Crowdworker Economics in the Gig Economy

The nature of work is changing. As labor increasingly trends to casual work in the emerging gig economy, understanding the broader economic context is crucial to effective engage- ment with a contingent workforce. Crowdsourcing represents an early manifestation of this fluid, laisser-faire, on-demand workforce. This work analyzes the results of four large-scale surveys of US-based Amazon Mechanical Turk workers recorded over a six-year period, providing compa- rable measures to national statistics. Our results show that despite unemployment far higher than national levels, crowd- workers are seeing positive shifts in employment status and household income. Our most recent surveys indicate a trend away from full-time-equivalent crowdwork, coupled with a reduction in estimated poverty levels to below national figures. These trends are indicative of an increasingly flexible workforce, able to maximize their opportunities in a rapidly changing national labor market, which may have material impacts on existing models of crowdworker behavior.This work was supported by an EPSRC studentship and EPSRC grants EP/N010558/1 and EP/R004471/1

How well did I do? The effect of feedback on affective commitment in the context of microwork

Crowdwork is a relatively new form of platform-mediated and paid online work that creates different types of relationships between all parties involved. This paper focuses on the crowdworker-requester relationship and investigates how the option of receiving feedback impacts the affective commitment of microworkers. An online vignette experiment (N= 145) on a German crowdworking platform was conducted. We found that the integration of feedback options within the task description influences the affective commitment positively toward the requester as well as the perceived requester attractiveness

To Speak up or Shut up? Revealing the Drivers of Crowdworker Voice Behaviors in Crowdsourcing Work Environments

This study examines worker voice behaviors in the microtask crowdsourcing work environment (CSWE) where voice channels are absent. Informed by employee voice research, this study adopts the revealed causal mapping method to analyze the detailed narratives of 60 workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our data analysis shows that the crowdworkers did engage in voice behaviors, but their voices were not always heard, depending on recipients. The crowdworker voice was directed to three different recipients (worker community, job requester, and platform) and influenced by six antecedents (duty orientation, efficacy judgment, workgroup identification, anger/frustration, futility, and achievement orientation). Based on the findings, we propose a model of worker voice antecedents and moderators in the CSWE. This study extends employee voice research by presenting a moderator perspective in the CSWE. Moreover, our study provides a nuanced understanding of crowdworker voice behaviors from two major aspects – antecedent and recipient – contributing to crowdsourcing research

Online, on call: : the spread of digitally-organised just-in-time working and its implications for standard employment models

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non-standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT-related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce.Peer reviewe

Working everywhere and every time? – Chances and risks in crowdworking and crowdsourcing work design

Schulte J, Schlicher K, Maier GW. Working everywhere and every time? – Chances and risks in crowdworking and crowdsourcing work design. Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Organisationspsychologie (GIO). 2020;51(1):59-69.This article of the journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation (GIO) deals with the question how work and organizational psychology can contribute to a better understanding of work design in crowdwork. Over the last decade, crowdsourcing (CS) has gained much momentum and attention, yet people who use CS as an additional or exclusive source of income are experiencing less consideration overall. Therefore, we define the term crowdwork (CW), and delimit it from related concepts, e.g., CS and gig economy. We then address how work and organizational psychology theory can contribute to the research of CW, with a focus on work design, and where new approaches are necessary. We give an overview of current research in this field, and derive suggestions and recommendations for both further research approaches and also practical application of work design in CW

Varieties of platform work: Platforms and social inequality in Germany and the United States

The platform economy has been criticized for exacerbating social inequalities in various ways. This study draws on these discussions and examines the extent to which social inequalities are being reproduced, reduced, or even increased within platform work. The first central question is that of the precariousness of this form of work and the vulnerability of the platform workers as a group. This is followed by a second question about the role of classical dimensions of inequality of education and gender within the group of platform workers. The study focuses on inequalities related to income, workload, and the subjective perception of platform work. It follows a comparative approach, building on institutionalist analyses developed in labor market and inequality research. The empirical analysis is based on case studies of 15 crowdwork platforms in the United States and Germany and on an online survey of crowdworkers in both countries. While platforms represent a global organizational model, they are embedded in different models of capitalism. The study shows that existing labor market segmentation and social welfare systems determine who works on platforms and to what extent. The weaker the social safety net, the more likely platform work is to be both a curse and a blessing: It offers a much needed and flexible source of income, albeit under extremely precarious conditions. The stronger the social safety net, on the other hand, the greater the market power of workers vis-à-vis the platforms

Hourly Wages in Crowdworking: A Meta-Analysis

In the past decade, crowdworking on online labor market platforms has become an important source of income for a growing number of people worldwide. This development has led to increasing political and scholarly interest in the wages people can earn on such platforms. This study extends the literature, which is often based on a single platform, region, or category of crowdworking, through a meta-analysis of prevalent hourly wages. After a systematic literature search, the paper considers 22 primary empirical studies, including 105 wages and 76,765 data points from 22 platforms, eight different countries, and 10 years. It is found that, on average, microtasks results in an hourly wage of less than $6. This wage is significantly lower than the mean wage of online freelancers, which is roughly three times higher when not factoring in unpaid work. Hourly wages accounting for unpaid work, such as searching for tasks and communicating with requesters, tend to be significantly lower than wages not considering unpaid work. Legislators and researchers evaluating wages in crowdworking need to be aware of this bias when assessing hourly wages, given that the majority of literature does not account for the effect of unpaid work time on crowdworking wages. To foster the comparability of different research results, the article suggests that scholars consider a wage correction factor to account for unpaid work. Finally, researchers should be aware that remuneration and work processes on crowdworking platforms can systematically affect the data collection method and inclusion of unpaid work

Relational Dynamics: Organising Rights and Work Relationships

This thesis analyses the manner in which labour rights are assigned to work relationships. The first half of the thesis is a doctrinal analysis of the work relationship statuses used in English law. The first chapter assesses the criteria that these statuses use, and the impact of using those criteria when they are applied to non-paradigm work relationship models. Subsequent chapters consider how, when these criteria are applied to atypical work relationships, the law struggles to properly analyse these relationships by virtue of the way they are structured. This analysis is done with a particular focus on tripartite work relationships, zero-hours work relationships, and the synthesis of these structures found in the gig economy. The second half of the thesis shifts to a normative proposal for a new model of assigning labour rights to work relationships. This begins by setting out the theoretical foundations of the new proposed model, which is based upon a version of the capabilities theory. Once this has been done, the theory of Relational Dynamics is outlined, including how this model relies upon the purposive interpretation of regulations to operate effectively. Following this, the practical aspects of implementing the Relational Dynamics model (including the use of legal presumptions, and the need for a tripartite structure to engage in the purposive interpretation of regulations) is set out, to demonstrate how the model can be practically implemented

Revolutionizing Crowdworking Campaigns: Conquering Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard with the Help of Smart Contracts

Crowdworking is increasingly being applied by companies to outsource tasks beyond their core competencies flexibly and cost-effectively to an unknown group. However, the anonymous and financially incentivized nature of crowdworkers creates information asymmetries and conflicts of interest, leading to inefficiencies and intensifying the principal-agent problem. Our paper offers a solution to the widespread problem of inefficient Crowdworking campaigns. We first derive the currently applied Crowdworking campaign process based on a qualitative study. Subsequently, we identify the broadest adverse selection and moral hazard problems in the process. We then analyze how the blockchain application of smart contracts can counteract those challenges and develop a process model that maps a Crowdworking campaign using smart contracts. We explain how our developed process significantly reduces adverse selection and moral hazard at each stage. Thus, our research provides approaches to make online labor more attractive and transparent for companies and online workers

Plattformökonomie - eine Literaturauswertung

Die Kurzexpertise beinhaltet eine umfassende Analyse und Auswertung der deutsch- und englischsprachigen rechtswissenschaftlichen Forschung und Literatur sowie der Rechtsprechung einschließlich von Teilaspekten oder "Vorläufern" mit Bezug zur Plattformökonomie