Team Jörg Flecker

10/2021 - 09/2024

More and more, people are encouraged to optimize their bodies and their way of living. Electronic tools providing feedback are often used for this purpose. In working life, organizational cultures increasingly demand individuals to control and optimize themselves while highly digitalized work settings tend to contribute to work intensification. In such a context, digital devices using biometric data may gain currency. These tools bear the risk of excessive (self-)optimization and thus foster ‘motivated self-endangerment’, i.e. to risk one’s health to advance professionally. However, such tools may also be used to help to protect employees’ health precisely under conditions of work intensification. The aim of the project is to explore the possibilities to use electronic tools providing feedback on states of the body to achieve a work-humanizing effect. To reach such an aim, a conscious and goal-oriented design of technology and specific social contexts of use are needed.

High workloads and stress levels are burning issues in many fields of white-collar work and thus of great interest to the general public. This project addresses these topic in a novel way. In particular, ShapeTech focuses the ambivalence between self-optimization on the one hand and health promotion on the other by exploring the design options and usage contexts of self-monitoring tools with the goal of humanizing highly digitalized work. In doing so, it will analyze how employees in such work environments use a self-monitoring tool based on biometric data to become aware of stressful situations at work. The project then investigates how workers may share their experiences in occupational health circles and how they may develop joint suggestions for improvements of work settings. The project will both promote humanized design and usage of self-monitoring tools currently gaining currency and explore the possibilities to use such tools to support the humanization of highly digitalized work settings. 

Cooperation with:
- Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
- TU Wien
- Working Life Research Centre, Vienna (FORBA)

09/2020 - 04/2023

Marienthal.reversed accompanies the world’s first job guarantee project, initiated and implemented by the AMS (Public Employment Service) for Lower Austria. The Modellprojekt Arbeitsplatzgarantie Marienthal (MAGMA, Marienthal job guarantee pilot project) is based on a three-year mixed-methods longitudinal approach and is targeted at the long-term unemployed in Gramatneusiedl, Austria. This project is intended as accompanying research to the social sciences study Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (the unemployed of Marienthal) by Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Hans Zeisel, based on a reversed research interest. It investigates the transition out of long-term unemployment into subsidised employment, as well as the effects of a job guarantee on the unemployed. Over the course of the project, the researchers carry out quantitative and qualitative surveys investigating the experiences and subjective perceptions of all project participants at regular intervals. The project aims to evaluate the job guarantee measure using a mixed-methods approach and to provide informative insights into how the measure is perceived, the transition out of long-term unemployment, the social participation of those affected as well as the changes to their realities of life. How do the persons surveyed experience the transition out of long-term unemployment, the period of unemployment and participation in the MAGMA project? How does the introduction of a job guarantee change the affected persons’ life satisfaction and self-efficacy, their health and health-related behaviour, their financial situation and the organisation of everyday life? Does the project lead to changes in social relations? Do the persons participating in the project experience respect and recognition, social inclusion or exclusion? The project team aims to investigate these issues in this accompanying study, designed as a research project that involves students enrolled on the master’s programme in Sociology.

12/2016 - 12/2022

The research project “Paths to the Future” is a longitudinal study using a variety of methods. Over the next 5 years (at least), the study will accompany young people in Vienna on their course through life and on their transition from an Austrian so-called new secondary school to other educational institutions, vocational education, labour market training measures and professional life. The observation of young people during these important stages of life enables us to identify opportunities and obstacles, significant events and actions of the participants. The survey focuses on different, interconnected stages during adolescence: educational system and vocational training, professional life and labour market training measures, family relationships and social networks as well as identity-forming processes and dynamics of youth culture. On the one hand, the project analyses lives in relation to social origin, educational success and labour market opportunities, as well as the conceived or promised, desired or dreaded future of young people in Vienna on the other hand. This project run by the Department of Sociology takes a holistic approach and involves all research areas of the Department, such as migration, work, family, culture, city or social inequality.

=> Project website

10/2017 - 05/2022

ÖAW Doc-team-Scolarship - Dominik Klaus and Benjamin Herr

Our world of work is constantly changing. The transformation from an industrial society to a service society is closely linked to developments in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) and has far-reaching implications for individuals: Life gets faster, more flexible and more complex. The use of ICT allows us to complete tasks when and where we like – especially in knowledge and office work. Mechanisms of acceleration and flexibilisation lead to the blurring of boundaries (dissolving boundaries) between gainful employment and private areas of life, such as family and household.This research project is an interdisciplinary cooperation between the Work and Organisational Psychology group and the Occupational Sociology group at the University of Vienna. It aims at investigating the influence of ICT-based flexible working on identity development, self-control, well-being and relaxation, as well as on the employee’s household organisation (including family responsibilities, such as childcare) in the dimensions of time, space, effort and cooperation. In addition, it explores the resources and skills that employees who work flexibly need or should acquire to experience their life as organised and controllable in general. The project takes into account employees working under different flexible working conditions and crowd workers, who experience the dissolution of boundaries in its extreme form, and compares these employees.

=> Project website

03/2018 - 02/2022

The University of Vienna and FORBA are the Austrian correspondents for the EU agency 'European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions' (Eurofound). As correspondents we report on current developments in working life, restructuring processes and changes in legislation. The team at the University of Vienna is reporting restructuring events and changes in public support instruments to the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM).