The term "crowdwork" describes a new form of digital work that is organised and regulated by internet-based platforms. This article examines how crowdwork platforms ensure their virtual workforce's commitment and control its performance despite its high mobility, anonymity and dispersion. The findings are based on a case study analysis of 15 microtask and macrotask platforms, encompassing 32 interviews with representatives of crowdwork platforms and crowdworkers, as well as an analysis of the platforms' homepages and community spaces. The article shows that performance control on crowd platforms relies on a combination of direct control, reputation systems and community building, which have until now been studied in isolation or entirely ignored. Moreover, the findings suggest that while all three elements can be found on both microtask and macrotask platforms, their functionality and purpose differ.Overall, the findings highlight that platforms are no neutral intermediaries but organisations that adopt an active role in in structuring the digital labour process and in shaping working conditions. Their managerial structures are coded and objectified into seemingly neutral technological infrastructures, whereby the underlying power relations between capital and labour become obscured.

Crowdwork is commonly described as an extremely isolating and anonymous form of work. Contrary to this, the article examines platforms’ managerial strategies to engineer so-called crowd communities. The results show that platforms assume either more controlled or lose strategies, which results in lower or higher crowdworker interaction, respectively. None of the communication spaces, however, seem to enhance labour power. While to some extent breaking the sociotechnical isolation of the crowd, the article suggests that crowd interaction serves to scale and outsource managerial tasks to the online workers in a highly rationalized work regime. Where it arises the self-organization is largely a self-regulation and reflects crowdworkers’ efforts to cope with the work system. Overall, the findings suggest that platforms develop more diverse and complex managerial systems than often assumed.

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Algorithmic management is a core concept to analyse labour control on online labour platforms. It runs the risk, however, of oversimplifying the existing variety and complexity of control forms. In order to provide a basis for further research, this article develops a typology of labour control forms within crowdwork and discusses how they influence perceptions of working conditions. It identifies the two most relevant forms of labour control in crowdwork: direct control mainly takes the form of automated output control, while indirect control aiming at creating motivation and commitment is mainly exerted through ranking and reputation systems (gamification). The article shows that these forms of control and their combination are linked with very different ways of how platform workers perceive working conditions on platforms. In addition, the analysis shows significant differences regarding the perception of working conditions between those who work on platforms in addition to a regular employment as opposed to those who are self-employed and rely more strongly, if not fully, on their income from platform work. The analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative research on crowdwork platforms. In particular, it builds on an online survey conducted with 1,131 crowdworkers active on different types of platforms.

Platform work creates a work model that is both a curse and a blessing for vulnerable labour market segments. Based on research on female precarity, the article expects that remote platform work-so-called crowdwork-could especially attract women who need to combine income and care responsibilities. This article investigates whether women experience more precarity on crowdwork platforms than men, and why their risks differ. It analyses data from a quantitative survey with crowdworkers in Germany and the United States. The results indicate higher precarity risks for women due to care work, which are also indirectly mediated via the employment status. The higher commodification of labour and weaker social infrastructure lead to generally greater precarity risks for platform workers in the United States. The high differences between women and men in Germany underline the gendered nature of labour market dualization and precarization as well as the traditional division of housework. Policy measures should address both platform work and these structural inequalities.