Humans in Digital Logistics
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leeds
Department Name: Leeds University Business School (LUBS)
Abstract
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The Humans in Digital Logistics (HuLog) project investigates how digital technologies shape work and employment conditions in warehouses in Europe. Warehouses are today profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technologies along the whole supply chain, which allow online purchases at express delivery, harmonize systems for tracking parcels, and optimize warehouse operations to reduce the time for handling goods. Warehousing is expected to keep growing and to generate new jobs, as companies rise local inventories to mitigate the risk of global supply chain disruptions caused by international trade conflicts (e.g. Brexit) and calamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
HuLog examines how digital warehouse management systems shape workers' experience of work and drive warehousing companies' employment strategies to maximise workforce flexibility, affecting employment conditions. To date, the impact of digital technologies on work and employment in warehouses remains a neglected field of investigation. Workers are absent from most studies of warehousing, which focuses on increasing efficiency to reduce time and costs. Current knowledge is largely limited to journalistic accounts of work and employment in single companies such as Amazon.
HuLog combines a socio-material and an employment relations perspective to study 12 digital warehouses in 4 logistic hubs in Europe: Western Poland, Leipzig-Halle (Germany), Limburg (Belgium) and West Yorkshire (United Kingdom). This research design allows for comparison across institutional, economic and socio-demographic contexts.
The HuLog project will produce multidisciplinary, cutting-edge scientific knowledge on work and employment in European logistics, advancing the debate in key disciplines and, more broadly, on the future of work. It will also scientifically support and facilitate policy stakeholders' negotiation of guiding principles for more human-centred and socially sustainable digital warehousing.
The Humans in Digital Logistics (HuLog) project investigates how digital technologies shape work and employment conditions in warehouses in Europe. Warehouses are today profoundly affected by rapidly evolving digital technologies along the whole supply chain, which allow online purchases at express delivery, harmonize systems for tracking parcels, and optimize warehouse operations to reduce the time for handling goods. Warehousing is expected to keep growing and to generate new jobs, as companies rise local inventories to mitigate the risk of global supply chain disruptions caused by international trade conflicts (e.g. Brexit) and calamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
HuLog examines how digital warehouse management systems shape workers' experience of work and drive warehousing companies' employment strategies to maximise workforce flexibility, affecting employment conditions. To date, the impact of digital technologies on work and employment in warehouses remains a neglected field of investigation. Workers are absent from most studies of warehousing, which focuses on increasing efficiency to reduce time and costs. Current knowledge is largely limited to journalistic accounts of work and employment in single companies such as Amazon.
HuLog combines a socio-material and an employment relations perspective to study 12 digital warehouses in 4 logistic hubs in Europe: Western Poland, Leipzig-Halle (Germany), Limburg (Belgium) and West Yorkshire (United Kingdom). This research design allows for comparison across institutional, economic and socio-demographic contexts.
The HuLog project will produce multidisciplinary, cutting-edge scientific knowledge on work and employment in European logistics, advancing the debate in key disciplines and, more broadly, on the future of work. It will also scientifically support and facilitate policy stakeholders' negotiation of guiding principles for more human-centred and socially sustainable digital warehousing.
