Underdog entrepreneurship in the digital era: The effect of digital servitization on household entrepreneurship in China.

In today's digital era, households are empowered by digital servitization, which could potentially impact their ability to become entrepreneurs. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and the National Bureau of Statistics of China, we construct the digital servitization index to analyze the impact of digital servitization on household entrepreneurship. The results show that the utilization of digital servitization by households significantly increases the likelihood of them engaging in entrepreneurial endeavors. This result remains robust after a series of robustness tests. We also find that digital servitization can help households identify entrepreneurial opportunities and access entrepreneurial resources by alleviating information and financial constraints, and increasing social capital. Further, the effect is more among households with rural residences, low material assets, elderly household heads, and household heads with low cognitive abilities, which means that digital servitization can promote underdog entrepreneurship. In conclusion, this paper provides micro-level evidence supporting the idea that digital servitization can foster household entrepreneurship, particularly among underprivileged groups. Ultimately, this paper highlights the potential of digitization as an essential resource to drive economic growth and help households in need become successful entrepreneurs.

Platform economy development and energy efficiency inequality: evidence from China.

Alleviating energy efficiency inequality between regions is critical for achieving green sustainable development and environmental equality. This study constructs platform economy development index and adopts Theil index to measure energy efficiency inequality. By using panel data from 30 regions in China spanning from 2013 to 2020, this study investigates the influence of platform economy development on energy efficiency in inequality through a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show that (1) platform economy development can alleviate energy efficiency inequality between regions. After the robustness tests, the results still support the findings. (2) When the level of industrial agglomeration, marketization and environmental decentralization is high, platform economy development is more effective in alleviating energy efficiency inequality. (3) Platform economy development can optimize energy resources allocation, promote energy utilization technology flow and narrow the green finance development gap, thus alleviating energy efficiency inequality. Governmental departments should promote platform economy development and green finance, and optimize renewable energy allocation.

Migration and Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy: An Intervention.

In urban gig economies around the world, platform labour is predominantly migrant labour, yet research on the intersection of the gig economy and labour migration remains scant. Our experience with two action research projects, spanning six cities on four continents, has taught us how platform work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers. This leads us to two claims that should recalibrate the gig economy research agenda. First, we argue that platform labour simultaneously degrades working conditions while offering migrants much-needed opportunities to improve their livelihoods. Second, we contend that the reclassification of gig workers as employees is by itself not sufficient to counter the precarisation of migrant gig work. Instead, we need ambitious policies at the intersection of immigration, social welfare, and employment regulation that push back against the digitally mediated commodification of migrant labour worldwide.

Licensing policy and platform models of telemedicine: A multi-case study from China.

Introduction: As a form of platform economy, telemedicine is not growing as fast as other digital platforms. The existing literature seldom pays attention to how licensing policy affects the development of telemedicine platform models. Methods: This paper uses the method of multi-case study and the theory of policy implementation as mutual adaptation to research the influence mechanism of telemedicine platform licensing policy on the platform model in China. Results: The findings of the current study are as follows: (1) three models can be classified in accordance with different platform providers in China: medical institution platform, Internet company platform and local government platform; (2) bargaining power, reputation mechanism and resource specificity are important dimensions in the analysis of platform models; (3) as an implementer in the process of licensing policy, the platform provider can not only directly determine the establishment and formation of platform model but also indirectly affect the sustainable development of platform model by affecting the supplier and the demander of platform; and (4) The impact between licensing policy and platform model is dynamic and bidirectional, mainly exerted via administrative orders, market-oriented mechanism and medical insurance. Conclusions: The research enlightens practical exploration in telemedicine and enriches the theoretical innovation in platform.

Saúde sem colarinhos: desafios da saúde ocupacional no advento do pós-Fordismo / No collar health: occupational health challenges with the advent of post-Fordism

Resumo Introdução: o termo pós-Fordismo refere-se a um modelo de organização laboral de acordo com a evolução dos meios de produção na segunda metade do século XX. Fruto das alterações substanciais dos mecanismos de regulação e contratação, este modelo prioriza a flexibilização e fragmentação da relação com o trabalhador. Com o advento informático, o pós-Fordismo ganha novos moldes e hiperboliza-se com as economias de plataforma em linha e a chamada uberização do trabalho. Objetivo: analisar criticamente as características do modelo pós-fordista e seus impactos à saúde ocupacional. Métodos: foi realizada uma revisão narrativa da literatura. Resultados: apontam-se para três aspectos do modelo pós-Fordista: 1) instabilidade laboral; 2) sobrecarga laboral; e 3) demanda psicossocial. Esses determinantes têm sido fortemente associados a maus resultados em saúde, sobretudo mental. Conclusões: as mudanças na conceptualização do trabalhador e do lugar do trabalho na vida do indivíduo exigem novas formas de pensar a saúde ocupacional. Para mitigar as consequências do pós-Fordismo, é necessária uma clara percepção das suas dinâmicas e uma mobilização de esforços multissetoriais.

Abstract Introduction: the term post-Fordism refers to the evolution of labour organization according to the new production models that emerged in the second half of the 20th century. As a result of substantial changes in the mechanisms of regulation and contracting, they prioritize the flexibilization and fragmentation of the employer-employee relationship. With the advent of information technology, post-Fordism gained new moulds and became hyperbolized with the online platform economies and the so-called uberization of work. Objectives: to critically analyse the characteristics of the post-Fordist model and its impacts in occupational health. Methods: this research was carried out with a review of the literature. Results: we point to three aspects of the post-Fordist model: 1) work instability; 2) work overload; and 3) psychosocial demand. The impact of these aspects, determinant on labour activities, have strong associations with bad health outcomes, especially in mental health. Conclusions: these changes in the conceptualization of workers and the place of work in their lives require new ways of thinking about occupational health. A clear perception of its dynamics, and a mobilization of multisectoral efforts, is needed to mitigate the consequences of this model.

Ideologia gerencialista e plataformas de treinamentos de dados para Inteligência Artificial (IA): condições de trabalho e saúde dos trabalhadores no Brasil / Managerial ideology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) data training platform: working conditions and worker's health in Brazil / Ideología managerial y plataformas de anotación de datos para Inteligencia Artificial (IA): condiciones de trabajo y salud de los trabajadores en Brasi

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar as condições de trabalho e os seus impactos na saúde dos trabalhadores no mercado de microtarefas de treinamento de dados para a produção de Inteligência Artificial (IA), em especial no que diz respeito a suas relações com a ideologia gerencialista. Os dados são provenientes de uma netnografia realizada entre os anos de 2020 e 2021, de análises dos websites das plataformas e de entrevistas realizadas com 15 trabalhadores. A partir da análise de quatro instâncias mediadoras (econômica, política, ideológica e psicológica), argumentamos que a ideologia gerencialista, consubstanciada a ideologia californiana, se caracteriza como um operador central na gestão do trabalho, que tem por finalidade garantir a adesão dos trabalhadores às plataformas e ocultar os conflitos do trabalho, direcionando-os para o nível individual e produzindo um cenário de individualização do sofrimento.

The objective of this study is to analyze working conditions and their impacts on worker's health in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) data annotation microtask market, especially to highlight their relationship with managerial ideology. The data comes from a netnography carried out between the years 2020 and 2021, from analysis on the platform's websites, and from interviews with 15 workers. Drawing from the analysis of four different mediation systems (economic, political, ideological, and psychological), we argue that the managerial ideology, overlaid with the Californian ideology, is characterized as a central element in the management of labor, which aims to guarantee the adherence of workers to platforms and hide the labor conflicts, directing them to the individual level and producing a scenario of individualization of suffering.

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar las condiciones de trabajo y sus impactos en la salud de los tra-bajadores en el mercado de microtareas de anotación de datos para la producción de Inteligencia Artificial (IA), en particular en lo que concierne a su relación con la ideología managerial. Los datos provienen de una netnografía realizada entre los años 2020 y 2021, de análisis en los sitios web de las plataformas y de entrevistas con 15 trabajadores. A partir del análisis de cuatro instancias mediadoras (económica, política, ideológica y psicológica), argumentamos que la ideología gerencial, superpuesta en la ideología californi-ana, se caracteriza como un elemento central en la gestión del trabajo, que pretende garantizar la adhesión de los trabajadores a las plataformas y ocultar los conflictos del trabajo, dirigiéndolos al plano individual y produciendo un escenario de individualización del sufrimiento.

The antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour in the creation of platform economy initiatives: An analysis based on the decomposed theory of planned behaviour.

The platform economy (PE) has experienced its strongest period of growth since the emergence of the sharing economy (SE). Much work has been put into understanding the effects and antecedents of the PE, with particular emphasis on peers and consumer motivation, yet few studies have analysed the motivations of the service providers and even fewer its impact on individual and collective wellbeing. The aim of this paper is provide a better understanding of the decomposed beliefs that inform the attitudinal, social-normative and control factors that make up pro-PE behavioural intention (the intention to develop a PE initiative) in the context of digitisation and wellbeing, while making the platform the focus of analysis. In this study we adapt and extend the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB) and use partial least squares regression (PLS), a structural equation modelling technique, to analyse valid data collected from 127 PE organisations operating in Spain. The empirical results obtained demonstrate that the three antecedents for behavioural intention (perceived control, attitude and the subjective norm) have a positive effect on the intention to develop a PE initiative. The study also shows that PE micro-entrepreneurs are motivated by individual and collective wellbeing and not just financial gain. This contributes substantially to reconciling the PE with its origins, rooted in pro-solidarity and social concerns, and to framing wellbeing in a broader paradigm consisting of psychological and social factors, going beyond the economic considerations and interests contained in previous paradigms.

Anti-monopoly supervision model of platform economy based on big data and sentiment.

With the advent of the cloud computing era, big data technology has also developed rapidly. Due to the huge volume, variety, fast processing speed and low value density of big data, traditional data storage, extraction, transformation and analysis technologies are not suitable, so new solutions for big data application technologies are needed. However, with the development of economic theory and the practice of market economy, some links in the industrial chain of natural monopoly industries already have a certain degree of competitiveness. In this context, the article conducts a research on the anti-monopoly supervision mode of platform economy based on big data and sentiment analysis. This paper introduces the main idea of MapReduce, the current software implementation specifies a Map function that maps a set of key-value pairs into a new set of key-value pairs. It specifies a concurrent Reduce function that guarantees that each of all mapped key-value pairs share the same set of keys. establishes a vector space model, and basically realizes the extraction of text emotional elements. It introduces the theoretical controversy of antitrust regulation of predatory pricing behavior of third-party payment platforms, and conducted model experiments. The experimental results show that the throughput of 40 test users in 1 h of test is determined by two factors, QPS and the number of concurrent, where QPS = 40/(60*60) transactions/second. The time for each test user to log in to the system is 10 min, and the average response time is 10*60 s, then the number of concurrency = QPS*average response time = 40/(60*60)*10*60 = 6.66. This paper has successfully completed the research on the anti-monopoly supervision model of platform economy based on big data and sentiment analysis.

Taming Proteus: Challenges for Risk Regulation of Powerful Digital Labor Platforms.

The platform economy's emergence challenges the current labor regulations hinged upon the binary employer-employee relations established during the industrial age. While this burgeoning phenomenon presents several possibilities for workers, customers, and businesses alike, scholars from various fields have sounded alarms regarding pitfalls in platform-mediated work (PMW). The regulation of working conditions, health, and safety risks are integral to these worries. Drawing upon existing research and empirical data from 49 qualitative interviews with several stakeholders, this paper explores the various dimensions of power exerted by platforms and the mismatch with the current risk regulatory framework. Four regulatory gaps are identified and the concept 'regulatory escape' is introduced. The study posits that taming powerful platforms requires harnessing adequate regulatory capacity grounded on developing an expansive view of regulation that encompasses all forms of socio-economic influence. The paper invokes reflection on the existing regulatory systems in society and calls for a more profound and inclusive debate on platform-mediated work and how regulatory gaps can be closed.

COVID-19 pandemic and work precarity at digital food platforms: A delivery worker's perspective.

This study tries to establish a conceptual and empirical understanding of the precarity of work in the platform economy using food aggregators as illustrations and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Internet access and smartphone facilitated the creation of platform aggregators, which emerged as a new workspace for young workers in India. However, food aggregators term these workers as 'delivery partners'; this changes the employer-employee relations and allows companies to avoid liabilities and reduce costs. This has led to systematic exploitation and dismal working conditions for food delivery workers. Further, Workers at platforms suffer from low wages (and benefit), absence (or lack) of welfare measures, and discriminatory practices. The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown have further aggravated the precarity of on-demand work and workers. Pandemic has shown that with loss of livelihood and income, the notion of autonomy and flexibility at work is meant for the privileged few. This precarious situation of food delivery workers calls for affirmative action in terms of regulations, social security, and protection.

Recognition and Work in the Platform Economy: a Normative Reconstruction.

The rise of the platform economy in the past two decades (and neoliberal capitalist expansion and crises more in general), have on the whole negatively affected working conditions, leading to growing concerns about the "human side" of organizations. To address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to apply Axel Honneth's recognition theory and method of normative reconstruction to working conditions in the platform economy. The paper concludes that the ways in which platform organizations function constitutes a normative paradox, promising flexibility and autonomy while at the same time creating working conditions that undercut these promises. The paper ends with a critical discussion of Honneth's approach, possible supplementing ideas and further lines of future research.

Psychological science for a responsible sharing economy.

The sharing economy is fueled by trust, which allows strangers to cooperate. To share responsibly, one needs to be aware of the various consequences sharing has on interacting and third parties. When transparency about such consequences is lacking, mutual trust among interacting parties may encourage people to cooperate and share, in turn, creating unintended negative impacts. Psychologists have long studied trust and cooperation, yet few insights from psychological science have been used to understand the sharing economy. Here, we propose that evoking trust may paradoxically increase motivated information processing leading people to share irresponsibly by ignoring the negative consequences sharing has on others. We review three conditions under which evoking trust may lead to irresponsible sharing: ethical blind spots, willful ignorance, and misinformation. We propose that transparent information is key to enable and encourage responsible sharing. More psychological research is needed to better understand how this flourishing, trust-based industry can be shaped to encourage safe, cooperative, and responsible sharing.

Beyond the realm of cash: street performers and payments in the online world.

Street performers are able to contribute to a fabric of a city's creative dynamic. The exchange for money between a street performer and an audience is a changing landscape. As less cash is carried on people's person and audiences want to participate in exchange, the industry is ripe for disruption. The paper uses a unique data set from the online busking platform 'The Busking Project' to analyse individual donations to 3757 active buskers. Using a Heckman selection model, we find that the number of fans does influence the number of donations and the artist's genre matters for the likelihood of receiving donation and the amount received. Musicians are more likely to receive a donation; however, it is a smaller donation amount than other performers. The method of payment for receiving a donation and the anonymity of the donor also influences the amount received. The geographic location matters for receiving a donation but not the amount received.

Platform economy: (dis-) embeddedness processes in urban spaces.

Digital platforms, understood as multi-sided matchmakers, have amassed huge power, reimagining the role of consumers, producers, and even ownership. They increasingly dictate the way the economy and urban life is organized. Yet, despite their influential and far-reaching role in shaping our economic as well as sociocultural world, our understanding of their embeddedness, namely how their activities are embedded in systems of social and societal relationships and how they conceptualize their main functions and actions in relation to their wider setting, remains rudimentary. Consequently, the purpose of this frontier paper is threefold. Firstly, it reveals the need to discuss and evaluate (dis-)embedding processes in platform urbanism in order to understand the underlying dynamics of platform power and urban transformation. Secondly, it aims to reveal the main reasons in regard to the difficulties in pinpointing digital platforms embeddedness. Thirdly, it seeks to propose future research unravelling the (dis-)embeddedness of the platform economy. This paper argues for three main reasons namely unawareness, unaccountability and non-transparency of digital platforms that drive the lack of embeddedness and reaffirms platform power. This is mainly based on the configuration of new commodities, platforms' strategic avoidance of labour protections and other regulatory frameworks as well as platforms' secrecy in which they operate. This frontier paper argues that transferring the concept of embeddedness to the platform economy might serve as a valuable tool to understand and pinpoint essential dynamics and relationships at play, therefore proposing embeddedness as a basis for future research on the platform economy. It strongly argues that a more detailed understanding is urgently needed, in order to be able to understand, accompany and actively influence the development of the platform economy in regulatory terms.

Networks of trust: accessing informal work online in Indonesia during COVID-19.

Although studies on digital labour platforms demonstrated how the internet has opened up access to income opportunities in the developing world, an exploration of how informal workers use the internet to access work without an intermediary is missing. Using data from digital ethnography and interviews with workers in Indonesia, this article examines how platform-based motorcycle taxi drivers and domestic workers accessed work through social media in the time of COVID-19 when the platforms were not allowed to operate. The evidence suggests that while social media can offer increased opportunities for workers, their success was largely dependent on their social networks and bounded by the algorithms designed by platform owners.

Towards decent work in the digital age: introducing the fairwork project in Germany.

The Fairwork Project is an international action-research project that currently operates in over 20 countries. The project focuses on working conditions in the platform economy, in order to develop 'fairness ratings' for digital labour platforms. With respect to Germany, the project evaluated the working conditions offered by ten digital labour platforms, by scoring them against the Fairwork principles and producing a national league table. We found that even in a highly regulated labour market context like the German one, platform workers experience precarity and insecurity and have limited access to employment rights. A number of platform workers are classified as employees rather than self-employed, and this guarantees a number of employment rights, including entitlement to minimum wage, health and safety protection and social protection. However, the existence of an employment relationship does not necessarily ensure platform work to be fair as other factors, including the existence of complex networks of subcontracting, erode labour standards and deprive workers of basic employment rights. Practical Relevance: While there are tens of millions of digital platform workers around the world performing functions essential to society-as demonstrated drastically by the Covid-19 pandemic-by supplying food, care and passenger transportation services, many platform workers face low pay, precarity as well as poor and dangerous working conditions. Exposing fracture lines of inequalities affecting particularly women, migrants and minority-ethnic groups who form the core part of the gig workforce, the international Fairwork research project aims not just to understand the gig economy, but to change it.

An apple a day - how the platform economy impacts value creation in the healthcare market.

The healthcare industry has been slow to adopt new technologies and practices. However, digital and data-enabled innovations diffuse the market, and the COVID-19 pandemic has recently emphasized the necessity of a fundamental digital transformation. Available research indicates the relevance of digital platforms in this process but has not studied their economic impact to date. In view of this research gap and the social and economic relevance of healthcare, we explore how digital platforms might affect value creation in this market with a particular focus on Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM). We rely on value network analyses to examine how GAFAM platforms introduce new value-creating roles and mechanisms in healthcare through their manifold products and services. Hereupon, we examine the GAFAM-impact on healthcare by scrutinizing the facilitators, activities, and effects. Our analyses show how GAFAM platforms multifacetedly untie conventional relationships and transform value creation structures in the healthcare market. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12525-021-00467-2.

How many online workers are there in the world? A data-driven assessment.

An unknown number of people around the world are earning income by working through online labour platforms such as Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk. We combine data collected from various sources to build a data-driven assessment of the number of such online workers (also known as online freelancers) globally. Our headline estimate is that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on online labour platforms globally. Approximately 14 million of them have obtained work through the platform at least once, and 3.3 million have completed at least 10 projects or earned at least $1000. These numbers suggest a substantial growth from 2015 in registered worker accounts, but much less growth in amount of work completed by workers. Our results indicate that online freelancing represents a non-trivial segment of labour today, but one that is spread thinly across countries and sectors.

Personal Trust and System Trust in the Sharing Economy: A Comparison of Community- and Platform-Based Models.

Currently, new business models created in the sharing economy differ considerably and they differ in the formation of trust as well. If and how trust can be created is shown by a comparison of two examples which diverge in their founding philosophy. The chosen example of community-based economy, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), no longer trusts the capitalist system and therefore distances itself and creates its own environment including a new business model. It is implemented within rather small groups where trust is created by personal relations and face-to-face communication. On the contrary, the example of a platform economy, the accommodation-provider company Airbnb, shows trust in the system and pushes technological innovations through the use of platform applications. It promotes trust and confidence in the progress of technology. For the conceptual analysis, the distinction between personal trust and system trust defined by Niklas Luhmann is adopted. The analysis describes two different modes of trust formation and how they push distrust or improve trust. Grounded on these analyses, assumptions on the process of trust formation within varying models of the sharing economy are formulated as well as a hypothesis about possible developments is introduced for further research.

Chinese affective platform economies: dating, live streaming, and performative labor on Blued.

This article analyzes the political economy of sexually affective data on the Chinese gay dating platform Blued. Having launched in 2012 as a location-based dating app akin to Grindr, Blued has now become a multipurpose platform providing extra services such as newsfeeds and live streaming. Through the continuous imbrication of old and new functionalities and related affordances, users are transformed from dating subjects into performative laborers. Based on Internet ethnographic research that lasted 2 years, this article focuses on sexual-affective data flows (e.g. virtual gifting, following, liking, commenting, and sharing) produced by gay live streamers within the parameters of same-sex desires such as infatuation, sexual arousal, and online intimacy. It argues that these sexually affective data flows increasingly constitute key corporate assets with which Blued attracts venture capital. This analysis of live streamers and their viewers extends understandings of dating apps in two ways. First, it shows how these apps now function as business platforms on top of being channels for hooking up. Second, it emphasizes that whereas users created data freely, now it is produced by paid labor.