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This introductory chapter provides an overview of flexible despotism. New economic processes are taking hold in the spaces opened up by the steady decline of collective workplace regulation. No longer is working time understood as a standard, stable eight hours, five days a week. Instead, working time is flexible, on demand, and 24/7. Consequently, many workers are increasingly employed flexibly, while others may not even have an employment contract at all, and instead be classified as self-employed—and yet have their labor controlled by a platform. Even workers with standard, full-time, permanent contracts can experience high levels of insecurity as a result of flexible scheduling within this new temporal order. As a result, the benefits and drawbacks of flexible scheduling have been widely debated. These discussions, however, have tended to focus on issues of job quality, work–life balance, and well-being. This book goes further, by drawing attention to important but under-researched issues of managerial power and workplace control. This is necessary, as it is only when one understands paid work as a power relationship that one is able to see how precarious scheduling constitutes flexible despotism—a new regime of control within the workplace.

This chapter traces the historical evolution of working time and internal labor markets in the United Kingdom. The term “internal labor market” refers to the shielding of employment relations from the external labor market through mechanisms such as seniority policies, employment protections, internal promotion ladders, and differentiated job structures based on skill and knowledge development. The chapter then looks at the temporal organization of labor at PartnershipCo. It considers wage rates and pay structure, employment protections, mobility, and promotion opportunities, but finds that flexible scheduling is the most significant means of securing control. Flexible scheduling was found to be highly manager-controlled, even when institutionalized working time regulations were present.

This chapter examines the respective worlds of work in the front and back of the house through the perspectives of those who inhabit each space. Engendered by divergent social memberships and structurally unequal job conditions, the two asymmetrical work cultures in restaurants are explicated in this chapter. Wilson describes how many of the men and women working in the front of the house are able to approach the unpredictable elements of their jobs as “perks.” These perks, such as flexible schedules and lucrative tips, allow them to forge custom-fit work lives.

This concluding chapter explains that the findings from ConflictCo and PartnershipCo suggest that a form of flexible despotism is key for understanding workplace control of workers in the twenty-first century. It considers how the form that flexible despotism takes is modified by the differing levels of bargaining power of workers. Specifically, the chapter looks at how the provision of greater employment rights and union protection leads to a more progressive form of flexible despotism—but one in which precarious scheduling nonetheless remains central to workplace control. This account of power at work provides a valuable insight into the experiences of control of a large number of postindustrial workers in the on-demand economy. The chapter then reflects on the implications for the future of work in the on-demand economy and assesses the forms of workplace control that are likely to achieve prominence as the century progresses.

This chapter examines the existence of internal labor markets at ConflictCo, looking at flexible scheduling in this workplace regime. While workers at PartnershipCo experienced little employment insecurity, this was not the case at ConflictCo. It was clear that workers at ConflictCo were highly fearful of losing their jobs. This was a consequence of ConflictCo's internal state, which made use of “at-will employment,” meaning that there was no redundancy policy, and managers were free to decide themselves which workers to keep on. Those who lost their jobs received no redundancy pay or notice. There was, therefore, a great deal of employment insecurity among the informants. If flexible discipline is found to be central to the operation of control at ConflictCo, despite the availability of traditional forms of discipline, then it significantly strengthens the case that this is a vital feature of workplace regimes in the twenty-first century.

This chapter evaluates the limits and contradictions of control at PartnershipCo and ConflictCo. The findings demonstrate that while flexible scheduling represents a source of managerial control, it also, paradoxically, provides fuel for resistance. At PartnershipCo, this resistance was found to be hidden as a result of the union's individualized and integrated tendencies toward collective resistance. At ConflictCo, however, few examples of hidden resistance were identified, owing to the high level of surveillance and fear that marked the workplace regime. For the majority of workers, the same was also true for open resistance. However, a relatively small number of workers managed to overcome this fear and joined a worker association that used social media networks and the symbolic power of direct actions to successfully challenge employer control at ConflictCo. These findings suggest that, even when only small numbers of workers are able to carve out spaces of resistance within the flexible workplace of the twenty-first century, they may nevertheless be able to harness social media-based networks in order to successfully raise labor standards through threat of reputational damage.