When Algorithms are your Boss: Staying Human in Platform-Mediated Work

Lior Zalmanson, Thomas Gegenhuber Platforms bring together clients
(e.g., consumers) with workers in specific domains.
Platform-mediated work thrives on using the Internet to mobilize
workers and deploying algorithms to supervise, control, and manage
them (i.e., algorithmic management). Typically, the relationship
between platforms and workers is market-based: rather hiring them
as workers, they are flexible, self-employed freelancers. In this
session, we assess the state and the future of labor relations by
shedding light on following questions: How do workers operate in
environments where AI govern and enforce platform’s policies? How
do human workers respond? To give the human worker a voice, we
further ask whether and how platforms enable workers to participate
and improve their autonomy over work, influence how work-processes
are organized or even shape a platform's strategy?   Lior
Zalmanson from the University of Haifa will present the insights
from a recent study on Uber (conducted with Mareike Möhlmann &
Ola Henfridsson of Warwick University). In this study, they
followed drivers in New York and London and found a wide array of
methods drivers use to regain the control and exercise their agency
in the face of algorithmic Management. Among those are acts of
resistance, switch to alternatives, and even gaming and tricking
the system to get back their sense of autonomy. It shows that even
in the face of computerized control, workers will attempt to
subvert the technology to reclaim their humanity. 
Subsequently, Dr. Thomas Gegenhuber (Leuphana University Lüneburg)
will discuss how to give workers voice in platform-mediated work.
In his talk, he draws on the results of a study funded by the
Hans-Böckler-Foundation (conducted with Markus Ellmer & Claudia
Scheba), which explored whether and how six german-based
crowdsourcing platforms implement voluntary participation
instruments for crowdworkers. The study found that most platforms
emphasize informing (e.g., blog) and reporting issues (e.g.,
chatbox). Some platforms provide the opportunity to discuss issues
in a forum or message board; voting is barely relevant. This kind
of participation empowers workers to some extent to increase their
autonomy, yet, workers have little say in how work is organized,
let alone, shaping the overall direction of the platform. Based on
these findings, Thomas provides an overview of best-practice
participation examples and outlines future directions.