Journal
JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
Volume 58, Issue 4, Pages 1070-1106Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/joms.12577
Keywords
new forms of organizing; platform economy; regulations; resource dependence; Uber; workers
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The study found that platform workers have varied responses to organizational solutions, sometimes even opposing or supplementing them. Importantly, workers' responses vary with the local regulatory structure, impacting the mutual dependency and balance of power between platforms and workers.
Platform economy organizations often resolve fundamental organizing problems with novel solutions, thereby transforming their relationship with core stakeholders including regulators and workers. Despite the integral role played by platform workers, research on the interplay between platforms and regulatory conditions has yet to take workers into consideration. We investigate how Uber drivers engage with novel forms of organizing across different regulatory structures. Drawing on insights from resource dependence theory, we conduct a topic modeling analysis of drivers' online forum posts and a complementary qualitative analysis of triangulated data sources. Our findings reveal that workers do not always succumb to organizing solutions imposed upon them; they also actively oppose or supplement them. Importantly, platform workers' responses vary with the local regulatory structure, which affects the mutual dependency and balance of power between platforms and workers. We discuss implications for the literature on new forms of organizing and the platform economy.
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