Financialization and the workplace: extending and applying the disconnected capitalism thesis

The global financial crisis has brought discussion of financialization to the fore. Yet, what is notable is the extent to which the dysfunctional micro-economic consequences of financialization at firm level have gone largely unremarked and unchanged. By revisiting and renewing the disconnected capitalism thesis, this article seeks to rectify the omission of a focus on financialization and the workplace and develops a complex and nuanced bigger picture that explores in some detail changes in accumulation, corporate, work and employment domains. The dual objective is thus to understand the dynamics and drivers of such changes and to identify the extent to which financialization has shaped them. In identifying patterns of connection and disconnection across and within domains, a recurrent theme concerns financialization interacting with, accelerating and exacerbating longer term trends such as labour market insecurity, externalization and internationalization.