Visible hands: How gig companies shape workers' exposure to market risk

Abstract

How do gig platforms prevent workers from defecting to a competitor? Drawing on 40 original interviews and survey data from 210 ride‐hail drivers, the author finds that platform companies calibrate workers' exposure to market risk using gamified reward systems. These rewards protect compliant workers from changes in market conditions, raising the costs of accepting work from a competitor. Yet those who do not comply are “pushed” to the periphery, increasing their market risk. This article illustrates how platform companies can use their “visible hands” to harness and control market forces, shaping worker behavior within and across platforms.

Flexibility and freedom suit me better: food delivery couriers’ preferred employment status

“…Thus, workers are subordinated towards platforms even though they experience enhanced agency towards clients, which Wood and Lehdonvirta (2021) call “subordinated agency” driving workers to support self-employed status but also to pursue collective action. Maffie (2023) agrees and shows how platform companies take a layered approach in actively shaping market forces and pressuring workers to prefer independent contractor status through the use of “visible hands,” which are information control, uneven job distribution and temporal insulation from market risk. Castillo-Villar et al (2024) conclude that algorithmic control platforms use, and workers being forced to be entrepreneurs, are the two exploitive tactics that ridesharing companies use.…”

“…Earlier research gives some explanations on why couriers prefer self-employment such as the desire for freedom and flexibility but, on the other hand, finds background factors such as unemployment ( Çiğdem, 2022 ) or immigrant status ( Barratt et al, 2020 ) that seem to push them towards self-employment. Both Wood and Lehdonvirta (2021) and Maffie (2023) argue that platform companies use their power to influence workers’ perspectives on employment status. Some scholars argue that the freedom experienced by self-employed platform workers is in reality no freedom at all, but companies use it as a marketing tool to attract couriers in poor societal or economic positions ( Popan, 2021 ).…”

Politicized shopping in the gig economy: Retaliation and solidarity on the “other side” of the app

“…Following past quantitative studies of gig workers, I sent participants two study documents spaced 14 days apart (Maffie, 2023b). The initial survey collected the independent variable of interest and controls while the follow-up document collected the dependent variable of interest.…”

“…Second, platform companies filter partnership requests to ensure that the resulting research reflects favorably on their labor practices (Horan, 2019). Following past empirical research on gig workers (Maffie, 2023b(Maffie, , 2023c, I recruited participants from online communities and partnered with gig worker "influencers." To protect data quality, I only recruited from online communities that required members to provide proof of shopper status.…”

A bibliometric analysis and future research agenda for online labour platforms

“…The field of industrial relations labour covers various studies exploring multifaceted aspects of platform work. Research topics include the influence of gig companies on workers' market risk exposure (Maffie 2023), investigation of microwork geography and the classification of worker types (Morgan, van Zoonen and ter Hoeven 2023), platform classification systems (Maffie 2020), multidimensional configuration of platform work (Haidar 2022), and the role of algorithmic management in platform work (Duggan et al 2019;Kullmann 2018). These papers contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the evolving industrial relations landscape of OLPs.…”