Empty Labor

Roland Paulsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University. Dr Paulsen has received several awards for his work, notably from the Nordic Sociological Association and the International Labor Process Conference. His first book Arbetssamhället: Hur Arbetet Överlevde Teknologin (The Society of Labor: How Labor Survived Technology) stirred up a national debate in Sweden on the meaning of work.

'Policymakers bemoan the epidemic of overwork. But as Roland Paulsen … explains in Empty Labor, an example-packed new book, innumerable studies suggest that the average worker devotes between one-and-a-half and three hours a day to loafing … the best way to understand a company's 'human resources' is not to consult the department that bears that ugly name but to study the basic principles of one of the world's most popular, if unrecognised, sciences: skiving.' The Economist

• Foreword; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Power at work; 3. Subjectivity at work; 4. Mapping out empty labor; 5. How to succeed at work without really trying; 6. The time-appropriating subject; 7. The organization of idleness; 8. Resistance incorporated?; 9. Conclusion; Appendix: methodological notes; Bibliography; Index.