Work in the Gig Economy

A Research Overview

James Duggan, Anthony McDonnell, Ultan Sherman, Ronan Carbery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032075266
• eBook ISBN: 9781000440201
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Throughout the last decade, the 'gig economy' has emerged as one of the most significant developments in the world of work. As a novel, hyper-flexible form of labour, gig work features a uniquely fragmented working arrangement wherein independent workers partner with digital platform organisations to provide a range of on-demand services to customers.

Work in the Gig Economy: A Research Overview provides a concise overview to the key themes and debate that encompass the gig economy literature. It covers five core themes: an introduction to gig work; classification issues; the role of technology; the experiences of gig workers; and the future of gig work. As an emerging and diverse research field, contributions stem from an array of perspectives including psychology, sociology, human resource management, legal studies, and technology management. The chapters synthesise the most prominent insights into this emerging field, key thinking on the complex relationships and conditions found in gig work, and the most significant issues to be addressed as the gig economy continues to develop.

A critical introduction for students, scholars and reflective professionals and policymakers, this book provides much needed direction through the rapidly growing and expansive body of research on work in the gig economy.

1 Work in the gig economy: an introduction ¹

DOI: 10.4324/9780429351488-1

Introduction

The gig economy has emerged as a much-discussed phenomenon across the world. Definitions of what represents the gig economy vary from incorporating all non-traditional and less structured work arrangements to a more specific focus on work performed via online platforms and crowdsourcing marketplaces. As such, Upwork, Uber, Lfyt, TaskRabbit, Fiverr, Just Eat, Airtasker, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Deliveroo, and Freelancer are often seen as key examples of organisations in the gig economy.

This book critically reviews research on work in the gig economy. More specifically, our focus is on gig work forms that are mediated via digital platform organisations. The book’s aim is to provide readers with a critical summary of the key themes and debates that encompass the gig economy literature. In addition, we propose a series of future research avenues that we argue as having great importance in better understanding the nature of gig work. We draw primarily from scholarly publications over the last decade which encompass work from multiple disciplinary perspectives including the sociology of work, industrial relations, human resource management, work and organisational psychology, and technology management. Accordingly, this book is likely to hold appeal to students, scholars, and professionals seeking a comprehensive yet succinct overview of research on “gig work.”

This first chapter tracks the emergence of the gig economy and accompanying working arrangements throughout the last decade. Specifically, we discuss the origins of the gig economy and account for its rapid growth as a widely recognised umbrella term associated with several multinational platform organisations and their associated working configurations. Additionally, this chapter also provides important background information and context for the specific issues considered throughout the book, where the most controversial and pervasive aspects of gig work will be critically reviewed.

Key chapter takeaways

• The gig economy and its accompanying work forms have emerged as a significant disruptor to traditional understandings of work and employment.
• The gig economy continues to grow steadily but at the time of writing remains a relatively small component of the overall labour market.
• Gig work is not homogenous and instead represents a diverse economy built upon digital infrastructures that connect independent workers with clients or customers (i.e. requestors).
• Scholarly research on gig work spans multiple disciplines, but several ongoing key issues and themes relating to worker classification, technological disruption, and workers’ experiences are common across literature.
• Empirical research on gig work remains in its infancy but is currently receiving increasing interest from scholars.

Introducing the gig economy

Over the past decade, the gig economy has been attracting both significant attention and controversy in the world of work. Broadly defined as an economic system that uses online platforms to digitally connect on-demand, freelance workers with requesters (i.e. customers or clients) to perform fixed-term tasks (Kuhn & Maleki, 2017), the gig economy embraces the information and connectivity properties enabled by modern technology to build service-providing digital infrastructures (Cennamo, 2019). The gig economy takes on many forms (c.f. Duggan et al., 2020; Howcroft & Bergvall-Kareborn, 2019) and operates across several sectors. For example, typical offerings that we regularly associate with the gig economy include on-demand services in local markets, such as transportation with Uber or Lyft, food delivery with Deliveroo or Uber Eats, and housekeeping and repair services with Handy (Smith & Leberstein, 2015). The gig economy also encapsulates remote, computer-based crowdwork companies, such as Fiverr and Amazon Mechanical Turk, where the services offered may range from translation to transcription to graphic design, and beyond (Howcroft & Bergvall-Kareborn, 2019). Perhaps to a lesser extent, capital platform organisations such as Airbnb and Etsy are sometimes also included as part of the gig economy, wherein individuals may sell goods or lease assets on platforms (Duggan et al., 2020).

Given the wide-ranging scope of services on offer and platform organisations available, the proliferation of the gig economy holds potentially noteworthy consequences for the world of work across the globe. In many cases, the tasks, or “gigs,” to be completed by workers are simply components of formerly full-time roles held by taxi drivers, couriers, translators, secretaries, and so on, that have been fragmented into discrete tasks and made available on a precarious, often poorly paid task-by-task basis (Smith & Leberstein, 2015). However, when these and similar tasks are available as part of the gig economy, the outcome is that many gig workers must competitively strive to make a living by combining multiple short-term tasks, devoid of commitment and with piece-rate payments, which makes the realisation of a stable income difficult. Thus, it is not surprising that gig work, platform organisations, and individuals operating in this domain continue to receive such extensive attention from scholars, policymakers, governments, and media organisations (McGaughey, 2018). While parts of the gig economy involve high-skilled work, much of the focus appears on what traditionally are low-skilled jobs. However, the COVID-19 pandemic may reshape the public discourse on what essential work encompasses. The pandemic has seen key segments of the gig economy – for example, delivery drivers and couriers – being classified as essential workers across many economies. It also highlights the difficult situation so many gig workers are faced with in terms of their lack of job security in such crisis times. Many have been hit with loss of earnings and lack of sick leave.

Understanding gig workers

Classified as independent contractors in almost all cases, gig workers are purportedly granted the opportunity to “be your own boss” – essentially, the promise of freedom to work independently by controlling most aspects of the work, from scheduling to selecting tasks (Jabagi et al., 2019). For platform organisations, the avoidance of the “employee” label in classifying gig workers is of significant strategic importance in removing the need for, among other things, potential overtime payments, union organisation, payroll taxes, and unemployment benefits (Frost, 2017). In fact, gig work is characterised by such intense precarity, anonymity, and hyper-flexibility that most workers never actually meet their “employer” or any representative of the platform organisation, having landed their roles through online-only applications and a speedy onboarding process, with, in most cases, no formal training (Barley et al., 2017). However, while gig workers do not hold a legal employment relationship with the platform organisations for whom they work, a complex multi-party working relationship instead exists between the worker, platform organisation, and requester (Duggan et al., 2020). By reshaping almost all of the conventions and norms that accompany traditional employment, the reimagined dynamic exchange agreement found in gig work subsequently creates various interdependencies and power dynamics between the parties involved (Meijerink & Keegan, 2019).

The precise nature of these interdependencies and power dynamics are a common source of debate across the literature. This is because platform organisations are known, in part at least, to utilise questionable and controversial practices in managing gig workers. Specifically, it is widely claimed that many platform organisations satisfy legal criteria to meet independent contractor status for gig workers, while simultaneously exerting significant levels of managerial control and surveillance over gig workforces (Shapiro, 2017; Norlander et al., 2021). Research has consistently addressed and supported this claim, suggesting that much of the autonomy afforded to these apparently independent gig workers is merely nominal, existing to attract workers to the platform and to fulfil legal criteria (Meijerink & Keegan, 2019; Wood et al., 2019). Instead, the reality of the working arrangement appears to be one where platform organisations attempt to avoid giving direct commands to workers, which may indicate the existence of an employment relationship, while simultaneously exerting significant control over most labour processes via the use of algorithmic technologies and punishing workers who fail to meet strict performance criteria (Duggan et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2019). The independent contractor status has been subject to several legal challenges across many countries, with decisions of the courts variable in respect to whether these workers should be classified as employees or not.

The emergence of the gig economy

During the global economic crisis of 2008, the nature of work and employment transformed dramatically. Working arrangements around the globe became, and have continued to become, more fragmented and precarious (Friedman, 2014). For example, we may naturally assume that the organisations whom we pay for services also employ the individuals or agents delivering the services being offered. However, essential duties within organisations are increasingly being carried out by contractors or temporary workers beyond the core boundaries of the firm, meaning such an assumption is increasingly challenged. This trend is part of what Weil (2017) describes as an increasingly fissured workplace, where organisations have sought to “outsource” a multitude of work activities in efforts to improve financial performance.

While this may prove to be a strategic activity for organisations, the fissured workplace undoubtedly creates complex new challenges for workers, potentially leaving many without stable income, career paths, or a safe working environment (Weil, 2017). Yet, for many, navigating this workplace has become the norm. In line with wider precarious working trends that are seeing a shift away from conventional working arrangements and the protections that accompany life-long employment, the gig economy emerged as a new way of doing things. The term, first coined by journalist Tina Brown in 2009, essentially describes variants of contingent work that are transacted via digital means, mostly through so-called digital marketplaces, with each piece of work being akin to an individual “gig” – intended to draw connotations to the working life of a free-spirited musician (Tran & Sokas, 2017).

While “gig economy” is the most widely adopted moniker for this type of digitally intermediated work, a multitude of other terms have also been used, often interchangeably, when referring to this phenomenon. For example, “on-demand economy,” “platform economy,” and “Uber economy” are all used, particularly by media organisations, while “sharing economy” also features heavily across discourse. However, we urge caution in the interchangeability of terminology as it can often lead to unclear or erroneous conceptualisations of what exactly gig work entails, particularly where subtle yet important distinctions are overlooked (Maselli et al., 2016). In particular, the use of “sharing economy” in place of “gig economy” may be problematic, with the former intended to describe peer-to-peer exchanges to temporarily access underutilised assets, possibly for money, but often without a transparent labour process (De Groen et al., 2016). While such an arrangement is closely related to a particular type of gig work – capital platform work – the presence of a labour-oriented working relationship is typically absent (Duggan et al., 2020).

What makes the gig economy different?

From the perspective of platform organisations, the gig economy represents an innovative, sharp response to the fast-paced nature of the global business environment. Heavily contrasting with the norms and principles of conventional employment, the “gig” business model allows organisations to significantly decrease costs and maintain flexibility in their hiring practices by utilising non-core workers to fill roles traditionally held by salaried employees (Lemmon et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2021). As a result, when compared to conventional employment, the gig economy is not bounded by time: workers are speedily hired, often without regard for their past employment, and with no promise for future employment, legacy pay, or deferred compensation (Friedman, 2014). In this way, gig work creates a new type of hyper-flexibility, where workers remain peripheral to the organisation, and where the risk of economic fluctuations is shifted almost entirely onto individual workers (Harris, 2017).

Importantly, platform organisations who operate in the gig economy identify themselves as technological companies, rather than service providers, by ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• About the authors
• About the authors
• 1 Work in the gig economy: an introduction
• 2 Classifying gig work
• 3 Technology, algorithms, and digital platform organisations
• 4 Multi-party working relationships : Understanding the experiences of gig workers
• 5 The future of gig work: Key issues, solutions, and future research directions
• Index