This paper examines food couriers' utilization of voice mechanisms as mobilization against employer silencing within platform capitalism. The concepts of 'worker silence' and 'worker voice' are used to facilitate an understanding of the way in which workers respond to workplace problems, as well as their capacity to respond within this specific context. Findings illustrate the role of technology as a facilitator but also inhibitor of worker voice. In particular, online food delivery companies' over-reliance on algorithmic management and their online app drove couriers to silence. However, in reaction to managerial silencing, we show that couriers are not passive recipients of forces beyond their control, and attempt to explore new trajectories and modes of voice in order to influence their working conditions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
The relationship between corporate hypocrisy and legitimacy has been articulated paradoxically in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) literature. On the one hand, this literature articulates that when corporations engage in hypocrisy it erodes trust and encourages attacks upon legitimacy. On the other hand, CSR statements decoupled from core functions are an example of corporate hypocrisy that is justified through maintaining legitimacy in certain conditions. These diverse approaches in the literature are evidenced further in our case study analysis. We present a qualitative case study of how local community judgements of a corporate hypocrisy event and consequent community engagement strategies affect trust and corporate-community relations. The analysis shows that the community tolerates corporate hypocrisy to a degree. However, when hypocrisy becomes intolerable, and with the firm in question reverting to an absent community engagement strategy, this erodes legitimacy. This has implications for society's trust in business, corporate sustainability, and managerial practice.
This paper investigates trust and organizational justice as antecedents of Works Council (WC) effectiveness perceptions, and the moderating role of industrial relations climate on this relationship. A two-year longitudinal study of Works Council participants in two UK organizations (a Housing Association and a Professional Services firm) was undertaken.Results show positive significant relationships between both trust and organizational justice and WC outcomes of WC performance, WC usefulness, and outcome satisfaction. Industrial relations climate is found to moderate the relationship between justice and WC performance, WC usefulness and outcome satisfaction.
This article examines how gig economy platform companies, via algorithmic management, shape working conditions and collective organisation of food delivery couriers. Using qualitative data from one case study operating in a city in the United Kingdom, the study captures real-time intraplatform unilateral changes in algorithmic management to provide increased flexibility for couriers. Findings show algorithmic changes generating a reconfigured, fragmented and compliant workforce.As a result, couriers demonstrate different interests and motivations to work for the company, where disparities in the demands for improved working conditions hindered efforts for collective organising. This article argues that intraplatform algorithmic changes create affordances that companies can exploit to concentrate power over labour even when conceding some control over the labour process.
This article provokes that human resource management (HRM) research is a long way from helping practice. Following a review of HRM empirical articles published in 2018, we show the limited focus academic journals place on practical implications. We provoke that HRM journals are failing to ‘do the right thing’ by not requiring authors to pay enough attention to communicating the practical implications of their research. In half of the articles that we reviewed (n = 324) less than 2% of the text focuses on practical implications. We also found that where practical implications were offered, they were often obscure, implicit, and used unintelligible terms. We argue for extensive practical implications to be included in publications that provide an impetus to research relevant topics and close the knowledge‐translation gap.
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