The Food App is Watching You: The Relationship between Daily Algorithmic Control and Meaningful Work and the Role of Job Crafting

Verelst, Lorenz; De Cooman, Rein; Verbruggen, Marijke

The Food App is Watching You: The Relationship between Daily Algorithmic Control and Meaningful Work and the Role of Job Crafting

Files

0442.pdf (931.1 KB)

Date

2022-01-04

Authors

Verelst, Lorenz

De Cooman, Rein

Verbruggen, Marijke

Abstract

App work disrupted our traditional understanding of work as it introduced new technologies, such as algorithmic control. Based on the job characteristics theory, we put forward an important drawback of algorithmic control and a practice that might mitigate it. We test whether algorithmic control obstructs experiences of meaningful work through a lack of motivating job characteristics and the buffering role of bottom-up work design (i.e. job crafting). We conduct a daily diary study among 51 Belgian food app workers and test within-person relationships. Results show that on days that app workers experience high algorithmic control, they perceive their work as less meaningful than on days with little algorithmic control. Although daily motivating job characteristics could not explain this negative relationship, we found job crafting to enable app workers in attaining motivating job characteristics and meaningful work. Thereby we emphasize the importance of both top-down and bottom-up work design in a strive for meaningful work.

Keywords

Crowdsourcing and Digital Workforce in the Gig Economy, gig work, app work, algorithmic control, job crafting, meaningful work

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10125/79884

Extent

11 pages

Related To

Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Collections

Crowdsourcing and Digital Workforce in the Gig Economy

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