Gig-workers’ motivation: thinking beyond carrots and sticks

Abstract

Purpose High-quality employee motivation can contribute to an organization’s long-term success by supporting employees’ well-being and performance. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research concerning how organizations motivate workers in non-traditional work contexts. In the algocratic context of the gig-economy, the purpose of this paper is to understand the role that technology can play in motivating workers. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the self-determination theory, job-characteristic theory and enterprise social media research, this conceptual paper explores how the architecture of the digital labor platforms underlying the gig-economy (and the characteristics of jobs mediated through these IT artifacts) can impact key antecedents of self-motivation. Findings Combining theory and empirical evidence, this paper develops a mid-range theory demonstrating how organizations can support the self-motivation of gig-workers through the thoughtful design of their digital labor platforms and the integration of two social media tools (namely, social networking and social badging). Research limitations/implications This paper answers calls for psychologically-based research exploring the consequences of gig-work as well as research studying the impacts of advanced technologies in interaction with work contexts on motivation. In theorizing around a large set of social-contextual variables operating at different levels of analysis, this paper demonstrates that individual-level motivation can be influenced by both task-based and organizational-level factors, in addition to individual-level factors. Originality/value The proposed theory provides novel insight into how gig-organizations can leverage widely accessible social media technology to motivate platform workers in the absence of human supervision and support. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Mediating Role of Psychological Capital between Motivational Orientations and Their Organizational Consequences

“…One aspect to be discussed is the possibility that some contextual variables may affect those relationships, e.g., the expansion of gig economy or teleworking, where characteristics like age [ 65 ], gender [ 66 ], or design of the labor platform [ 67 ] can be crucial to define the motivation and orientation towards work performance.…”

Effect of Gig Workers’ Psychological Contract Fulfillment on Their Task Performance in a Sharing Economy—A Perspective from the Mediation of Organizational Identification and the Moderation of Length of Service

“…Belongingness may strengthen willingness and motivation to increase effort and consequently influence a worker's level of engagement [15]. Gig workers' need for affiliation and connection is demonstrated to positively influence organizational identification and commitment [4], thereby influencing their task performance [5,16]. Prior studies have determined that organizational identification serves as an important mediator between psychological contracts and employees' in-role performance and service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior [11,17].…”

“…Accordingly, Ashford et al (2018) proposed an agenda for studying individuals in a gig economy to address those challenges that gig workers and organizations may confront, such as remaining viable, staying organized, maintaining identity, and sustaining relationships [22]. A recent review article by Jabagi et al (2019) proposed that the basic needs satisfaction of a platform-based worker is positively related to his/her intrinsic work motivation [16]. For example, a platform with social features may enhance the perceived relatedness of a gig worker.…”

“…While studies on gig employment in a sharing economy have mostly addressed the foreseeable problems that gig organizations may confront and inferred possible solutions, a deeper exploration into these propositions is warranted. When independent workers perform their jobs outside traditional centralized offices and conventional work hours, organizations cannot rely on managerial supervision as a means of controlling and motivating these workers [4,16]. Therefore, how to motivate gig workers to advance in fulfilling their tasks and achieving their organizational goals becomes an important issue.…”

Digital labourers’ proactivity and the venture for meaningful work: Fruitful or fruitless?

“…Microwork denotes work on online platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Fiverr, or Clickworker, where a large group of undefined individuals contribute small parts to broad projects that they often do not see finished (Jabagi, Croteau, Audebrand, & Marsan, 2019). Through digital platforms, employers distribute these batches of work, which might consist of the remote completion of small digital tasks, such as transcribing a snippet of hand-written text, classifying an image, categorizing the sentiment expressed in a comment, or rating the relevance of a search engine result.…”