Critical reflection on strategies for widening acceptance to emancipatory sociology engaging with employers and workers in The Good Jobs Project

This article offers a critical reflection on The Good Jobs Project: a multi-phase qualitative project and an attempt at fostering symbiotic transformation (a ‘win-win’ for employers and workers) via emancipatory sociology from within a business school. The project attempted to involve workers and employers in improving the experience of work for low-paid public-facing workers (in retail, hospitality and care). In attempting emancipatory research in an engagement space heavily characterized by contemporary capitalist norms such as transactional and individualized interaction, we identified and reflected on dilemmas around ‘securing access’ to research with employers and workers, ‘value proposition framing’ to motivate stakeholder involvement and the importance of ‘prompting judgement’ as part of the emancipatory intent of the work. Our discussion draws on concepts of utopian sociology (Wright, Levitas) to explore strategies addressing the necessary ‘mess’ of a research practice attempting to resist reproducing transactional norms for knowledge exchange between academia and business.