Papers by Didem OZKIZILTAN
In der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion wird Automatisierung üblicherweise als Oberbegriff verwendet... more In der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion wird Automatisierung üblicherweise als Oberbegriff verwendet, um verschiedene fortschrittliche Technologien wie Computer, fortschrittliche Robotik und künstliche Intelligenz einzuschließen. Forschungsergebnisse aus der Arbeitsmarktökonomie deuten darauf hin, dass einerseits die Zahl der Arbeitsplätze mit mittlerem Qualifikationsniveau aufgrund der Automatisierung von Aufgaben abnimmt, andererseits neue Arbeitsplätze für nicht-routinemäßige Aufgaben sowohl für hoch- als auch für niedrigqualifizierte Arbeitskräfte geschaffen werden. Dieser Beitrag analysiert den aktuellen Wissensstand und identifiziert drei Lücken in der Literatur mit einem besonderen Fokus auf Deutschland. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht (1) hinsichtlich der Instrumente, die den Übergang von Arbeitnehmern in neue Berufe unterstützen, (2) bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf gefährdete Arbeitnehmerinnen, (3) der Rolle und der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf die berufliche Bildung und (4) der Rolle von Mitbestimmung.
This paper provides an overview of the actual and likely labour market transformations caused by ... more This paper provides an overview of the actual and likely labour market transformations caused by increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across the advanced economies, with a special focus on Germany. The scholarly debates on these issues mainly revolve around the impact of AI on the number and structure of jobs, and around AI-enabled management tools’ perpetuation and aggravation of work-related inequalities and discrimination. The study starts with a brief background of AI as a technology, with a focus on its definition, subfields, capabilities, and history. Following this, it reviews the discussions on the implications of AI use in the world of work and its ethical and political repercussions and continues with a summary of AI use and its impacts in German labour markets. It then discusses the current gaps in the relevant scholarly literature and identifies numerous opportunities for further research. The investigation concludes by addressing two far-reaching ...
Digital automation has pervaded many areas of our daily activities, with serious repercussions fo... more Digital automation has pervaded many areas of our daily activities, with serious repercussions for social, economic and political systems. Automation’s ever-enhancing capability to transform human lives has spawned a wide body of scholarly research, with inputs from social and economic sciences, engineering and technology. This paper1 provides a brief overview of the main arguments put forward by the researchers, particularly in labour economics, on the subject of digital automation, with a special focus on Germany. Such debates revolve around the impact of automation on the number of jobs performed by human labour and the restructuring of labour markets under the influence of automation. The overview starts with a short discussion about the meaning of digital automation. It then outlines the debates of how technology distributes work between humans and machines from the viewpoint of skill-biased technological change and routine-biased technological change research. This is followed...
The Journal of Development Studies, 2019
Abstract Turkey’s current collective labour legislation places heavy restrictions on trade union,... more Abstract Turkey’s current collective labour legislation places heavy restrictions on trade union, strike, and collective bargaining rights. Regarding which, conventional wisdom cites the country’s ongoing neoliberal transformation since the early 1980s. This article explains the post-1980 institutional transformation by placing the institutional history of Turkey’s industrial relations under the optic of historical institutionalism by laying special emphasis on the dominant interests steering industrial relations and the legal and practical causal mechanisms put at work in materialisation of these interests. It is concluded that curtailment of work-related collective rights and freedoms for the protection of capitalist development has displayed a remarkable historical continuity as a regime of rationality in Turkey. Such restriction created long-term institutional path-dependencies in the policies governing Turkey’s industrial relations, thereby exerting a significant impact on industrial relations policy and practices in the post-1980 period.
Industrial Relations Journal, 2019
International Labor and Working-Class History, 2018
The 1961 constitutional reform in Turkey recognized the right to strike and granted other rights ... more The 1961 constitutional reform in Turkey recognized the right to strike and granted other rights and freedoms related to the collective actions of labor. Conventional wisdom holds that Turkish trade unions became independent of the state power with class-based interests only after this reform. Across mainstream literature, this is considered, in historical institutionalist terms, as the first critical juncture in Turkey's industrial relations. This paper provides a critical account of the institutional continuity, development, and change that took place in Turkey's industrial relations starting from its establishment as a republic in 1923 until the end of the 1950s, by considering the socioeconomic and legal-political environment during these years. Considering the historical evidence employed, and under historical institutionalism, it is argued that the first critical juncture in the country's industrial relations occurred in 1947, when the ruling cliques permitted the ...
Most of the contemporary literature on Turkey’s industrial relations emphasises the impact of glo... more Most of the contemporary literature on Turkey’s industrial relations emphasises the impact of globalisation in bringing about fundamental institutional changes in the domain of industrial relations that have resulted in diminished capability of organised labour to act as an independent socioeconomic actor. However, what is often overlooked in these accounts is the historical continuity of insecurity as an embedded rationale in the institutions regulating industrial relations, the roots of which can be traced back to the first steps towards industrialisation following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The emergence of what I call the political economy of insecurity in Turkey was carried out by the generations of political actors to come and has had two far-reaching consequences in the domain of industrial relations. First, it distributed power between actors in favour of capital and the state. And second, with an exception of a couple of years, it served as an effective to...
Globalizations, 2020
This article investigates distinctiveness of work-related precarity in neoliberal orders by pursu... more This article investigates distinctiveness of work-related precarity in neoliberal orders by pursuing two main arguments. First, precarity prevailed in pre-welfare state capitalist and current era display marked similarities regarding political ideas and workers' experiences. Second, neoliberal precarity manifests its distinctiveness in the human factor and the socioeconomic circumstances surrounding it. That is, in the previous era of precarity, the labouring men who is in pursuit of social protection and solidarity refused to refashion themselves as homo economicus, thanks to a protective socioeconomic environment where countermovements against the unfolding realities of free market gathered momentum. In the neoliberal era, incorporation of market values in everyday lives, digital automation and reorganisation of the work facilitated the transformation of labouring men into homo economicus, who can function without seeking solidarity and social protection. Thus, neoliberal precarity renders it highly uncertain whether it is possible to re-embed the markets into society in foreseeable future.
Industrial Relations Journal, 2019
Authoritarian neoliberal governance of industrial relations is on the rise around the world, disp... more Authoritarian neoliberal governance of industrial relations is on the rise around the world, displaying remarkable similarities across countries with similar democratic political structures. However, despite a certain degree of resemblance, countries have been following divergent paths rendering each case unique in terms of its experience. This article explains the specific path through which authoritarian neoliberalism was materialised in the governance of Turkey’s industrial relations under AKP rule. It is purported that AKP’s pursuit of authoritarian neoliberalism in its governance of industrial relations shares certain similarities with the emerging market economies, which have a less democratic political system. However, it is contended that the governance of Turkey’s industrial relations under AKP leadership embodies spatially and temporally distinct characteristics integrating long-established authoritarian institutional structures and practices with neoliberal ideology, powerful political alliances, Islamic values, repressive practices and mounting resistance, thus rendering it a unique form of authoritarian neoliberalism.
Journal of Development Studies, 2019
Turkey’s current collective labour legislation places heavy restrictions on trade union, strike, ... more Turkey’s current collective labour legislation places heavy restrictions on trade union, strike, and collective bargaining rights. Regarding which, conventional wisdom cites the country’s ongoing neoliberal transformation since the early 1980s. This article explains the post-1980 institutional transformation by placing the institutional history of Turkey’s industrial relations under the optic of historical institutionalism by laying special emphasis on the dominant interests steering industrial relations and the legal and practical causal mechanisms put at work in materialisation of these interests. It is concluded that curtailment of work-related collective rights and freedoms for the protection of capitalist development has displayed a remarkable historical continuity as a regime of rationality in Turkey. Such restriction created long-term institutional path-dependencies in the policies governing Turkey’s industrial relations, thereby exerting a significant impact on industrial relations policy and practices in the post-1980 period.
International Labor and Working-Class History , 2018
In this paper, it is purported that the consensus reached by the trade unions on the necessity of... more In this paper, it is purported that the consensus reached by the trade unions on the necessity of the right to strike from the mid-1950s onwards initiated a peaceful class struggle between Turkish labor and the state, which gradually steered the industrial relations towards the second critical juncture following the promulgation of the 1961 constitution.
Thesis Chapters by Didem OZKIZILTAN
PhD Thesis, 2014
Most of the contemporary literature on Turkey’s industrial relations emphasises the impact of glo... more Most of the contemporary literature on Turkey’s industrial relations emphasises the impact of globalisation in bringing about fundamental institutional changes in the domain of industrial relations that have resulted in diminished capability of organised labour to act as an independent socioeconomic actor. However, what is often overlooked in these accounts is the historical continuity of insecurity as an embedded rationale in the institutions regulating industrial relations, the roots of which can be traced back to the first steps towards industrialisation following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The emergence of what I call the political economy of insecurity in Turkey was carried out by the generations of political actors to come and has had two far-reaching consequences in the domain of industrial relations. First, it distributed power between actors in favour of capital and the state. And second, with an exception of a couple of years, it served as an effective tool for the political actors to steer the behaviours of labour in the direction of so-called social peace and order. Against this background, my study investigates the institutionalisation of insecurity as a rationale in the political economy of Turkey’s industrial relations during the 20th century. It highlights the centrality of the modern Turkish state in shaping the interests of and interactions between the socioeconomic actors in modern Turkish society and the economy by adopting a long historico-institutionalist perspective, beginning with the early years of republican period and ending with Turkey’s integration into the global economy.
The overall contributions of this study can be outlined in terms of theoretical, empirical and methodological aspects. Theoretically, this thesis brings forth new comprehension of the concept of security/insecurity by analysing it in relation to its different facets, i.e. security as one form of power resource, as an institutional outcome, and as an institutional rationale. Empirically, by taking an historical-institutionalist approach and by building on a power-sensitive perspective, the work investigates the formation and (re)configuration of Turkish industrial relations and calls attention to historically entrenched class alliances in the (re)distribution of power resources between the state, employers and labour, which is still an under-researched area. Methodologically, by examining industrial relations over a period of time as an institution, and by inserting power and actors at the heart of the analysis, this study presents a detailed and power-sensitive account of the institutional continuity, development and change that came into place in Turkey’s industrial relations.
Drafts by Didem OZKIZILTAN
Governing Work in the Digital Age Project Working Paper Series 2021-01, 2021
This paper provides an overview of the actual and likely labour market transformations caused by ... more This paper provides an overview of the actual and likely labour market transformations caused by increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across the advanced economies, with a special focus on Germany. The scholarly debates on these issues mainly revolve around the impact of AI on the number and structure of jobs, and around AI-enabled management tools’ perpetuation and aggravation of work-related inequalities and discrimination. The study starts with a brief background of AI as a technology, with a focus on its definition, subfields, capabilities, and history. Following this, it reviews the discussions on the implications of AI use in the world of work and its ethical and political repercussions and continues with a summary of AI use and its impacts in German labour markets. It then discusses the current gaps in the relevant scholarly literature and identifies numerous opportunities for further research.
The investigation concludes by addressing two far-reaching implications of increasing utilisation of AI-enabled tools in labour markets. First, in the case that the current trends remain unchanged, the AI-driven future of work is likely to perpetuate and aggravate work-related inequalities and discrimination, diminishing further the prospects of decent work, fair remuneration and adequate social protection for all. Second, predictions provided by current studies only point out one possibility amongst many. Thus, we still have choices as to the advancement, adoption, and utilisation of workplace AI technologies in a way that brings benefit to all.
In der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion wird Automatisierung üblicherweise als Oberbegriff verwendet... more In der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion wird Automatisierung üblicherweise als Oberbegriff verwendet, um verschiedene fortschrittliche Technologien wie Computer, fortschrittliche Robotik und künstliche Intelligenz einzuschließen. Forschungsergebnisse aus der Arbeitsmarktökonomie deuten darauf hin, dass einerseits die Zahl der Arbeitsplätze mit mittlerem Qualifikationsniveau aufgrund der Automatisierung von Aufgaben abnimmt, andererseits neue Arbeitsplätze für nicht-routinemäßige Aufgaben sowohl für hoch- als auch für niedrigqualifizierte Arbeitskräfte geschaffen werden.
Dieser Beitrag analysiert den aktuellen Wissensstand und identifiziert drei Lücken in der Literatur mit einem besonderen Fokus auf Deutschland. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht (1) hinsichtlich der Instrumente, die den Übergang von Arbeitnehmern in neue Berufe unterstützen, (2) bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf gefährdete Arbeitnehmerinnen, (3) der Rolle und der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf die berufliche Bildung und (4) der Rolle von Mitbestimmung.
This working paper was prepared as a part of ‘Governing Work in the Digital Age’ project based at... more This working paper was prepared as a part of ‘Governing Work in the Digital Age’ project based at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. The project is funded by German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
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Papers by Didem OZKIZILTAN
Thesis Chapters by Didem OZKIZILTAN
The overall contributions of this study can be outlined in terms of theoretical, empirical and methodological aspects. Theoretically, this thesis brings forth new comprehension of the concept of security/insecurity by analysing it in relation to its different facets, i.e. security as one form of power resource, as an institutional outcome, and as an institutional rationale. Empirically, by taking an historical-institutionalist approach and by building on a power-sensitive perspective, the work investigates the formation and (re)configuration of Turkish industrial relations and calls attention to historically entrenched class alliances in the (re)distribution of power resources between the state, employers and labour, which is still an under-researched area. Methodologically, by examining industrial relations over a period of time as an institution, and by inserting power and actors at the heart of the analysis, this study presents a detailed and power-sensitive account of the institutional continuity, development and change that came into place in Turkey’s industrial relations.
Drafts by Didem OZKIZILTAN
The investigation concludes by addressing two far-reaching implications of increasing utilisation of AI-enabled tools in labour markets. First, in the case that the current trends remain unchanged, the AI-driven future of work is likely to perpetuate and aggravate work-related inequalities and discrimination, diminishing further the prospects of decent work, fair remuneration and adequate social protection for all. Second, predictions provided by current studies only point out one possibility amongst many. Thus, we still have choices as to the advancement, adoption, and utilisation of workplace AI technologies in a way that brings benefit to all.
Dieser Beitrag analysiert den aktuellen Wissensstand und identifiziert drei Lücken in der Literatur mit einem besonderen Fokus auf Deutschland. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht (1) hinsichtlich der Instrumente, die den Übergang von Arbeitnehmern in neue Berufe unterstützen, (2) bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf gefährdete Arbeitnehmerinnen, (3) der Rolle und der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf die berufliche Bildung und (4) der Rolle von Mitbestimmung.
The overall contributions of this study can be outlined in terms of theoretical, empirical and methodological aspects. Theoretically, this thesis brings forth new comprehension of the concept of security/insecurity by analysing it in relation to its different facets, i.e. security as one form of power resource, as an institutional outcome, and as an institutional rationale. Empirically, by taking an historical-institutionalist approach and by building on a power-sensitive perspective, the work investigates the formation and (re)configuration of Turkish industrial relations and calls attention to historically entrenched class alliances in the (re)distribution of power resources between the state, employers and labour, which is still an under-researched area. Methodologically, by examining industrial relations over a period of time as an institution, and by inserting power and actors at the heart of the analysis, this study presents a detailed and power-sensitive account of the institutional continuity, development and change that came into place in Turkey’s industrial relations.
The investigation concludes by addressing two far-reaching implications of increasing utilisation of AI-enabled tools in labour markets. First, in the case that the current trends remain unchanged, the AI-driven future of work is likely to perpetuate and aggravate work-related inequalities and discrimination, diminishing further the prospects of decent work, fair remuneration and adequate social protection for all. Second, predictions provided by current studies only point out one possibility amongst many. Thus, we still have choices as to the advancement, adoption, and utilisation of workplace AI technologies in a way that brings benefit to all.
Dieser Beitrag analysiert den aktuellen Wissensstand und identifiziert drei Lücken in der Literatur mit einem besonderen Fokus auf Deutschland. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht (1) hinsichtlich der Instrumente, die den Übergang von Arbeitnehmern in neue Berufe unterstützen, (2) bezüglich der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf gefährdete Arbeitnehmerinnen, (3) der Rolle und der Auswirkungen von Automatisierung auf die berufliche Bildung und (4) der Rolle von Mitbestimmung.