Our research cluster brings together critical management and sociological research focused on researching and supporting the development of democratic, inclusive, sustainable and meaningful futures of work. It examines power, inequality, labour relations and work imaginaries, challenging technocratic and market-led narratives shaping how work is organised and valued.
The Futures of Work cluster brings together interdisciplinary research examining how work is being reshaped, reimagined and governed in contemporary societies. Grounded in critical management studies and the sociology of work, the cluster adopts a human-centred perspective that places people, power and lived experience at the heart of debates about work futures. It focuses on how economic change, technological development, labour relations and cultural narratives interact to shape emerging forms of work, employment and organisation.
Rather than treating future work trajectories as technologically determined or economically inevitable, the cluster approaches futures of work as socially produced and politically contested. Research interrogates dominant narratives around innovation, automation, flexibility and productivity, asking whose interests these narratives serve and how they redistribute power, risk and responsibility across workers, organisations and institutions. Human-centrism in this context means foregrounding human dignity, agency, voice and wellbeing, and resisting approaches that reduce work to efficiency metrics, optimisation or technological capability alone.
A central strand of the cluster’s work examines changing employment relations and worker voice, including trade unions, collective organisation, and new forms of representation under conditions of labour market restructuring, precarity and platform-based work. Alongside this, the cluster critically analyses managerial ideologies and organisational cultures, including discourses of purpose, entrepreneurship and self-realisation, exploring how they shape identities, consent and resistance at work.
The cluster also emphasises the role of imagination and representation in shaping work futures. Research explores how future work imaginaries are produced through policy, management discourse, media and cultural forms, and how alternative imaginaries, drawing on feminist, postcolonial and Afro-futurist perspectives, challenge dominant Western, technocratic and market-led visions of work. These perspectives open up possibilities for rethinking what meaningful, valuable and sustainable work could look like.
Across all strands, the cluster foregrounds inclusion and sustainability. It is committed to researching and supporting the development of democratic, inclusive, sustainable and meaningful futures of work, contributing critical, human-centred insight to academic debate, public policy and organisational practice.
Khalid, N., Paraskevopoulou, A., Baric, M. and Ali, S. (2026) ‘Redefining service convenience: developing and validating the inclusive service convenience (INSCON) scale’, Journal of Services Marketing.
Land, C. (2025) ‘Craft as an ambivalent future of work: from deskilling and nostalgia to neo-craft fetishism and the gentrification of labour’. In: Rees, C., Bozkurt, Ö., Limoncelli, S. and Preminger, J. (Eds.) (2025) Handbook on the Sociology of Work. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 224-237.
Marcolin, A., Saatçi, B., Toraldo, M. L. and Land, C. (2025) ‘Leisure, hustle and career: Informal skills acquisition in accordion repairing’, Management Learning. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076251392834
Weik, E., Hartz, R. and Land, C. (Eds.) (2024) The Handbook of Organizational Transformation. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Halari, A. and Baric, M. (2023) 'Exploring the role of accountants in a circular economy: Experiences and Perspectives of Practitioners', Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management.
Tregaskis, O., Graham, J., Baric, M., Harvey, V., Maguire, D., Michaelides, G., Nayani, R. and Watson, D. (2023) 'Organisational Change towards Sustainability: From Ambition to Impact through mindsets and communities of practice'. In: Di Fabio, A. and Cooper C. (Eds.) Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development in Organizations. Abingdon: Routledge.
Watson, D., Wallace, J., Land, C. and Patey, J. (2023) ‘Re-organising wellbeing: contexts, critiques and contestations of dominant wellbeing narratives’, Organization, 30(3), pp. 441-452.
Nayani, R., Baric, M., Patey, J., Fitzhugh, H., Watson, D. M., Tregaskis, O. and Daniels, K. (2022) 'Authenticity in the Pursuit of Mutuality During Crisis', British Journal of Management, 33(3), pp. 1144-1162.
Langmead, K., Land, C. and King, D. (2020) ‘Can management ever be responsible? Alternative organizing and the three irresponsibilities of management’. In: Laasch, O., Jamali, D., Freeman, E. and Suddaby, R. (Eds.) (2020) The Research Handbook of Responsible Management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.