Future Steel Work in the Digital and Green Transition : Change and stabilization

This dissertation focuses on the construction of future steel work and work environment in relation to the ongoing digital and green transitions. The transitions include a clear focus on technology and has so far been lacking a focus on work. Future steel work run the risk of being forgotten in the transition processes, or only indirectly addressed. The purpose is therefore to investigate how new technology, based on the transitions, is constructed in the steel industry and how this relates to the development of the future work and work environment. This refers to the construction that takes place in the form of the process by which technology is constructed by actors, and to the construction that takes place in the form of descriptions and interpretations of new technology, through which it is given meaning. The dissertation is based on a sociotechnical tradition but utilizes theories from science and technology studies on the social construction of technology to understand how actors participate and contribute to the development of technology. The empirical data has been produced mainly from semi-structured interviews with managers, project managers, and workers with union roles, which through thematic analysis has resulted in six different main themes: work environment and safety, rationalization, competence, environment, influence, and gender equality. The empirical material also includes documents and empirical data produced during workplace visits, meetings, etc. in the shape of a logbook. The results demonstrate that work is largely absent in the descriptions of new technology. New technology is primarily interpreted and described as rationalizing the production process or being linked directly to fossil-free steelmaking. At the same time, descriptions of new technology in relation to work indicate that new technology is generally regarded as the solution to existing problems, primarily described as physical. New technology being viewed as the solution to today's problems has also proven to be the case for the environmental challenges, where fossil-free steelmaking is broadly considered to be the solution. The understanding of fossil-free steelmaking in relation to work is reduced to an understanding of the possibility of fewer jobs in the future. Similarly, new technology is seen as contributing to addressing challenges of gender equality, primarily expressed interms of eliminating heavy work tasks and thus being able to influence the gender distribution at the company. On the other hand, new technology is expected to increase the skills requirement for workers that are faced with working alongside a more technologically advanced production system. From a process perspective, future work can be seen as constructed through investment projects that gradually stabilize the future work and work environment, from social constructions to concrete work tasks. Future work and work environments are stabilized by methods where primarily the physical dimension of the work environment is prioritized, in a process where the most intense stabilization take place at an early stage. The opportunities to create good future work and work environments are reduced to the degrees of freedom and resources that remain, in relation to the project participants' competence regarding work environment and the workers' ability to represent the interests of their respective groups. The consequence is that the process relies on user participation, which can be characterized to include information to workers, worker input and difficulties in recruiting workers as project participants. The dissertation concludes that the good future steel work is left out of the construction of new technology by the combination of a belief in new technology as the solution to today's problems, and a process that mainly focuses on one of the three dimensions of the work environment. The exclusion of the good work does not mean that work is not affected within the transitions, but rather that the construction of the future work takes place whether it is intentionally in the direction of good work, or indirectly by means of other purposes