‘My boss, the app’: Algorithmic management and labour process in delivery platforms in Colombia
Date
2022-11-15
Authors
Sánchez Vargas, Derly Yohanna
Maldonado Castañeda, Oscar Javier
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Southern Centre For Inequality Studies (SCIS)
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
Work and the activities and technologies that allow any work to be performed seem to be given issues in contemporary modern market-capitalist economies. However such issues are in motion within evolving patterns of governance and organisational arrangements. This paper analyses the impact of algorithms in the working conditions of platform workers in Colombia. We explore the extent to which digital tools and algorithmic management have been used to allocate, monitor and evaluate work in different sectors of the gig economy: couriers (food delivery), transportation (drivers) and domestic work. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), recent work on the sociology of algorithms, and Organisation Studies, this project analyses the digital devices that shape the labour process and the emerging practices of resistance or compliance that emerge from these interactions amongst workers. This paper builds on our previous work around decent work and working conditions of platform workers, focusing on the human-machine configurations that emerge from the material-semiotic connections between workers and algorithms. We approach the platform’s algorithms from the black-boxed narratives of managers and companies to the embodied accounts of the workers who deal with them. In this paper we explore algorithmic management and the relationships that emerge in the human-machine interaction mediated by app-centred work, focusing on digital delivery platforms. Delivery work offers an opportunity to address the material configurations that sustain the digital economy, the ecologies that emerge in the streets, the workers’ embodied experience and the digital infrastructure. This paper also explores the ways in which algorithms produce new configurations of inequality in the labour process.
Description
Keywords
Inequality, Gig economy, Digital labour platforms, Regulation, Algorithms, Platform economy, Labour process, Columbia, Couriers (food delivery), Transportation (drivers), Domestic work
Citation
Sanchez Vargas D.Y. and Maldonado Castañeda O. 2022. ‘My boss, the app’: Algorithmic management and labour process in delivery platforms in Colombia. Future of Work(ers) SCIS Working Paper Number 36, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University Of The Witwatersrand.