Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work
By K. Griesbach, A. Reich, Luke Elliott-Negri, R. Milkman. Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 2019
384 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Building on an emerging literature concerning algorithmic management, this article analyzes the processes by which food delivery platforms control workers and uncovers variation in the extent to which such platforms constrain the freedoms—over schedules and activities—associated with gig work. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 55 respondents working on food delivery platforms, as well as a survey of 955 platform food delivery workers, we find that although all of the food delivery platforms use algorithmic management to assign and evaluate work, there is significant cross-platform variation. Instacart, the largest grocery delivery platform, exerts a type of control we call “algorithmic despotism,” regulating the time and activities of workers more stringently than other platform delivery companies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the spectrum of algorithmic control for the future of work.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Marketing, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d184a81838ad0c82ed7e2ebf8cc095b13113311
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- Paul Glavin
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- Katherine C. Kellogg
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- David R. Williams
Citations in the corpus
- Algorithms at Work: The New Contested Terrain of Control (2020, background): “Other scholars, too, have highlighted that some workers appreciate the high levels of flexibility, autonomy, task variety, and task complexity that algorithmic control can afford (Griesbach et al., 2019; Wood et al., 2019).”
- Über-Alienated: Powerless and Alone in the Gig Economy (2021, background): “Alternatively, rideshare 423Glavin et al. drivers’ higher levels of powerlessness relative to online crowdworkers may be due to cross-platform variation in the extent that platform firms seek to control workers (Griesbach et al., 2019).”