Mixed-method approaches to employment relationships in team-based online gig work
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Fueled by internet-based technologies that enable seamless transactions between globally dispersed individuals, new online platforms are emerging that compose "flash" teams of remote freelancers to collaborate on complex projects in diverse industries. In these provisional teams, relationships are transient, virtual, and often algorithmically mediated. This presents organizational scholars with new intriguing puzzles. First, how do flash teams achieve effective coordination despite their lack of shared context and minimal opportunities for rich interactions? Second, how do workers navigate the uncertainties associated with this way of working, including those arising from being evaluated by algorithmic systems? To answer these questions, I draw on extensive online communication data (2 million Slack messages), the performance records of 117 teams, and over 18 months of field observation from a single "gig" labor platform company that composes virtual project teams of freelance software development professionals. Study 1 develops a natural language processing-based measure of teams' cognitive diversity as expressed in their online interactions and demonstrates its task-contingent relationship with performance. In a complementary inductive approach, study 2 theorizes how leaders' situational behaviors aimed at creating role clarity explain variation in team performance outcomes. Study 3 inductively theorizes the conditions under which freelancers developed heightened levels of trust and engagement in response to an algorithmic ranking system. My findings contribute to research on team effectiveness, team temporal dynamics, and leadership, as well as to the nascent literature on algorithms at work. They also point to several empirical and methodological opportunities for organizational scholars seeking to study novel technology-enabled organizational forms.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Lix, Katharina Lucia Maria |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Goldberg, Amir |
| Degree supervisor | Valentine, Melissa (Melissa A.) |
| Thesis advisor | Goldberg, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Valentine, Melissa (Melissa A.) |
| Thesis advisor | Christin, Angèle |
| Thesis advisor | Clément, Julien |
| Degree committee member | Christin, Angèle |
| Degree committee member | Clément, Julien |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Katharina Lucia Maria Lix. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/rm124wf4080 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Katharina Lucia Maria Lix
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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