Digital platforms and application software have changed how people work in a range of industries. Empirical studies of the gig economy have raised concerns about new systems of algorithmic management exercised over workers and how these alter the structural conditions of their work. Drawing on the republican literature, we offer a theoretical account of algorithmic domination and a framework for understanding how it can be applied to ride hail and food delivery services in the on-demand economy. We argue (...) that certain algorithms can facilitate new relationships of domination by sustaining a socio-technical system in which the owners and managers of a company dominate workers. This analysis has implications for the growing use of algorithms throughout the gig economy and broader labor market. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

While the challenges workers face in the gig economy are now well-known, reflections on emancipatory solutions in political philosophy are still underdeveloped. Some have pleaded for enhancing workers' bargaining power through unionisation; others for enhancing exit options in the labour market. Both strategies, however, come with unin-tended side-effects and do not exhaust the full potential for worker self-government present in the digital gig economy. Using the republican theory of freedom as non-domination , I argue that G.D.H. Cole's 20th-century (...) defence of guild socialism offers a promising avenue for enhancing worker autonomy in the gig economy. Platform companies rely on relational and structural domination to undermine worker autonomy, but Cole's guild socialism was specifically designed to enhance autonomy in the workplace. Following Cole's advice today would amount to a defence of worker-owned cooperative platforms. By putting workers in control of platform design and governance, cooperative platforms create new opportunities for worker autonomy. However, platform coopera-tivism faces serious challenges if it plans on becoming a realistic alternative to the traditional gig economy. (shrink)

The 2007+ crisis led to an increase in occasional and task work, which unleashed the potential of new technological and organizational solutions. The advancements in digital technological platforms stimulated the growth of the segment referred to as gig economy. The article aims to apply a systematic approach to the driving forces behind the emergence of gig economy and its success to date and to assess its development prospects. It argues to confirm the thesis that gig economy has (...) its own inherent logic, while it remains part of the multi-stage process of the evolution of employee-employer relations, from the industrial stage to the digital era to platform-mediated work. Based on the analysis of the current world literature, the article posits that gig economy, as the next stage of development, has significantly reduced the quality of work, but it may also not meet the individual needs of the contemporary consumer. This increases the likelihood of the need for its change. The article also envisages the direction of this change towards post-platform economy based on distributed market spaces and provides the characteristics of its determinants, including social capital and a sense of individual entrepreneurship. The primary methods used in the study involved analysis and critique of the current world literature as well as the method of analysis and logical construction. (shrink)

The gig economy is a phenomenon that is rapidly expanding, redefining the nature of work and contributing to a significant change in how contemporary economies are organised. Its expansion is not unproblematic. This article provides a clear and systematic analysis of the main ethical challenges caused by the gig economy. Following a brief overview of the gig economy, its scope and scale, we map the key ethical problems that it gives rise to, as they are discussed in (...) the relevant literature. We map them onto three categories: the new organisation of work (what is done), the new nature of work (how it is done), and the new status of workers (who does it). We then evaluate a recent initiative from the EU that seeks to address the challenges of the gig economy. The 2019 report of the European High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets is a positive step in the right direction. However, we argue that ethical concerns relating to algorithmic systems as mechanisms of control, and the discrimination, exclusion and disconnectedness faced by gig workers require further deliberation and policy response. A brief conclusion completes the analysis. The appendix presents the methodology underpinning our literature review. (shrink)

Christiaens argues that digital technologies are fundamentally undermining workers’ autonomy by enacting systems of surveillance that lead to exploitation, alienation, and exhaustion. For a more sustainable future of work, digital technologies should support human development instead of subordinating it to algorithmic control.

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 37-39.

The gig economy has become a hot topic. The term itself derives from the world of entertainment, particularly live music, where performers striving for recognition hope to get a few ‘gigs’ – i.e. short-term and sporadic opportunities for paid employment, with the understanding that such engagements are limited and without any future obligation on either party – employer or employee. This seemingly gives both parties significant autonomy, albeit not in equal measure. Indeed, the terms ‘employer’ and ‘employee’, with respective (...) connotations of extended and enduring responsibility, and mutual obligation, are hotly disputed. Are they self-employed contractors or employees of the company? In what follows, I show how key aspects of Zygmunt Bauman’s work prepare us for an understanding and appreciation of the gig economy, and other more extensive ramifications; particularly those exemplified in the success of the Open Source model, and its potential – or not – to provide the basis for new institutional forms appropriate and acceptable for our current context. (shrink)

Drawing on a qualitative, multi-case study of three kinds of geographically tethered gig work—ride-hailing, delivery, and domestic services platforms—in the United States, I examine how workers anticipate the influences of metrics, live with metrics, and cope with algorithmic precarity. Data for this project include in-depth interviews with 50 gig workers about their efforts to interpret and manage metrics as part of their everyday work practices. The analysis reveals that participants were anxious about metrics primarily because of the disciplinary outcomes, that (...) are, the threat of job loss and the valued job features. It also directs attention to how workers felt and experienced customer-sourced ratings and system-generated behavioral metrics variously across platforms. Information asymmetries and the perceived lack of control also intensified a sense of powerlessness among participants. While participants articulated strategies that aimed at managing the uncertainty of customer-sourced ratings—and more precisely, the work-related uncertainty created by “difficult customers”—throughout service interactions, their feelings of anxiety could not be resolved. Furthermore, the (in)visibility of metrics, the settings of platform-mediated worker–customer interactions, and workers’ platform dependence contributed to the varying disciplinary power of metrics. The study contributes to understanding how metrics as affective measures mediate the trilateral relationship between platforms, workers, and customers in the gig economy. (shrink)

The article explores the normative concerns raised for gig workers by algorithmic management (AM), by embracing an ethnographically sensitive approach to philosophical inquiry. Inspired by Michel de Certeau’s concept of ‘tactics’, the article suggests interpreting workers’ attempts to ‘trick the algorithm’ and escape some of AM’s constraints as ways to reclaim agency, in the absence of suitable organizational conditions for its affirmative exercise. The kind of agency specifically deployed by workers in cooperative settings is referred to as ‘contributive agency’, broadly (...) defined as workers’ control over their contribution in multiple dimensions – epistemic, relational, participatory and protective. Contributive agentic capacities are not mere properties of agents, but organizationally mediated capacities that can be more or less enabled or constrained depending on the contributive context. It is argued that below a certain threshold, AM’s agency-constraining features are objectionable and desirable agency-enabling organizational conditions are identified in the four dimensions. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers increases consumer demand for corporate (...) social responsibility regarding this stakeholder group – specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, thereby bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves from future reputational crises. To do so, we advance a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory in order to leverage customers’ virtuous self-perception and increase gig-worker freedom. (shrink)

The emergence of so-called ‘gig work’, particularly that sold through digital platforms accessed through smartphone apps, has led to disputes about the proper classification of workers: Should platform workers be classified as independent contractors (as platforms typically insist), or as employees of the platforms through which they sell labor (as workers often claim)? Such disputes have urgency due to the way in which employee status is necessary to access certain benefits such as a minimum wage, sick pay, and so on. (...) In addition, classification disputes have philosophical significance because their resolution requires some foundational account of why the law should make a distinction between employed and freelance workers in the first place. This paper aims to fill this foundational gap. Central to it is the idea that employment involves a worker ceding certain freedoms in return for a degree of security, at least with respect to income. Insofar as the misclassification objection has force against digital platforms, it is when a platform is attempting to have it both ways: Workers are giving up freedom but not being granted a proportionate increase in security. As I shall explain, this approach offers some flexibility as to how actual disputes might be resolved – justice may be indifferent between whether platforms offer greater security or permit workers greater freedom, provided they do at least one of these things. (shrink)

Many of us assume that all the free editing and sorting of online content we ordinarily rely on is carried out by AI algorithms — not human persons. Yet in fact, that is often not the case. This is because human workers remain cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than AI for performing myriad tasks where the right answer turns on ineffable contextual criteria too subtle for algorithms to yet decode. The output of this work is then used for machine learning (...) purposes to generate algorithms constructed from large data sets containing thousands of correctly coded observations. The fact that ghost workers are treated as consumers distorts the basic logic of the employment relationship, effectively placing the worker-as-consumer in the worst of both worlds, in which they hold the legal rights of neither group. This puts them in a regulatory limbo position in which they have little or no protection, control, or guarantee of return on investment. This is because the platforms that facilitate ghost work have orchestrated a three-way virtual relationship that absolves all parties of responsibility, while placing nearly all the risks and opportunity costs squarely on the shoulders of the workers. As a result, we believe such a work arrangement as it stands, does not uphold basic standards of Rawlsian justice as fairness. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the underlying economic structures which have led to the rise of the tech giants. In their book Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy, economists Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake outline the four fundamental features of the technocapitalist (or what they consider the intangible) economy. Key to the emerging intangible economy, they suggest, are the four “S’s” of this new form of capitalism, viz., scalability, sunkenness, synergies, and (...) spillovers. In the following, I explicate the ways in which, if taken seriously, these four features of the technocapitalist economy tend towards heightened levels of economic centralization and economic inequality as compared to those experienced under industrial capitalism. (shrink)

Over the past few years, a significant global debate has developed over the classification of workers in the sharing economy either as independent contractors or as employees. While Uber and Lyft have dominated the spotlight lately, the worker classification debates extend beyond ridesharing companies and affect workers across a variety of sectors. Classification of a worker as an employee, rather than an independent contractor, can carry a range of implications for worker treatment and protections under labor law, anti-discrimination law, (...) tort law, and tax law, depending on the legal jurisdiction. The debates, at least in the United States, have been incomplete due to the failure of policy makers and advocates to consider the scope and interconnectedness of the worker classification issues across the full sweep of legal arenas. There is time, however, to remedy the incompleteness of these policy conversations before worker classification decisions ossify and path dependence takes hold. Two interacting forces create the most serious risk for inadequate policy formulation: (1) silos among legal experts, and (2) first-mover effects. Both of these factors, silo and first mover, emerge in sharing economy debates in the United States. Tax experts and other legal specialists operate in distinct silos leading to a misunderstanding by non-tax analysts of the tax ramifications of worker classification, and to an under appreciation on the part of tax experts of the potential influence of “modest” tax rule changes on worker classification generally. The risks of such misunderstandings can be amplified by first-mover efforts, such as: (1) platforms’ contractual designation of workers as independent contractors to bolster a claim of nonemployer/nonemployee status; (2) platforms’ support for proposed tax legislation that would “clarify” the status of sharing workers as independent contractors for tax purposes if they satisfy a multiple-prong (relatively easy) safe harbor test; and (3) sharing economy worker litigation to secure employee status. This Article identifies the incompleteness in the worker classification debates and argues for the active formulation of policy through a process that looks beyond individual fields. A more complete conversation requires analytical engagement across multiple fields and recognition of the de facto power of reform in one arena to influence others. Moreover, it is by no means clear that just because tax might arrive at the legislative drawing table first (due to first mover effects), that it should drive or shape the broader worker classification debate. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Chomsky (1989) has proposed two principles which choose among competing transformational derivations. He calls them principles of “Economy of Derivation”. These are the Least Effort principle and the Last Resort principle, seen in (1a-b). (The _________ _________ _ _ nomenclature is partially my own: Chomsky uses the term “Principle of Least Effort” for (1a-b) together.).

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid legal decision making has become prominent. This paper investigates the use of AI in a critical issue in employment law, the determination of a worker’s status—employee vs. independent contractor—in two common law countries (the U.S. and Canada). This legal question has been a contentious labor issue insofar as independent contractors are not eligible for the same benefits as employees. It has become an important societal issue due to the ubiquity of the gig (...) economy and the recent disruptions in employment arrangements. To address this problem, we collected, annotated, and structured the data for all Canadian and Californian court cases related to this legal question between 2002 and 2021, resulting in 538 Canadian cases and 217 U.S. cases. In contrast to legal literature focusing on complex and correlated characteristics of the employment relationship, our statistical analyses of the data show very strong correlations between the worker’s status and a small subset of quantifiable characteristics of the employment relationship. In fact, despite the variety of situations in the case law, we show that simple, off-the-shelf AI models classify the cases with an out-of-sample accuracy of more than 90%. Interestingly, the analysis of misclassified cases reveals consistent misclassification patterns by most algorithms. Legal analyses of these cases led us to identify how equity is ensured by judges in ambiguous situations. Finally, our findings have practical implications for access to legal advice and justice. We deployed our AI model via the open-access platform, https://MyOpenCourt.org/, to help users answer employment legal questions. This platform has already assisted many Canadian users, and we hope it will help democratize access to legal advice to large crowds. (shrink)

Much has been written about data politics in the last decade, which has generated myriad concepts such as ‘surveillance capitalism’, ‘gig economy’, ‘quantified self’, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, ‘data colonialism’, ‘data subjects’ and ‘digital citizens’. Yet, it has been difficult to plot these concepts into an historical series to discern specific continuities and discontinuities since the origins of modern power in its three major forms: sovereign, disciplinary and regulatory. This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought these three forms (...) of power into sharp relief but made particularly visible a fourth form of power that we name ‘sensory power’, which has been emerging since the 1980s. The article draws on early studies of power by Michel Foucault, subsequent studies on biopower and biopolitics that expanded on them, and studies in the past decade that focused on data produced from apps, devices and platforms. Yet, despite its ambition, the article is inevitably an outline of a much larger project. (shrink)

The rapid development of machine-learning algorithms, which underpin contemporary artificial intelligence systems, has created new opportunities for the automation of work processes and management functions. While algorithmic management has been observed primarily within the platform-mediated gig economy, its transformative reach and consequences are also spreading to more standard work settings. Exploring algorithmic management as a sociotechnical concept, which reflects both technological infrastructures and organizational choices, we discuss how algorithmic management may influence existing power and social structures within organizations. We (...) identify three key issues. First, we explore how algorithmic management shapes pre-existing power dynamics between workers and managers. Second, we discuss how algorithmic management demands new roles and competencies while also fostering oppositional attitudes toward algorithms. Third, we explain how algorithmic management impacts knowledge and information exchange within an organization, unpacking the concept of opacity on both a technical and organizational level. We conclude by situating this piece in broader discussions on the future of work, accountability, and identifying future research steps. (shrink)

“My first long haul flight that didn’t fill up and an empty row for me. I have been blessed by the algorithm ”. The phrase ‘blessed by the algorithm’ expresses the feeling of having been fortunate in what appears on your feed on various social media platforms, or in the success or virality of your content as a creator, or in what gig economy jobs you are offered. However, we can also place it within wider public discourse employing theistic (...) conceptions of AI. Building on anthropological fieldwork into the ‘entanglements of AI and Religion’, this article will explore how ‘blessed by the algorithm’ tweets are indicative of the impact of theistic AI narratives: modes of thinking about AI in an implicitly religious way. This thinking also represents continuities that push back against the secularisation thesis and other grand narratives of disenchantment that claim secularity occurs because of technological and intellectual progress. This article will also explore new religious movements, where theistic conceptions of AI entangle technological aspirations with religious ones. (shrink)

Writing about loneliness has been a struggle in the midst of the pandemic. Characterized by loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and fear, the COVID-19 pandemic is an exceptionally challenging time. At various points while navigating this loneliness project amid a particularly lonely time, we lamented the seeming futility of it all. A main goal of developing a Feminist Loneliness Studies in this introduction is to understand the ways that systems of oppression – white supremacy, settler colonialism, anti-queer bias, misogyny, neoliberal capitalism, and (...) so on – create our lonely world. To date, there remains no comprehensive feminist analysis of the structural conditions that both produce and intensify experiences of loneliness. We aim to remedy this gap. That is, we seek to address what a Feminist Loneliness Studies can contribute to understanding the complexities of this complicated emotion. For example, what is the unique loneliness of the feminist killjoy who calls out, or calls in, existing forms of queerphobia, racism, and sexism? What does it mean to be a politicized person and how does that result in both alienation and isolation? What might the relationship be between white supremacy and loneliness? How is loneliness both individual and systemic, and what is the relationship between the two? What distinctive forms of loneliness are created by ableism, sanism, neoliberalism, capitalism, globalization, and the gig economy? Ought loneliness be avoided at all costs? What are the ethics of loneliness? In our introduction to this special issue, we unpack and theorize the potential perils and generative possibilities offered up by this profound emotion. Establishing a Feminist Loneliness Studies provides us with the space we need to begin addressing and comprehending loneliness. (shrink)

This study provides an overview of the different forms of labor contracting in the Philippines, as found in the “formal” economy, i.e., the traditional sectors of Agriculture, Industry, and Services, as well as the “informal” or gig economy. It also discusses similarities and differences between the “formal” and “informal” economy, as well as the increasing precarity of labor contracting, regardless of industry sector and the nature of work. The paper concludes with recommendations to address the precariousness and (...) inequality of labor contracting within the immediate future. (shrink)

Adding to contemporary debates about the relationship between financialization and neoliberalism, this article investigates their entanglement at the level of subjectivity. Primarily, the article argues that financialization and neoliberalism are converging to produce a new form of subjectivity, post-profit homo œconomicus, an always indebted but credit-seeking enterprise. The value of this approach, the article demonstrates, is that it provides theoretical tools capable of grasping the differential production of subjectivity across the uneven and unequal striations of contemporary neoliberal society, from precarious (...) workers of the gig economy to financial sector elites. The article examines two figures who have become central to public and academic debates about neoliberalism and financialization – the low-waged, precarious worker and the indebted student – to consider how neoliberal subjectivity is produced and distributed unevenly. It concludes that within these fragmentary socioeconomic positions are different instantiations of always indebted but credit-seeking human capital. (shrink)

With an emphasis on psychoanalytic theory, Business, Ethics and Society: Key Concepts, Current Debates and Contemporary Innovations provides a clear, concise introduction to the field of business ethics, while addressing contemporary issues and debates around the impacts of artificial intelligence, social media, the gig economy and populist politics on business and society. The book features mini-case studies from a variety of contexts and companies, including Gillette, Nike, Dove, British Airways and Microsoft, as well as thought-provoking questions throughout. Also included (...) are: - Learning objectives - Chapter summaries - Recommended reading Business, Ethics and Society: Key Concepts, Current Debates and Contemporary Innovations serves as an ideal introductory text for students of undergraduate business ethics-related courses. Lecturers can access a range of online resources for use in their teaching, including an instructor's manual, PowerPoint slides and SAGE Business Cases. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, work relations have changed dramatically. New phenomena like “gig-economy” or “crowd work” not only constitute precarious working conditions but also contradict with our social esteem of work resulting from the social theories of the classical economy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The central focus of classical economists on building an educated and disciplined workforce provided not only the base for the upcoming industrial society but also resulted in a work-based society where “being (...) employed” became the precondition for social security and social participation. It is the aim of this contribution to show how our positive attitudes towards work, established by the political economic theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are jeopardized by the social changes in post-industrialized societies, due to the effects of globalized economies, digitalization and changed industrial relations. This has also far-reaching consequences for managerial theories based on conceptions like meaningful work or discussions about social responsibilities vis-à-vis employees as primary stakeholder groups. (shrink)

Gandhi scholars agree that he was a critic of capitalism, if not capital or capitalists. Nevertheless, they disagree about his relationship to socialism. Some emphasize Gandhi’s claim that the modern Western canon of socialism is incompatible with the philosophy of nonviolence. Others emphasize his occasional affirmation that he is a socialist, regarding socialism as a beautiful ideal of equality. Gandhi moves back and forth between conditional endorsements of capitalists and socialism’s beautiful ideal. In this article, I ask why Gandhi never (...) specifies any clear economic preference for the philosophy of nonviolence. Is he confused and incapable of reaching practical judgments about what nonviolence demands in terms of economics? I answer this question in two ways. First, I argue that passing back and forth over the partial and fallible viewpoints of capitalists and socialists of various stripes is consistent with Gandhi’s method of experiments in truth. The passing-over method extends from experiments in devotion to constructive experiments in economics, laying the foundation for integrating distinctively human life goals or puruṣārthas. Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, I consider the background to Gandhi’s use of this method as applied to economics in Kauṭilya’s classical Arthaśāstra. Scholars often characterize Kauṭilya as both a socialist and a realist. While establishing the world’s first welfare state, his Arthaśāstra is also tied deeply into the material-spiritual concerns of the puruṣārthas, combining economics with duty, earthly pleasure, and transcendence. In this latter respect, however, Kauṭilya’s realism concedes too much to the contextual realities of his time concerning imperial conquest and caste. Gandhi emerges from this inquiry as another kind of realist in his constructive experiments with diverse economic perspectives, equally attuned to the contextual realities of his age. Gandhi succeeded—where Kauṭilya failed—to integrate economics with the spiritual goals of the puruṣārthas. I contend that Gandhi’s back and forth method in economics provides contemporary Gandhians with a way to address new contextual realities of the digital or “gig” economy through techno-satyagraha. (shrink)

The Online Labour Index was launched in 2016 to measure the global utilisation of online freelance work at scale. Five years after its creation, the OLI has become a point of reference for scholars and policy experts investigating the online gig economy. As the market for online freelancing work matures, a high volume of data and new analytical tools allow us to revisit half a decade of online freelance monitoring and extend the index's scope to more dimensions of the (...) global online freelancing market. While measuring the utilisation of online labour across countries and occupations by tracking the number of projects and tasks posted on major English-language platforms, the new Online Labour Index 2020 also tracks Spanish- and Russian-language platforms, reveals changes over time in the geography of labour supply and estimates female participation in the online gig economy. The rising popularity of software and tech work and the concentration of freelancers on the Indian subcontinent are examples of the insights that the OLI 2020 provides. The OLI 2020 delivers a more detailed picture of the world of online freelancing via an interactive online visualisation updated daily. It provides easy access to downloadable open data for policymakers, labour market researchers, and the general public. (shrink)

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While the advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods and services can be exchanged, as well as an efficient way for consumers to voice their opinions about retailers (i.e., via online rating systems), recent work has begun to uncover significant biases that manifest during the review process. In particular, it has been suggested that the gig-economy’s elimination of previously anonymous arm’s-length transactions may re-introduce (...) bias into perceptions of quality. In this work, we build upon research that has identified biases based on ascriptive characteristics in rating systems of ridesharing platforms. In doing so, we conduct an online experiment using a series of factorial vignettes to consider not only willingness to transact but post-transaction perceptions of quality. Findings suggest that female drivers are not penalized ex ante for taking on gender incongruent roles, i.e., driving, and experience no penalty when a rider reports a high-quality experience. However, conditional upon a lower quality experience, there is a disproportionate penalty for female drivers. Strikingly, we also observe that historic high quality does not serve as a buffer against such penalties, as prior literature would suggest. These findings underscore the challenges platforms face in ensuring their participants are being evaluated in a fair and impartial way, and highlight the difficulties present when non-employees (customers) are rating non-employees (drivers) of the firm. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking centre stage in economic growth and business operations alike. Public discourse about the practical and ethical implications of AI has mainly focussed on the societal level. There is an emerging knowledge base on AI risks to human rights around data security and privacy concerns. A separate strand of work has highlighted the stresses of working in the gig economy. This prevailing focus on human rights and gig impacts has been at the expense of a (...) closer look at how AI may be reshaping traditional workplace relations and, more specifically, workplace health and safety. To address this gap, we outline a conceptual model for developing an AI Work Health and Safety (WHS) Scorecard as a tool to assess and manage the potential risks and hazards to workers resulting from AI use in a workplace. A qualitative, practice-led research study of AI adopters was used to generate and test a novel list of potential AI risks to worker health and safety. Risks were identified after cross-referencing Australian AI Ethics Principles and Principles of Good Work Design with AI ideation, design and implementation stages captured by the AI Canvas, a framework otherwise used for assessing the commercial potential of AI to a business. The unique contribution of this research is the development of a novel matrix itemising currently known or anticipated risks to the WHS and ethical aspects at each AI adoption stage. (shrink)

This chapter focuses the future of work as it relates to automation, artificial intelligence, the gig economy, and the technologies that will emerge from the so-called “fourth industrial revolution.” The goal here is to analyze the ways in which our modern capitalist economy drives technological development and the ownership structures which are built into our economic and technological relations. Our current ownership structures point to a future of “precariatized” labor, leading to less stable, more automated and more deskilled (...) labor. What this chapter therefore seeks to do is provide an overview of the present predictions concerning the future of work – the likelihood of job automation, the types of jobs that will remain, the skills future workers will need to develop, etc. Furthermore, this chapter also attempts to outline a social theory for the future of work, specifically one which prioritizes the concept of ownership as a necessary component of the future of work. What is ultimately suggested is that, given the current capitalist economy and predictions about the future of work, any post-capitalist vision for the future of work ought to prioritize new forms of ownership, including work ownership, technological ownership, and information ownership. (shrink)

The changes created by platform-facilitated labor are considered fundamental challenges to the future of work. As more data accumulates on gender discrimination in online platforms, this Article explores how inequality is cultivated by platforms in the gig economy. Looking at technological architecture as organizational structure, this essay bridges a gap between three bodies of scholarship that have not yet been in conversation but considering them together is necessary if we are to think about gender equality in platform-facilitated labor. The (...) first concerns data driven discrimination, the second concerns the role of platform affordances and the third concerns organizational policies. These point to the gender inequality regime that platforms may enact. Thus, the Article theoretically contributes to unpacking platforms’ role in perpetuating and institutionalizing gender inequality. Finally, it offers some suggestions on the ways in which law, policy and technology can disrupt the institutionalization of gender inequality in platform-facilitated labor. (shrink)

Individuals have different experiences of work when they are self‐employed, when they perform tasks in the gig economy, and when they follow directives from managers. But such differences are not represented in some of the most prominent non‐ideal theories of work. These describe workers as a coherent group, with a position in the structure of the liberal capitalist economy. I present an alternative that does better at acknowledging difference, through a description of work and workers that has greater (...) ‘pluralism’ and less ‘unifying coherence’. Some might insist that their ‘unifying’ description has superior empirical plausibility. But if ‘pluralistic’ descriptions are valid rivals to provide an accurate characterization of our current condition, then we should consider whether their use in theory can serve valuable aims. I identify the distinctive and valuable non‐ideal aims – epistemic, evaluative, and normative – that can be pursued with ‘pluralistic’ descriptions of work and workers. (shrink)

Inevitably, digitization and the increasing use of intelligent programs and machines have fundamentally changed the world of work. Moreover, it is to be expected that trends will continue in the near future and that other far-reaching changes will occur. Work is such an essential part in the lives of most members of society. It is not only the primary source of income but also crucial for one’s self-fulfillment, identification, and the achievement of social recognition. Therefore, from a societal, legal, and (...) political perspective, there is a need to understand the imminent changes, to critically reflect on them, and to draft alternative proposals to shape the future in order to provide normative guidance. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written by various authors including the editors of the collection, Phoebe V. Moore, Martin Upchurch, and Xanthe Whittaker. These essays deal with the current topics of monitoring of workers in the new gig economy, digitalization of the work, and use of big data for the restructuring of the workforce. This book examines how new forms of surveillance are being adopted into contemporary work. It draws from original empirical research engaging with existing and (...) emerging fields of social inquiry and discusses the occurrence of surveillance and new forms of measurement of work in a range of industries. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written by various authors including the editors of the collection, Phoebe V. Moore, Martin Upchurch, and Xanthe Whittaker. These essays deal with the current topics of monitoring of workers in the new gig economy, digitalization of the work, and use of big data for the restructuring of the workforce. This book examines how new forms of surveillance are being adopted into contemporary work. It draws from original empirical research engaging with existing and (...) emerging fields of social inquiry and discusses the occurrence of surveillance and new forms of measurement of work in a range of industries. (shrink)