Event typeSeminar

Prof Jenny Huberman
University of Missouri, Kansas City

Title: Moments are Still the Elements of Profit – The App Economy and the Digital Extraction of Surplus-Value

Abstract: Over the last two decades, while the ranks of the under and unemployed have swelled, and as the commercial demand for more precise data has skyrocketed, the smartphone task and gaming app industry has exploded. Likened to a portable Mechanical Turk, or a veritable “data enrichment” industry, apps such as Spare5, Taps for Money, InboxDollars, Cash Karma, Mistplay, Bingo Box, Solitude Cube, Swagbucks, Survey Junkie, Lifepoints, PrizeRebel, and TreasureTrooper, to name just a few, are advertised to e-commerce and AI companies as a way to get the most direct access to potential consumers, and as way to gain a “cost-effective” leg up in the “arms race in training data.” They are also presented to consumers or users as a means to “win” or “earn some money by performing simple tasks irrespective of the place where you are.” Companies propose that by downloading these apps onto smartphones users can render their “free time” economically productive. In this talk, I explore how the smartphone app industry is facilitating the digitized extraction of surplus-value. I argue that it is precisely by blurring the boundaries between work and leisure, and in many cases, “gamifying” tasks, that the app economy, which is inextricably tied to the platform economy, is able to perpetuate and extend a classic form of capitalist expropriation into the most intimate reaches of daily life. Drawing upon an analysis of some of the most popular smartphone “earning” apps, I will demonstrate that although much has changed in the era of digital capitalism, moments, as Marx recognized long ago, are still the elements of profit.

POSTPONED – A new date will be posted.

This online meeting of the School of Management’s Organisations and Society thematic research group will welcome Jeff Hyman, Honorary Professor in the School, and Chris Baldry who is Professor Emeritus in the Stirling Management School.

Professors Hyman and Baldry will present insights from their recent book, ‘Sustainable work and the environmental crisis: the link between labour and climate change’.

Their research demonstrates definite and complex connections between degraded jobs and a degraded environment. They aim to suggest alternative routes to sustainable work that supports both the natural environment and worker wellbeing.

The seminar will include time for discussion and post COP26 reflections.

Further details about the seminar have been circulated to group members.

This research seminar will welcome Professor Arito Ono from the Faculty of Commerce, Chuo University. His topic will be ‘The effect of physical collateral and personal guarantees on business startups’.

The seminar is organised jointly by the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance (CRBF) and the Financial Institutions and Markets (FIM) research group of the School of Management.

This event is for staff of the University and students in the School, in particular those with an interest in finance and economics.

In this seminar, Augusto Rocha and Professor Ross Brown from the Organisations and Society research group will be presenting their paper ‘Capturing conversations in entrepreneurial ecosystems’.

Introducing their work, Rocha and Brown note: “This paper sets out a novel approach to assessing the relational connectivity within entrepreneurial ecosystems by capturing entrepreneurial ‘conversations’. Drawing on real-time data extracted from an event-based social media platform, in combination with social network analysis and qualitative interview data, we provide an in-depth assessment of the relational connections within the city of Edinburgh. […] As well as producing novel empirical insights, this approach provides policy makers with vital strategic policy intelligence to help better inform public policy frameworks and associated interventions.”

This lunchtime event is one in a series of brown bag research seminars for staff in the School of Management. The series aims to provide opportunities to showcase ongoing research and offer a regular space for colleagues across the School to come together and open up research conversations across the thematic groups and research centres.

Further details about the seminar have been circulated to School of Management staff.

This online meeting of the School of Management’s Organisations and Society thematic research group has been rescheduled from December 2021. In this session, the group will welcome Jeff Hyman, Honorary Professor in the School, and Chris Baldry who is Professor Emeritus in the Stirling Management School.

They will present insights from their recent book, ‘Sustainable work and the environmental crisis:
the link between labour and climate change’.

Their research demonstrates definite and complex connections between degraded jobs and a degraded environment. They aim to suggest alternative routes to sustainable work that supports both the natural environment and worker wellbeing.

The seminar will include time for discussion and post COP26 reflections.

Further details about the seminar have been circulated to group members.

This online meeting of the School of Management’s Accounting, Governance and Organisations thematic research group (AGOG) will welcome Dr Aisling Crean, Learning Technologist with the Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED).

Dr Crean will present her research, ‘Do corporations have a duty to be trustworthy?’, which explores the moral duties of corporations who have been facing a crisis of trust since the global financial crisis of 2008. The work emerged from postdoctoral research at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, where she worked on British Academy funded projects on trust and trustworthiness in corporations.

Further details about the seminar have been circulated to group members.

This research seminar will welcome Dr Livia Pancotto from the University of Strathclyde. Her topic will be ‘Gender diversity in bank boardroom and green lending: Evidence from euro area credit register data’.

The seminar is organised jointly by the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance (CRBF) and the Financial Institutions and Markets (FIM) research group of the School of Management.

This event is for staff of the University and students in the School, in particular those with an interest in finance and economics.

Dr Robert Phipps (University of Cambridge) will give a talk discussing his research group’s most recent work.

Title and abstract to follow.

https://phippsgroup.wixsite.com/home