The Rise of Crowd Aggregators - How Individual Workers Restructure Their Own Crowd

Crowd work has emerged as a new form of digital gainful employment whose nature is still a black box. In this paper, we focus on the crowd workers – a perspective that has been largely neglected by research. We report results from crowd worker interviews on two different platforms. Our findings illustrate that crowd aggregators as new players restructure the nature of crowd work sustainably with different effects on the behavior as well as the existing relationships of crowd workers. We contribute to prior research by developing a theoretical framework based on value chain and work aggregation theories which are applicable in this new form of digital labor. For practice, our results provide initial insights that need to be taken into account as part of the ongoing discussion on fair and decent conditions in crowd work

I AM A CROWD WORKER – HOW INDIVIDUALS IDENTIFY WITH A NEW FORM OF DIGITAL WORK

Crowd work has emerged as a new form of digital gainful employment that changes the nature of work. However, an increasing number of people perform certain tasks in the crowd and start to identify with this work. In this paper, we outline our research in progress which is concerned with the effects of work characteristics in crowd work that have impact on the individual’s identification. Thus, we developed our research model and conducted an online survey amongst 434 crowd workers to ex-amine their perception of work and illustrate the antecedences of identification. Our expected contribution will increase the understanding of crowd work and extend prior research on self-determination theory (SDT) and work design. For practice, we provide important insights for platform providers to (re-) design work on platform in order to increase identification among their crowd. In addition, our findings can serve as common basis for future discussions on decent crowd work

Crowdwork as an elevator of human capital. A sustainable human development perspective

Work is a key element in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Crowd-work is a new way of working defined as a paid, digital platform-enabled form of work based on crowdsourcing model. Previous research on crowdwork narrowly considered its direct and immediate economic impact on individual workers overlooking its broader sustainable impact. This study goes a step further and adopts a wider sustainable development approach to examine the relationship between crowdwork and the sustainable development of the workers involved. It questions whether crowdwork contributes to the sustainable development of workers, and if so, how? An inductive research approach is adopted, and rich qualitative data was collected benefiting from a unique access to crowdworkers. The study reveals that crowdworkers develop three types of skills in the process of crowdwork name-ly; domain, platform and business skills. It highlights that these developed knowledge and skills are transferred from crowdworkers to other workers and other work settings. Further-more, it traces and identifies the process through which crowdworkers develop and transfer these skills and knowledge and categorises it into three stages of Reactive Exploitation, Proactive Expansion, and Transfer. The study concludes that this process contributes to a more sustainable human resource development not only for the crowdworkers involved but for others as well contributing to the sustainable social and economic development

Technology as a Source of Power: Exploring How ICT Use Contributes to the Social Inclusion of Refugees in Germany

Since the beginning of the recent global refugee crisis, researchers have been tackling many of its associated aspects, investigating how we can help to alleviate this crisis, in particular, using ICTs capabilities. In our research, we investigated the use of ICT solutions by refugees to foster the social inclusion process in the host community. To tackle this topic, we conducted thirteen interviews with Syrian refugees in Germany. Our findings reveal different ICT usages by refugees and how these contribute to feeling empowered. Moreover, we show the sources of empowerment for refugees that are gained by ICT use. Finally, we identified the two types of social inclusion benefits that were derived from empowerment sources. Our results provide practical implications to different stakeholders and decision-makers on how ICT usage can empower refugees, which can foster the social inclusion of refugees, and what should be considered to support them in their integration effort

Perceived Organizational Support in the Face of Algorithmic Management: A Conceptual Model

Organizational support theory proposes that employees develop global beliefs concerning the degree to which an organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. These beliefs, known as perceived organizational support (POS), are related to a number of positive employee outcomes, including: job satisfaction, work effort, performance, etc. Three categories of POS antecedents have been recognized in the literature: perceived supervisor support; fairness of organizational procedures; and organizational rewards and job conditions. In this paper, we explore these antecedent categories in the gig-work context where organizations replace human managers with algorithmic management practices and data-driven procedures. In doing so, we develop a new conceptual model that centers on the role that a gig-organization’s algorithm plays in engendering POS by promoting perceptions of fairness and support, and by managing the provision of performance-based rewards. Contributions and future research avenues are discussed

Organizing Work on Creative Crowdwork Platforms: A Practice Perspective

The world of work is changing fast with the increasing popularity of platform-mediated work. Despite platform workers being the fastest growing segment in the alternative workforce, there is little known about how work is organized on gig economy platforms that operate under conditions of employment, scheduling and location flexibility. This paper explores how work is organized on crowdwork platforms with Topcoder serving as a case of a successful platform. Our findings demonstrate that professional socialization and career development are the main practices that organize employment relationship flexibility; time, budget, and task management are the main practices that organize scheduling flexibility; and virtual communication and cultivating work friendships are the main practices that organize location flexibility. Furthermore, we find that the combination of these practices can generate psychological safety for both workers and job providers, despite the usual risks involved in the gig and crowdwork arrangements

Is Crowdsourcing a Source of Worker Empowerment or Exploitation? Understanding Crowd Workers’ Perceptions of Crowdsourcing Career

Crowdsourcing offers new forms of work arrangements enabled and facilitated by the advancements in Internet technologies and growing popularity of social media. However, do these new forms of work empower workers to craft their own careers or do they create a sweatshop where workers complete fragmented tasks to earn minimal pay? We posit that career theories and job crafting approaches collectively provide valuable theoretical perspectives for examining this question. By assessing the degree to which these platforms afford or constrain the workers to exert their personal agencies (i.e., affords career and job crafting preferences), we argue, will partially determine whether these new forms of work are a harbinger of worker empowerment or exploitation. Preliminary findings of this exploratory research-in-progress, conducted using two types of workers on Amazon-Mechanical-Turk, reveal that these new forms of work arrangements have a potential for both empowerment and exploitation of workers