HRM is a continuously changing practice – not only in the firm, but also in inter-organisational relations between firms or between firms and (self-employed) individuals. As a consequence, we experience a massive change in practices of HRM, in the respective constellations of actors in HRM and employment relations. A growing digitalisation of (multinational) firms as well as their business relationships, new business models based on digital technologies (e.g., crowdwork) leading to a “Gig economy” and the use of artificial intelligence impacts on the quality of work, HRM practices and employment relations.
Continuity or discontinuity
Maria M. Mexi, University of Geneva
In crisis-ridden Greece, the growth of digital platforms has provided employment for large segments of the population. However, gig workers mostly engage in atypical employment, lacking social protections and labour representation. This has intensified traditional divides between outsiders-insiders in the labour market, giving rise to a “polarized/state-centred” regime.
A case study on bike deliverers
Jean-Michel Bonvin, University of Geneva
Nicola Cianferoni , University of Geneva
Luca Perrig, University of Geneva
A fierce competition is ongoing among Swiss bike deliveries since the entry of digital platforms in the market. A case study shows that couriers were able to build a mobilization and negotiate a collective labor agreement that contributed to the enhancement of gig workers' social protection.
Challenges and opportunities
Kostas Papadakis, ILO
Maria M. Mexi, University of Geneva
The rise of global digital labour markets upsets national labour markets and raises the need for a more ''interventionist'' role for international organizations. If international organizations seek to set global standards, what could be optimum solutions and how can social dialogue operate as a global regulatory alternative?
Heiner Heiland, Technical University Darmstadt
The paper is dedicated to the emerging field of platform work, which is the epitome of the transformation of established industrial relations. Specific objects are online platforms in Germany, which take over the mediation of courier work of meals. These represent a new field that has become established within a few years in all major European cities, with annual growth rates of approximately 20%. At the present time, however, it is not the size of the analyzed phenomenon that underlines its relevance but its role as an organizational avant-garde. Because the service platforms focused here face central challenges that go hand in hand with the digital organization and control of work.
The focus is on the specific coordination and control of this type of work by organizing platform-internal markets. The German field is particularly insightful in this regard, as its key players have taken different paths with regard to central organizational issues, which have a broad impact on other aspects of organizing this type of work. Thus, the platforms show a varying degree of a shift of the market frontier into the companies. Specifically, one of the platforms hires the workers with a fixed employment contract and the other works with self-employed couriers. The work equipment must be provided by the workers themselves in both platforms.
This varying shift of the market frontier is the subject of a trade-off between low labor costs on the one hand and low levels of coordination and control over labor on the other. The platforms react to this with various instruments such as algorithmic management, information asymmetries and surveillance (Heiland 2018, Ivanova et al.2018, Schreyer/Schrape 2018, Heiland/Brinkmann 2019).
The thesis of the paper is that these mostly technological instruments are preceded by the control of work by determining the working time and space: "It is possible to define domination in such a way that it is always capable of prescribing the rules according to which people are [...] in a detailed organization of spatial and temporal parts "(Negt 1987). As shown in the article, this coordination and control of time and space in platform work is not based solely on a technological fix, but is complemented by an organizational fix (following David Harvey (1992) and Beverly Silver (2003)).
The research topic was investigated using a "fully integrated mixed-methods-design" (Teddlie / Tashakkori 2006), by means of which various complementary data were collected. There were 35 qualitative interviews conducted with food couriers, a quantitative online survey (n = 241) as well as ethnographic surveys conducted by analogue own courier work and digital content analysis of online forums and chat groups. The different methods were used interactively and referred on each other in all phases of the research process.
The platforms are mediators between restaurants, couriers and customers. As such, they compete with other platforms for these three groups of actors. The platforms hope to initialize indirect network effects that will positively enhance the different groups (for example, more restaurants, bring more customers and thus more couriers). At the same time they are also gatekeepers. In particular, they control access to the platform for the potential couriers and thus the opportunity to earn an income through courier work.
In addition, the platforms are not just participants in markets, but organize their own internal markets. On these, couriers compete for the opportunity to work at their preferred times and in the desired places. Despite the differing scope of market frontier shifts, the platforms do not differ in this respect. Even the hired couriers have to compete for shifts on the platform-internal markets. And so, large parts of respondents on both platforms say they regularly do not get the shifts they want or need.
The general currency in these markets is the performance of the workers. But in this regard, the platforms differ concerning the central performance evaluation criteria. The company with only self-employed couriers does not face the transformation problem of potential labor into an actual performance. This is outsourced to the workers themselves as a result of their independence. The relevant criteria, which influence the platform-internal status, do not concern the work performance as such, but only the reliability of its execution. For the employed workers, on the other hand, in addition to the reliability, in particular criteria of the work performance, such as speed and quantity of the completed orders are central.
Good status as a result of appropriate performance gives the courier the opportunity to choose their shifts at different times. Good status means being able to access the shift schedule first. This is crucial for the profitability of the work done by the self-employed and the intensity of the work of the employed drivers and is therefore one of the central topics in the interviews.
The freedom and flexibility of platform-based courier work, which is regularly claimed to attract new couriers, is thwarted when the workers have a poor platform-internal market status. Anyone who either relies on income through self-employed courier work or can/wants to work at certain times and/or only in certain zones, is therefore dependent on a good status on the platform-internal markets.
But it is also crucial that the effectiveness of this organizational control technique is based on a sufficient supply of interested workers. Thus there is a high dependence of the platforms on local labor markets, so that in some cities this instrument has no effect.
As the paper shows, the coordination and control of platform-based courier work is not based solely on technical instruments. Complementary part of this technological fix is an organizational one by means of which the workers are competing with each other and are required to work reliably and efficiently.
The competing pressures produced by global supply chains
Harry Katz, Cornell University, ILR School
The expansion of global supply chains and the increased role of multi-national corporations (MNC’s) has produced competing pressures within those MNC’s regarding where decisions are made concerning human resource (HR) matters, including the working conditions, in the factories producing the goods marketed by the MNC’s. On the one hand, the increased role of independently owned factories who manufacture the products marketed by MNC’s has eliminated direct control of HR matters including how factory workers work, are compensated and managed by MNC’s and has put those decisions under the direct control of the supplier factory owners and managers. Yet, negative publicity regarding the labor conditions in those supplier factories has led many MNC’s to (re)establish various mechanisms to influence, albeit often indirectly, work conditions and terms in the supplier factories. Meanwhile, many of those MNC’s that retained direct control of the production of particular goods have chosen to shift from the traditional local control of HR matters in their factories to more regional and global control, in part to ensure effective coordination of their global supply chains and in part, like the MNC’s who no longer directly control any supply production, because of labor rights concerns related to the labor conditions in supplier factories. We illustrate those competing pressures in this paper by describing the evolving locus of control of HR matters in the global supply chains of Nike and Colgate-Palmolive.
Knut Linke, University of Applied Sciences Weserbergland, Institute for Knowledge Management
The digitalization and globalization of work places new and constantly changing demands on trained specialists and scientifically qualified employees. Employees are challenged to adapt changing requirements of customers and employers, to handle new and existing job insecurities and to work decentralized in human teams with the usage of digital tools and if necessary with robots in mixed teams. For the human resource management, which wants to employ and retain well-trained employees, this means that they have to prepare their employees for the changing working world and support them with further (scientific) education offers.
Within the scope of the German research project "Open IT Bachelor und Open IT Master", funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, credit transfer programs for IT specialists with initial or secondary IT training are developed and tested (Städler, von Zobeltitz & Linke, 2018). Students are training through the academic lectures within the credit transfer programs in a way that they can fulfil management tasks after completing their studies.
This includes leadership tasks in the context of personnel responsibility in the form of an organizational, hierarchical role, as well as the assumption of responsibilities in projects - as a project manager or sub-project manager. The aim of assuming management tasks is also pursued by the participants of the study courses according to their own statements (Städler, Linke & von Zobeltitz, 2018). Regardless of the motivation of companies and their sometimes hesitant willingness or even refusal to promote employees (Linke, Städler, von Zobeltitz & Blochberger, 2017), there is a need to prepare employees for the future demands of the working environment. Agile management concepts, which strengthen the self-organization of employees and, in comparison to classical hierarchical approaches, manage with less defined processes, are increasingly cited as a solution of working in a VUCA world (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014, 311-314) in which uncertainty is the only security. Agile management approaches are mostly based on the agile manifesto (Beck et al., 2001) and aim at working in a project-oriented work environment. The term agility also increasingly appears in the context of general terms such as Work 4.0 (Arbeit 4.0) and Compatibility 4.0 (Vereinbarkeit 4.0) and is presented in this context as a solution for "open" organizations.
The scientific article intends to provide a comparative analysis of agile and traditional management approaches. Traditional project-oriented management approaches, such as PMBOK and agile concepts for Lean Management (Brenner, 2018), such as Scrum (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2013; Neumer, Porschen-Hueck & Sauer, 2018), Kanban (Anderson, 2011; Eisenberg, 2018), Objectives and Key Results (Doerr, 2018) will be considered as well as sociocratically concepts such as Holacracy (Radojević, Krasulka & Janjušić, 2016).
The following research questions are focused within the considered scientific contribution:
In detail, the analysis will take into account the following categories of work organization:
For the area of organizational methods, the comparison also serves to construct the requirements for agile work from the theoretical approaches and to support the definition of the term "agile". With this, it should be possible to show differentiations from the traditional non-agile, management methods. Also contents can be defined, which are comparable for all management types. Here the question will be asked if and to what extent agile management methods are equally suitable for each type of organization.
The later results will be used to define requirements for further scientific education, which can fulfill the developed requirements. The contribution is concluded by a reflection in which the compatibility of the different approaches in the context of work and private life is considered.
Uber’s platform as a technological work arrangement
Sigurd M. Nordli Oppegaard, Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, Oslo
» Full paper: ilera-2019-paper-143-Oppegaard.pdf
The so-called sharing economy is often framed as an adept system for taking advantage of “underutilized” assets and, enabled by digital technology, establishes a community of strangers trusting, interacting and exchanging goods and services with each other. In this article, I explore the “algorithmic management” of Uber’s platform as a technology for organizing the drivers’ labor process based on a case study of Uber Black in Oslo. Within this particular materialization of Uber’s business model, the drivers are employed by limousine companies who own the cars used and endow the drivers with a significant freedom to choose their own schedules. The digital platform used to coordinate the Uber Black market in Oslo, however, is identical to that employed in other countries where Uber provides Uber X or Uber Pop, in which the drivers are self-employed and use their own private cars to transport passengers. According to Uber’s own economists, the flexibility of the Uber drivers formal work arrangement – where the drivers can choose when and how much they want to work – is highly valued by the drivers. But this flexibility is also described as a problem by the same economist: How can the “free” drivers be incentivized to provide their labor when and where Uber needs them to? The answer is the platform, structuring the choices available for the drivers through algorithmic trip assignment, adjustment of the trip fare – and thus the drivers’ earnings – to local fluctuations in supply and demand and the rating system. While the platform can be seen as a “market machine”, institutionalizing market mechanisms to control the drivers’ labor, its techniques for coordinating the market cannot be reduced to price mechanisms alone. I rather argue that the platform should be seen as a privately owned market regulation, parallel to or competing with the governments regulation of the passenger transportation sector depending on the context. In this sense, the platform economy may indicate a transfer of regulatory power from governments to privately owned companies.
Monika Martišková, Charles University
New technologies, sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0 technologies, may have disruptive effects on economies, especially in those countries that rely on manufacturing to a large extent. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) represents a region where the automotive manufacturing has become a crucial segment of the economic growth. The arrival of foreign direct investments solved several difficulties this region had been experiencing in the transition period in the 1990s, such as high unemployment rates, stagnant GPD growth and the lack of available technologies and knowledge. However, new technologies may downscale manufacturing advantages by having strong and mostly negative impact on working conditions and the number of jobs in this sector.
There are at least three main reasons for raising the concerns about the impact of new technologies on working conditions. First, the implementation of new technologies will reduce demand for manual work and decrease wages of manual workers. Second, because of the labour cost reducing character of technologies, cheap labour, the main competetive advantage of the CEE region, may become obsolete resulting in reallocations either to mother countries or to cheaper locations. The third concern is related to the quality of working conditions associated with the increasing level of control, deteriorating job stability and decline in complexity of duties in manufacturing jobs (e.g. the “feeding-machines positions”).
The present paper studies the effects of new technologies on working conditions by using an example of automotive industry in Czechia based on the secondary data resources and qualitative interviews conducted in the subsidiaries of multi-national corporations (MNCs) and with representatives of social partners at the sector level in 2018. In the paper it is argued that the new technologies´ expected impact on working conditions, wages or job offers are only partially visible nowadays. This situation is associated with the dependent position of subsidiaries in introducing new technologies in production that stems either from limited competences assigned from the headquarter or from local management limited capabilities to implement new technologies. The economic boom experienced in the CEE countries, including Czechia, provides on the one hand incentives to robots´ utilization because of labour shortage, but at the same time it hampers the new technologies implementation because of the production overload and time and capacities constraints to prepare the changes at the firm level.
In light of this development, social partners are aware of expected changes in working conditions, but at the same time, they remain passive in pushing for measures that would moderate anticipated impacts. A broader concept of economic transition is addressed mostly by the business sector actors while trade unions struggle to be involved in determination of policy instruments that would ensure the smooth transition. One of the most important aspects of successful transformation, workers´ participation on life-long learning, is not promoted neither by the social partners, nor by the government.
In the paper, we discuss the puzzle of current improvements in working conditions and wages and expected massive deterioration of quality and quantity of manufacturing jobs. The prospects of workers in the Czech automotive industry do not seem to be dark for now, but the near future remains to be in question that local actors are not fully capable to answer.
Alberto Bayo-Moriones, Public University of Navarre
Amaya Erro-Garcés, Public University of Navarre
Fernando Lera-López, Public University of Navarre
» Full paper: ilera-2019-paper-155-Erro-Garces.pdf
Technological change derived from the introduction of information and communication technologies has had substantial consequences in the modern workplace. Among these we could mention their effects on skills, wages, job characteristics and the hierarchical distribution of decision rights (Green, 2012; Bllom et al., 2014).
In this paper we want to analyse the influence of the introduction of computers in the workplace in the adoption of compensation programs that make wages depend on performance at different levels, either the individual, the team or the company. This contributes to the literature on the work implications of ICTs by complementing research on their effects on wages (Dunne et al., 2004).
We also intend to provide some light on the mechanisms through which this potential effect could take place. The main theoretical approaches to the analysis of incentives choice emphasize the role played by work organization as a relevant determinant (Marsden and Belfield, 2010). Therefore, we examine whether the impact of computer technology on pay for performance is mediated by job variables such as complexity or autonomy.
In this line a question that deserves especial attention is whether the influence of computer technology on pay for performance is similar across occupations. Literature on inequality on working and employment conditions has highlighted that the effect of technical change on jobs is dependent on the nature of the tasks, so that the impact differs by occupation (Holman and Rafferty, 2018). For this reason it is relevant to investigate whether the relationship between computers and pay for performance is similar for different occupational groups.
We use data from the last three waves of the European Working Conditions Survey, conducted by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Working and Living Conditions. Therefore, the unit of analysis is the worker. The sample is restricted to employees.
The four dependent variables are binary and capture the use of four pay for performance schemes: piece rate/productivity payments, payments based on the performance of team/department, payments based on the overall performance of the company (for example, profit sharing) and incomes form shares in the company.
The independent variable measures on a 1 to 7 scale the frequency with which the worker uses computer technologies in her job, with 1 indicating she neves uses them and 7 she uses them all the time. The mediating variables include items related to job aspects such as achieving precise quality standars, solving unforeseen problems, complexity, monotony and autonomy.
Since the dependent variables are binary, probit models are estimated. Control variables include country, year, gender age, occupation, industry and firm size. For each dependent variable two models are estimated: the first includes the independent control variables and the second adds the mediating variables.
The analyses are conducted for the whole sample and also by subsamples for non-routine non-manual, routine non-manual, manual non-routine and manual and routine occupations.
We find that there is a positive effect for the whole sample of computer use on the four pay for performance schemes examined. The results also indicate that this effect is partially mediated by the job variables included in the analysis. However, a significant direct effect of computers on pay for performance remains unexplained after controlling for differences in job characteristics.
When estimating the empirical models for the four subsamples defined according to the dimensions routine/non routine and manual/non manual, we find differences in the effects of computers on pay for performance use. This effect is larger for non manual occupations than for manual occupations.
In order to deal with the potential endogeneity of our independent variable, two robustness checks have been conducted. Firstly, multivariate probit models have been estimated in order to allow for correlations between the error terms in the four models estimated. Secondly, instrumental variables models have been performed. Although in some of the models endogeneity problems have been detected, they do not invalidate the conclusion in favor of a positive effect of computers on the use of pay for performance.
Can experience ensure work and income security for microtask workers?
Uma Rani Amara, International Labour Organization (ILO)
To date, little research has investigated issues around platform work dependency, income security, and skills development. This paper explores the extent to which platform work ensures work and income security and provides opportunities for skill development for workers with different levels of experience, based on novel survey data collected on five globally operating microtask platforms and in-depth interviews with workers.
