Media Review: Algorithmic Bosses, Labor Exploitation, and Dignity Erosion by Antonio Aloisi and Valerio De Stefano
Date
2025
Authors
Killoran, Jay
Park, Andrew
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Organization Studies
Abstract
With the emergence of digital platforms such as Uber, GrubHub, TaskRabbit, and Amazon Mechanical Turk, there has been a dramatic shift in the options available to workers. Often referred to as the gig economy, on the surface, the rise of digital platforms appears to be ushering in flexibility and independence, enabling workers the ability to work wherever and whenever suits them best. However, there also seems to be an insidious effect arising from the popularization and proliferation of these platforms: widespread exploitation, discrimination, and the loss of worker autonomy as a result of technological oversight. In Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour, authors Aloisi and De Stefano call this effect “algorithmic governance,” where labor forces are managed not by a traditional human manager, but by the anonymous and faceless information technology that buttresses gig economy platforms. The negative outcomes of this algorithmic governance are manifested in myriad ways, including excessive surveillance, a loss of privacy, underemployment, the inability to negotiate or unionize, and a parcelization of higher skill jobs into sundry, routinized tasks.
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Citation
Killoran, J., & Park, A. (2025). Media Review: Algorithmic Bosses, Labor Exploitation, and Dignity Erosion. Organization Studies, 46(2), 299–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241282125