Microphones, not megaphones: Functional crowdworker voice regimes on digital work platforms

Thomas Gegenhuber,Markus Ellmer,Elke Schüßler

doi:10.1177/0018726720915761

Thomas Gegenhuber, Markus Ellmer + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720915761

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Abstract

Digital work platforms are often said to view crowdworkers as replaceable cogs in the machine, favouring exit rather than voice as a means of resolving concerns. Based on a qualitative study of six German medium-sized platforms offering a range of standardized and creative tasks, we show that platforms provide voice mechanisms, albeit in varying degrees and levels. We find that all platforms in our sample enabled crowdworkers to communicate task-related issues to ensure crowdworker availability and quality output. Five platforms proactively consulted crowdworkers on task-related issues, and two on platform-wide organisation. Differences in the ways in which voice was implemented were driven by considerations about costs, control and a crowd’s social structure, as well as by platforms’ varying interest in fair work standards. We conclude that the platforms in our sample equip crowdworkers with ‘microphones’ by letting them have a say on workflow improvements in a highly controlled and easily mutable setting, but do not provide ‘megaphones’ for co-determining or even controlling platform decisions. By connecting the literature on employee voice with platform research, our study provides a nuanced picture of how voice is technologically and organisationally enabled and constrained in non-standard, digital work contexts.

Highlights

Over the past decade, outsourcing tasks to online crowds via digital platforms has become increasingly common
Our interviews reveal that platforms offering micro and macro tasks alike recognise that they operate in a context where they face the challenge to bind crowdworkers to the platform
Our findings illuminate the questions of why and how platforms enable crowdworker voice by establishing varying platform regimes based on governance decisions and technical building blocks

Summary

Introduction

Over the past decade, outsourcing tasks to online crowds via digital platforms has become increasingly common. Crowdwork is often associated with problems such as low wages, economic and legal insecurity, repetitiveness, and a lack of communication, representation and collective organising (Berg, 2016; Fieseler et al, 2019; Irani and Silberman, 2013) Suggestions for improving these conditions revolve around the need to strengthen worker representation and voice (Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas, 2018; Vandaele, 2018), i.e. of providing opportunities to speak up and seek change, rather than silently accept, or exit from, an objectionable state of affairs at work (Farrell, 1983; Hirschman, 1970). They focus either on the lack of voice opportunities on ‘micro task’ platforms (e.g. Irani and Silberman, 2013) or on ways in which crowdworkers can be motivated and retained in more creative, ‘macro task’ contexts (e.g. Boons et al, 2015).

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