Workers of the Internet unite? Online freelancer organisation among remote gig economy workers in six Asian and African countries

This article presents findings regarding collective organisation among online freelancers in middle‐income countries. Drawing on research in Southeast Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa, we find that the specific nature of the online freelancing labour process gives rise to a distinctive form of organisation, in which social media groups play a central role in structuring communication and unions are absent. Previous research is limited to either conventional freelancers or ‘microworkers’ who do relatively low‐skilled tasks via online labour platforms. This study uses 107 interviews and a survey of 658 freelancers who obtain work via a variety of online platforms to highlight that Internet‐based communities play a vital role in their work experiences. Internet‐based communities enable workers to support each other and share information. This, in turn, increases their security and protection. However, these communities are fragmented by nationality, occupation and platform.     

Of crowds and talents: discursive constructions of global online labour

Online platforms not only serve to exchange information and goods but increasingly also service work provided by the self‐employed. The emergence of crowdsourcing of paid work has created a global market for online labour where services can be fully acquired and provided irrespective of location via platforms such as upwork.com or freelancer.com. Drawing on a content analysis of the websites of 44 globally operating platforms, this study has investigated the discursive construction of this new type of labour market. The findings show that platforms address the online workforce in different ways, for instance, as workers or freelancers. Contrary to their blanket characterisation as an anonymous crowd in previous academic debate, in most cases, online workers are forced to present themselves as talented experts to distinguish themselves from the mass of competitors. The control over online labour that these platforms exercise challenges existing conceptions of professionalism and self‐employment.     

‘The Magnificent 7[am]?’ Work‐life articulation beyond the 9[am] to 5[pm] ‘norm’

This article focuses on the work‐life ‘balance’ challenges of those who work in organisations that operate beyond standard hours. The concept of work‐life articulation is utilised to examine the experiences and practicalities of attempting to reconcile the, often competing, demands of employment and family life. Qualitative research was conducted in two private sector businesses and one‐third sector organisation in the UK during the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. The findings reveal increasing competitive pressures, efficiency drives and work intensification. ‘Business needs’ are prioritised over care responsibilities, and in the private sector organisations there is declining flexible working with a reassertion of the management prerogative. This article contributes to current debates over work‐life ‘balance’ and highlights variable, changeable and unpredictable working time arrangements that permeate non‐standard hours, which creates additional complexities and challenges for family time schedules and routines.     

Making gigs work: digital platforms,job quality and worker motivations

Technology has driven new organisations of work and employment relationships, rendering changes that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. The rise of digital platforms has not only enabled new forms of work activity but also transformed the way workers find new opportunities. This development, referred to as gig work, is distinct from traditional employment in that it is mediated through online platforms. While we can somewhat objectively designate traditional job characteristics as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, designating gig work itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ overlooks the fact that workers are inclined to evaluate the quality of their jobs according to their own individual needs, priorities, backgrounds and other circumstances—even if those jobs are objectively the same. Unlike previous scholarship on gig work, which has viewed job quality largely from a platform-focused perspective, this article takes a worker-centric approach and provides a typology of gig workers. The typology demarcates how gig work is used and indicates key attributes that differentiate how workers approach such jobs. Moreover, the typology reveals heterogeneity in gig workers’ motivations, characteristics and intentions. Consequently, platforms with ‘bad’ job quality characteristics can still offer work that some workers will see as ‘good’ and vice versa.     

The kill programme: an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ in a slaughterhouse

It has been argued that ‘dirty work’ is characterised by strong occupational and workgroup cultures. This literature has mainly focused on direct workers, but this article largely attends to indirect ‘dirty’ workers, specifically meat inspectors, through ethnographic research conducted in a UK slaughterhouse. Four arguments are developed; the first is that ‘dirty workers’ may not all display group cohesiveness; indeed, individualisation may be more evident depending upon the technology used, internationalisation and employment conditions. Second, there is complexity and diversity within ‘dirty work’ and even single occupations can contain considerable variety, rendering generalisations problematic. Third, we argue that much greater attention needs to be given to the wider contextual issues affecting ‘dirty work’, specifically changing labour markets, itinerant labour, economic conditions and technologies. Finally, we argue that stigmatised work may become more so if it is equated with the low wage economy and/or undercutting conditions of employment through exploiting migrant labour.     

Algorithmic management in food-delivery platform economy in China

This article investigates the organisation of work under algorithmic control in the platform economy. Based on a 1-year ethnographic study conducted at top food-delivery platforms in China, this study finds two main mechanisms for organising labour under algorithmic management: the virtual organisation of labour and algorithm-driven labour process control. First, platform drivers are reorganised in an outsourced labour force, placed in application-based virtual-networked production under sophisticated technological infrastructure. Second, to habituate drivers to the virtual mode of production, food-delivery platforms utilise four algorithm-driven control techniques, which are identified as: smart machinery control, information monopoly, management by multi-stakeholders, and ‘carrots and sticks’. The findings highlight the process of algorithmic design in configuring a digital managerial ecosystem for platform governance and contribute to emerging debates on algorithmic management.     

Assessing the growth of remote working and its consequences for effort,well‐being and work‐life balance

This article critically assesses the assumption that more and more work is being detached from place and that this is a ‘win‐win’ for both employers and employees. Based on an analysis of official labour market data, it finds that only one‐third of the increase in remote working can be explained by compositional factors such as movement to the knowledge economy, the growth in flexible employment and organisational responses to the changing demographic make‐up of the employed labour force. This suggests that the detachment of work from place is a growing trend. This article also shows that while remote working is associated with higher organisational commitment, job satisfaction and job‐related well‐being, these benefits come at the cost of work intensification and a greater inability to switch off.     

Expert labour as a differentiated category: power,knowledge and organisation

The idea of ‘expert labour’ as a category uniting many kinds of knowledge‐based work has long been of interest. At the same time, existing models often do not differentiate between the many forms of ‘new’ expertise in the main business and technological groups. These tend to be consolidated in single categories of ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘organisational’ or ‘commercial’ professions. This paper built on Reed's seminal account of the expert division of labour. It used his analytic dimensions of power, knowledge and organisation to develop a new framework comparing clusters of expert labour in professional services, business services and knowledge work. It offered a more detailed classification and a comparative view that throws fresh light on key debates around new professionalism and emergent technologically defined occupations.     

Building coalitions on Facebook: ‘social media unionism’ among Danish bike couriers

Platform work represents an important challenge for the ‘Danish model’ of unionisation. Using interviews and ethnographic data, this article analyses the strategies of the Danish grassroots union movement the Wolt Workers' Group, representing principally migrant couriers using the food-delivery platform Wolt. This study is an attempt to map an emergent form of flexible labour organisation based on horizontal, informal online networks while supported in different ways by established unions. We term this strategy of balanced autonomy and support ‘social media unionism'. Wolt couriers' attempts at grassroots organisation via social media is an important and understudied issue, especially their complex relationship to union actors. The ‘social media unionism' explored in this article allows for the formation and maintenance of nimble grassroots mobilisation among workers that are otherwise hard for unions to reach, such as migrants platform workers. We argue that this strategy holds both great possibilities and challenges for the labour movement.     

It's all about games: enterprise and entrepreneurialism in digital games

This article aims to contrast benign notions of ‘free’ and ‘creative’ work in the context of labour market conditions and employment relationships. Empirical research reveals the exploitative and precarious nature of work in the experiences of self‐employed digital game developers and charts the responses of developers to unstable and insecure working conditions. Building on work by Pongratz and Voß, Haunschild and Eikhof, and Bergvall‐Kåreborn and Howcroft, this study finds that a typical response to increasing instability in the labour market is to adopt more enterprising and entrepreneurial behaviour in order to find work. This article illustrates the consequences for developers by highlighting examples of self‐exploitation, which is fuelled by a passion for work and is where entrepreneurial practices lead to long working hours, unpaid work and a blurring of work–life boundaries.     

Flexibility in the gig economy: managing time on three online piecework platforms

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.     

Boundary management in an ICT‐enabled project‐based organising context

This paper explores the boundaries that emerge and exist within an information and communication technology (ICT)‐enabled project‐based organising context and the ways knowledge workers manage these boundaries through the use of technology. This is done through an exploratory qualitative case study of an early instance of the phenomenon in a knowledge‐intensive professional services organisation. Through the experiences of a group of knowledge workers who started to work in project‐based ways that were highly mediated by ICT, this study aims to understand the boundaries that they faced and the practices they undertook to manage these boundaries. In so doing, this study contributes to the existing literature on new forms of work and organisation, particularly on the issue of boundaries where ICT‐enabled project teams are used. In particular, this study extends our current understanding of boundaries through expanding the lens of investigation beyond a predominant focus on work–home boundaries and considers boundaries within the work sphere.     

Crowdsourcing and work: individual factors and circumstances influencing employability

The development of a fast and reliable Internet, new technologies online payment systems, and changes in work structure that enable and demand flexible working patterns have driven a move to a new form of Internet‐enabled labour exchange called crowdsourcing. Evidence from an in‐depth qualitative study is presented, focusing on selected users' interactions and experiences of working on two UK‐based crowdsourcing platforms. The paper shows that workers engaged in this form of labour exchange need to deploy existing employability skills and networks to effectively meet the challenges, and take advantage of the opportunities, that crowdsourcing presents. Individual factors and circumstances emerge as paramount for workers' continued engagement in this form of employment. Using selected components from an employability framework, the findings suggest that crowdsourcing can offer new pathways to practising skills and enhancing employability for some workers.     

Learning to labour: an evaluation of internships and employability in the ICT sector

The employability of graduates is often reduced to lists of de‐contextualised skills that graduates may or may not have and which may or may not translate to prized graduate positions. Recently, internships have become the way in which graduates acquire and demonstrate work‐readiness to potential employers. This article examines a particular type of internship in the ICT sector, namely placements incorporated in degree education. The findings suggest that while internships can enhance employability and indeed be a mechanism for accessing permanent jobs, more often, instead of ‘learning to labour’, interns are expected to be productive workers. A mini labour market operates at the undergraduate level that advantages those already possessed of the required soft skills. The emphasis on soft skills signals a shift in the nature of ICT work with attendant implications for education of workers in this sector, revealed by anchoring employability to particular labour process(es).     

Controlling space,controlling labour? Contested space in food delivery gig work

The article investigates the control of the platform labour process by means of the digital production of space and how workers resist it. The segment of German platform‐mediated food delivery is examined via qualitative interviews and auto‐ethnography. It is shown how the platforms create different spaces to efficiently coordinate and control mobile delivery gig work. Steered by geolocalisation and geofencing, the couriers operate autonomously in spatial corridors defined by the platforms. The agency of the riders is thus limited, but they are occasionally able to undermine the platforms’ spatial control and reinterpret it. The article shows that space is a central but contested instrument for controlling labour.     

‘I didn't feel like I was alone anymore’: evaluating self‐organised employee coping practices conducted via Facebook

The long‐term fracturing of the labour movement has led to increased attention to employee coping practices under new management practices and labour processes. However, the literature caters little for the recent rise of employees taking to social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, to find ways to cope with the pressures of contemporary employment. To explore the self‐organised coping qualities of SNSs, interviews were conducted with front line workers, employed by a large anti‐trade union US retailer, who contribute to a self‐organised Facebook group set up as a place for fellow employees to deal with collective employment‐related problems. The main findings suggest employee self‐organised Facebook groups represent an important development and extension to the coping practices available to individual and groups of employees. The main implication of the findings is that Facebook groups appear to strengthen and widen the options for employee resilience in an age of continuing trade union retreat.     

Always on across time zones: Invisible schedules in the online gig economy

This study investigates work schedules in online labour markets, operating in 24/7 mode across spatial borders and time zones. Focusing on largely hidden and invisible work of freelancers such as searching for jobs and communicating with clients, the study documents how platforms put pressures and constraints on freelancers’ time through the mechanism of task allocation. We use data on 241,582 timestamped messages posted by 29,759 unique users in 4082 contests on a leading Russian‐language freelance platform to reveal how freelancers’ efforts to get a job make them work nonstandard hours, including evenings, nights and weekends. Freelancers have to be responsive and adapt their schedules to clients’ needs. Freelancers who live in time zones which differ from their clients are particularly disadvantaged, working a greater proportion of nonstandard hours. The findings emerging from the study contribute to current debates on the gig economy and a new time‐work discipline.     

‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home‐based business

Home‐based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under‐researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home‐based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Becker's early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turner's later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.     

The Dominance Effect? Multinational Corporations in the Italian Quick‐Food Service Sector

This paper is based on a study of the employment practices of one Italian‐owned multinational corporation (MNC) and one US‐owned MNC in the Italian quick‐food service sector and examines such issues as work organization, unionization, employee representation and pay and conditions. The paper focuses on the concept of ‘dominance’ and the related convergence and divergence theses. The findings suggest that dominance can not only be interpreted as a mode of employment or production emanating from one country, but could also be associated with one dominant MNC in one sector. Consequently, it is argued that while the effect of host and home country influences may be significant factors in cross‐border employment relations practices, more attention needs to be paid to organizational contingencies and the sectoral characteristics within which firms operate.     

Amazon Mechanical Turk and the commodification of labour

Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables firms to shift costs and offload risk as they access a flexible, scalable workforce that sits outside the traditional boundaries of labour laws and regulations. The micro‐tasks of ‘clickwork’ are tedious, repetitive and poorly paid, with remuneration often well below minimum wage. This article will present an analysis of one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites—Mechanical Turk—to illuminate how Amazon's platform enables an array of companies to access digital labour at low cost and without any of the associated social protection or moral obligation.