Prakriti Dasgupta

Do platform workers inadvertently strengthen the algorithmic management (AM) systems they seek to resist? Drawing on 37 interviews with digital labor platform managers, this paper provides an organizational perspective on workers’ “algoactivism” in food and grocery delivery. We reveal that platforms are not passive targets and their reactions to algoactivist acts unfold through a dynamic cycle of sensemaking across three stages: noticing, framing, and acting. We identify key determinants at each stage, explaining why platforms react differently to worker acts. Unlike traditional organizations with formal conflict management procedures, we suggest that platforms operate as adaptive socio-technical systems, continually recalibrating managerial mechanisms through experimentation. We find that workers exploit gaps that platforms subsequently close, rendering them unwitting contributors to their own control. Explaining workers’ algoactivism and its role in shaping AM practices, we situate sensemaking within the duality of AM, highlighting how its interpretive flexibility creates tensions between intended design and actual use. We refine this conceptualization, asserting that the recursivity of AM is not open-ended, as interpretive flexibility may shrink with platforms continually adapting to algoactivist acts. While mutual shaping persists, recursive dynamics may compress worker agency, exposing the limits of algoactivism and challenging assumptions about its emancipatory potential.

The algorithmic control of human resources (HR) represents a profound tension in contemporary work arrangements: as technological sophistication in management increases, workers’ ability to express...

This systematic review investigates why and how platform workers express voice in a context where institutional and organisational voice mechanisms and representation structures are lacking or absent. Platform workers have been restricted in their ability to formally unionise or collectively bargain, and the presence of a digital intermediary in the form of a platform organisation limits the scope of worker voice. In this paper, we identify and synthesise the motives for voice use by platform workers—namely mutual aid, organising, visibility, and confrontation, and unpack how these are realised through bottom‐up and independent voice channels that may potentially influence multiple stakeholders. The paper's core contribution lies in highlighting how the blurred employment boundaries of platform work structurally render labour power even more indeterminate, informing our conceptualisation of a ‘grassroots voice mechanism’, wherein the social relations of platform work and digital technologies convey worker voice beyond traditional organisational boundaries. We conclude with an agenda to guide future research centred heavily around the dynamics of platform work, the use of novel voice channels, and worker attitudes towards them.

Algorithmic management has rapidly grown to play an influential role in managing workforces in large organizations. Platforms such as Uber, Upwork, and Deliveroo, are now able to coordinate and ass...