Author Identifier (ORCID)

Tom Barratt

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2733-2123

Abstract

Platform firm in the gig-economy are disrupting work as a social practice, production systems and recasting capital-labour relations. This qualitative study examines worker agency in the Australian food-delivery sector; a segment where platforms actively intermediate both product and labour markets. Within this sector, worker agency poses a potential challenge to platform-organisations; however this study reveals how these platforms’ work organisation and market regulation constrain agency potential. Shaped by the work’s spatio-temporal features, organisational fixes and institutional context, it is shown how food-delivery workers, transiently attached to the labour market, predominantly engage in ‘entrepreneurial agency’ – a low-level agency expression aimed at materially improving individual conditions and aligning with, rather than challenging, platforms’ business models.

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

2020

Publication Title

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

Publisher

Sage Publications

School

School of Business and Law

RAS ID

31410

Funders

Edith Cowan University - Open Access Support Scheme 2020

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Comments

Barratt, T., Goods, C., & Veen, A. (2020). ‘I’m my own boss…’: Active intermediation and ‘entrepreneurial’worker agency in the Australian gig-economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(8).

https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20914346

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1177/0308518X20914346