The School of Research is pleased to announce that Francesco Sabato Massimo, PhD in Sociology and Associate Researcher at the Centre for the Sociology of Organisations (CSO – Sciences Po/CNRS), has received an honourable mention in the Thomas A. Kochan & Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award 2025, presented by the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA).

This prestigious award is given each year to doctoral theses of excellence in the field of labour relations and employment. The jury, composed of international researchers, recognises work that has made a major contribution to the understanding of contemporary labour relations.

Entitled ‘Mobilising work and demobilising labour under contemporary monopoly capitalism,’ Francesco Massimo Sabato's thesis offers an in-depth analysis of the functioning of one of the most emblematic companies of modern capitalism: Amazon.

By placing work at the centre of its analysis, this research shows how Amazon, despite its image as a ‘digital’ giant, relies on a massive physical infrastructure and the paid labour of millions of people, particularly in logistics. It explores the ways in which this workforce is managed, the strategies deployed to mobilise their efforts while limiting forms of resistance, and how these practices have evolved in line with changes in the company's economic model. The study also highlights the different effects of Amazon's expansion depending on the institutional context, particularly between the United States and other countries.

This thesis thus offers a valuable contribution to the understanding of new forms of labour domination in platform capitalism and the tensions that arise from them.

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the study of one of the largest contemporary companies and perhaps the most representative of contemporary capitalism: Amazon. The main goal of this thesis is to bring labour back at the core of the analysis, showing its centrality in the production of value, even in those giant corporations called “digital monopolies”.With its vast logistics network and millions of employees scattered across dozens of countries, Amazon is an ideal case study for understanding (1) why these monopolies, despite their “digital” nature, rely on massive physical infrastructures and how these infrastructures depends on the activity of millions of workers – in the case of Amazon, wage-workers, particularly in logistics warehouses; (2) how Amazon manages this workforce in order to mobilise the effort of employees while simultaneously demobilising their resistance, but above all how these strategies change at the same time as the evolution of Amazon’s profit strategy (3) how the “disruptive” power of digital monopolies unfolds in historical and institutional contexts other than those of the United States, particularly in terms of labour regulations and its impact on working conditions in Amazon’s workplace. To answer these three questions, the thesis mobilises the results of a multi-level investigation: the level of the labour process, studied through participant observation, interviews with employees and written sources; the level of Amazon’s profit strategy, examining the company’s balance sheets, interviewing management, and analysing vast secondary sources; the level of industrial relations, local and transnational, analysed through the direct observation of trade union activities, interviews and secondary sources.

Find out more

• See the official announcement of the winners
• Francesco Sabato Massimo - CSO
• Francesco S. Massimo's thesis
• Doctorate in Sociology