Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T08:50:43.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Rise of the “Gig Economy” and Implications for Understanding Work and Workers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2016

Kristine M. Kuhn
Kristine M. Kuhn*
Affiliation:
Department of Management, Information Systems, & Entrepreneurship, Washington State University
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kristine M. Kuhn Department of Management, Information Systems, & Entrepreneurship, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4743. E-mail: kmkuhn@wsu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Bergman and Jean (2016) include freelancers as one of the categories of workers who are understudied in the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology literature. This neglect is particularly striking given the attention paid by the popular media and by politicians to the rise of the “gig economy,” comprising primarily short-term independent freelance workers (e.g., Cook, 2015; Kessler, 2014; Scheiber, 2014; Warner, 2015). This may be due in part to challenges involved in accessing and researching this population, as discussed by Bergman and Jean, but it may also arise from complexities in defining and conceptualizing freelance work, as well as from misunderstandings about the nature of the work now performed by many people who are considered freelancers. Major topics of interest to I-O psychologists such as organizational attraction, job satisfaction, and turnover may seem at first glance to lack relevance to the study of workers who are officially classified as self-employed. But there is substantial opportunity for I-O psychologists and other behaviorally oriented organizational researchers to contribute to our understanding of the growing number of people who earn all or some of their income by freelancing.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 157 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agrawal, A., Horton, J., Lacetera, N., & Lyons, E. (2013). Digitization and the contract labor market: A research agenda. In Goldfarb, A., Greenstein, S., & Tucker, C. (Eds.), Economic analysis of the digital economy (pp. 219–250). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aguinis, H., & Lawal, S. O. (2013). eLancing: A review and research agenda for bridging the science–practice gap. Human Resource Management Review, 23 (1), 6–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, M. E., & Jean, V. A. (2016). Where have all the “workers” gone? A critical analysis of the unrepresentativeness of our samples relative to the labor market in the industrial–organizational psychology literature. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 9, 84–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, A., & Witteloostuijn, A. (2013). Drivers of freelance career success. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 24–46.Google Scholar
Chen, J. (2015). Your job success score on Upwork. Retrieved from www.upwork.com/blog/2015/06/job-success-score-upwork/ Google Scholar
Connelly, C. E., & Gallagher, D. G. (2006). Independent and dependent contracting: Meaning and implications. Human Resource Management Review, 16 (2), 95–106.Google Scholar
Cook, N. (2015, July 25). The insecure world of freelancing. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/building-social-safety-net-freelancers/399551/ Google Scholar
Fox, J. (2014, September 4). Breaking down the freelance economy. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/09/breaking-down-the-freelance-economy/ Google Scholar
Freelancers Union. (2010). Independent, innovative, and unprotected: How the old safety net is failing America's new workforce. Retrieved from http://fu-res.org/pdfs/advocacy/2010_Survey_Full_Report.pdf Google Scholar
Hall, J. V., & Krueger, A. B. (2015). An analysis of the labor market for Uber's driver-partners in the United States. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/uber-static/comms/PDF/Uber_Driver-Partners_Hall_Kreuger_2015.pdf Google Scholar
Kessler, S. (2014, March). Pixel and dimed: On (not) getting by in the gig economy. Fast Company, 185–190.Google Scholar
Kitching, J., & Smallbone, D. (2012). Are freelancers a neglected form of small business? Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 19, 74–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, K. M. (2013). Judgments about pay. In Highhouse, S., Dalal, R. S., & Salas, E. (Eds.), SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series: Judgment and decision making at work (pp. 159–177). New York, NY: Routledge Academic.Google Scholar
Kuhn, K. M., & Maleki, A. (2015). A workforce of micro-entrepreneurs: Online labor platforms and the sharing economy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, M. K., Kusbit, D., Metsky, E., & Dabbish, L. (2015). Working with machines: The impact of algorithmic and data-driven management on human workers. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 33, 1603–1612.Google Scholar
Light, J. (2010, April 26). More freelancers fight to be paid. Wall Street Journal, p. B1.Google Scholar
MBO Partners. (2015). 5th Annual State of Independence Report: The independent workforce and America's new economy. Retrieved from https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence Google Scholar
Milkman, R., González, A. L., & Ikeler, P. (2012). Wage and hour violations in urban labour markets: A comparison of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Industrial Relations Journal, 43, 378–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raphel, A. (2014, July 22). TaskRabbit redux. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/taskrabbit-redux Google Scholar
Riesman, A. (2014, December 7). Why many New York drivers prefer Lyft to Uber. New York Magazine. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/lyft-uber-drivers.html# Google Scholar
Scheiber, N. (2014, November 23). Corporate America is using the sharing economy to turn us into temps. The New Republic. Retrieved from https://newrepublic.com/article/120378/wonolo-temp-worker-app-shows-scary-future-sharing-economy Google Scholar
Sundararajan, A. (2014, November 27). What Airbnb gets about culture that Uber doesn't. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-airbnb-gets-about-culture-that-uber-doesnt Google Scholar
Warner, M. R. (2015, June 18). Asking tough questions about the gig economy. Washington Post, p. B1.Google Scholar
Wile, R. (2015, July 27). There are probably way more people in the gig economy than we realize. Fusion. Retrieved from http://fusion.net/story/173244/ Google Scholar
Zumbrun, J., & Sussman, A. L. (2015, July 26). Proof of a “gig economy” revolution is hard to find. Wall Street Journal, p. B1.Google Scholar