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Technological developments and new customer expectations of immediacy have driven businesses to adopt on-demand service models. The purpose of this paper is to study the characteristics of a range of on-demand services in order to better understand the meaning of “on-demand” and its implications for service management. This enables the on-demand service logic to be applied to other service contexts, where it may add value for customers.

The study starts with a focused literature review and continues with a multiple case study methodology, as the on-demand service concept is in the early stages of theory development. Seven cases were studied, based on a maximum variation sampling strategy.

The results show that on-demand services are characterized by three interrelated characteristics: being highly available, responsive and scalable. Analysis further reveals that on-demand services display differences within the conceptual boundaries of these characteristics, i.e. they vary in terms of their availability, responsiveness and scalability.

Drawing on these findings, the study contributes to the service literature by being the first to specifically conceptualize and define the on-demand services concept and reveal three key characteristics that clarify the distinctive nature of this service type. Accordingly, on-demand services are clearly differentiated from other services. Additionally, the paper discusses the variety within on-demand services and develops an on-demand service continuum that gives detailed insights into the conceptual variations within such services.

This chapter will introduce the concept of the gig economy. It begins with a brief discussion of technological changes and their impact on the workforce and labour market, demonstrating how the trend shifts towards the gig economy. It then examines the trends that are influencing this transformation and discusses various perspectives and the attractiveness of the gig economy for workers and businesses. This chapter will also discuss the gig economy, platform economy, digital platform, and gig worker categories. It concludes with a brief discussion of some of the opportunities, issues, and challenges associated with the gig economy.

Industry 4.0 and its leading-edge components are transforming all aspects of human life with wide-ranging repercussions for managing production and workforce in the digital age. The traditional definitions of formal and informal employment are no longer applicable to our world, thanks to disruptions of various nature. The innovation landscape is radically altering the way work is done as well as where it is done, leading to an expansion of the gig economy with its freelancers, contract workers, agile workforce, or independent workforce who are constituting increasingly more temporary providers of labor. In addition to a tension between technological development and loss of jobs at the expense of individuals with lower set of skills, advancing technology is enabling new forms of organizing through facilitating new work arrangements. The new world of work is characterized by short-term contracts, fluidity, fragmentation, transience, temporariness, increased autonomy, and independence, on the one hand, and by precarity, financial instability, job uncertainty, and insecurity embedded in its very fabric, on the other, hence presenting both opportunities and challenges that need to be urgently addressed by researchers and policymakers. The inevitable tension between technology-driven developments in economy and labor markets is further exacerbated by the most recent pandemic and global economic recession, making scholarly and policy discussions all the more relevant.

Online marketplaces, which provide on-demand goods or services through matching providers and consumers, have emerged in many sectors of the society. This paper aims to assess the need and speculate the design features of a specialized, online marketplace for archival services.

Interview data collected for a previous project were reanalyzed, and the websites of some online marketplaces were explored.

Existing general-purpose online marketplaces are useful but limited. Archivists and closely related professionals, including conservators, genealogists and public historians, need a specialized online marketplace to connect with their clients. This specialized online marketplace for archival services could adopt some useful features of existing online marketplaces.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first attempt to assess the need for an online marketplace for archival services.