Gig Economy: A Literature review of critical approaches
| Název práce v češtině: | Zakázková ekonomika: Literární rešerše kritických přístupů |
|---|---|
| Název v anglickém jazyce: | Gig Economy: A Literature review of critical approaches |
| Klíčová slova: | platform economy, gig economy, narrative literature analysis, digital jobs |
| Klíčová slova anglicky: | platform economy, gig economy, narrative literature analysis, digital jobs |
| Akademický rok vypsání: | 2020/2021 |
| Typ práce: | bakalářská práce |
| Jazyk práce: | angličtina |
| Ústav: | Katedra sociologie (23-KS) |
| Vedoucí / školitel: | Mgr. Maksym Kolomoiets |
| Řešitel: | skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem |
| Datum přihlášení: | 29.09.2021 |
| Datum zadání: | 29.09.2021 |
| Datum a čas obhajoby: | 06.06.2022 09:00 |
| Místo konání obhajoby: | Pekařská 16, JPEK210, 210, Malá učebna, 2.patro |
| Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: | 03.05.2022 |
| Datum proběhlé obhajoby: | 06.06.2022 |
| Oponenti: | Mgr. Tereza Svobodová |
| Kontrola URKUND: | |
| Seznam odborné literatury |
| 1.LEHDONVIRTA, Vili, et al. The global platform economy: A new offshoring institution enabling emerging-economy microproviders. Journal of Management, 2019, 45.2: 567-599.
2.PARKER, Geoffrey G.; VAN ALSTYNE, Marshall W.; CHOUDARY, Sangeet Paul. Platform revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and how to make them work for you. WW Norton & Company, 2016. 3.KENNEY, Martin; ZYSMAN, John. Work and value creation in the platform economy. In: Work and Labor in the Digital Age. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2019. 4.VALLAS, Steven and SCHOR, Juliet B.. What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy. Annual Review of Sociology. 2020. Vol. 46, no. 1p. 273–294. DOI 10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857. 5.SCHMIDT, Florian A. Digital labour markets in the platform economy. Mapping the Political Challenges of Crowd Work and Gig Work, 2017, 7: 2016. 6.FRENKEN, Koen; SCHOR, Juliet. Putting the sharing economy into perspective. In: A research agenda for sustainable consumption governance. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019. 7.IRANI, Lilly C.; SILBERMAN, M. Six. Stories We Tell About Labor: Turkopticon and the Trouble with" Design". In: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 2016. p. 4573-4586. 8.WOODCOCK, Jamie; GRAHAM, Mark. The gig economy. A critical introduction. Cambridge: Polity, 2019. 9.KUREKOVÁ, Lucia Mýtna; BEBLAVÝ, Miroslav; THUM-THYSEN, Anna. Using online vacancies and web surveys to analyse the labour market: a methodological inquiry. IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2015, 4.1: 1-20. 10.FERRARI, Rossella. Writing narrative style literature reviews. Medical Writing, 2015, 24.4: 230-235. 11.GREEN, Bart N.; JOHNSON, Claire D.; ADAMS, Alan. Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade. Journal of chiropractic medicine, 2006, 5.3: 101-117 12.FISCHER, Arnout RH; TOBI, Hilde; RONTELTAP, Amber. When natural met social: a review of collaboration between the natural and social sciences. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2011, 36.4: 341-358. 13. TORPEY, John. A sociological agenda for the tech age. Theory and Society. 2020. Vol. 49, no. 5-6p. 749–769. DOI 10.1007/s11186-020-09406-0. 14. STEWART, Andrew; STANFORD, Jim. Regulating work in the gig economy: What are the options?. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2017, 28.3: 420-437. 15. KOUTSIMPOGIORGOS, Nikos; SLAGEREN, Jaap; HERRMANN, Andrea M. Conceptualizing the Gig Economy and Its Regulatory Problems. Policy & Internet. 2020-05-02, s. poi3.237. 16. BAUMEISTER, Roy F. and LEARY, Mark R.. Writing Narrative Literature Reviews. Review of General Psychology. 1997. Vol. 1, no. 3p. 311–320. DOI 10.1037/1089-2680.1.3.311. |
| Předběžná náplň práce |
| The internet surrounds us and we as a society already live in a new era when without online services of different variations cannot even imagine our life, both from the position of the regular user and from the standpoint of the organizations. The current authors draw attention to the existence of modern branches of the economy, which are connected to the usage of various platforms, software and apps. While definitions are intertwined, the precise terminology does not exist yet (Lehdonvirta, 2019). However, we can try to outline some delicate unique features about them.
The so-called sharing economy consists in the sharing of information or products on the basis of voluntary financial support for authors and possible contributors (Kenney & Zysman, 2019). Moreover, we can mention that this kind of economy “was originally referred to amateur or noncommercial transactions” (Parker, Van Alstyne, & Choudary, 2016) Platform economy, on the other hand, is equally associated with companies and applications, but being rather a wider term. It can be manifested on a level of peer-to-peer communication, businesses or governments. In essence, the platform economy is based on the principle of maximum monetization and exchange of any goods or capabilities of the user.(Kenney & Zysman, 2019). Some argue that the platform economy is such a rapidly growing branch of the economy that has an immense influence on markets and networks and is now intrinsic to a society as a new form of mass employment.(Valas & Schor, 2020). Sometimes platform labour is even referred to as “Work 4.0” (Schmidt, 2016) as a way to emphasize the progressiveness of platform based businesses in relation to the workforce. A large number of scholars have presented taxonomies of the digital work in relation to the functionality of a certain platform and the workforce needed. I can outline at least 5 types of employment from skilled professionals, independent contractors(most freelance and outsource based workers), mundane public service(delivery, taxi) to social media influencers and their support systems(social media managers and marketing) .(Kenney & Zysman, 2019, Valas &Schor, 2020, Frenken & Schor, 2017, Irani, 2015) Regardless of the aforementioned types, the main role here still play the professionals who carry out all the tasks. Thus, the phenomenon of gig economy or gig work is introduced. Gig economy is a special kind of digital economy that is built solely on the premises of outsourcing job opportunities or individual tasks (Schmidt, 2016).Technological boom has provided a medium to popularize freelancers, however still being dependent on workers' expertise, “gig work is always bound to a specific person who has to show up on time to do the job”(Schmidt, 2016). It was initially intended to revolutionize the existing employment procedures and give more freedom to both employers and employees and to enhance overall suppleness of the market itself. “Workers can supposedly choose what to do, how, when, where and for whom. Many are able to find jobs and income previously hard to obtain.” (Woodcock, 2020) However, I feel that the gig economy as a distinguishing part of the modern economy is undeservedly overlooked. According to Scopus.com alone there are currently 1921 academic works devoted to the gig economy opposed to the 11902 works about the platform economy. What I found to be interesting is that most of the 1921 works in question are of critical nature, either criticizing gig work or explaining the various problems gig labor faces and causes. I feel that sociology brings a critical lens to the sphere and we can trace the effects it brings to us as a society. The popularization of the use of the internet around the world in the last 15-20 years, has completely changed the paradigm of perception of the network as a new center of the world economy. Previously, it was believed that the internet is just:” a bulletin for the effective advertisement of vacancies among job seekers" (Mýtna-Kureková et al. 2015), i.e. a mere list of reports and advertisements for experts and the theoretical possibility to search for information. However, now the public consensus refers to the development of the field of computer technology and the internet as the third globalization (Kenney & Zysman, 2019). My generation and generations to come are born with the power of the internet and are more likely to become the workforce for the growing sector of the platform economy. Thus, gig work is in my opinion our future main way of employment and I am afraid that the general audience is not aware of the problems and risks that the gig economy carries. I trully believe that such topic is interesting and worthy of a scientific research. To my knowledge currently there are no works dedicated to the compilation of academic literature about the gig economy. I believe that literature review is needed because for the new and growing field of studies such as gig economy studies, literature review helps to systematize the state of things in the field. Literature reviews are helpful to build cumulative knowledge. For this work, I have two main aims. Firstly, to define the consistency of the definition itself among the sociology articles, which use this notion. It is important to understand if currently the gig economy is defined with precise terminology or rather it being an umbrella term that can mean different things in different contexts, and therefore, be misleading and conflict with the supposed cumulativeness in this field of studies. Secondly, I intend to define all the problematic aspects scholars see nowadays in the gig economy by doing a review of all the possible critiques of the gig economy. I will discover what are the biggest concerns raised by scholars and which problems are overlooked, in other words examine to what large kinds of "critiques" can be generalized from a number of articles from the topic of gig economy. In addition, analyze the risk factors and possible positive and negative outcomes of the gig economy. This work will be completely theoretical,thus special methodology is used. To do this I chose to use the narrative literature review method. I believe that method is more useful to fulfill my goals. “ NRs [narrative reviews] are aimed at identifying and summarizing what has been previously published, avoiding duplicates, and seeking new study areas not yet addressed”(Ferrari, 2015) Moreover, SRs[systematic review] and NRs have different approaches, steps, goals and applications. SRs are focused on providing guidelines and meta-analysis, which I do not have a capacity for, moreover systematic approach means that the final SR is not changeable for several years (Ferrari, 2015). While NR is a fairly possible approach for me to make certain conclusions based on a smaller sample. It will adjust a lot of info into readable format and can be updated with new data. “They [NRs] are helpful in presenting a broad perspective on a topic and often describe the history or development of a problem or its management”(Green et al. 2006).Moreover, utilising different types of NRs, I would be able to derive the most similarities or deviations in terminology and conclusions out of the selected sample. To achieve that, precisely narrative analysis is cosidedered to be the most useful and fitting method: "In essence, the published literature provides a database from which the author draws conclusions about the merits of existing conceptualizations."(Baumeister & Leary, 1997) • Stage 1. Conduct a search in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect for most data. • Stage 2. Search through keywords (Ronteltap et al. 2011). • Stage 3. Conduct a selection process using various filters such as type of publication (peer-review journals), year of publication, language, research method, field of study atd. • Stage 4. Create clusters of problems mentioned in publications and possible definition discrepancies to answer the research question. • Stage 5. Draw conclusions and outcomes The implementation of the project is not associated with any ethical risks. |
| Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce |
| The internet surrounds us and we as a society already live in a new era when without online services of different variations cannot even imagine our life, both from the position of the regular user and from the standpoint of the organizations. The current authors draw attention to the existence of modern branches of the economy, which are connected to the usage of various platforms, software and apps. While definitions are intertwined, the precise terminology does not exist yet (Lehdonvirta, 2019). However, we can try to outline some delicate unique features about them.
The so-called sharing economy consists in the sharing of information or products on the basis of voluntary financial support for authors and possible contributors (Kenney & Zysman, 2019). Moreover, we can mention that this kind of economy “was originally referred to amateur or noncommercial transactions” (Parker, Van Alstyne, & Choudary, 2016) Platform economy, on the other hand, is equally associated with companies and applications, but being rather a wider term. It can be manifested on a level of peer-to-peer communication, businesses or governments. In essence, the platform economy is based on the principle of maximum monetization and exchange of any goods or capabilities of the user.(Kenney & Zysman, 2019). Some argue that the platform economy is such a rapidly growing branch of the economy that has an immense influence on markets and networks and is now intrinsic to a society as a new form of mass employment.(Valas & Schor, 2020). Sometimes platform labour is even referred to as “Work 4.0” (Schmidt, 2016) as a way to emphasize the progressiveness of platform based businesses in relation to the workforce. A large number of scholars have presented taxonomies of the digital work in relation to the functionality of a certain platform and the workforce needed. I can outline at least 5 types of employment from skilled professionals, independent contractors(most freelance and outsource based workers), mundane public service(delivery, taxi) to social media influencers and their support systems(social media managers and marketing) .(Kenney & Zysman, 2019, Valas &Schor, 2020, Frenken & Schor, 2017, Irani, 2015) Regardless of the aforementioned types, the main role here still play the professionals who carry out all the tasks. Thus, the phenomenon of gig economy or gig work is introduced. Gig economy is a special kind of digital economy that is built solely on the premises of outsourcing job opportunities or individual tasks (Schmidt, 2016).Technological boom has provided a medium to popularize freelancers, however still being dependent on workers' expertise, “gig work is always bound to a specific person who has to show up on time to do the job”(Schmidt, 2016). It was initially intended to revolutionize the existing employment procedures and give more freedom to both employers and employees and to enhance overall suppleness of the market itself. “Workers can supposedly choose what to do, how, when, where and for whom. Many are able to find jobs and income previously hard to obtain.” (Woodcock, 2020) However, I feel that the gig economy as a distinguishing part of the modern economy is undeservedly overlooked. According to Scopus.com alone there are currently 1921 academic works devoted to the gig economy opposed to the 11902 works about the platform economy. What I found to be interesting is that most of the 1921 works in question are of critical nature, either criticizing gig work or explaining the various problems gig labor faces and causes. I feel that sociology brings a critical lens to the sphere and we can trace the effects it brings to us as a society. The popularization of the use of the internet around the world in the last 15-20 years, has completely changed the paradigm of perception of the network as a new center of the world economy. Previously, it was believed that the internet is just:” a bulletin for the effective advertisement of vacancies among job seekers" (Mýtna-Kureková et al. 2015), i.e. a mere list of reports and advertisements for experts and the theoretical possibility to search for information. However, now the public consensus refers to the development of the field of computer technology and the internet as the third globalization (Kenney & Zysman, 2019). My generation and generations to come are born with the power of the internet and are more likely to become the workforce for the growing sector of the platform economy. Thus, gig work is in my opinion our future main way of employment and I am afraid that the general audience is not aware of the problems and risks that the gig economy carries. I trully believe that such topic is interesting and worthy of a scientific research. To my knowledge currently there are no works dedicated to the compilation of academic literature about the gig economy. I believe that literature review is needed because for the new and growing field of studies such as gig economy studies, literature review helps to systematize the state of things in the field. Literature reviews are helpful to build cumulative knowledge. For this work, I have two main aims. Firstly, to define the consistency of the definition itself among the sociology articles, which use this notion. It is important to understand if currently the gig economy is defined with precise terminology or rather it being an umbrella term that can mean different things in different contexts, and therefore, be misleading and conflict with the supposed cumulativeness in this field of studies. Secondly, I intend to define all the problematic aspects scholars see nowadays in the gig economy by doing a review of all the possible critiques of the gig economy. I will discover what are the biggest concerns raised by scholars and which problems are overlooked, in other words examine to what large kinds of "critiques" can be generalized from a number of articles from the topic of gig economy. In addition, analyze the risk factors and possible positive and negative outcomes of the gig economy. This work will be completely theoretical,thus special methodology is used. To do this I chose to use the narrative literature review method. I believe that method is more useful to fulfill my goals. “ NRs [narrative reviews] are aimed at identifying and summarizing what has been previously published, avoiding duplicates, and seeking new study areas not yet addressed”(Ferrari, 2015) Moreover, SRs[systematic review] and NRs have different approaches, steps, goals and applications. SRs are focused on providing guidelines and meta-analysis, which I do not have a capacity for, moreover systematic approach means that the final SR is not changeable for several years (Ferrari, 2015). While NR is a fairly possible approach for me to make certain conclusions based on a smaller sample. It will adjust a lot of info into readable format and can be updated with new data. “They [NRs] are helpful in presenting a broad perspective on a topic and often describe the history or development of a problem or its management”(Green et al. 2006).Moreover, utilising different types of NRs, I would be able to derive the most similarities or deviations in terminology and conclusions out of the selected sample. To achieve that, precisely narrative analysis is cosidedered to be the most useful and fitting method: "In essence, the published literature provides a database from which the author draws conclusions about the merits of existing conceptualizations."(Baumeister & Leary, 1997) • Stage 1. Conduct a search in Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect for most data. • Stage 2. Search through keywords (Ronteltap et al. 2011). • Stage 3. Conduct a selection process using various filters such as type of publication (peer-review journals), year of publication, language, research method, field of study atd. • Stage 4. Create clusters of problems mentioned in publications and possible definition discrepancies to answer the research question. • Stage 5. Draw conclusions and outcomes The implementation of the project is not associated with any ethical risks. |