidance for individual students and lecturers to find their way of dealing with ChatGPT and similar tools. • Second, this whitepaper shall inform the more extensive organizational sensemaking processes on embracing and enclosing large language models or related tools in higher education. We wrote this whitepaper based on our experience in information systems, computer science, management, and sociology. We have hands-on experience in using generative AI tools. As professors, postdocs, doctoral candidates, and students, we constantly innovate our teaching and learning. Fully embracing the chances and challenges of generative AI requires adding further perspectives from scholars in various other disciplines (focusing on didactics of higher education and legal aspects), university administrations, and broader student groups. Overall, we have a positive picture of generative AI models and tools such as GPT-4 and ChatGPT. As always, there is light and dark, and change is difficult. However, if we issue clear guidelines on the part of the universities, faculties, and individual lecturers, and if lecturers and students use such systems efficiently and responsibly, our higher education system may improve. We see a greatchance for that if we embrace and manage the change appropriately.