Why platform capitalism is not the future of work

Abstract

This article examines the assumptions behind the sociology of work and industrial relations literature on online labour-based platforms. This literature has critically examined working conditions and worker resistance in platform work, but it has done so without criticising what we call the ‘metanarrative of the platform economy’. This metanarrative enables a weaving together of platform work with broader trends such as precarisation, neoliberalisation, financialisation and marketisation, but it makes it difficult for scholars to explain the small size of the platform workforce or to understand the diverse forms that platforms take. We argue that in order to understand the limits and diversity of platforms it is important to understand the inherent problems of platforms as capitalist business models. We suggest a research agenda that decentres some of the better-known platform models (ridesharing and food delivery) and carries out in-depth studies of work and exchange in other sectors.

New social relations of digital technology and the future of work: Beyond technological determinism

“…Researchers of work should be well-placed to critically interrogate these narratives. There is, however, a risk that scholars either sidestep a critical engagement with it, or else implicitly or explicitly endorse the narrative of platform work as part of a grand shift towards flexibilisation, precarisation and the like (Azzellini et al, 2022). There is a need for more research with an interest in continuity, thick description and contextualisation, as well as transformation.…”

“…A prominent example is the epochal break implied by discussions of the ‘platform economy’ or ‘platform capitalism’ (see Azzellini et al, 2022). The problem with such periodisations, based on a belief in the transformative power of certain technological innovations, is that they tend to ignore the complexity of change in sociotechnical systems; usually, by overstating technological novelty and understating social continuity, and ascribing decisive causality to the former.…”

“…Contemporary accounts of digital technology at work also seem to exhibit what Storey (1985, p. 194) calls the ‘functionalist premises that capital must and can devise coherent systems of control’. This problematic assumption leads to explanations of digital technology as the straightforward expression of this functional imperative to control (Azzellini et al, 2022). Finally, recent accounts of technology and the labour process often lack attention to how, once introduced, the way in which ‘[technologies] are actually used will be moderated by … responses and resistances’ (Baldry, 2011, p. 180).…”

“…The third challenge relates to a disproportionate emphasis on certain empirical phenomena, specifically on platform work. Research on platform work accounts for a disproportionate quantity of published research on new digital technology and employment (Azzellini et al, 2022), which is further skewed towards particular types of platform work; notably, app‐mediated transport network services such as the Uber and Deliveroo models. There is, therefore, a real danger of scholarship becoming preoccupied with very specific empirical niches.…”

Labor Studies: Who and Where? A Global Perspective on the Future of Work(ers)

“…For example, technological innovation has allowed for a slew of novel workplace surveillance tools that have increased the mental and material hold of the employer over employees, such as in Amazon fulfillment centers, to name the most iconic of such examples. In discussions about the increasing precarity of workers, there is a tendency to underestimate the impoverishment in working conditions within stable employment, missing this forest for the trees represented by platforms and other casualized work when considering the future of work (Carbonell 2022; Azzellini et al 2022).…”