A lealdade dos trabalhadores às plataformas digitais de trabalho: pensando além da estratégia de preço dinâmico

Research output: Types of ThesisDoctoral Thesis

Abstract

Digital labour platforms are business models that describe how platform-owning companies create, deliver, and capture value by digitally mediating services provided by workers to customers. First, I used concepts from the service operations management literature to reveal that depending on the skill level required of workers to perform the service and how fast the service needs to be performed, the operational challenges in managing these companies are many different. Then, contradicting the assumption that the pricing strategy is the best tool to cultivate workers’ loyalty to the platform, I rescued the concept of needs from the field of psychology to argue that in low-skilled labour platforms, such as iFood, Rappi, Uber, and 99, financial incentives do not determine workers' loyalty, but rather the satisfaction of financial security and autonomy needs that is felt while they work through a certain platform. Through the lens of self-determination theory, I anticipated the effects of the six forms of algorithmic control (goal setting, work scheduling, monitoring, performance management, compensation, and job termination) on the fulfillment of such needs. So, I developed a research model that links workers' perceived algorithmic control to need satisfaction and then workers’ loyalty to a given platform. Using survey data from 116 Brazilian workers, I found empirical support for the relationship between need satisfaction and workers’ loyalty to a given platform. I also found empirical support for the central role of satisfaction of financial security in the relationship between compensation and workers' loyalty to a given platform. Such results suggest that it is necessary to think beyond pricing strategies to cultivate workers’ loyalty to a low-skilled labour platform. This study responds to recent calls for quantitative research that has workers as representatives of themselves and stands out for its combination of mechanistic and motivational approaches to understand behavior at work mediated by low-skilled labour platforms.
Original languagePortuguese
QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
Awarding Institution
  • Fundação Getúlio Vargas
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Santos de Campos, Juliana Bonomi, Supervisor, External person
Award date31 May 2023
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2023
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Autonomy
  • Algorithmic control
  • Digital labour platforms
  • Loyalty
  • Financial security

Cite this