IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v32y2023i4p795-814..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding work in the online platform economy: the narrow, the broad, and the systemic perspectives

Author

Listed:
  • Angela Garcia Calvo
  • Martin Kenney
  • John Zysman

Abstract

This critical review of research on platform-mediated work argues that platform work studies are too focused on gig and remote work platforms. We introduce a framework that identifies three perspectives on how platforms reorganize work: narrow, broad, and systemic. This framework is used to examine the impact of platform-mediated work on four different aspects of work: management power, work processes, social protection and labor rights, and skills and career prospects.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Garcia Calvo & Martin Kenney & John Zysman, 2023. "Understanding work in the online platform economy: the narrow, the broad, and the systemic perspectives," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 32(4), pages 795-814.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:32:y:2023:i:4:p:795-814.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtad005
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gawer, Annabelle, 2014. "Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1239-1249.
    2. Berg, Janine., 2016. "Income security in the on-demand economy : findings and policy lessons from a survey of crowdworkers," ILO Working Papers 994906483402676, International Labour Organization.
    3. Feng Zhu & Qihong Liu, 2018. "Competing with complementors: An empirical look at Amazon.com," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(10), pages 2618-2642, October.
    4. Arindrajit Dube & Jeff Jacobs & Suresh Naidu & Siddharth Suri, 2020. "Monopsony in Online Labor Markets," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 33-46, March.
    5. Cenamor, Javier & Frishammar, Johan, 2021. "Openness in platform ecosystems: Innovation strategies for complementary products," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    6. Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2018. "Do Digital Skill Certificates Help New Workers Enter the Market? Evidence from an Online Labour Platform," SocArXiv 7tybd, Center for Open Science.
    7. Valeria Cirillo & Dario Guarascio & Zachary Parolin, 2021. "Platform Work and Economic Insecurity: Evidence from Italian Survey Data," LEM Papers Series 2021/13, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    8. Dafna Bearson & Martin Kenney & John Zysman, 2021. "Measuring the impacts of labor in the platform economy: new work created, old work reorganized, and value creation reconfigured [Probing for informal work activity]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(3), pages 536-563.
    9. John W. Cioffi & Martin F. Kenney & John Zysman, 2022. "Platform power and regulatory politics: Polanyi for the twenty-first century," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 820-836, September.
    10. Nicolas Petit & David J Teece, 2021. "Innovating Big Tech firms and competition policy: favoring dynamic over static competition [Patterns of industrial innovation]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(5), pages 1168-1198.
    11. Christina Behrendt & Quynh Anh Nguyen, 2019. "Ensuring universal social protection for the future of work," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 25(2), pages 205-219, May.
    12. Tobias Kretschmer & Aija Leiponen & Melissa Schilling & Gurneeta Vasudeva, 2022. "Platform ecosystems as meta‐organizations: Implications for platform strategies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 405-424, March.
    13. Melissa Mazmanian & Wanda J. Orlikowski & JoAnne Yates, 2013. "The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1337-1357, October.
    14. Janine Berg & Hannah Johnston, 2019. "Too Good to Be True? A Comment on Hall and Krueger’s Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber’s Driver-Partners," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(1), pages 39-68, January.
    15. Andrey Shevchuk & Denis Strebkov & Shannon N. Davis, 2019. "The Autonomy Paradox: How Night Work Undermines Subjective Well-Being of Internet-Based Freelancers," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(1), pages 75-100, January.
    16. Michael David Maffie, 2022. "The Perils of Laundering Control through Customers: A Study of Control and Resistance in the Ride-hail Industry," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(2), pages 348-372, March.
    17. Wen Wen & Feng Zhu, 2019. "Threat of platform‐owner entry and complementor responses: Evidence from the mobile app market," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(9), pages 1336-1367, September.
    18. De Stefano, Valerio., 2016. "The rise of the "just-in-time workforce" : on-demand work, crowdwork and labour protection in the "gig-economy"," ILO Working Papers 994899823402676, International Labour Organization.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Inoue, Yuki, 2021. "Indirect innovation management by platform ecosystem governance and positioning: Toward collective ambidexterity in the ecosystems," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    2. Maximilian Julius Krome & Ulrich Pidun, 2023. "Conceptualization of research themes and directions in business ecosystem strategies: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 873-920, June.
    3. Jan Frederic Nerbel & Markus Kreutzer, 2023. "Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-20, December.
    4. Wu, Aiqi & Song, Di & Liu, Yihui, 2022. "Platform synergy and innovation speed of SMEs: The roles of organizational design and regional environment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 38-53.
    5. Cenamor, Javier, 2021. "Complementor competitive advantage: A framework for strategic decisions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 335-343.
    6. Uzunca, Bilgehan & Sharapov, Dmitry & Tee, Richard, 2022. "Governance rigidity, industry evolution, and value capture in platform ecosystems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    7. Bixiang Shi & Fangcheng Tang & Fenfen Wei, 2022. "The Path Constitution of Platform Evolution: An Organizational Momentum View," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-22, July.
    8. Shi, Xianwei & Liang, Xingkun & Luo, Yining, 2023. "Unpacking the intellectual structure of ecosystem research in innovation studies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    9. Cenamor, Javier & Frishammar, Johan, 2021. "Openness in platform ecosystems: Innovation strategies for complementary products," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    10. Steffen, Nico & Wiewiorra, Lukas & Kroon, Peter, 2021. "Wettbewerb und Regulierung in der Plattform- und Datenökonomie," WIK Discussion Papers 481, WIK Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste GmbH.
    11. Moshe A. Barach & Aseem Kaul & Ming D. Leung & Sibo Lu, 2019. "Strategic Redundancy in the Use of Big Data: Evidence from a Two-Sided Labor Market," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(4), pages 298-322, December.
    12. Frédéric Marty & Thierry Warin, 2020. "Keystone Players and Complementors: An Innovation Perspective," Working Papers hal-03029748, HAL.
    13. Xuelin Chen & Dongmei Zhou & Ziying Zhan & Ruoyu Lu, 2023. "When Do You Enter? Entrepreneurial Firms’ Entry Timing and Product Performance in the Digital Platform Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-18, March.
    14. Valerio De Stefano & Antonio Aloisi, 2018. "European legal framework for "digital labour platforms"," JRC Research Reports JRC112243, Joint Research Centre.
    15. Cantarella, Michele & Strozzi, Chiara, 2019. "Workers in the Crowd: The Labour Market Impact of the Online Platform Economy," IZA Discussion Papers 12327, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Lukas Stricker & Joël Wagner & Angela Zeier Röschmann, 2023. "The Future of Insurance Intermediation in the Age of the Digital Platform Economy," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-32, August.
    17. Tobias Kretschmer & Aija Leiponen & Melissa Schilling & Gurneeta Vasudeva, 2022. "Platform ecosystems as meta‐organizations: Implications for platform strategies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 405-424, March.
    18. Markus Reisinger & Jens Schmidt & Nils Stieglitz, 2021. "How Complementors Benefit from Taking Competition to the System Level," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 5106-5123, August.
    19. Jiewang Chu & Jiaxuan Li, 2022. "The Composition and Operation Mechanism of Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: A Study of Hangzhou Yunqi Town as an Example," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-19, December.
    20. Wood, Alex & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2021. "Antagonism beyond employment: how the ‘subordinated agency’ of labour platforms generates conflict in the remote gig economy," SocArXiv y943w, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:32:y:2023:i:4:p:795-814.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.