David Regin Öborn

My research examines how work, workplace relations, and organizational conditions are reshaped through processes of managerial reform, digitalization, and technological change. A central concern across my work is how these transformations reorganize everyday practices of visibility, recognition, and control, and how this in turn reshapes relations between occupational groups and conditions for agency in gendered and unequal work contexts.

My academic background is grounded in research on administrative work in higher education, where I analyzed how New Public Management, digitalization, and organizational restructuring reconfigured relations between academics, administrators, and management. This work highlighted how female-dominated administrative occupations are positioned in-between competing organizational logics, and how gender, status, and technology intersect in the reorganization of work, producing both new constraints and forms of agency.

Building on this foundation, my more recent research has expanded toward digitally mediated and service-based forms of work. I have studied algorithmic management in the gig economy, the introduction of robots and AI in service organizations, and the transformation of emotional and interactive labor in gendered service settings. Across these contexts, I am particularly interested in how digital technologies function as infrastructures of coordination, evaluation, and visibility, shaping expectations, accountability, and control in everyday work practices, while simultaneously reproducing, reshaping, or challenging gendered divisions of labor.

Methodologically, I primarily use qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, with an emphasis on in-depth workplace studies. Theoretically, my work draws on labor process theory, organizational sociology, and feminist and interactionist perspectives to analyze the micro-politics of digitalized work. By bringing empirically grounded insights from a Nordic institutional context into dialogue with international debates, my research contributes a relational and power-sensitive perspective on technology, gender, and power at work that travels across sectors and national settings.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Working Life Science at Karlstad Business School, Karlstad University. My research focuses on how work and workplace relations are shaped through organizational change, managerial reform, and technological transformation, with particular attention to gendered forms of work and inequality.

My research is often conducted in dialogue with workplace actors and public organizations, with a focus on working conditions, digitalization, and the organization of work.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Working Life Science at Karlstad Business School, Karlstad University. My research focuses on how work and workplace relations are shaped through processes of organizational change, managerial reform, and technological transformation.

Rosengren, C., Palm, K., Regin Öborn, D., & Håkansta, C. (Accepted for publication). “We bring them to life”: Service robots and emotional labour among frontline employees in the service sector. Management Revue.

Regin Öborn, D., Palm, K., Rosengren, C., & Håkansta, C. (2025). Unintended impacts of collaborative robots on social relations at work. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies (online first). https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.160897

Regin Öborn, D. (2024). Changing workplace relations and sites of belonging in Swedish university administration. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 15(4). https://doi.org/10.18291/njwls.15069

Regin Öborn, D. (2024). The indeterminate position in-between: Work relations amongst university administrators. Doctoral dissertation, Karlstad University Press. https://doi.org/10.59217/szjb9469

Regin Öborn, D., MacKenzie, R., Örnebring, H., & Van Couvering, E. (2025). Bypassing the limitations of algorithmic management via out-of-app activities and the emergence of opportunistic agency in the Swedish gig economy. New Technology, Work and Employment, 40(3), 368–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12323

Örnebring, H., Van Couvering, E., Regin Öborn, D., & MacKenzie, R. (2024). The mediatization of work? Gig workers and gig apps in Sweden. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241270470

Regin Öborn, D. (2023). Risks, possibilities, and social relations in the computerisation of Swedish university administration. New Technology, Work and Employment, 38(3), 434–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12265

Ringqvist, J., Regin Öborn, D., Lid-Falkman, L., & Ivarsson, L. (2022). Sustainability and international human resource management. In International Human Resource Management: The Transformation of Work in a Global Context (pp. 359–).

Regin Öborn, D., Axelsson, J., & Arvidson, M. (2020). Tidslojalitet. Sociologisk Forskning, 57(1), 25–42. https://doi.org/10.37062/sf.57.20575

Regin Öborn, D. (2015). Att göra rum – erfarenheter från ett jämställdhetsprojekt. Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv, 21(4), 41–53.