Digital Technologies’ Transformation of US Store-Based Retail Work: Semi-structured Interviews with Workers and Managers, 2022-2023

To obtain a free account please register with the UKDA.

This dataset consists of interview notes on 63 semi-structured, one-hour interviews of store-based retail employees (frontline workers and managers) in various locations in the USA (with the exception of two in Canada), conducted August 2022 through August 2023. The interviews focus on technological change and how it is affecting the labor process. However, they also inquire about the respondents’ career trajectories, pay history, and aspirations for future mobility; the details of their job functions and how those functions are organized; how labor in the store is supervised; any forms of worker collective action; the respondent’s subjective experience of work and supervision; and significant changes in any of these aspects of work. Respondents were recruited via a commercial online interviewee recruitment platform, User Interviews https://www.userinterviews.com/ . The resulting sample is by no means a representative sample of US store-based retail workers. But we believe it is qualitatively representative of more senior employees at larger-unit grocery and general merchandise stores in the US, with a sprinkling of respondents from other types of stores that offer some limited comparisons.

The Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Dig.IT) will establish itself as an essential resource for those wanting to understand how new digital technologies are profoundly reshaping the world of work. Digitalisation is a topical feature of contemporary debate. For evangelists, technology offers new opportunities for those seeking work and increased flexibility and autonomy for those in work. More pessimistic visions, in contrast, see a future where jobs are either destroyed by robots or degraded through increasingly precarious contracts and computerised monitoring. Take Uber as an example: the company claims it is creating opportunities for self-employed entrepreneurs; while workers' groups increasingly challenge such claims through legal means to improve their rights at work. While such positive and pessimistic scenarios abound of an increasingly fragmented, digitalised and flexible transformation of work across the globe, theoretical understanding of contemporary developments remains underdeveloped and systematic empirical analyses are lacking. We know, for example, that employers and governments are struggling to cope with and understand the pace and consequences of digital change, while individuals face new uncertainties over how to become and stay 'connected' in turbulent labour markets. Yet, we have no real understanding of what it means to be a 'connected worker' in an increasing 'connected' economy. Drawing resources from different academic fields of study, Dig.IT will provide an empirically innovative and international broad body of knowledge that will offer authoritative insights into the impact of digitalisation on the future of work.