scholarly journals The Creativity Hoax: Precarious Work and the Gig Economy. GeorgeMorgan and ParieceNelligan. New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2018.

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
Jiazhi Fengjiang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Gig Economy

Mechanisms of biopower and neoliberal governmentality in precarious work: Mobilizing the dependent self-employed as independent business owners

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Moisander ◽  
Claudia Groß ◽  
Kirsi Eräranta
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Direct Sales ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Self Worth

In the contemporary conditions of neoliberal governmentality, and the emerging ‘gig economy,’ standard employment relationships appear to be giving way to precarious work. This article examines the mechanisms of biopower and techniques of managerial control that underpin—and produce consent for—precarious work and nonstandard work arrangements. Based on an ethnographic study, the article shows how a globally operating direct sales organization deploys particular techniques of government to mobilize and manage its precarious workers as a network of enterprise-units: as a community of active and productive economic agents who willingly reconstitute themselves and their lives as enterprises to pursue self-efficacy, autonomy and self-worth as individuals. The article contributes to the literature on organizational power, particularly Foucauldian studies of the workplace, in three ways: (1) by building a theoretical analytics of government perspective on managerial control that highlights the nondisciplinary, biopolitical forms of power that underpin employment relations under the conditions of neoliberal governmentality; (2) by extending the theory of enterprise culture to the domain of precarious work to examine the mechanisms of biopower that underpin ongoing transformations in the sphere of work; and (3) by shifting critical attention to the lived experience of precarious workers in practice.

Automation, work, and jobs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald M. Baecker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Severance Pay ◽  
Big Brother ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Medical Benefits ◽  
Efficient Processing

The effect of automation on employment and jobs has engaged thoughtful computer scientists and economists since the earliest days of computing. Yet there have been concerns about the effects of technology on employment since ancient times, and notably during the First Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century by a group of workers known as the ‘Luddites’. Our first topic is the role of algorithms in enabling more efficient processing of job applicants and the selection of candidates to interview. This now includes the automatic filtering out of huge numbers of résumés that are never seen by human resource professionals. Next, we look at how technology is used in monitoring job performance, with the goal of encouraging or requiring enhanced performance. Oftentimes, these practices have the opposite effect, as it makes workers feel like ‘Big Brother’ is watching. Companies have long used contractors to provide flexibility in the availability of workers as well as to circumvent costs such as medical benefits and liabilities such as severance pay. This practice has recently changed dramatically: internet communication can now rapidly link seekers of services to providers of the services. This is typically called the gig economy or sharing economy, yet a better name is on-demand services. We shall then examine areas where automation threatens to replace human workers with machines. Fear is rampant, as typified by a 2017 New York Times article, ‘Will Robots Take Our Children’s Jobs?’ Between 2014 and 2016, future prospects were analysed in five scholarly books. We examine the phenomenon of unemployment by looking at specific areas: agriculture, manufacturing, service industries, and the professions. We highlight how new robotic technology, incorporating sensing, reasoning, and manipulating abilities, is enabling significant automation. Of particular importance is the extent to which new machine learning systems are enabling the automation of thinking and reasoning, which were previously considered infeasible for machines. Arguably the most interesting, challenging, and risky application is that of automatic diagnosis of disease, and, more speculatively, robot doctors.

scholarly journals Platform Labour Discourse: How Hyr Targets the “Bucket List Generation”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Posada ◽  
Leslie Regan Shade
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Information Control ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Conditions Of Work ◽  
Promotional Marketing

This paper provides an analysis of the discursive contradictions and narratives of labour within Hyr, a location-based freelance platform app that caters to the retail, hospitality, and restaurant sectors in Toronto and New York. The app provides companies with access to individuals with a variety of skills in these sectors and provides workers with access to contract jobs. The paper provides an analysis of Hyr’s promotional marketing, that targets urban “millennials,” and discusses how the platform exerts algorithmic and information control over its workers through their legal documentation and conditions of work within the platform. Situated within the “gig economy,” the paper also reviews current local policy proposals to alleviate the situation of gig workers in the Canadian context.

Work and Identity in an Era of Precarious Employment: How Workers Respond to “Personal Branding” Discourse

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Vallas ◽  
Angèle Christin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
White Collar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Employment Relation ◽  
Precarious Employment ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Enterprising Self ◽  
Career Advice ◽  
Personal Branding

Recent efforts to understand the significance of precarious work have been limited in at least two important respects. One is the neglect of the ideological constructs that workers are led to embrace concerning the employment relation, and the other is the undertheorized nature of much research in this field. To address these limits, the authors adopt a two-pronged strategy in this article. In empirical terms, the authors focus on an important source of popular thinking about work: the career advice genre, which has recently evolved into a growing literature on “personal branding.” In theoretical terms, the authors appeal to Foucault’s theory of governmentality in order to understand how and why workers respond to personal branding discourses. Data are drawn from two linked qualitative studies bearing on workers employed in distinct settings: freelance journalists in Paris and New York ( N = 101) and a broader set of white-collar employees who have faced market adversity in Boston ( N = 62). Findings reveal that personal branding discourse has become both prevalent and potent, encouraging many workers to conform to what Foucault referred to as the “enterprising self.” Yet the authors also find that workers respond to personal branding in a multiplicity of ways, some of which Foucault left unaddressed. The article thus finds qualified support for Foucault’s arguments but identifies issues—especially that of agency and resistance—which stand in need of additional elaboration.

Stepping Stone or Dead End? The Ambiguities of Platform-Mediated Domestic Work under Conditions of Austerity. Comparative Landscapes of Austerity and the Gig Economy: New York and Berlin

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Niels van Doorn
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Venture Capital ◽  
Business Model ◽  
York City ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Global Patterns

This chapter examines some of the ways that nationally and locally distinct conditions of neoliberal austerity shape how people come to take up work in the platform-mediated gig economies of New York City and Berlin. Focusing on gig workers' experiences with platforms providing domestic cleaning service, the chapter analyses the experience of four young platform workers and concludes that global institutional phenomena such as 'the gig economy' and 'austerity' have local platform-specific iterations as well as larger global patterns. While it is true that the gig economy's business model is predicated on austerity logics, to the extent that its two central tenets are risk offloading and continuous accounting, platform companies are also notorious for burning through massive amounts of venture capital in their quest to achieve scale. The immediate impact of this pursuit on many gig workers has been one of relative — and short-lived — splendour, as they eagerly collect sign-up bonuses and enjoy initial payouts higher than any previously received wage. Platform labour's link to austerity is thus not a straightforward matter, as it is rife with ambivalence and contradictions.

scholarly journals Defining the gig economy: platform capitalism and the reinvention of precarious work

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Montgomery ◽  
Simone Baglioni
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Novel Concept ◽  
The Uk ◽  
New Forms Of Work

PurposeThis article seeks to answer the question: how should we conceptualise the “gig economy”? In doing so the authors shall explore if gig economy work should be understood as a novel concept that stands alone, a concept that is a subtype, or whether it may in fact be conceptually redundant.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a thematic analysis of interview data drawn from 27 interviews with policymakers, trade union officials, key figures within labour organisations and gig economy workers.FindingsThe authors reveal how, from the perspective of key stakeholders, the concept of the gig economy exhibits a lack of “differentiation” from the long-established concept of precarious work of which it is best understood as a subtype.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical findings from the authors’ study should be regarded as limited in terms of being situated in the specific employment context of the UK. Nevertheless, the implications of the study have a broader reach. The authors seek to provoke debate and discussion among scholars across disciplines and contexts working in the areas of precarious work and the gig economy. The authors’ analysis will be of interest to scholars who are concerned with how they conceptualise “new” forms of work.Originality/valueThe analysis offers a novel intervention by revealing how key stakeholders perceive the gig economy through a prism of continuity rather than change and connect it with broader processes of precarity.

Explaining the decline of tipping norms in the gig economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 233-245
Author(s):  
Erik P. Duhaime ◽  
Zachary W. Woessner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Food Delivery ◽  
Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Worker Autonomy

Purpose Advances in information technology have enabled new ways of organizing work and led to a proliferation of what is known as the “gig economy.” While much attention has been paid to how these new organizational designs have upended traditional employee–employer relationships, there has been little consideration of how these changes have impacted the social norms and expectations that govern the relationship between workers and consumers. The purpose of this paper is to consider the social norm of tipping and propose that gig work is associated with a breakdown of tipping norms in part because of workers’ increased autonomy in terms of deciding when and whether to work. Design/methodology/approach The authors present four studies to support their hypothesis: a survey vignette experiment with workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk (Study 1), an analysis of New York City taxi data (Study 2), a field experiment with restaurant employee food delivery drivers (Study 3) and a field experiment with gig-worker food delivery drivers (Study 4). Findings In Studies 1 and 2, they find that consumers are less likely to tip when workers have autonomy in deciding whether to complete a task. In Study 3, they find that restaurant delivery employees notice upfront tips (or lack thereof) and alter their service as a result. In contrast, in Study 4, they find that gig-workers who agree to complete a delivery for a fixed amount that includes an upfront tip (or lack thereof) are not responsive to tips. Together, these findings suggest that the gig economy has not only transformed employee-employer relationships, but has also altered the norms and expectations of consumers and workers. Originality/value The authors present four different studies that consider the social norm of tipping in the context of gig work. Together, they highlight that perceptions of worker autonomy have driven the decline in tipping norms associated with gig work.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document