How platforms manufacture the ‘appropriate individual’

Platform-based control has emerged as a powerful form of technologically mediated governance of work. This paper theorises platform-based normative control by integrating classic normative control theory with contemporary research on algorithmic management. We argue that platforms govern workers not only through rational, rule- based mechanisms, but also through normative processes that reorient workers’ perceptions, values, and identities. We introduce the 3Ps of normative control (Persuasion, Perception, and Pressure) and embed them within a socio-technical process framework that explains how the workeris oriented towards becoming the ‘appropriate individual’ through interrelated phases of Deconstruction, Reconfiguration, and Internalisation. These processes are shown to be contingent and uneven, varying systematically across platform architectures and degrees of worker dependence. By conceptualising normative control as distributed across algorithms, interfaces, customers, peers, and workers themselves, this paper advances understanding of platform power and highlights important ethical implications in platform-mediated work.