Wiley: New Technology, Work and Employment: Table of Contents

The Politics of Unpaid Labour: How the Study of Unpaid Labour Can Help Address Inequality in Precarious Work By Valeria Pulignano and Markieta Domecka, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. 320 pp. £99 hbk. ISBN: 9780198888130

Paul Stewart — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:01:56 -0700

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

From Online Gatherings to Industrial Relations Actors: A Framework for Understanding the Impacts of Digital Labour Groups

Yao Yao, Lorenzo Frangi — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:37:37 -0700

ABSTRACT

Digital labour groups (DLGs)—online groups focusing on labour issues—are emerging as new actors in employment relations. While existing research documents various aspects of DLGs' activities, there is limited understanding of their impact on industrial relations (IR) or how an impact is achieved. To address this, we drew on the synergy of mobilization theory, connective action and network analysis perspectives to review the literature on DLGs. We identified a framework consisting of three core factors—actions, dynamics and statics—shaping DLGs' potential to become impactful IR actors and three typical pathways through which DLGs impact IR: grassroots DLGs entering IR, grassroots DLGs influencing IR and IR entities leveraging DLGs. This reveals how specific configurations of the three factors influence the capacity of DLGs to have an institutional impact. The study enhances theoretical understanding of digital collectives, extends the applicability of traditional IR theories to new contexts and offers practical advice for stakeholders navigating a digitalizing world of work.

Reframing Disability With Digital Advocacy: Affective Strategies of Disabled Digital Social Entrepreneurs on Instagram

Amanda Peticca‐Harris, Sara R. S. T. A. Elias, Angela Owens‐Jackson — Wed, 20 May 2026 23:29:36 -0700

ABSTRACT

Through comparative research, we examine how disabled digital social entrepreneurs, Alex Dacy and Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, employ emotional engagement on Instagram to reshape perceptions of disability. Drawing on Ahmed's (2004) concept of affective economies, we analyse how affect is mobilised to foster audience engagement and cultivate digital communities. Through a visual narrative analysis of their top-performing 2023 Instagram posts, we identify three key strategies—sidelining, stacking, and subverting disability—each positioning disability differently through affective circulations that shape how digital social entrepreneurs engage their audiences while navigating platform affordances. We contribute to digital social entrepreneurship and disability studies by highlighting the role of affect in digital advocacy and illustrating how social media structures disability representation and engagement.

Remote and On‐Site Working During the Covid‐19 Pandemic: (Re)Configuring Work Organisation in Border Control Services and the Nuclear Industry

Laure Bonnaud, Tania Navarro Rodríguez — Mon, 04 May 2026 00:17:23 -0700

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the nuclear and border control services had to reorganise their work, both on-site and remotely, to continue their activities. Whereas employees came to work at the power plants and border posts every day, the health rules introduced by the public authorities and those relating to the lockdown of populations suddenly meant that only a portion of the teams could be selected to continue activities essential to electricity production and food supply within the European Union. Above and beyond the perceived inequity between on-site workers and those able to work remotely, this research examines how the organisation regulates work arrangements, and in particular, how work activities are configured—that is, how they are carried out, and the autonomy and control involved in their execution. To this end, it draws on Jean-Daniel Reynaud's regulation theory to analyse the regulation of work organisations in these two sectors. It shows that the distinction between on-site and remote work was not set in stone, and that there was considerable movement (of workers, documents, procedures, etc.) between the two. It also highlights the changing dynamics of the reconfiguration of on-site and remote work, even over short periods of time, as a result of autonomous and control-based regulations designed to achieve these reorganisations. Our case studies concern the maintenance departments at two nuclear production sites plants in Spain, and the veterinary and phytosanitary inspection border services in three French ports. This comparison opens up analytical perspectives for many other sectors.

Understanding Online Freelancers' Labour Agency at the Intersection of Platforms, Wider Labour Markets, and Households: Evidence From the Philippines

Jorien H. Oprins — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:45:17 -0700

ABSTRACT

Research on the labour agency of remote-based online freelancers has often struggled to account for the interplay between platform dynamics, broader labour market conditions, and gendered household responsibilities. This article addresses this gap by proposing an integrated analytical framework that synthesises these dimensions to examine how freelancers exercise their labour agency in choosing between different online jobs—decisions which are vital to their platform success. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 Filipino freelancers, the findings show that freelancers exercise their agency by employing two overarching strategies: optimising their financial and temporal resources. These strategies are shaped by platform logics, as well as by constraints and opportunities linked to freelancers' wider labour market position and private-sphere responsibilities. The discussion demonstrates the framework's analytical value by illustrating how these strategies produce uneven implications for freelancers' longer-term platform trajectories, adding nuance to debates about the uneven gains of remote platform work.

Patching Algorithmic Management: The Invisible Role of Support in Digital Delivery Platforms

Francisca Gutiérrez‐Crocco, Sebastián Budnevich — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:30:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a blind spot in the debate on platform algorithmic management: what happens after disruption. While existing studies have documented how platform workers resist and contest algorithmic control, far less is known about how platforms stabilise and recalibrate control in everyday operations. We introduce the concept of patching to theorise these counteractions as socio-technical processes through which discontinuities in algorithmic management are identified, prioritised, and provisionally resolved. Drawing on a qualitative case study of food-delivery platforms in Chile, based on interviews with couriers, support staff, consumers, and other actors, we examine the role of internal support work in sustaining algorithmic control. Our findings show that patching relies on labour-intensive practices that translate disruptions into manageable problems while preserving the appearance of automated decision-making. By bringing support work into view, the article challenges technological determinism and binary platform-worker framings, and highlights the organisational labour through which algorithmic management is continuously produced, repaired, and normalised.

Organizing Amazon: Building Worker Power Under Conditions of Fragmentation, Precarity and Regimentation By Tom Vickers, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2025. 160 pp. 14.99 GBP (paperback). ISBN: 978‐1‐52‐925429‐7

Sabrina Apicella — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

Remote4All: Voicing the Lived Experiences of Disabled and/or Neurodivergent Remote Workers

Christine Grant, Maria Charalampous, Carlo Tramontano, Emma Russell — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:49:38 -0700

ABSTRACT

Disabled and/or neurodivergent people form 20% of the UK working population but their experience of remote working has been overlooked in research and practice. This research gave a voice to this community of workers to express their lived experience about how remote working can help to support their specific needs. Employing a qualitative design, we interviewed 24 disabled and/or neurodivergent remote workers across various UK organizations and sectors. Using Conservation of Resources theory, we identified (through thematic analysis) eight themes associated with conditional resources that, when configured in different combinations (referred to as resource ‘caravans’) can support the development and sustenance of personal resources to fulfil three key resource needs. These key resource needs involve being able to Control the Sensory Environment, Manage Conditions and Present Authentic Self-expressions. These needs emerged as specifically important for this group of workers and were likely to be fulfilled through remote and hybrid working arrangements. We encourage organizations to invest in these caravans of conditional resources, to enable flourishing in relation to the key needs of disabled and/or neurodivergent workers, and to promote sustainable, inclusive and fair remote working for all.

James Duggan, Anthony McDonnell, Ultan Sherman & Ronan Carbery (2022) Work in the Gig Economy: A Research Overview, London and New York: Routledge

Arjan Keizer — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 156-158, March 2026.

Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power By Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2024. 257 pp. US$ 30/£29 UK. ISBN: 9780262377485

Lutfun Nahar Lata — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 153-155, March 2026.

Crises at Work: Economy, Climate and Pandemic By Steve Williams and Mark Erickson, Bristol, Bristol University Press, 2024. 256, £85.99. ISBN: 978‐1529224917

Tom Hoctor — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 159-161, March 2026.

Work, Employment, and Resistance in Transportation Platforms: Theoretical Approaches, Empirical Insights, and Critical Reflections

Jamie Woodcock, Caroline Ruiner — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 27-32, March 2026.

Reimagining Work Security in Latin America's Platform Economy: Workers' Strategies Amid Urban Violence

Omar Manky — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how ride-hailing drivers in Lima redefine security amidst high informality and urban violence. Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews and more than 35 informal conversations with drivers, alongside a systematic review of Latin American media coverage of the platform economy, it shows how drivers value platforms not for formal job security, but for mitigating physical risks, enabling cashless transactions, and providing data-driven oversight of passengers and routes. By examining workers' spatial agency and their ‘reworking’ of platform technologies, this study reconceptualizes platform labour through the lens of urban security. The analysis reveals how workers use platforms to produce new arrangements of security and trust in precarious urban environments, enriching our understanding of platform labour in the Global South.

Sociotechnical Change in British Supermarkets: Examining the Role of Labour

Abbie Winton, Debra Howcroft, Jill Rubery — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

When predicting the future of retail work, commentators tend to focus on automation and labour replacement and neglect the continued role played by labour, particularly in food retail. To understand this role, this article draws on both interview and newspaper data to show how change unfolded in the sector from before to just after the Coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, it shows how increased technology adoption and use in food retail occurred alongside an increased reliance on labour. The availability of a flexible labour pool that was easy to scale and later disband enabled employers to respond to increased consumer demand rapidly. In contrast to futurist predictions of the proliferation of labour-replacing technologies, the analysis shows how food retailers continued to prioritise short-term solutions contingent on human labour rather than investments in longer-term automation programmes, reflecting historical patterns of sociotechnical change within the sector.

How Technology Investments Destroy and Create Manufacturing Jobs: Firm Evidence From Sweden

Martin Henning, Emelie Hane‐Weijman, Ola Bergström — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This study draws on a longitudinal (2000−2020) firm-level panel data set to investigate the relationship between investments in machinery and equipment, and jobs in the Swedish manufacturing sector. It finds a positive link between such investments and job creation in firms. Adding a firm exit indicator also demonstrates that low-investing manufacturing firms are more likely to exit. Relying on a broad investment indicator, the results confirm findings in several recent European firm-level studies that use narrower indicators of technological investments and change. In the conclusion, the study attempts to span a bridge between the literature on technology, machines and jobs coming out of economics and business on the one hand, and the sociology of work on the other, to reflect on the relations between technology and jobs in firms.

Amplifying Employee Voice? Situating Social Media in the Organisational Voice System

Maria Khan, Paula K. Mowbray, Adrian Wilkinson — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

In today's digitised workplace, it is important to understand how employee voice is affected by new technologies. Adopting a novel interdisciplinary approach, this paper uses the Escalator of Participation framework and the Technology Affordance lens to explore how modern communication technology, such as social media (SM), compares to traditional voice mechanisms. Findings from 52 in-depth interviews of managers and employees from two multinational subsidiaries show that SM provides new ways of voicing in synchronous and asynchronous settings that traditional voice mechanisms do not offer. Despite this, employees do not always choose SM for all voice types due to employees' perception that SM was suited better for some types of voice more than others and also being mindful of managerial preferences for non-SM mechanisms. We also provide implications for future research and practitioners through highlighting that the effectiveness of voice on SM is shaped by SM affordances, issue type, employee awareness of likely responses, and managerial willingness to engage constructively with voice on SM.

Consent, Resistance and Existential Proficiency in Swedish Home Care: The Presence of Digital Apps in the Daily Work of Assistant Nurses

Marita Flisbäck, Danka Miscevic — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

Digital applications integrated into assistant nurses' work phones have long been used in Swedish municipal home care to structure and monitor care tasks. However, few studies have explored how these technologies shape the everyday realities of work. This article examines digital apps both as messengers of economic and bureaucratic rationalities and as co-creators of value and priority structures in home care. While the apps promote control and efficiency, assistant nurses may tactically reposition them—foregrounding or backgrounding their influence—to safeguard relational, responsive, and communicative care practices. This resistance, aimed at preserving good care—a quality grounded in the lifeworld—paradoxically enables practical consent to austerity-driven welfare policies. Drawing on the concepts of existential proficiency and the care game, the article contributes to understanding how digital governance reshapes everyday care work and how embodied, relational competence not only endures but also resists pressures of digital governance within the system's constraints.

Trade Unions and Sociotechnical Change: Examining Legal Mobilisation in the Retail Sector in Chile

Alejandro Castillo, Debra Howcroft, Miguel Martínez‐Lucio — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This article examines how trade unions in Chile adopted legal mobilisation to address a sociotechnical transformation agenda that triggered wage decline and work intensification. The proposed change involved the implementation of a Functional Flexibility Plan by a multinational retailer, facilitated by in-store logistics and supermarket front-end sales technologies. Connecting a Sociotechnical Approach with Employment Relations studies, and using longitudinal qualitative methodologies, the findings show how trade unions were able to circumvent collective bargaining difficulties through strategic litigation, organisational misbehaviour, and political lobbying. This demonstrates that legal mobilisation can be an effective strategy for addressing the labour-related outcomes of sociotechnical change in a regulatory context where union bargaining power is weak and legal constraints limit negotiations over work organisation. However, in the absence of regulatory frameworks that formally incorporate trade union decision-making on crucial issues, such as the design and implementation of new technologies, legal mobilisation remains reactive and confined to responding to the consequences of such changes for labour.

Mercy Consent and Contained Resistance: Grievance Systems in Chinese Food‐Delivery Platforms

Ziheng Liu, Wei Wei — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

Based on a multi-methods qualitative study, this article investigates how in-platform grievance systems operate in the Chinese food-delivery platform work. Drawing on labour process theory, we examine the role of in-platform grievance systems in shaping the dynamic interplay between control, consent, and resistance. Our findings reveal that in-platform grievance systems create a distinct form of consent—termed ‘mercy consent’—through creating an illusion of agency, constructing a façade of procedural fairness, individualising grievances, and facilitating intergroup antagonism between riders and customer service agents. Meanwhile, riders’ resistance within the grievance system is captured, channelled, and contained by platforms. We argue that the in-platform grievance systems function not merely as dispute resolution channels, but as mechanisms for shaping worker subjectivity, converting dissent into a manageable and depoliticised form of consent.

‘Beating the App’ or Pyrrhic Victories? Gamification, Workaholism and FoMo in UK Food‐Delivery Platforms

Cristian Santabarbara, Tony Royle, Wei Wei — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between the gamification of platform food-delivery work and workaholism. Drawing on a qualitative study, our findings suggest that while financial needs act as a ‘push’ factor, encouraging workers to enter off-line platform work, gamification serves as a ‘pull’ factor - driving an introjected motivation that draws couriers into the compulsive behaviours associated with workaholism. The more exposure that couriers have with these gamified apps, the more likely they are to think that they can ‘beat the app’. However, the algorithm is always one step ahead, resulting in illusory wins or pyrrhic victories for couriers. While gamified apps limit couriers' choice architecture and the possibilities for counter-gamification, they also reduce couriers' rational self-reflection, driving couriers to work excessively and compulsively, with couriers exhibiting Clark et al.'s (2020) four dimensions of workaholism: motivational, behavioural, cognitive, and, in particular, the emotional dimension - the fear of missing out (FoMO).

A Typology of Labour Agency in the Gig Economy: Gig Drivers' Experiences of Struggle in Indonesia During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Muhammad Yorga Permana — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This article explores how ride-hailing drivers, couriers, and food-delivery riders in Indonesia exercised labour agency to improve their working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a survey (N = 997) and in-depth interviews (N = 30) with gig drivers in Jakarta, it contributes to labour geography and employment relations literature by reconceptualizing labour agency in the gig economy. Four modes of agency are proposed: (1) Individual resilience, (2) Individual reworking and resistance, (3) Collective resilience, and (4) Collective reworking and resistance. This article further presents main obstacles that explain why not all workers may exercise these practices: Fear of potential platform counteraction and moral dilemma hindered workers from resisting the platform. Identity struggles concerning the ‘driver-partner’ status and the competitive nature of the platform work prevented workers' involvement in collective agency. Meanwhile, free rider problem, fragmented and leaderless movement, and collective frustration posed challenges for workers in translating collective feeling into active solidarity.

The Role of ICT Demands and Resources and Job Autonomy in the Work‐Life Balance of Hybrid and High‐Intensity Teleworkers

Kaire Piirsalu‐Kivihall, Tiiu Paas, Anne Aidla — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the impact of perceived ICT demands, ICT resources, and job autonomy on work-life balance (WLB) in hybrid and high-intensity teleworking. Utilising survey data from the Estonian Salary Information Agency, the study includes 1495 full-time employees who work remotely using computers for more than half their work time. Regression results indicate distinct relationships between ICT demands/resources and WLB for hybrid and high-intensity teleworkers, with one exception: exhausting e-communication is negatively associated with WLB in both teleworker groups. Moderation analysis reveals that some ICT resources can slightly ease the negative impact of e-communication on WLB for hybrid but not high-intensity teleworkers. High job autonomy is an important job resource for both groups, but it may exacerbate the negative impact of exhausting e-communication on WLB. These findings contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding teleworkers' WLB by considering different telework intensities, job autonomy, and the role of ICT usage.

‘Woeful Pay, But Still, I Enjoy It’: Refining Subjective Job Quality in Ride‐Share Work

Alex Veen, Tom Barratt, Caleb Goods, Marian Baird — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

Workers who experience structural barriers in the labour market are overrepresented in the gig economy. There is limited research on how the broader context of labour markets and welfare systems shapes workers' motivations for, and subjective understandings of, ride-share work. Using established concepts of ‘constrained agency’, ‘labour market objectives’ and ‘life stories’ from labour geography, this study develops a conceptual framework to advance subjective understandings of job quality. Drawing upon 59 interviews with workers from three distinct but overlapping disadvantaged groups (workers with disability, caring responsibilities and/or aged 45 and over), we focus on the experiences of and motivations for the work on a market-leading platform in Australia. Our findings highlight that subjective job quality perceptions are a complex mesh of individual circumstances and multi-layered social structures. Our framework helps to better understand why the work organisation and technology of the platform are valued by some yet loathed by others.

Issue Information

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 01:36:52 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page i-iii, March 2026.

How Neurodivergent Workers Use and Make Sense of Assistive Technologies: Implications for The AMO Model and Digital Masking

Sophie Hennekam, Emmanuelle Walkowiak, Joanna Szulc — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:21:05 -0800

ABSTRACT

This article explores how neurodivergent workers use and make sense of assistive technologies by drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with these individuals. We contribute to the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) model by revealing its underlying neuro-normative assumptions. We show how assistive technologies, such as screen readers, influence the abilities and motivation of neurodivergent workers, making opportunities more attainable and allowing them to consider different career possibilities. We identify three processes through which assistive technologies influence the career development of neurodivergent workers. First, they can reduce cognitive, socioemotional and sensory challenges. Second, they can increase neurodivergent workers' feelings of confidence, autonomy, self-efficacy and agency. Third, they can remove the stigma associated with neurodivergence. Finally, we show that while assistive technologies enable neurodivergent workers to digitally conceal their condition, doing so can also have unintended negative consequences. We call this concept, consisting of hiding one's neurodivergence through assistive technologies, digital masking.

Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies Through Art and Technology. By Ashley Lee Wong, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2025. 228 pp. ISBN: 978‐0‐26‐255216‐5. 48 GBP (Paperback)

Deepa Kylasam Iyer — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 03:34:13 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI By James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant, Great Britain: Canongate Books, 2024. 288 pp. £16.99

Anand Raj — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:09:15 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

Book Review: Augmenting Human Resource Management With Artificial Intelligence: Towards an Inclusive, Sustainable and Responsible Future By Aizhan Tursunbayeva, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2024. pp. 151. 135,19 EUR (hardcover)

Alessandra Lazazzara — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:47:35 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

Focusing or Fragmenting Representation at Work? Specialist Trade Union Representation in the United Kingdom, by A.Hodder and M.Martinez Lucio, (eds.), Leeds, Emerald Publishing, 2025.

Joe Kearsey — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:35:50 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

Canaries in the Code Mine: Precarity and the Future of Tech Work By Papadantonakis Max, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2025. 154 pp. $79.50 (hardcover). ISBN: 978‐1‐43‐992577‐5; $21.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978‐1‐43‐992578‐2; $21.95 (e‐book). ISBN: 978‐1‐43‐992579‐9

Qixin Lin — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:34:39 -0800

New Technology, Work and Employment, EarlyView.

The Social Structuring of Digital Monitoring: How Resource‐Rich Employees Are Shielded From More Invasive Levels of Digital Monitoring

Anja‐Kristin Abendroth, Charlotte Katharina Schröder, Sophie‐Charlotte Meyer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 02:32:58 -0800

ABSTRACT

Digital monitoring represents a new dimension of external control. We focus on variation in the experiences and perceptions of digital monitoring among employees with differing access to resources due to their embeddedness in differentially resource-rich organizations and jobs. Based on German linked employer–employee survey data, our results suggest that employees in resource-rich organizations that are able and willing to pay relatively high wages to secure work performance are less likely to experience the use of automatically stored data on work steps for performance evaluation and to perceive digital monitoring as constant surveillance. The same is true of employees in resource-rich jobs with high task complexity. These patterns did not emerge for the mere automatic storage of data about work steps, which suggests that—in contrast to more invasive levels of digital monitoring—employees' experiences of this basic level are less likely structured by their embeddedness in organizational inequality regimes.

Digitalizing Newspaper Journalism: Instituting and Negotiating New Temporalities in the Digital Workplace

Xanthe Whittaker — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

Digitalization of the labour process has occasioned the emergence of new temporal orders at work. For newspaper journalists, it has resulted in a radical reorganization of newsrooms and the temporalities of news production, offering a key site for studying this process of temporal reordering. This article develops Orlikowski and Yates' (2002) concept of temporal structuring as an active and intentional process in which journalists have enacted the emergent temporal order. Drawing on observations of the temporal practices of journalists in a London-based newsroom, including 28 in-depth interviews, the article demonstrates how the temporal structuring conditions which shape journalists' action within the labour process emerge from the temporal ruptures and conflict resulting from digitalisation as journalists accommodated, negotiated and resisted the new temporal order. The role of objectification is identified as a strategy used by managers and workers to resolve these tensions.

What Platform Clients Care About: Relationality in the Gig Economy

Maria Hameed Khan — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 22:41:28 -0800

ABSTRACT

Platform-mediated work arises from networks of relationships between workers, platforms, and clients, representing complex relations between these actors. Knowledge of gig work has mostly emerged from studies of platform-worker interactions in transport and food delivery sectors, with little examination of the platform client perspective. With gig work now expanding to relational contexts like private care, it is important to understand the role of clients in shaping the experience and conditions of platform-mediated care work. This article explores platform clients' decision-making processes with a specific focus on choice of platform and, most importantly, engagement with platform workers. Employing ethics-of-care as a lens, the findings illustrate how the relational dimensions of solidarity, mutuality and attentiveness underpin platform clients' decisions. Clients seek to maintain a concern and care-for-self and also demonstrate care-for-others. This study demonstrates how platform clients' choices influence gig work relations and indeed shape conditions of care work in the gig economy.

Navigating Accessibility and Inclusivity: Perceptions and Usability of Artificial Intelligence‐Enabled Job Application Systems for Persons With Disabilities

Apuroopa Sai Lakshmi Tippavajjula, Anupama Sharma — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 21:25:03 -0800

ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled job application systems are transforming the hiring process by automating candidate screening and improving efficiency. However, not much research is available on how these systems are perceived by Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). This study has explored the use-intention of AI-enabled job application systems among PwDs using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework with key predictors such as Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI), Perceived Inclusivity (PI) and Self-efficacy (SE). Data were obtained from a web-based survey with 303 PwDs. Hierarchical regression analysis was applied for data analysis and hypothesis testing. The results showed that EE and SI were significant and positively associated with behavioural intention, while PE, PI and SE had no significant association, thus highlighting the need for greater personalisation, adaptive features and human intervention in AI-enabled job application systems to ensure fair and accessible hiring experiences for PwDs.

Outsourcing Domestic Work in the Crisis of Social Reproduction: Platform‐Mediated Cleaning and the Role of Clients

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 02:08:56 -0800

ABSTRACT

Amid the crisis of social reproduction, outsourcing domestic work has become increasingly appealing, with labour platforms offering new avenues to do so. This article explores the largely overlooked perspective of clients using platform-mediated cleaning services, focusing on Helpling in Germany. Drawing on a multi-method study, we examine clients’ motivations for hiring cleaners through platforms and their perceptions of working conditions. We also analyse interactions between clients and cleaners, and how these are shaped by the platform. Our findings suggest that platforms like Helpling are attractive because of their convenience and their promise of an allegedly legal alternative to informal arrangements. While some clients express concerns over precarious working conditions, others justify them through market logic or assumptions about cleaners’ backgrounds. The platform infrastructure helps mediate trust, yet personal relations between clients and cleaners limit the platform's strategy of delegating management and control mechanisms to clients.