Artificial intelligence (AI) is a leading technology in the digital transformation. AI is expected to cause job losses in general, initially in professions associated with routine activities, and subsequently in the field of creative professions. The present article analysed the results of the authors’ own empirical sociological survey of the attitude of Bulgarian translators towards AI, and the ways in which it will change their profession. Most of them perceive artificial intelligence and automatization as threats to the profession. According to them, digital technologies and AI will modify the profession by relieving human translators of the routine, technical part of the job. Hence, translators will predominantly edit machine-translated texts, and teach artificial intelligence to perform machine translation. The conclusion of the analysis demonstrates that, in the case of Bulgarian translators, such pessimistic scenarios about mass jobs destruction are not justified. In addition, expectations of a deterioration in quality of work as a result of digitalization in the near future are not justified in the case of the translating profession. The present survey results serve as a basis for further research about the impact of artificial intelligence on other creative professions.

The article compares the process of digitalisation and outcomes from work restructuring in two banks from the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. The banking sectors in both countries have been challenged by digitalisation pressures such as online and mobile banking, pressures from ‘Fintech’ banks, and the automation of back-office operations. Yet, the adjustment paths in the two countries differed. In Luxembourg, there is an adjustment via limited lay-offs, and increased training and reskilling; however, in the United Kingdom, the main outcomes revolve around branch downsizing and offshoring of employment. These outcomes are explained by differences in institutional supports for collective voice institutions, as well as the role of the state. The findings demonstrate that the embedded employment relations’ institutions and actors have shaped distinct paths of adjustment to digitalisation; and show how the impact of technology on work is neither deterministic nor unidirectional.

Despite the interest in the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) by trade unions, little is known about how new ICTs have changed trade union protest. In a period of austerity, in which new groups – including labour-related ones – have shown impressive mobilization using social media, we focus on a cross-country approach, looking at the impact of trade union strikes and protest in the public sector. Our findings show that new ICTs are being used at all stages of strike action and union protests in general, but do not allow us to assert that unions have changed the way they act in a fundamental way.

Platform cooperatives, namely, businesses that sell goods or services primarily through a website, mobile app, or protocol and commit to the principles of democratic governance and shared ownership, have lately been proposed as a more sustainable, equitable and, under certain conditions, even efficient alternative to the organizational model of commercial platforms. Accordingly, they have been presented as economic institutions capable of involving all their relevant stakeholders in an extended and inclusive governance structure. Nevertheless, this emerging literature is still characterized by the lack of a holistic and analytic framework connecting the dispersed studies on the topic through the lens of stakeholder theory and detailing strategic complementarities between these different stakeholders. Related to this point, while dealing with the competitive advantages and challenges of platform cooperatives, little reference has been made to the existing debate in governance theory about the advantages and challenges of cooperative firms as compared to capitalist ones. These research gaps motivated our literature review, which is the first comprehensive systematic review specifically focused on this topic. Given the still‐emerging character of the research object, our work also makes way for future updates as new contributions are gradually published.

This article discusses the dynamics of collective bargaining in the management of restructuring, drawing on the example of the banking sector in France, Luxembourg and Romania. We show that the organized decentralization of the corporatist or statist models of France and Luxembourg helped sustain employment relations systems and cushion crisis effects. Bargaining outcomes included internal mobility and training. In Romania, by contrast, disorganized decentralization meant that solutions were left to the company level and to market forces.