Summary
Gig workers have become an important component of the contemporary workforce and have generated extensive interest among researchers. The purpose of this article is to provide an integrative ...review of the literature on gig workers. Consistent with the more recent studies, we adopt a broad definition of gig work, which is characterized by the temporary nature of the work, project‐based compensation, work flexibility, and non‐membership in an organization. We first discuss the major themes in the literature based on an input–process–output framework. Specifically, we review what factors drive individuals to engage in gig work, how gig work impacts gig workers based on four theoretical approaches, and what outcomes individuals experience as a result of engaging in gig work. Based on the literature review, we highlight six future research agendas. We also discuss practical implications for gig workers, traditional organizations, digital labor platforms, and society.
This research explores how a new relation of production—the shift from human managers to algorithmic managers on digital platforms—manufactures workplace consent. While most research has argued that ...the task standardization and surveillance that accompany algorithmic management will give rise to the quintessential “bad job” (Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson, 2000; Kalleberg, 2011), I find that, surprisingly, many workers report liking and finding choice while working under algorithmic management. Drawing on a seven-year qualitative study of the largest sector in the gig economy, the ride-hailing industry, I describe how workers navigate being managed by an algorithm. I begin by showing how algorithms segment the work at multiple sites of human–algorithm interactions and how this configuration of the work process allows for more-frequent and narrow choice. I find that workers use two sets of tactics. In engagement tactics, individuals generally follow the algorithmic nudges and do not try to get around the system; in deviance tactics, individuals manipulate their input into the algorithmic management system. While the behaviors associated with these tactics are practical opposites, they both elicit consent, or active, enthusiastic participation by workers to align their efforts with managerial interests, and both contribute to workers seeing themselves as skillful agents. However, this choice-based consent can mask the more-structurally problematic elements of the work, contributing to the growing popularity of what I call the “good bad” job.
UK workers are stuck in a low-pay, low-productivity rut, with far too many people working in poor quality, insecure jobs, with little training or chance of getting on. Katy Jones and Ashwin Kumar ...question the mantra that 'work is the best way out of poverty' and examine the in-work poverty that now defines employment for many.
The state's engagement with people out of work is shown to ignore the needs of lone parents and disabled people, and has little concern for skills and career progression. When coupled with the degradation of social infrastructure, such as child care and transport, the barriers to quality work can become insurmountable. Jones and Kumar's insightful analysis reveals the need to move away from positioning unemployment as a 'behavioural problem' to be corrected by coercive labour market policies to one that considers the wider obstacles to better paid, quality jobs.
PurposeThrough focusing on gig workers registered in three crowdsourcing platforms, the authors investigate how individual and collaborative job crafting may be positively related to the meaningful ...work and affective commitment those gig workers develop towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register in.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a quantitative research method in which they focused on date from surveys completed by 327 gig workers. They tested the hypotheses using SmartPLS 3, which is more suitable when dealing with complex models, non-normal data, small samples and higher-order constructs.FindingsThe results showed that the proactive behaviour embedded within both individual and collaborative job crafting may lead to a sense of meaningfulness for gig workers and subsequently, their affective commitment towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register in. Specifically, the more gig workers undertake individual (H1) and collaborative (H2) job crafting behaviour, the greater the sense of meaningfulness they develop. Moreover, meaningfulness for gig workers positively affects their affective commitment towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register with (H3).Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of its kind in the context of France and the European Union to focus on job crafting and its effect on both meaningful work and the affective commitment of non-traditional workers. This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resource (HR) management, in which empirical studies that address gig work have been limited so far.
Despite growing interest in the concept of gig work, the nature and quality of gig work is not well understood. The article builds on recent research by exploring gig work through an application of ...notions of job quality associated with Scotland's Fair Work Convention. Further, in recognising the multidimensional nature of job quality and the divide between objective versus subjective approaches to job quality, the article adopts a checklist or job characteristics approach, focusing on objective aspects of quality work, whilst drawing on subjective experiences to capture lived experience of gig work. A key finding is, in spite of a deficit in objective characteristics of Fair Work, the subjective experience varies between platforms as well as in accordance with individual worker characteristics, such as between those undertaking gig work as a primary or supplementary source of income. A further key finding suggests the growth in gig work reflects the normalisation of what in the past would constitute poor working conditions. Taken together, the findings highlight limitations of theoretical models of job quality due to an emphasis on traditional employment.
The advent of the sharing/gig economy has created new forms of employment embedded in new labor practices. Advocates of the sharing economy frame it in salutary terms, lauding its sustainability, ...decentralization, and employment-generation capabilities. The workers of the gig economy are seen as independent contractors under law rather than employees, and the owners of the gig economy platforms celebrate this categorization as a form of entrepreneurship. In this paper, we use insights from the entrepreneurship literature to examine this claim critically. Taking Uber as an exemplar, we look at the arguments behind the company's contention that its drivers are actually "partners" who are engaged in entrepreneurship, and demonstrate why these claims are problematic. We utilize a stakeholders' theory framework that initiates a dialogue between ethics and entrepreneurship in order to focus on the mechanisms that help ensure ethical practices in the sharing economy and to examine the efficacy of these mechanisms. We also discuss the role of the entrepreneurship literature in promoting entrepreneurial behaviors that lead to income inequality. We conclude by arguing that the sharing economy reflects the intensification of an ongoing neoliberal trend that misuses the concept of entrepreneurship in order to justify certain forms of employment practices, and make a case for regulatory oversight.
This paper develops geographic debates on platform urbanism by exploring the overlooked consumption practices that digital on-demand platforms have generated. Extending recent work on the affectivity ...of platforms which explain how specific bodily experiences are ‘engineered’ into the design of platforms, the paper argues that the onflow of urban life can complicate these logics. In the context of on-demand food delivery platforms, the paper moves beyond the explanatory logic of convenience to provide a richer understanding of how digital on-demand food delivery platforms might be changing everyday habits in the city for people in different circumstances. Through analysis of qualitative interviews with consumers who use digital on-demand food delivery platforms in Melbourne, Australia, the paper investigates how such platforms are ongoingly evaluated by urban inhabitants. Through a micropolitical lens that views bodies in terms of their changing indeterminate capacities, the paper explains how on-demand food platforms can both enhance and deplete bodily capacities in time, and that this changeability is contingent on diverse circumstances of urban dwelling. The political value of this perspective is to acknowledge a more diffuse set of power relations at play and to enhance our sense of the multiple subjectivities that emerge through ongoing immersion in digital worlds.
Gig economy platforms seem to provide extreme temporal flexibility to workers, giving them full control over how to spend each hour and minute of the day. What constraints do workers face when ...attempting to exercise this flexibility? We use 30 worker interviews and other data to compare three online piecework platforms with different histories and worker demographics: Mechanical Turk, MobileWorks, and CloudFactory. We find that structural constraints (availability of work and degree of worker dependence on the work) as well as cultural‐cognitive constraints (procrastination and presenteeism) limit worker control over scheduling in practice. The severity of these constraints varies significantly between platforms, the formally freest platform presenting the greatest structural and cultural‐cognitive constraints. We also find that workers have developed informal practices, tools, and communities to address these constraints. We conclude that focusing on outcomes rather than on worker control is a more fruitful way to assess flexible working arrangements.
Gig workers are a growing portion of the workforce and of increased interest to researchers. Recent reports suggest one in four workers is involved in gig work to some extent. Additionally, gig work ...has been a trending topic in organizational psychology for the past few years; however, our systematic literature review revealed the need for more attention to address definitional ambiguity and consider the intricacies of gig work. Specifically, this article identified the following gaps in the extant literature: the need for a comprehensive definition of gig work, the creation of profiles to differentiate gig workers, and the application of organizational psychology theories to explain gig workers’ experiences. This conceptual article addresses these gaps by providing clarity with a definition for gig work that captures both the primary (e.g., shared by all gig workers) and secondary (e.g., shared by some gig workers) characteristics of gig work. Further, this article describes five gig worker profiles (i.e., Gig Service Providers, Gig Goods Providers, Gig Data Providers, Agency Gig Workers, and Traditional Gig Workers) based on combinations of secondary characteristics to identify different types of gig work. Using the definition provided in this article and applying the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, propositions were developed to compare gig worker profiles based on the job demands and job resources they experience. Thus, this article serves as a foundation to advance the literature through a consistent definition of gig work that paves the way for future research to better understand gig workers through the JD-R model.
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a crisis that affects several aspects of people's lives around the globe. Most of the affected countries took several measures, like lockdowns, business shutdowns, ...hygiene regulations, social distancing, school and university closings, or mobility tracking as a means of slowing down the distribution of COVID-19. These measures are expected to show short-term and long-term effects on people's working lives. However, most media reports focused on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on changes in work arrangements (e.g., short-time work, flexible location and hours) for workers in a regular employment relationship. We here focus on workers in flexible employment relationships (e.g. temporary agency work and other forms of subcontracted labor, as well as new forms of working, such as in the gig economy). Specifically, we will discuss (a) how the work and careers of individuals in flexible employment relationships might get affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; (b) outline ideas how to examine period effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work and careers of those individuals, and (c) outline how the pandemic can contribute to the ramification of flexible employment relationships.
PDF
