ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and overview the theoretical bases which inform a critical understanding of the ways in which social, political, and economic ideologies shape policy, practice, and experience. The chapter is designed around the fundamental notion that: 'All employees should have access to and control on their developmental experiences and these opportunities should be available across a range of levels in the organization. Programs should not only challenge the performative bias of the organization but also help its members achieve success on their own terms'. (Bierema, Human Resource Development Review 8:91, 2009), as well as the central notion that to move forward meaningfully in the contemporary context, Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD) needs to further return to its humanistic origins as a scholarly mechanism of problematizing performativity, stimulating further critical ideologies for challenging 'truth', which, in turn, may stimulate renewed pragmatic orientation while maintaining critical integrity in the field. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has weakened the economy leading to massive unemployment and entire industries being put on lockdown. With millions of Americans either unemployed or underemployed, many turned to new business ventures. Whether starting their own company as an entrepreneur or serving a gig worker on a variety of service platforms, workers found creative ways to either enter or remain in the workforce. Understanding the motivations, opportunities, success rates and outcomes of these new business ventures are important for future entrepreneurs and industry experts. This chapter investigates the role of the gig economy and entrepreneurial activity during the Covid-19 pandemic. A literature review is conducted, and an employment survey of gig workers is conducted and analyzed. Workers' motivations, industry statistics, business funding opportunities, goals of these workers and industry implications are discussed and analyzed. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The unbridled propagation of the sharing economy halted abruptly with the onset of the pandemic, forcing sharing economy companies to respond to the new set of challenges faced by them. There were marked differences between the pre- and post-COVID challenges. Post-COVID, sharing economy companies designed novel response strategies including tempering ambitions, adapting business models, designing new standard operating procedures, displaying empathy towards employees and partners, building trust, and sharing information with stakeholders. This signified a reorientation of sharing economy companies in the hyperconnected world where there is a blurring of boundaries as brand experiences and meanings are cocreated by stakeholders. Sharing economy companies would need to focus on different set of values to attain competitive advantage in the post-COVID world – partnership instead of confrontation, nurturing instead of destructive, open and sharing instead of closed, and empathetic instead of uncaring. This can help create meaningful differentiation and provide competitive advantage.
ABSTRACT
The current scale and duration of displacement prompts renewed urgency about livelihoods prospects for displaced people and the role of humanitarian organisations in fostering them. This special issue focuses on how aid organisations, together with the private sector and other actors, have worked to include refugees in new forms of online work within the web-based digital economy. Building on comparative analysis and a comprehensive review of the field of digital livelihoods among the forcibly displaced, in this introductory article we argue that including refugees in this digital economy is currently neither a sustainable form of humanitarian relief nor is it a development solution that provides large-scale decent work. We show how digital livelihoods approaches have gained a special footing in the middle ground between short-term economic relief and long-term development. Indeed, digital economies seemingly offer a variety of ‘quick-fix' solutions at the transition from humanitarian emergency towards long-term development efforts. While digital economies harbour significant potential, this cannot be fully realised unless current efforts to include refugees in digital economies are complemented by efforts to address digital divides, uphold refugees' rights, and ensure more decent working conditions.
ABSTRACT
After the Global Financial Crisis (2008) many people found new job opportunities on crowd platforms. The COVID‐19 crisis reinforced this trend and virtual work is expected to increase. Although the working conditions of individuals engaged on these platforms is an emerging topic, of research, the existing literature tends to overlook the gendered dimension of the gig economy. Following a quantitative approach, based on the statistical analysis of 444 profiles (platform Freelancer.com in Spain and Argentina), we examine the extent to which the gig economy reproduces gender inequalities such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM‐related tasks and the gender pay gap. While the findings reveal lower participation of women than men, this gap is not higher in Argentina than in Spain. Moreover, gender variations in hourly wages are not as marked as expected, and such differences disappear once STEM skill levels are controlled for. Asymmetry in individuals' STEM skill level provides a better explanation than gender of the hourly wage differences. This finding opens a window of opportunity to mitigate the classical gender discrimination that women face in technological fields in traditional labor markets. Finally, the paper identifies some issues concerning the methodological bias entailed by the use of an application programming interface in cyber‐research, when analyzing gender inequalities.
ABSTRACT
PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused the food delivery sector to boom as people continue to rely on services provided by online catering platforms (OCPs). However, because of the nature of sharing economy employment, gig workers' contributions went largely ignored until intervention from institutional governance. This study aims to explore the impacts of labor market transformation after the Chinese Government issued guidance to promote gig workers' welfare as a focal case.Design/methodology/approachFocus groups and the Delphi technique were used to explore associated impacts on OCPs and gig workers based on governance theory.FindingsResults show that institutional governance negatively affected OCPs' operating cost structure but sustained gig workers' welfare. The dual effects of market mechanism and institutional governance in the sharing economy are needed to be balanced for labor market transformation.Research limitations/implicationsLong-term equilibrium can be fulfilled, given the growing food-related demand for the market mechanism. Social reciprocity is expected to be realized through institutional governance for gig workers' welfare.Originality/valueThis study suggests that moving from market governance to stakeholder governance, as mediated by state governance, could transform gig workers' labor structure in the gig economy. This study presents an integrated governance theory to enhance the epistemology of institutional governance.
ABSTRACT
• Assess the reliability of an online food delivery system as a performance index. • Investigate with non-integer multiple orders, time, and space limitations. • Construct a multistate online food delivery network as its gig economy. • Determine minimal capacity vectors without knowing minimal paths in advance. • Conduct sensitivity analysis for more managerial insights on the MOFN. In recent years, especially during the outbreak of COVID-19, there have witnessed the emergence of online food delivery (OFD) services that allow customers to place orders via Internet-connected devices to obtain door-to-door delivered meals. In this service, on-time delivery to the right customer with high-quality fresh meals is deemed the primary factor. This paper investigates the reliability of OFD through its ability to meet customer needs in a specific context. During the delivery process, the courier receives the food at the store, packs it into a delivery box, and then delivers it to the customer. Note that, the delivery boxes are limited in space. Customers prefer having their orders delivered within a given time threshold. Thus, reliability is defined as the probability to complete non-integer and multiple orders under a limited time and space. Besides, the OFD system belongs to the gig economy, which allows couriers to select their shifts and working regions. Hence, the capacity of each region, which indicates the number of available couriers, is regarded as multistate. We, thus, construct the OFD system as a multistate online food delivery network (MOFN). Under the limitation of time and space, all feasible minimal capacity vectors are determined to compute the reliability. With the proposed investigation, managers can understand their MOFN's ability to meet specific customer demands. Accordingly, they can make appropriate adjustments for better performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Expert Systems with Applications is the property of Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
ABSTRACT
The current economic situation in many countries, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has forced local organizations to downsize the number of employees, reduce working hours or rely on temporary workers to perform the job by means of gig workers. While these conditions could be considered as a threat, some workforce vulnerable groups, like women, grasped this opportunity to develop entrepreneurial behavior and start-up their businesses. This paper aims to investigate the factors that under the explained circumstances encourage women to be entrepreneurs, proposing a theoretical model of relationships between gig economy practices and opportunistic and necessity women's entrepreneurship start-ups. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the impact of the pandemic on ride-hailing drivers and their mitigation strategies during lockdown in Africa. Ride-hailing has emerged as one of the latest paid-work opportunities for the continent's many unemployed. Yet, ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Bolt misclassify drivers to avoid regulation and responsibilities towards workers' welfare. Drawing on 34 in-depth interviews with ride-hailing drivers, driver representatives and trade unions in South Africa and Kenya, this article makes two arguments. First, the gig economy in Africa provides work opportunities for the unemployed on the continent and simultaneously vitiates the working conditions through the commodification and informalisation of work. Second, the state-directed emergency measures act as a veneer to capital's efforts to commodify labour and the gig economy platforms have emerged as primary tools for it. Our account points to an urgent need for better regulatory systems to hold platform companies accountable and a collective bargaining mechanism in the gig economy.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The emergence of dark kitchens in the restaurant industry is a contemporary phenomenon, arising most recently in the context of the so-called gig economy. This new business model flourished during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on a global scale. Despite dark kitchens' popularity, considerable negative publicity exists in the news related to poor working conditions. To highlight this new phenomenon, this paper explores the existing literature on worker exploitation in dark kitchens in the context of the gig economy. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review of hospitality and tourism databases generated 1,430 articles, of which 18 met the authors' inclusion criteria for the final analysis, and 1,030 anecdotal sources, of which 47 were included. Thematic analysis was used to identify the key themes and summarise the findings to be used for further studies. Findings: The popularity of dark kitchens as a business model is premised on the fact that dark kitchens' dramatically reduces the operational cost and increases productivity. On the other hand, the working conditions and contractual agreements of the gig workers in dark kitchens raise several questions from operational, legal and ethical perspective. These poor working conditions create the conditions for worker exploitation and further damage the sector's image. Practical implications: This study advocates that companies and managers are responsible for implementing and monitoring fair working conditions in dark kitchens. The existence of poor working conditions increases employee turnover and, overall, affects the industry's reputation. Originality/value: This explorative study provides insights into the working conditions and contractual agreements in dark kitchens. Currently, there is no other study (empirical or conceptual) to shed light on the working practices. The authors hope this study will trigger further discussion and empirical research in this field. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ride-hailing drivers in Africa. It argues that though ride-hailing offers paid-work to some African workers, the commodified and informalised nature of this work results in poor job quality. The effects of which are greatly amplified during the pandemic. Drawing on a mixed methods approach: in-depth interviews with ride-hailing drivers in Nairobi and digital ethnography, it also provides a narrative of 'hustle' to outline strategies of resilience, reworking, and resistance among informal workers. It concludes by highlighting the need for adequate regulatory frameworks and on-the-ground solidarity networks to ensure decent working conditions and to push back against precarity in the gig economy.
ABSTRACT
Garner, grinning, describes the banter among Scott, Marino, and the rest of the returning cast as "kind of a good-natured abuse, like the little-kid joy of being back together." Back in the early 2000s, Enbom, Rudd, and their TV-producer friends Rob Thomas and Dan Etheridge would gather regularly for what Etheridge describes as "high movie nights at Rob's house." The Mix ON A SUNNY WINTER morning on a Malibu cliff overlooking the Pacific, a luau for radio-contest winners is in full swing. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Rolling Stone is the property of Rolling Stone LLC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
• Assess the reliability of an online food delivery system as a performance index. • Investigate with non-integer multiple orders, time, and space limitations. • Construct a multistate online food delivery network as its gig economy. • Determine minimal capacity vectors without knowing minimal paths in advance. • Conduct sensitivity analysis for more managerial insights on the MOFN. In recent years, especially during the outbreak of COVID-19, there have witnessed the emergence of online food delivery (OFD) services that allow customers to place orders via Internet-connected devices to obtain door-to-door delivered meals. In this service, on-time delivery to the right customer with high-quality fresh meals is deemed the primary factor. This paper investigates the reliability of OFD through its ability to meet customer needs in a specific context. During the delivery process, the courier receives the food at the store, packs it into a delivery box, and then delivers it to the customer. Note that, the delivery boxes are limited in space. Customers prefer having their orders delivered within a given time threshold. Thus, reliability is defined as the probability to complete non-integer and multiple orders under a limited time and space. Besides, the OFD system belongs to the gig economy, which allows couriers to select their shifts and working regions. Hence, the capacity of each region, which indicates the number of available couriers, is regarded as multistate. We, thus, construct the OFD system as a multistate online food delivery network (MOFN). Under the limitation of time and space, all feasible minimal capacity vectors are determined to compute the reliability. With the proposed investigation, managers can understand their MOFN's ability to meet specific customer demands. Accordingly, they can make appropriate adjustments for better performance. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
After the Global Financial Crisis (2008) many people found new job opportunities on crowd platforms. The COVID-19 crisis reinforced this trend and virtual work is expected to increase. Although the working conditions of individuals engaged on these platforms is an emerging topic, of research, the existing literature tends to overlook the gendered dimension of the gig economy. Following a quantitative approach, based on the statistical analysis of 444 profiles (platform Freelancer.com in Spain and Argentina), we examine the extent to which the gig economy reproduces gender inequalities such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM-related tasks and the gender pay gap. While the findings reveal lower participation of women than men, this gap is not higher in Argentina than in Spain. Moreover, gender variations in hourly wages are not as marked as expected, and such differences disappear once STEM skill levels are controlled for. Asymmetry in individuals' STEM skill level provides a better explanation than gender of the hourly wage differences. This finding opens a window of opportunity to mitigate the classical gender discrimination that women face in technological fields in traditional labor markets. Finally, the paper identifies some issues concerning the methodological bias entailed by the use of an application programming interface in cyber-research, when analyzing gender inequalities.
ABSTRACT
Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns devastated the world's population and poor migrant workers were hit the hardest. The lockdown announcement suspended their income as all economic activities were halted. Kerala, one of the favourite destinations of India's domestic migrants, had to deal with their problems. With a holistic and humanitarian approach, the state arranged relief camps and food kits for its guest workers. This study explored the lives of migrant workers in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, during and after the lockdown. Quantitatively and qualitatively interviewed 50 migrant workers were selected through snowball sampling, subscribing to a mixed method. Statistical analysis of quantitative data and thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed migrant workers' plight. By summarising the quantitative and qualitative results, this study confirmed the financial, physical and psychological struggles that the pandemic imposed on migrant workers.
ABSTRACT
Foodsters United, une campagne de syndicalisation en milieu de travail menée par des coursiers alimentaires de Toronto, montre que, meme dans l'économie des petits boulots, les méthodes de syndicalisation classiques fonctionnent. Les Foodsters ont contesté avec succes leur classification erronée en tant qu'entrepreneurs indépendants, ont fait signer des cartes syndicales a plus de 40 pour cent d'une main-d'œuvre importante et ont déclenché un vote syndical qu'ils ont remporté avec 88,8 pour cent de soutien. Ces victoires ont été tempérées par un revers dévastateur: leur employeur, Foodora, s'est retiré des marchés canadiens. Néanmoins, ce que Foodsters United a réalisé grâce a l'organisation du lieu de travail a soutenu sa transformation en Gig Workers United, qui organise tous les travailleurs de la plateforme de livraison a Toronto. Bien que les sociétés de plateforme comme Foodora promeuvent l'idée que l'économie des petits boulots est sans précédent, ses continuités historiques sont plus importantes que ses discontinuités. Cela est également vrai de l'organisation du lieu de travail dans l'économie des petits boulots. Foodsters United a remporté des victoires substantielles, non pas parce qu'ils ont inventé de nouvelles méthodes d'organisation, mais parce qu'ils ont adapté les méthodes classiques, de maniere souvent ingénieuse, a leur lieu de travail de l'économie des petits boulots. Cet article est basé sur des entretiens avec les organisateurs de la campagne. Il est organisé de maniere thématique selon les méthodes classiques d'organisation du lieu de travail, en particulier celles développées dans la tradition d'organisation industrielle, y compris l'organisation des conversations, la cartographie, la mise en tableaux, l'identification des dirigeants, l'identification des problemes et la création d'organisations démocratiques.Alternate :Foodsters United, a workplace organizing campaign by Toronto food couriers, shows that, even in the gig economy, the classic organizing methods work. The Foodsters successfully challenged their misclassification as independent contractors, got over 40 per cent of a large workforce to sign union cards, and triggered a union vote that they won with 88.8 per cent support. These victories were tempered by a devastating setback: their employer, Foodora, exited from Canadian markets. Nevertheless, what Foodsters United achieved through workplace organizing sustained its transformation into Gig Workers United, which is organizing all delivery platform workers in Toronto. Although platform companies like Foodora promote the idea that the gig economy is unprecedented, its historical continuities are more important than its discontinuities. This is also true of the workplace organizing in the gig economy. Foodsters United achieved substantial victories, not because they invented new organizing methods but because they adapted the classic methods, in often ingenious ways, to their gig economy workplace. This article is based on interviews with the campaign organizers. It is organized thematically according to classic workplace organizing methods, particularly those developed in the industrial organizing tradition, including organizing conversations, mapping, charting, leader identification, issue identification, and the creation of democratic organizations.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the impact of the pandemic on ride-hailing drivers and their mitigation strategies during lockdown in Africa. Ride-hailing has emerged as one of the latest paid-work opportunities for the continent's many unemployed. Yet, ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Bolt misclassify drivers to avoid regulation and responsibilities towards workers' welfare. Drawing on 34 in-depth interviews with ride-hailing drivers, driver representatives and trade unions in South Africa and Kenya, this article makes two arguments. First, the gig economy in Africa provides work opportunities for the unemployed on the continent and simultaneously vitiates the working conditions through the commodification and informalisation of work. Second, the state-directed emergency measures act as a veneer to capital's efforts to commodify labour and the gig economy platforms have emerged as primary tools for it. Our account points to an urgent need for better regulatory systems to hold platform companies accountable and a collective bargaining mechanism in the gig economy.
ABSTRACT
Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the food delivery sector to boom as people continue to rely on services provided by online catering platforms (OCPs). However, because of the nature of sharing economy employment, gig workers' contributions went largely ignored until intervention from institutional governance. This study aims to explore the impacts of labor market transformation after the Chinese Government issued guidance to promote gig workers' welfare as a focal case. Design/methodology/approach Focus groups and the Delphi technique were used to explore associated impacts on OCPs and gig workers based on governance theory. Findings Results show that institutional governance negatively affected OCPs' operating cost structure but sustained gig workers' welfare. The dual effects of market mechanism and institutional governance in the sharing economy are needed to be balanced for labor market transformation. Research limitations/implications Long-term equilibrium can be fulfilled, given the growing food-related demand for the market mechanism. Social reciprocity is expected to be realized through institutional governance for gig workers' welfare. Originality/value This study suggests that moving from market governance to stakeholder governance, as mediated by state governance, could transform gig workers' labor structure in the gig economy. This study presents an integrated governance theory to enhance the epistemology of institutional governance.
ABSTRACT
Recent literature focuses on the inherent challenges of food delivery work. Less is known about how these injustices impact workers and their lives more broadly, or how workers navigate them. This empirical article is based on a 12-month ethnographic theory-relevant case study and includes an innovative shadowing method focused on migrant food delivery workers in Brisbane, Australia. We found that temporary migrant workers face intersectional injustices, exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, both within and beyond the platform economy. Nevertheless, the workers agentically enacted their own justices to navigate their precarity, in the absence of institutional supports. This study’s theoretical contribution is the development of a model explaining the agentic and structural underpinnings of the injustices that migrant platform workers experience. Moreover, our contribution reveals that the unique attributes that migrants bring to bear on their platform work provide them with the affordances to navigate the injustices they experience. In so doing they mitigate some of the negative impacts of platform work, and indeed derive benefits that non-migrant platform workers might not. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
How do individuals react to the sudden public moralization of their work and with what consequences? Extant research has documented how public narratives can gradually moralize societal perceptions of select occupations. Yet, the implications of how workers individually respond and form self-narratives in light of—or in spite of—a sudden moralizing event remain less understood. Such an understanding is even more critical when workers are weakly socialized by their organization, a situation increasingly common today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, radically shifting public narratives suddenly transformed grocery delivery work, previously uncelebrated, into highly moralized “heroic” pursuits. Drawing on interviews (n = 75), participant artifacts (n = 85), and archival data (e.g., newspaper articles), we find that these workers (here, shoppers on the platform organization Instacart), left mainly to themselves, exhibited varying responses to this moralizing and that their perceived relations to the organization, customers, and tasks shaped these responses. Surprisingly, those who facilely adopted the hero label felt morally credentialled, and they were thus likely to minimize their extra-role helping of customers and show low commitment to the organization;in contrast, those who wrestled with the hero narrative sought to earn those moral credentials, and they were more likely to embrace extra-role helping and remain committed to moralized aspects of the work. Our study contributes to literatures on the moralization of work and narratives by explaining why some workers accept a moralized narrative and others reject or wrestle with it, documenting consequences of workers’ reactions to such narratives, and suggesting how a moralized public narrative can backfire. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.