Working in Warehouses is an ongoing research collaboration between Queen’s Business School and colleagues at the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds.

Industry knowledge exchange partners include the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Involvement and Participation Association.

Together, scholars across these three institutions are seeking to understand work organization, labour processes and the nature of work in the growing e-commerce retail fulfilment market.

Prompting our initial enquiry was the extent to which these increasingly new sites of work organization could deliver UK policy directives on Good Work as well as the extent to which they are harbingers of the new technological frontier in automation and robotics.

The project team are particularly interested in understanding different business models in the sector and their implication for work processes, and to what extent large firms influence the working practices of small firms and the impact of same-day/next-day delivery objectives have on the internal operations of modern warehouses.

The project is generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK.