Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Jianyu Chen, Jinlian Luo, Wenan Hu, Jun Ma
Summary: The current governance model of gig platforms benefits platforms and customers at the expense of gig workers. Extant studies lack empirical insight and direction for creating an effective governance model. This study finds that formalization governance promotes gig workers' job crafting, but work insecurity climate weakens this relationship.
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
(2023)
Article
Geography
Elizabeth. R. Straughan, David Bissell
Summary: This paper explores how urban sociality is changing through interpersonal encounters between workers and consumers who use gig economy apps. By examining three different configurations of social curiosity in Melbourne's gig economy, the paper suggests that curious encounters can transform social relations beyond the encounter itself. It argues that these encounters have a reparative dimension for some workers, supplementing political economy accounts of digital platform work with a cultural geographical sensitivity to changing social relations.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Fabian Braesemann, Fabian Stephany, Ole Teutloff, Otto Kassi, Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta
Summary: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise of digitally enabled remote work, but our understanding of its geographies is limited. This study uses data from an online labour platform to show that remote platform work is polarized along three dimensions: global division of countries, concentration in large cities, and skill-based competition for jobs and wages.
Article
Business
Dafna Bearson, Martin Kenney, John Zysman
Summary: This article examines labor displacement due to digitization and the new work and value created in the platform economy. Platform-enabled value creation activities create identification and measurement challenges, with previous studies focusing on specific organizational forms and lacking consideration of the overall scope and scale of value creation. Case studies of Etsy and Amazon Self-Publishing in the United States provide suggestive evidence for the utility of the framework introduced in this article.
INDUSTRIAL AND CORPORATE CHANGE
(2021)
Article
Environmental Studies
Barbara Orth
Summary: This study expands on previous research by investigating the concept of 'migrant labour' in the gig economy. Through biographical interviews with platform workers in grocery delivery and domestic work platforms in Berlin, Germany, as well as expert interviews, the study reveals a stratification of migrant trajectories and required skills in platform work across different labour platforms. The findings shed light on the relationship between migration regimes and platform-mediated labour regimes, complicating the notion of 'accessibility' of platform work and emphasizing the importance of considering visa regimes, immigration categories, and specific skill sets in future research.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A-ECONOMY AND SPACE
(2023)
Article
Communication
Paula McDonald, Penny Williams, Robyn Mayes
Summary: Research on the motivations of workers engaging with digital platforms is growing, but little has been explored on the impact of the digital economy on workers in professional contexts. This study on Australian photographers reveals that the level of worker engagement with digital platforms is influenced by platform control over pricing, services, product quality, and relationship management. The experiences of freelance workers complicate our understanding of the work facilitated by digital platforms, contributing to a richer theoretical framework in this context.
NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY
(2021)
Article
Management
Helen M. Rand, Hanne M. Stegeman
Summary: The characteristics of online work platforms significantly influence the experiences and perspectives of workers, particularly sex workers. This study on online sex work practices in the UK analyzes how workers perceive and experience the role of platform characteristics in their work. The findings demonstrate that platform characteristics do shape the valuation of online labor, but this is a dynamic process influenced by the agency of workers. Structural analysis reveals that platform features may create competition and devalue labor, but individual sex workers employ strategies to resist devaluation and assert boundaries in a highly competitive market. This highlights the multidirectional and relational dynamics between platform characteristics and workers. The study's focus on sex workers contributes to understanding the role of platforms in valuing feminized online labor.
GENDER WORK AND ORGANIZATION
(2023)
Article
Environmental Studies
Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, Declan Cullen
Summary: This paper examines the socio-spatial dynamics of worker agency in the platform economy in the Washington, D.C. region, focusing on how Uber's innovation of creating just-in-place workers and their efforts to keep workers in just the right place can actually enable new modes of organization. The research highlights the collective and spatial conditions of laboring under and through new technologies, and how workers at a D.C. airport overcame socio-spatial atomization to challenge their emplacement and exercise collective worker agency.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A-ECONOMY AND SPACE
(2021)
Article
Business
Nikolai Cook, Anthony Heyes
Summary: This study provides the first causal evidence that psychological exposure to pollution can impact employment performance, leading to lower likelihood of accepting work and decreased labor productivity.
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
(2022)
Article
Management
Al James
Summary: This paper investigates the experiences of women crowdworkers in integrating work and family and explores the coping tactics they have developed on digital labor platforms. The research challenges the conventional work-family research agenda and emphasizes the disruptive influence of digital labor platforms. It also highlights the need for further engagement with platforms, algorithmic management, and independent platform workers to advance work-family research and support feminist activism.
GENDER WORK AND ORGANIZATION
(2023)
Article
Sociology
Ya-Wen Lei
Summary: This study investigates how labor control and management in China's food-delivery platform economy leads to collective resistance. By analyzing platform architecture, the study finds that differences in technological, legal, and organizational aspects can either diffuse or intensify labor contention. Service platforms have mechanisms to contain grievances and reduce collective action, while gig platforms reinforce grievances and enhance collective contention.
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
(2021)
Article
Industrial Relations & Labor
Corinna Funke, Georg Picot
Summary: In the German political economy, despite some constraints, platform work is gradually being accommodated and monitored, with no new intervention regulations from the government, traditional social partnership institutions are adapting and supervising the development of platform work.
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Jamie Woodcock
Summary: There has been a significant amount of recent research on the application of artificial intelligence in various types of work. However, little is known about how these applications build upon previous forms of managerial control or are adapted in practice. This paper aims to examine the use of artificial intelligence in management within a longer history of control at work and evaluate its impact critically.
FRONTIERS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Industrial
Marie Nilsen, Trond Kongsvik
Summary: This study compares food delivery and ICT-related consulting, two radically different platforms, to identify features of platform-mediated work that have implications for health, safety, and well-being (HSW) and developing a sustainable working life. Based on the Job Demands-Resources perspective, 35 interviews and observations of three digital communities were conducted to identify two factors influencing demands and resources in platform work. The study demonstrates the diversity in platform-mediated work and how personal and contextual factors can moderate adverse consequences. Strategies for aligning platform-mediated work with sustainability are proposed.
Editorial Material
Communication
Winifred R. Poster
Summary: This special issue expands research on the various forms of deception in the digital economy, focusing on the institutions, labor, and platforms involved in online scams, fakes, and frauds.
NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY
(2022)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Julian Posada
Summary: This presentation for the AIES'21 doctoral consortium examines the Latin American crowdsourcing market through a decolonial lens. The research is based on the analysis of web traffic of ninety-three platforms, interviews with Venezuelan data workers, and analysis of documentation issued by these organizations. The findings reveal the persistence of centuries-old global divisions of labor, the constraints on workers' agency in producing annotations, and the role of ideologies from the Global North in legitimizing and reinforcing the global labor market configuration.
AIES '21: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2021 AAAI/ACM CONFERENCE ON AI, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY
(2021)
Proceedings Paper
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Julian Posada, Nicholas Weller, Wendy H. Wong
Summary: This paper discusses the constitutive shift in social and political relations due to datafication, emphasizing that the effects go beyond economic and ethical concerns. By using the analogy of the printing press, the author provides a framework to understand this constitutive change.
AIES '21: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2021 AAAI/ACM CONFERENCE ON AI, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY
(2021)