Crowd workers’ voices must be heard, write Xuefei (Nancy) Deng, K.D. Joshi and Robert D. Gallier

Deng, Xuefei (Nancy)

Galliers, Robert D.

Joshi, K.D.

LSE Research Online

4/15/2016Microtask crowdsourcing can both empower andmarginalise workersblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2016/04/15/microtask-crowdsourcing-can-both-empower-and-marginalise-workers/As a society we have reached a point of social consciousness where the debate regarding the impacts of theInternet-based ‘gig’ or on-demand economy, commonly known as crowdsourcing (CS), is taking centre stage. Onesuch debate concerns the need for new regulations and policies relating to the growing crowd worker populationwho engage in work on or through Internet-based platforms. As the drumbeats for regulating the on-demandworkforce on these platforms grow louder, it is imperative that crowd workers’ voices are heard and not drowned.Our work gives voice to the crowd workers by conducting deep analysis of their values in an increasingly prevalenttype of crowdsourcing known as microtask CS.The demand for this type of work is one of the most rapidly growing trends. Compared to regular jobs in a ‘traditional’organisation, these microtasks are simple (e.g., can be completed in a matter of minutes) and are compensated withtiny monetary rewards (between $0.25 and $1). While microtask crowdsourcing can afford worker autonomy andflexibility, it can also make workers vulnerable to exploitation. Our work provides a rich description of an emergingparadox of worker empowerment and marginalization in these environments. We advance theoretical understandingof the societal challenges of this emerging phenomenon and offer a novel, ethical design perspective forincorporating moral import into this socio-technical work environment to counter crowd worker exploitation.In our study, we analysed the detailed narratives of 210 crowd workers to reveal their underlying values attainedfrom their engagement in Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). We conceptualised crowd worker value as a multi-faceted construct of nine human values — access; autonomy; fairness; transparency; communication; security;accountability; making an impact, and dignity — all of which are implicated in the structures of microtaskcrowdsourcing. The work involves four structures relating to:compensation (e.g., payment arrangements for crowdsourcing jobs),task (e.g., the properties of crowdsourcing jobs),1/3governance (e.g., CS work practices, standards and policies), andtechnology (e.g., IT infrastructure used to build the CS work environment).As a medium of crowd workers’ conduct of work, these structures have both empowering and marginalisingimplications on crowd worker activities. The crowd workers feel empowered when the structures enable choice(e.g., where and when to work satisfying the value of autonomy); they feel marginalised when the same structuresrestrict action (e.g., lack of communication channels that limit their opportunities to voice concerns).Empowerment is manifested in the form of four cognitions — meaning, self-determination, impact, and competence— when the desired values are adequately implicated on the crowdsourcing platform. Empowerment throughmeaning is a common experience resulting from valuing open access to work opportunities. Empowerment throughself-determination stems from the value of autonomy, when workers can decide for themselves what, when, where,and how to work. Empowerment through impact, arising from the value of making an impact on others and onsociety more generally, and through competence, ensuing from the value of access to diverse kinds of micro tasks,are valued by a small proportion of the crowd workers in our sample, but are nonetheless important to them.Marginalisation emerges in four different forms when the desired values are not sufficiently implicated on thecrowdsourcing platform. Specifically, marginalisation manifested in: 1) economic marginalisation (feeling exploited);2) institutional (policy) marginalisation (feeling helpless in relation to job requesters and the CS platform); 3)institutional (technical) marginalisation (feeling constrained by platform technical functionalities), and 4) competencemarginalisation (feeling de-skilled from doing simple and repetitious work). While the feeling of being exploited(economic marginalization) was perceived by a considerable majority in our sample, the other three perceptions ofmarginalization were experienced by a smaller proportion.In summary, our survey respondents revealed multiple values in relation to their engagement in microtaskcrowdsourcing on MTurk. Yet, the extent to which their expected values are fulfilled varies considerably. In instanceswhen a value is fulfilled, crowd workers feel empowered; otherwise, they feel powerless and even exploited.Through this interplay between the values and dimensions of empowerment and marginalization emerges theduality implicit in microtask CS.The duality is intrinsic to the lived experience of the crowd workers. The benefits of crowdsourcing are wellunderstood by those organisations that seek the knowledge of ‘the crowd’, as is the flexibility provided to crowdworkers by this new form of work opportunity. The dis-benefits have been less well known till now, and the duality wehave uncovered needs, in our view, to be carefully considered in designing crowdsourcing platforms and policies soas to provide an even playing field. Thus, our study heightens awareness of worker marginalization in microtask CS,and offers guidelines for improving CS practice. Specifically, we offer recommendations regarding the ethicalemployment of crowd workers (including in academic research), and means of improving the MTurk platform designfor greater worker empowerment.♣♣♣Notes:This article is based on the authors’ paperThe Duality of Empowerment and Marginalization in MicrotaskCrowdsourcing: Giving Voice to the Less Powerful through Value Sensitive Design,  MIS Quarterly.This post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Michael Coghlan CC-BY-SA-2.02/3Xuefei (Nancy) Deng is an Associate Professor of Information Systems (IS) at California StateUniversity, Dominguez Hills, USA. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at University ofHawaii at Manoa. She received her Doctorate in Information Systems from Carnegie MellonUniversity. Her research on digital technologies, human value, IS design, IS workforce andknowledge management has been published in top IS and management journals and presented ininternational conferences. She is an Associate Editor of two journals, Information andOrganization, and Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, serves on theeditorial review board of Knowledge Management Research & Practice, and co-chairs the “Digitaland Social Media in Enterprise” mini-track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences .K.D. Joshi is the Philip L. Kays Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at WashingtonState University, where she also teaches at the MBA Online programme. She received her Masterof Science in Engineering from the University of Michigan and received her Doctor of Philosophyin Business Administration (Decision Sciences and Information Systems) from the University ofKentucky.  Her published research is cited over 3,700 times according to Google Scholar. She hasbeen a Principle Investigator or Co-Principle Investigator on grants totaling over $5M from theNational Science Foundation (NSF). She is currently a Senior Editor of the Information SystemsJournal and Special Section Editor of Social Inclusion and IS at the DATABASE Journal. She is anAssociate Editor of the Communications of the AIS  and Journal of Organizational Computing and ElectronicCommerce.Robert D. Galliers is The University Distinguished Professor at Bentley University, Boston, USA,where he served as Provost for the period 2002-2009. He also holds a fractional appointment asProfessor in the School of Business & Economics at Loughborough University, UK. Prior to joiningBentley, he was Research Director in the Department of Information Systems at the LSE, fromwhich he received his Doctorate in 1987, and prior to that Dean of Warwick Business School. He iseditor-in-chief of The Journal of Strategic Information Systems  and received the prestigiousAssociation for Information Systems LEO Award  for outstanding life-time contributions to the fieldof Information Systems in 2012. His work has been published in 14 books and over 90 journalarticles and has been cited approaching 9,000 times.Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

Microtask crowdsourcing can both empower and marginalise workers

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