Tackling climate change is regarded as a priority by governments, politico-economic unions and regions, as well as an array of intergovernmental organisations (see, inter alia, Cable et al., 2011; European Commission (EC), 2010; OECD 2011; ILO, 2013; UNFCC, 2015). The challenge is also viewed as an opportunity, with ‘green growth’ identified as a path to economic recovery from the most recent recession, and as a strategy for the regeneration of regions marked by deindustrialisation and economic decline (e.g. OECD, 2011; Stroud et al., 2015). A central platform of the strategy for green growth is the ‘greening’ of skills, jobs and the economy, and efforts in this direction focus in part on increasing and improving efficiency – of workers and work, as well as industrial and manufacturing processes. The European Union’s (EU) Europe 2020 strategy (EC, 2010), for example, calls for a 20% increase in energy efficiency, as part of a broader shift to a low carbon economy. The transition to a low carbon or green economy has clear implications for firms and those they employ – through, for example, the imposition of more stringent efficiency and environmental regulations with which to comply (see, for example, Evans and Stroud (2014) on firm strategy with regard to innovation and compliance on ‘green’ regulations and Porter and van der Linde (1995) on the beneficial constraints flowing from environmental regulation).
In this paper, we focus on the implications for workers of firms’ strategies for complying with and innovating around energy efficiency regulations. We draw on data from a Horizon 2020 (H2020) project, WaterWatt, which aims to improve energy efficiency within industrial water circuits (IWCs) in energy-intensive industries through an innovation strategy – the use of ‘gamification’. This is the use of game elements in non-game environments to ‘target behaviour’ through engagement (Deterding et al, 2011). In this instance, the ‘target behaviour’ is the reduction of energy use by technicians and operators, who through the use of mobile technology applications become ‘engaged’ through ‘competing (or collaborating) with colleagues’ to achieve the highest performance with regard to reduced energy usage and more energy efficient behaviours, whilst receiving virtual ‘rewards’ in the process.
Drawing on data from companies operating in four sectors (pulp and paper, food and beverage, steel and non-ferrous metals) across four European countries (Germany, Norway, Portugal, UK), we argue that engagement with more efficient (target) behaviours – and thus the greening of the labour process – is more likely to occur when the gamification approach, as an employment strategy, is underscored by the recognition of ‘mutual gains’ and a win-win scenario for both employer and employed (e.g. Boxall and Macky, 2009). Here, the employer gains through legislative compliance, increased energy efficiency and the associated reduction in costs, while the employee’s situation is enhanced through increased autonomy and discretion, as well as the element of ‘workplace fun’ introduced by gamification (see Bolton and Houlihan, 2009). Elsewhere, however, gamification strategies seemingly lend themselves to the further intensification and expansion of control, with such ‘self-tracking’ indicative of yet another area of ‘responsibilisation’ for the individual worker (Gray, 2002), who can be judged, held accountable and potentially sanctioned, through the augmented processes of ‘dataveillance’ wrought by the introduction of gamification technology (Lupton, 2016).
As might be expected, institutional context (and sector) creates some variation in the way gamification might be employed - and, indeed, the same factor(s) also shapes the extent to which the 'greening’ is regarded as a 'beneficial constraint' or significant barrier (See, for example, Porter and van der Linde, 1995; Stroud and Evans, 2014. See, also, Hauptmeier and Vidal (2014) for discussions on comparative work and employment relations within a broader political economy framework). More specifically, however, the evidence suggests that the potential for ‘mutual gains’ or the intensification of increasingly sophisticated control – through gamification – is highly dependent on information flows, and management decisions on the ‘need to know’, on the firm’s strategy for energy efficiency. The latter is moreover, related to processes of decision making and how ‘information’ (in relation to energy budgets and targets, for example) is cascaded through the occupational hierarchy, thereby creating space for the gamification (and greening) of energy efficiency decisions in a mutually beneficial fashion. The analysis thus focuses on the critical role of extant levels of trust and social capital within firms in shaping the introduction of innovatory approaches to the greening of operations (see, for example, Helliwell and Huang, 2010).
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