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A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

Purpose – This chapter considers the economic and political relationship between artificial intelligence tools such as facial recognition software and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) identity construction and identification. In doing so, the chapter considers the threats and opportunities to diverse LGBTQ identities from algorithmic governance.

Methodology/approach – The author analyzes public discourse on these issues and its relationship to agency for LGBTQ communities. The conceptual approach integrates research into surveillance capitalism and neuroliberalism with “digiqueer” criminology to map the relationship between digital media technologies, institutional legitimacy and negotiations for LGBTQ rights, recognition and resources.

Findings – The discussion shows that the surveillance capitalist principles of blurred consent and redistributed privacy are underpinned by geopolitical and technological forces that have undermined the legitimacy of governments and big tech companies. LGBTQ community resistance to harms perpetrated through digital media platforms is one positive consequence of the ambiguities of surveillance capitalism, but which also reflects the investment required by such communities to secure basic protections that the general population might take for granted.

Originality/value – Research into the relationship between recognition and redistribution through access to rights granted to different social groups on the basis of sexuality, sexual expression and identity is under-interrogated. This chapter responds to that gap with a focus on the role that digital media technologies can play in securing recognition and redistribution of resources for LGBTQ communities, or the significance of their absence and/or diminution in current contexts.

This work examines the intersection between traditional human resource management and the novel employment arrangements of the expanding gig economy. While there is a substantial multidisciplinary literature on the digital platform labor phenomenon, it has been largely centered on the experiences of gig workers. As digital labor platforms continue to grow and specialize, more managers, executives, and human resource practitioners will need to make decisions about whether and how to utilize gig workers. Here the authors explore and interrogate the unique features of human resource management (HRM) activities in the context of digital labor platforms. The authors discuss challenges and opportunities regarding (1) HRM in organizations that outsource labor needs to external labor platforms, (2) HRM functions within digital labor platform firms, and (3) HRM policies and practices for organizations that develop their own spin-off digital labor platform. To foster a more nuanced understanding of work in the gig economy, the authors identify common themes across these contexts, highlight knowledge gaps, offer recommendations for future research, and outline pathways for collecting empirical data on HRM in the gig economy.

This chapter critically examines whether it may be possible to create an AI-based authentic leader, questioning the inherent contradiction between artificial and authentic. The authors pose central research questions: Does the application of AI – even just as a powerful resource – challenge the tenets of authentic leadership? What are the possibilities and limitations of the concept of authenticity in AI-based management systems? Moreover, with the help of three vignettes illustrating practical applications of AI-based systems in leadership and management tasks, the authors illustrate how technology may be used to either control or empower workers and leaders. The authors call for research to assess whether the search for authenticity in AI-based leadership could lead anywhere, warning that it could entrap us in unresolvable existential and conceptual ambiguity, ultimately diverting our focus from the essence of leadership altogether.

The term “crowdwork” describes a new form of digital work that is organized and regulated by internet-based platforms. This chapter examines how crowdwork platforms ensure their virtual workforce’s commitment and control its performance despite its high mobility, anonymity, and dispersion. The findings are based on a case study analysis of 15 microtask and macrotask platforms, encompassing 32 interviews with representatives of crowdwork platforms, and crowdworkers, as well as an analysis of the platforms’ homepages and community spaces. The chapter shows that performance control on crowd platforms relies on a combination of direct control, reputation systems, and community building, which have until now been studied in isolation or entirely ignored. Moreover, the findings suggest that while all three elements can be found on both microtask and macrotask platforms, their functionality and purpose differ. Overall, the findings highlight that platforms are no neutral intermediaries but organizations that adopt an active role in structuring the digital labor process and in shaping working conditions. Their managerial structures are coded and objectified into seemingly neutral technological infrastructures, whereby the underlying power relations between capital and labor become obscured.

While digital platforms tend to be unproblematically presented as the infrastructure of the sharing economy – as matchmakers of supply and demand – the authors argue that constituting the boundaries of infrastructures is political and performative, that is, it is implicated in ontological politics, with consequences for the distribution of responsibilities (Latour, 2003; Mol, 1999, 2013; Woolgar & Lezaun, 2013). Drawing on an empirical case study of Uber, including an analysis of court cases, the authors investigate the material-discursive production of digital platforms and their participation in the reconfiguring of the world (Barad, 2007), and examine how the (in)visibility of the digital infrastructure is mobilized (Larkin, 2013) to this effect. The authors argue that the representation of Uber as a “digital platform,” as “just the technological infrastructure” connecting car drivers with clients, is a political act that attempts to redefine social responsibilities, while obscuring important dimensions of the algorithmic infrastructure that regulates this socioeconomic practice. The authors also show how some of these (in)visibilities become exposed in court, and some of the boundaries reshaped, with implications for the constitution of objects, subjects and their responsibilities. Thus, while thinking infrastructures do play a role in regulating and shaping practice through algorithms, it could be otherwise. Thinking infrastructures relationally decentre digital platforms and encourage us to study them as part of ongoing and contested entanglements in practice.