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      Call for Papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Deadline for submissions is 30th September, 2024Full details can be read here.

      Articles to be no longer than 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and submitted in two forms: an anonymised version in which all references to the authors’ institution and publications are omitted; and a full version including the authors’ titles and institutional affiliations. For complete instructions on style, formatting, etc., please consult: https://www.plutojournals.com/wp-content/uploads/WOLG-Instructions-for-Authors2023.pdf 

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      Paradoxes, problems and potentialities of online work platforms

      research-article
      Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
      Pluto Journals
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            Abstract

            Drawing from a critical synthesis of interdisciplinary literatures, this article presents the organisational landscape of online work platforms as embedding problems posed to ‘the crowd’ while holding clues for paths of resistance. Organisational mechanisms that underpin online work platforms paradoxically both deterritorialise and territorialise online work and encompass new processes of disintermediation and intermediation, producing unprecedented savings for firms while imposing precarity on crowdworkers. Online work platforms nonetheless have become a tool of ‘development’ in underdeveloped countries for ‘bottom-of-pyramid’ (BOP) populations, a situation I critically examine regarding unique organisational features. Despite principles of online work platforms that would seem to foster the deterritorialisation of work, close scrutiny reveals spatially differentiated labour markets, which matter because the implications for change and the affordances of the new digital infrastructure differ across contexts.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            10.13169
            workorgalaboglob
            Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
            Pluto Journals
            1745641X
            17456428
            Winter 2017
            : 11
            : 2
            : 21-38
            Article
            workorgalaboglob.11.2.0021
            10.13169/workorgalaboglob.11.2.0021
            a3f141ce-b93a-4e0b-888a-21497c760a3e
            © Nancy Ettlinger, 2017

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History

            Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

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