‘My boss, the app’: Algorithmic management and labour process in delivery platforms in Colombia

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dc.citation.doi10539-33459
dc.contributor.authorSánchez Vargas, Derly Yohanna
dc.contributor.authorMaldonado Castañeda, Oscar Javier
dc.date.accessioned2022-11-15T12:06:53Z
dc.date.availableAugust 2022
dc.date.issued2022-11-15
dc.departmentSouthern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS)
dc.description.abstractWork 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.
dc.description.librarianSeipati Mokhema
dc.description.sponsorshipSouthern Centre For Inequality Studies (SCIS)
dc.description.sponsorshipUniversity of the Witwatersrand
dc.facultyFaculty of Commerce, Law and Management
dc.identifier.citationSanchez 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.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/33459
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.doi.org/10.54223/uniwitwatersrand-10539-33459
dc.language.isoen
dc.orcid.id0000-0003-0126-4879
dc.orcid.id0000-0002-0142-3625
dc.publisherSouthern Centre For Inequality Studies (SCIS)
dc.publisherUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.relation.ispartofseries36
dc.rights©2022 Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS)
dc.schoolSouthern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS)
dc.subjectInequality
dc.subjectGig economy
dc.subjectDigital labour platforms
dc.subjectRegulation
dc.subjectAlgorithms
dc.subjectPlatform economy
dc.subjectLabour process
dc.subjectColumbia
dc.subjectCouriers (food delivery)
dc.subjectTransportation (drivers)
dc.subjectDomestic work
dc.title‘My boss, the app’: Algorithmic management and labour process in delivery platforms in Colombia
dc.typeWorking Paper
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