Job Crafting in the Era of Algorithmic Management: Worker driven Improvements towards Meaningful Work within Q-Commerce | LABOR.A® 2024

The integration of algorithmic management (AM) technologies to execute workflow processes leads to inevitable changes in the performance of managerial tasks, i.e., coordination and control of workers. AM fundamentally alters work execution processes, responsibilities, rules, procedures and decision-making processes and is currently predominantly prevalent in the quick commerce (q-commerce) sector. Q-commerce, referred to as on-demand or rapid delivery, denotes businesses, specifically platform providers, such as Just Eat Takeaway that provide swift delivery of goods, often groceries, in under an hour, or even as fast as 10 minutes. However, the use of AM is increasingly spreading towards other forms of (standardized) work, warehouse work in Amazon storage facilities Amazon.
The mechanisms of AM put workers in a 'technical corset', from which they might feel the need to escape. In this regard, job crafting emerges as a promising behaviour to better cope with the algorithmic management-associated job demands. It is a proactive bottom-up behavior in which workers exercise their agency and autonomy in shaping the way work is conducted and experienced. In this session, we aim to discuss the relationship between algorithmic management, job crafting behaviours as a mechanism to escape algorithmic management’s constraints, and the role of trade unions in supporting workers.

Speakers: Blaz Gyoha (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund), Isabell Lippert (Technische Universität Dresden), Robert Peters (Institut für Innovation und Technik)

Moderation: Inga Sabanova (FES Future of Work)

Partners: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, ÖGB (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund), Technische Universität Dresden