Agency and Political Orientations of Workers

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Menz; Professorin Dr. Sarah Nies
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 559688305

The research project investigates the relationship between work experiences and political orientations of employees and develops a new conceptual approach to theoretically grasp and empirically explore these relationships. To this end, the project draws on the concept of 'agency'. The initial assumption is that how one's own agency at work is experienced is related to whether, how and what claims are made concerning the political sphere. At the same time, political orientations in turn frame the perception of work experiences. The project thus takes up the question of political orientations of workers, as formulated in the classic studies of workers’ consciousness. Going beyond this, the project ties in with current subject-oriented sociological studies on the normative claims of employees in organisations and expands these to include the political dimension. The perception of one's own agency as well as the attribution of agency to other actors in the political and economic sphere forms the analytical category that mediates between the 'work orientations' and the 'political orientations'. For the conceptualization of agency, the project draws on critical approaches to agency, qualitative-reconstructive agency research and social-theoretical concepts of agency and its structural conditions and combines them with sociological diagnoses of autonomy and control at work. The empirical approach comprises the analysis of contrasting objective 'work constellations' (economic, social and operational conditions) in case studies, which form the framework for the qualitative pattern analyses of the subjective work-related and political orientations of different groups of employees by means of in-depth interviews and group discussions. The result is a theoretical redefinition of the concept of 'agency' to examine the political consciousness of employees. The empirical results include the analysis of the relationships between work-related and political orientations against the background of subjective work experiences and their social embeddedness.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants