Institutions, Occupations and Connectivity: The Embeddedness of Gig Work and Platform-Mediated Labour Market in Hong Kong

Abstract

Informed by the economic sociology of work, this qualitative study employs a dynamic and multi-dimensional notion of embeddedness to critique the social bases of gig work and the platform-mediated labour market, with a series of embedding, disembedding and re-embedding forces. Conducting in-depth interviews with 24 gig workers, the findings reveal how gig work is incorporated into Hong Kong’s labour market and the ways in which gig work is reshaping the power of workers via digital platforms. First, gig work is institutionally embedded in a policy framework centred on weak regulation and protection, resulting in platforms’ expandable and retractable control over labour. Second, gig work is embedded in occupational norms and professional practices, in which workers practise multi-platforming and marketplace resistance when defending their interests. Finally, the embedded connectivity of gig work boosts the scalability of labour market competition but engenders algorithmic opacity. The marketplace bargaining power of gig workers is twofold: workers’ dependence on platforms and their working status. Hence, the embeddedness of gig work and platforms is far from stable but involves new tensions that challenge the gigification and platformisation of work.

Socio‐technical issues in the platform‐mediated gig economy: A systematic literature review: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…Gig economy platforms facilitate the exchange of labor and money by allowing gig workers to showcase and sell their skills to a global market (Huang et al, 2019). These platforms and the ICTs on which they depend are a digital workplace which is embedded in a global information infrastructure (A1) (Au‐Yeung & Qiu, 2022). In the literature there are many examples that illustrate the extent to which gig workers are engaging with this larger information infrastructure (Lesala Khethisa et al, 2020).…”

“…Stated simply, algorithmic management shapes gig work (Scholz, 2017). For example, algorithmic management replaces human managers and assigns work, sets deadlines for the completion of tasks, provides information support, engages in monitoring, surveillance, and evaluation, and handles dispute resolution (Au‐Yeung & Qiu, 2022; Chen et al, 2022). This type of management is critical to platform companies because management “originates from algorithms, the delivery of the management to the worker is provided by a technology interface (e.g., smartphone app) rather than by a human manager, and the management can be applied on a continual, real‐time basis” (Cram et al, 2022, p. 427).…”

“…Power asymmetry (B4) is an important outcome of algorithmic management that, based on the literature collected and analyzed, can be decomposed into six attributes (Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2022). In general, power asymmetry exists when differences in statuses and roles among actors within a complex organizational hierarchy lead to differences in their abilities to initiate or prevent actions from taking place (Au‐Yeung & Qiu, 2022; Scholz, 2017). It is “a decisive factor in how all kinds of relationships develop” (Fousiani, 2022, p. 1) and to a great extent shapes the gig economy in terms of platform structure and work processes (Baiyere et al, 2019).…”

“…Jack (2020) found that ride‐hailing platform drivers in Beijing joined several ride‐hailing platforms and built plugins to compare which platform offers the best wage at a given time. The multi‐platforming was found as a coping strategy for gig workers to survive and bargain with platforms (Au‐Yeung & Qiu, 2022).…”

‘No South Asian Riders, Please’: The Politics of Visibilisation in Platformed Food Delivery Work during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong

“…Such views beg the questions of how, and to what extent, racial minority workers might be subjected to added precarities in ‘gig’ work. As Au-Yeung and Qiu argue in their paper, gig labour in Hong Kong (like China) well exemplifies how the platform economy complicates notions of ‘embeddedness’, and further disempowers the agency of individual worker (Au-Yeung and Qiu, 2022, this issue). In particular, food delivery services in Hong Kong became popular around 2018, but surged in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”