Alternative Work Arrangements

Alternative Work Arrangements Lindsey D. Cameron, Lyndon Garrett, Gretchen Spreitzer LAST MODIFIED: 27 FEBRUARY 2019 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199846740­0155 Introduction The literature on alternative work arrangements is broad, spanning multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, information sciences, management, and organizational psychology. Alternative work arrangements are loosely defined as jobs that occur outside of a traditional employment context with the expectation of a long­term employment contract. Given the breadth of the topic this review limits its scope to alternative work arrangements in the United States, unless otherwise noted. Taken together, the literature broadly explores the social, economic, and legal trends influencing the growth of alternative workplace arrangements and the different configurations within the workplace. Growth of Alternative Work Arrangements In organizational scholarship, work has typically been portrayed in terms of a full­time, regular employment model, “where work is performed on a fixed schedule, at the firm’s place of business under the firm’s control and with mutual expectation of continued employment” (Kalleberg, et al. 2000). In the United States today, a smaller percentage of the labor force works in full­time jobs for a particular employer at the employer’s place of work. Polivka 1996 claims the first comprehensive measure of contingent workers in the United States in 1995, estimating as many as six million contingent workers, or 4.9 percent of the US workforce. Using a broader definition of nonstandard employment, including on­call work, independent contractors, temp work, part­time work for a regular employer, and any self­employment, Kalleberg, et al. 2000 estimated that 31 percent of American adults in 1995 were in some type of nonstandard employment. Focusing on remote work, Mateyka, et al. 2012 reported that the percentage of US workers who worked at least one day each week at home increased from 7 percent in 1997 to 9.5 percent in 2010, and those who work exclusively from home increased from 4.8 percent to 6.6 percent. Recent estimates of US workers in alternative work arrangements range from 10.1 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018) to 15.8 percent (Katz and Krueger 2016). Katz and Krueger 2016 concludes that almost all of the net employment growth in the US occurred in nonstandard work arrangements. In addition, Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 suggests that increasingly individuals are employed but also doing contingent work in side hustles or gig work. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Department of Labor, Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangements, 2018. Government database of contemporary workforce trends. Kalleberg, A. L., B. F. Reskin, and K. Hudson. “Bad Jobs in America: Standard and Nonstandard Employment Relations and Job Quality in the United States.” American Sociological Review 65.2 (2000): 256–278. Using data from the 1995 Current Population Survey, this article explores the extent to which nonstandard employment is characterized by certain “bad job” characteristics, namely low pay, no health insurance, and no pension benefits. They find that 31 percent of American adults are in some type of nonstandard employment (on­call work, contract work, self­employment, part­time). They also find that nonstandard work strongly increases likelihood of having these bad job characteristics. Katz, L. F., and A. B. Krueger. The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015 (No. w22667). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016. Katz and Krueger find that the percentage of workers in alternative work arrangements rose from 10.7 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015. They also find that workers in alternative work arrangements earn considerably less per week than traditional employees in similar occupations and get fewer hours of work. However, a majority of independent contractors value their flexibility and prefer to work independently. Mateyka, P. J., M. Rapino, and L. C. Landivar. Home­Based Workers in the United States: 2010. Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, US Census Bureau, 2012. This report presents statistics about the characteristics of home­based workers from two nationally representative surveys conducted by the US Census Bureau. They found that the percentage of workers who worked at least one day each week at home increased from 7 percent in 1997 to 9.5 percent in 2010. Those who work exclusively from home increased from 4.8 percent to 6.6 percent during the same time. Nearly half of home­based workers are self­employed. Polivka, A. E. “Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangements, Defined.” Monthly Labor Review 119 (1996): 3–9. Povlika presents data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Current Population Survey to estimate the number of US contingent workers and alternative work arrangements in 1995. She estimates as many as six million contingent workers, or 4.9 percent of the workforce. These data offered the first comprehensive measure of the number of contingent workers in the US workforce, including breakdowns of various alternative work arrangements among contingent workers. Reviews and Classifications of Alternative Work Arrangements One of the challenges in documenting the growth of various alternative work arrangements is in determining what counts as alternative. The reviews below are useful starting points for understanding the landscape of the organizational literature on alternative work arrangements. Pfeffer and Baron 1988 provide an early account of the emergence of trends toward weakening the attachments between employees and organizations. Not long after, Davis­Blake and Uzzi 1993 examined factors that contributed to the externalization of work described in Pfeffer and Baron. Twenty years after Pfeffer and Baron 1988, Kalleberg 2009, then­president of the American Sociological Association, wrote a detailed review of the rise in precarious work and corresponding social consequences from a sociological perspective. Ashford, et al. 2007 is a review of the research on the new world of work from an organizational behavior perspective. These reviews triggered a surge in research interest in alternative forms of work. Bidwell, et al. 2013 bridges sociology and organization behavior with an interesting review on the social movements shaping changes in employment relationships and benefits. Returning to the question of categorizing the various alternative work arrangements, Ashford, et al. 2007 in their review followed the same dimensions Pfeffer and Baron proposed twenty years earlier. Cappelli and Keller 2013 suggests that the Pfeffer and Baron classification system is less useful in the 21st century, as many alternative work arrangements cut across, or even fall outside of, the three categories. They proposed a classification system based on the extent of control over the work process. They provide a nice review of the new forms of work, especially making distinctions between employment and contracting, but their classification does not capture other important dimensions relating to alternative work arrangements, namely flexibility about the location and scheduling of work. Most recently, the authors of this article wrote a review of alternative work arrangements, as a follow­up to Ashford, et al. 2007, identifying three themes that emerged in the literature: flexibility in the employment relationship, flexibility in scheduling of work, and flexibility in where work is accomplished (Spreitzer, et al. 2017). We find these three dimensions to largely capture the variety in different forms of work that are being discussed in the literature. We use these same categories below. Ashford, S. J., E. George, and R. Blatt. “2 Old Assumptions, New Work: The Opportunities and Challenges of Research on Nonstandard Employment.” The Academy of Management Annals 1.1 (2007): 65–117. Ashford and colleagues review the OB literature across the three dimensions of nonstandard work laid out in Pfeffer and Baron 1988: temporal attachment, administrative attachment, and physical attachment. After reviewing reasons for the rise in nonstandard work, they discuss how nonstandard workers experience control, boundaries, relationships, careers, and identities. They also discuss implications for managing and organizing nonstandard workers and opportunities for future research. Bidwell, M., F. Briscoe, I. Fernandez­Mateo, and A. Sterling. “The Employment Relationship and Inequality: How and Why Changes in Employment Practices are Reshaping Rewards in Organizations.” Academy of Management Annals 7.1 (2013): 61–121. Bidwell and colleagues review the literature on the growth of short­term employment relationships, contingent work, outsourcing, and performance pay in the United States. They review the causes of these changes and their consequences for inequality. They describe the social movements shaping employment benefits in nonstandard work arrangements, including how pay and benefits are allocated within jobs, how workers are allocated to jobs, and the effects on inequality in society. Cappelli, P., and J. R. Keller. “Classifying Work in the New Economy.” Academy of Management Review 38.4 (2013): 1–22. Cappelli and Keller outline a classification system that distinguishes between employment and its various alternatives to facilitate improved organizational theorizing. Their classification system groups work arrangements based on the extent of control over the work process, the contractual nature of the work relationship, and the parties involved in the work relationship. They discuss how these categories are distinct from each other in ways that matter for practice and for research. Davis­Blake, A., and B. Uzzi. “Determinants of Employment Externalization: A Study of Temporary Workers and Independent Contractors.” Administrative Science Quarterly 38.2 (1993): 195–223. Davis­Blake and Uzzi examine factors that influence whether organizations use temporary workers and independent contractors. They find that firm­specific training, bureaucratization of employment practices, firm size, and requiring high skills reduces the use of temp workers. Variation in employment needs increased use of temp workers. Variation in employment needs, bureaucratized employment practices, and firm size also increased use of independent contractors. Kalleberg, A. L. “Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition.” American Sociological Review 74.1 (2009): 1–22. Arne Kalleberg’s ASR presidential address discussed the growth of precarious work as a core concern to sociologists, with a wide range of individual and societal consequences. He suggests an increasing importance for sociologists to understand alternative work arrangements that generate precarious work and worker insecurity. He provides a historical account for the growth of precarious work in the United States and the corresponding challenges that are emerging. Pfeffer, J., and N. Baron. “Taking the Workers Back Out.” Research in Organizational Behavior 10 (1988): 257–303. Pfeffer and Baron provide an early review of trends toward weakening attachments between workers and organizations. They describe an externalization of work across three dimensions of attachment between employee and the organization: physical proximity between the worker and the organization, administrative control over the employee, and duration of employment. They explain reasons for weakening these dimensions of attachment and implications for organizational theory. Spreitzer, G. M., L. Cameron, and L. Garrett. “Alternative Work Arrangements: Two Images of the New World of Work.” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 4 (2017): 473–499. The article reviews OB research on nonstandard work published subsequent to Ashford, et al. 2007, focusing on the worker’s lived work experience. They identify two images of the new world of work—one for high­skill workers who choose alternative work arrangements and the other for low­skill workers compelled into alternative work arrangements. They propose directions for research and practice to reduce the inequality between these worlds. Books and Edited Volumes The following contains a list of books and edited volumes that look both at macro­level structural factors that led to the ride of alternative work arrangements and workers’ experiences within. Appelbaum, et al. 2003; Kalleberg 2011; and Weil 2014 provide a sweeping portrait of the macro­level economic, social, and technological factors that led to the rise of alternative work arrangements in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. Focusing on more recent changes, Sundararajan 2016 and Scholz 2016 explicitly focus on the role of information technology in shaping the way work is organized and conducted and digital labor. A common feature in alternative work arrangements is flexibility, which, for the worker is often experienced as job insecurity or precariousness. Barley and Kunda 2006 explores the rise of contract­based labor in the IT sector and how contractors make meaning of their work experience. Both Ehrenreich 2010 and Snyder 2016 paint a vivid picture of the day­to­day experiences of living on the minimum wage in the United States while Pugh 2015 explores the impact of job insecurity on families. Taking a more political stance and global perspective, Standing 2011 notes the increasing disenfranchisement and isolation of these workers, arguing they are afforded fewer rights and privileges than those in traditional jobs. Fortunately, many of these works also offer suggestions about what can be done to improve working conditions and lessen worker precarity, such as legal regulation and enforcement and new worker classification systems (e.g., Standing 2011, Kalleberg 2011, Weil 2014, Scholz 2016, Sundararajan 2016). Appelbaum, E., A. Bernhardt, and R. J. Murnane, eds. Low­Wage America: How Employers are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003. Edited volume of twenty­five industries that primarily employ low­wage, contract labor. Barley, S. R., and G. Kunda. Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Barley and Kunda’s masterful ethnography explores the rise of contract­based labor in the high­tech sector. Ehrenreich, B. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. A classic book and harrowing tale about one woman’s year­long experiment to live on the minimum wage. Kalleberg, A. Good Jobs Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States 1970s­2000s. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011. Kalleberg notes the replacement of “good jobs” (defined as jobs paying relatively high earnings, providing fringe benefits and opportunities for advancements, and permitting some worker control over schedules) with “bad jobs” (defined as jobs paying low wages, providing few benefits, and allowing workers no control over work activity) since the 1970s, thus, increasing wage inequality in the United States. Pugh, A. J. The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pugh examines the effect of job flexibility and job insecurity on families suggesting that flexibility ultimately destabilizes relationships. Scholz, Trebor. Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. Cambridge, UK: Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. Taking a critical eye toward the new digital economy, Scholz argues that digital platforms obscure labor’s activities allowing for further exploitation and devaluation by the platform. The book outlines a typology of digital labor, making a distinction between paid and unpaid digital work, and investigates the legal position of platform operators. Snyder, B. H. The Disrupted Workplace: Time and the Moral Order of Flexible Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Snyder argues that today’s flexible economy transforms how workers experience time, making time both a liberating and terrorizing force in daily work life. Standing, G. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. A provocative and pessimistic critique of the modern neoliberal economic policy. Standing coins the term “precariat” for a rising class of workers who lack labor­related security and any prospects of career mobility and occupational identity. Standing argues these workers are at risk of economic exploitation and political mobilization. Sundararajan, A. The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd­Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Sundararajan provides an optimistic account of how information technology is changing work through the emergence of “crowd­based capitalism,” an economic system between socialism and capitalism. The first half provides a historical overview of the predecessors to sharing economy and multiple mini­case studies of several organizations. The second half of the book explores the likely socioeconomic and legal effects of crowd­based capitalism, including the increasing the impact of economic regulations. Weil, David. The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Weil argues the rising income inequality in the US labor market is more due to organizational restructuring (e.g., franchising, supply chains, subcontracting) than technological innovations and offers solutions. Broader Trends Influencing Growth of Alternative Work Arrangements Three trends are influencing the growth of alternative work arrangement: changes in the social economic environment, technological transformations, and shifts in the legal environment. Socioeconomic Trends In a global economy where short­term financial results drive decision making, firms seek flexibility through employment at will to meet changing demand (Davis 2016)—sometimes referred to as a “workforce on demand” or an “open talent economy” or “precarious work” (Fleming 2017, Kalleberg 2012). As a result, Bidwell 2013 argues that firms increasingly hire contract workers who appear less expensive to firms because they require no long­term job security, benefits, or often even training. Some factors fueling the growth in alternative work arrangements are driven by workers’ preferences. Rodrigues and Guest 2010 find that self­employment has continued to grow post­ recovery, indicating that more people are choosing self­employment for freedom and flexibility. Workers enjoy having the flexibility to choose when, where, and what they are working on. More choice can enable workers to craft work to be more meaningful and aligned with their values and interest. Flexibility can help to create more work/family balance. Bidwell, M. J. “What Happened to Long­Term Employment? The Role of Worker Power and Environmental Turbulence in Explaining Declines in Worker Tenure.” Organization Science 24.4 (2013): 1061–1082. Over the last several decades, there has also been a precipitous decline in labor unions exacerbating a shift in power from labor to firms. Firms increasingly hire contract workers who receive no long­term job security, benefits, or often even training—roles that labor unions have traditionally offered unionized workers. Davis, G. The Vanishing American Corporation. San Francisco: Berrett­Koehler, 2016. The increasing obsolescence of the corporation means there are fewer large companies able to hire workers into traditional full­time jobs. The “financialization” of the economy has led to a stakeholder model of corporate governance being replaced by a shareholder model that privileges the interests of investors where corporations are much less likely to hire workers into traditional full­time jobs with job security. Fleming, P. “The Human Capital Hoax: Work, Debt and Insecurity in the Era of Uberization.” Organization Studies 38.5 (2017): 691– 709. Human capital theory is founded on neoclassical economic ideas promoting the appeal of having discretion over how, where, and when a job is performed. Human capital theory has accentuated individualism leading to a “radical responsibilization” of the workforce, where individuals are responsible for their economic fate. Fleming links this radical responsibilization to growing economic insecurity, low productivity, diminished autonomy, and crippling personal debt. Kalleberg, A. L. “Job Quality and Precarious Work: Clarifications, Controversies, and Challenges.” Work and Occupations 39.4 (2012): 427–448. In “precarious work,” the power differentials between workers and employers are amplified. While precarious work is not new, it has dramatically increased in the last decade. Rodrigues, R. A., and D. Guest. “Have Careers Become Boundaryless? Human Relations 63.8 (2010): 1157–1175. Economic decline often leads to more self­employment. Economic disruptions from the recession forced people from their jobs and left them to scrape together a livelihood through freelance work. Technological Trends Innovations in technology allow work to be done anytime, anywhere. This trend affects full­time employees as well as contract and gig workers (Boudreau, et al. 2015; Bailey, et al. 2012). Cloud technology makes it possible for employees to work in any location, logging into an organization’s server, accessing shared documents, or responding to emails (Hwang, et al. 2015). This kind of virtuality commonly refers to the communication that occurs via various computer­mediated communication (CMC) tools such as e­mail, chat, instant, and messaging (Gilson, et al. 2015) that are prevalent among millennials (Myers and Sadaghiani 2010). Instant messaging such as WeChat, WhatsApp, and GroupMe allow workers to connect seamlessly even if they are not co­located. And collaboration technology such as Slack and Googledocs enable teams to work together. Of course, a downside of technology is that it can create the perception that one must be always available for work­related requests and that employers can monitor employee behavior and location. Bailey, D. E., P. M. Leonardi, and S. R. Barley. “The Lure of the Virtual.” Organization Science 23.5 (2012): 1485–1504. One particularly intriguing phenomenon is an emerging trend toward virtualization technologies. These technologies create virtual worlds where people are represented by avatars that can interact with one another. This form of virtualization technology is often associated with games and play but is increasingly being used to facilitate collaboration and learning. Boudreau, J. W., R. Jesuthasan, and D. Creelman. Lead the Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment. San Francisco: Wiley, 2015. Technological innovations have enabled the rise of online talent platforms, which instantaneously link workers with employers across countries and time zones. Technology is enabling work to be disaggregated to the level of the task, making it easier to outsource specific tasks into “gigs.” A growing pool of workers compete against each other to be hired to complete these tasks. Gilson, L. L., M. T. Maynard, N. C. Jones Young, M. Vartiainen, and M. Hakonen. “Virtual Teams Research: 10 Years, 10 Themes, and 10 Opportunities.” Journal of Management 41.5 (2015): 1313–1337. Critiques the current state of the literature over the previous ten years. Identifies ten empirical issues/themes that have arisen including: team inputs, team virtuality, and the roles of technology, globalization, leadership, and trust, among others. They also look toward the future and highlight ten opportunities including generational impacts, member mobility, team adaptation, transition processes, and team member well­being, among others. Hwang E. H., P. V. Singh, and L. Argote. “Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities: Learning to Cross Geographic and Hierarchical Boundaries.” Organization Science 26.6 (2015): 1593–1611. With collaborative software, workers can easily collaborate across distances; in fact, virtual collaboration is becoming common even among workers who are co­located. Indeed, this form of online collaboration has been found to cause categorical boundaries (such as location or hierarchical status) to weaken. Myers, K. K., and K. Sadaghiani. “Millennials in the Workplace: A Communication Perspective on Millennials’ Organizational Relationships and Performance.” Journal of Business and Psychology 25 (2010): 225–238. The millennial generation is especially receptive to the use of CMCs at work and perceiving virtual connectivity, such as via social media, as a way to decrease hierarchical boundaries and increase collaboration. Legal Trends The existing legal framework in the United States recognizes two statuses for workers: employee and independent contractor. As US labor and employment laws primarily protect full­time employees (as opposed to independent contractors), Newman 2013 and Dubal 2017 argue the rise in alternative work arrangements erodes worker’s rights as they are excluded from traditional protections mechanisms such as collective bargaining, minimum wage, labor market discrimination, overtime pay, and worker and unemployment compensation. Cappelli and Keller 2013 find new forms of work have emerged that do not fit neatly into either classification system. For example, on­demand workers using a digital platform or intermediary to find short­term work can choose when, where, or whether to work; however, much like an employer, the intermediary controls aspects of the work. Scholz 2016 and Calo and Rosenblat 2017 argue that digital platforms are poised to benefit from these legal loopholes as they have more space to monitor consumers and workers and manipulate interactions to their advantage. Rosenblat, et al. 2017 document another feature of on­demand work, which is that employment opportunities are often based on customer evaluations—which are inherently biased. In a study of two digital platforms, Hannák, et al. 2017 finds that gender and race influence customer ratings. To address these legal concerns, Harris and Krueger 2015 suggests additional worker regulations, such as a third worker classification category, independent worker, offering additional benefits and rights to workers. Relatedly, Scholz 2016 suggests an alternative ownership structure, the platform co­operative, to better protect workers’ rights. Calo, R., and A. Rosenblat. The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power. Rochester, NY: SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017. Argues that existing consumer protection laws are inadequately protecting digital platform workers, especially full­time workers, as they lack a deep understanding of the practices of platforms. Cappelli, P., and J. R. Keller. “Classifying Work in the New Economy.” Academy of Management Review 38.4 (2013): 575–596. Proposes a theoretical model of alternative work arrangements based on legal classifications. Dubal, Veena. “Wage­Slave or Entrepreneur? Contesting the Dualism of Legal Worker Categories.” California Law Review 105 (2017): 65. Explains that the legal distinction between employee and independent contractor evolved historically based on political and cultural philosophies about work. Explores how contemporary workers interpret these classifications, finding that native­born Americans prefer the employee classification, as it implies professionalization and belonging, while immigrant groups prefer contractor classification, as it implies entrepreneurship and autonomy. Hannák, A., C. Wagner, D. Garcia, A. Mislove, M. Strohmaier, and C. Wilson. “Bias in Online Freelance Marketplaces: Evidence from TaskRabbit and Fiverr.” In Proceedings of the American Computer Machinery Confereence: Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 1914–1933, 2017. Finds that gender and race significantly correlate with worker evaluations (ratings), which may affect employment opportunities. Harris, S. D., and A. B. Krueger. A Proposal for Modernizing Labor Laws for Twenty­First­Century Work: The ‘Independent Worker’. Washington, DC: Hamilton Project, Brookings Institute, 2015. Harris and Krueger suggest a third category of worker classification: independent worker. This is a middle ground between employee and independent contract. This category would enable businesses to provide benefits and protections similar to what employees receive, without fully assuming the legal risks and costs of being an employer. Newman, K. S. “The Great Recession and the Pressure on Workplace Rights.” Chicago­Kent Law Review 88.2 (2013): 529–543 Argues that the Great Recession has further eroded workers’ rights due to the decline of unions and purposeful misclassification of workers. Explores the difference in labor regulatory difference in the United States and the European Union. Rosenblat, A., K. E. Levy, S. Barocas, and T. Hwang. “Discriminating Tastes: Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Bias.” Policy and Internet, 9.3 (2017): 256–279 Drawing on a case study of the ride­hailing company Uber, this study suggests that bias may creep into evaluations of drivers through consumer­sourced rating systems, thus opening the door to employee discrimination. Scholz, Trebor. Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. Scholz argues that the legal position of platforms engenders much of their success as the platforms skirt traditional workers’ laws, such as employment taxes. Explores the differences between the terms “employee,” “independent contractor,” and “employer” as well as the legal challenges to workers. Alternative Work Arrangements There is a growing variety of ways to work, or ways in which people and organizations get work done. Labels such as nonstandard, contingent, temporary, and externalized have been used to describe workers who were not working in permanent employment situations. These terms lump many different kinds of work together and do not capture the range of different kinds of work arrangements we see in the new economy: from high­wage freelancers doing highly skilled work, to the low­wage service workers who are on­call for unpredictable work hours, to remote workers who have long­term employment but can work from any location. We prefer the term “alternative work arrangements” over the previously mentioned labels that emphasize the nature of the employment relationship. This is because in the 21st century even full­time workers with employment contracts are contingent to some extent, given that lifetime employment is largely obsolete outside of academic tenure. Full­time workers also often work remotely away from the firm for some or all of their time and follow increasingly flexible work schedules. The term “alternative work arrangements” captures the variety of different manifestations of work seen in 21st­century workplace. In a review of this new world of work, Spreitzer, et al. 2017 (cited under Reviews and Classifications of Alternative Work Arrangements) reviews key references across three categories of alternative work arrangements: contract and agency work, remote work, and flex scheduled work. We then review the most recent development in alternative work arrangements, the rise of the on­demand economy (e.g., Uber), which cuts across the three previous categories with limited degrees of flexibility and control. Contract and Agency Work A growing alternative to employment is contract and agency work. For contract workers, the client specifies the work outcome in a contract written before the work is begun for a specific period of time (Cappelli and Keller 2013, cited under Reviews and Classifications of Alternative Work Arrangements). Agency work is more complex because the employment relationship is between three parties—(1) client organization, (2) an employment agency such as Manpower, and (3) the worker. The main kind of co­employment model involves agency temporary workers who are assigned work through an agency on a short­term contract or leased workers on a long­term contract, as studied by Barley and Kunda 2006 in a case­study of information technology workers. The agency is the employer of record and responsible for all the regulatory requirements such as payroll and employment taxes (Broschak, et al. 2008). And in the 21st century, we are more likely to see contracts and full­time employees working side by side in similar roles as Broschak and Davis­Blake 2006 describes. Barley, S. R., and G. Kunda. “Contracting: A New Form of Professional Practice.” The Academy of Management Perspectives 20.1 (2006): 45–66. Stephen Barley and Gideon Kunda undertook an ethnography of technical contractors to understand the social dynamics of skilled “contingent labor” or itinerant experts who repeatedly moved from the market to a job back to the market. Contractors who wished to maximize their income had to learn to manage this cycle by continually honing and reinventing their skills (i.e., their human capital) with an eye to technological innovation and avoiding technological fads. Bidwell, M. “Do Peripheral Workers Do Peripheral Work? Comparing the Use of Highly Skilled Contractors and Regular Employees.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 62.2 (2009): 200–225. Bidwell finds that contractors and employees worked in similar jobs and roles in most respects, although contractors were less likely to be placed in roles that were more critical to the firm or for positions requiring knowledge of the business. It is important to note that these findings are based on highly skilled contractors. The similarity between contractors and employees may be much lower for lower­skilled contractors. Bidwell, M. J., and F. Briscoe. “Who Contracts? Determinants of the Decision to Work as an Independent Contractor Among Information Technology Workers.” Academy of Management Journal 52.6 (2009): 1148–1168. Bidwell and Briscoe find that IT workers with less need for employment security and employer­provided training were more likely to take jobs as independent contractors. They used career history data to show that IT workers were more likely to contact when they were at an earlier or much later career stage, had a higher skill level and (at least for men) had fewer family responsibilities. Bidwell, M., F. Briscoe, I. Fernandez­Mateo, and A. Sterling. “The Employment Relationship and Inequality: How and Why Changes in Employment Practices are Reshaping Rewards in Organizations.” Academy of Management Annals 7.1 (2013): 61–121. Shows the expansion of short­term employment relationship and contingent work. Finds evidence that changes in the employment relationship have led to a distribution of wealth among stakeholders—with fewer resources going to employees and contingent works (especially women and minorities) and more going to shareholders. Broschak, J. P., and A. Davis­Blake. “Mixing Standard Work and Nonstandard Deals: The Consequences of Heterogeneity in Employment Arrangements.” Academy of Management Journal 49.2 (2006): 371–393. Broschak and Davis­Blake conducted a survey from two locations of a multinational financial services firm to explore how proportions of individuals in standard and nonstandard work arrangements affected various work outcomes. They find that higher proportions of nonstandard workers in a group led to less favorable attitudes toward supervisors and peers, increased turnover intentions, and decreased work­related helping behaviors, limiting the effects of nonstandard work arrangements. Broschak, J. P., A. Davis­Blake, and E. S. Block. “Nonstandard, not Substandard: The Relationship Among Work Arrangements, Work Attitudes, and Job Performance.” Work and Occupations 35.1 (2008): 3–43. Broschak and colleagues examine how different alternative work arrangements influence work attitudes. They find that agency temp workers have more negative attitudes toward their work than standard employees. However, when temp workers are hired full time by an organization, their work attitudes are more positive than their peers. Also, making part­time arrangements aimed at retaining good part­time workers does not improve the attitude or performance of part­time workers. Remote Work With increasingly sophisticated collaboration technology, more work can be done away from the organization or client, increasing flexibility in where people do their work. The rise in teleworking and remote work presents unique benefits and challenges to individuals and organizations (for a review, see Allen, et al. 2015). Teleworking is not a particularly new phenomenon, and there is extensive literature focusing on the impact of teleworking on the individual. Gajendran and Harrison 2007 conducted a meta­analysis of the positive and negative consequences of teleworking, finding primarily positive psychological effects of teleworking, and only seeing harmful effects on relationships when teleworking more than 2.5 days per week. Kelliher and Anderson 2008 and Kelliher and Anderson 2010 have found that flexible working practices, including working remotely, increase perceived job quality, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. They also found increased work intensification for workers who adopted flexible work practices but reduced opportunities for learning and promotion. These findings suggest that the effects of teleworking on individual workers may be more complex than initially thought. Related to teleworking, there is also a well­developed body of literature on virtual teams, recently reviewed in Gilson, et al. 2015. MacDuffie 2007 provided an earlier review on managing geographically distributed workers and virtual teams from a human resource perspective. More recently, the literature has turned toward the interpersonal and organizational dynamics of remote and virtual work. Timothy Golden has led the way in this effort, studying the effects of teleworking on coworkers in the office (e.g., Golden 2007). Gibson, et al. 2011 examine teleworking through the lens of the Job Characteristics Model, finding that it can reduce the meaningfulness of one’s work, which is mitigated by cultivating intimacy and identification in virtual interactions. Cultivating identification virtually may be challenging, as demonstrated by several studies showing the negative effects of remote work on group and organizational identification, both remote workers (Bartel, et al. 2012) and on the workers in the office (Rockmann and Pratt 2015). However, Chattopadhyay, et al. 2008 found that the negative effects of sex dissimilarity on group identification are reduced in geographically distributed groups, suggesting that groups with certain identification challenges may benefit from being geographically distributed. Allen, T. D., T. D. Golden, and K. M. Shockley. “How Effective is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 16.2 (2015): 40–68. Presents a broad and detailed review of the existing research on individual, organizational, and societal benefits and drawbacks of telecommuting. Discusses some of the definitional challenges and intricacies that account for some of the divergent findings in the literature. They also discuss contextual issues that influence the impact of telecommuting, including organizational culture and support. Bartel, C. A., A. Wrzesniewski, and B. M. Wiesenfeld. “Knowing Where You Stand: Physical Isolation, Perceived Respect, and Organizational Identification Among Virtual Employees.” Organization Science 23.3 (2012): 743–757. This survey­based study finds that the degree of physical isolation of virtual employees is negatively associated with perceived respect of the virtual employees, both for shorter­ and longer­tenured employees. This suggests that feelings of reduced respect, conceptualized as being included and valued, experienced by virtual employees could explain how physical isolation negatively affects organizational identification. Chattopadhyay, P., E. George, and A. D. Shulman. “The Asymmetrical Influence of Sex Dissimilarity in Distributive vs. Colocated Work Groups.” Organization Science 19.4 (2008): 581–593. This study finds that sex dissimilarity in groups has a negative effect on group identification reported by women and a positive influence on task and emotional conflict. These relationships were neutral or opposite for men. Further, the challenges associated with sex dissimilarity are not manifested in geographically distributed groups, suggesting a potential benefit of distributed work. Gajendran R, and D. Harrison. “The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta­Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences.” Journal of Applied. Psychology 92.6 (2007): 1524–1541. Conducts a meta­analysis of forty­six studies on the consequences of telecommuting. They find that telecommuting has small but beneficial effects on perceived autonomy, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intentions, role stress, and reducing work­family conflict. Telecommuting generally has no effect on the quality of workplace relationships, although telecommuting more than 2.5 days/week does harm coworker relationships. These authors have a later (2015) study on the performance effects of telecommuting. Gibson, C. B., J. L. Gibbs, T. L. Stanko, P. Tesluk, and S. G. Cohen. “Including the ‘I’ in Virtuality and Modern Job Design: Extending the Job Characteristics Model to Include the Moderating Effect of Individual Experiences of Electronic Dependence and Copresence.” Organization Science 22.6 (2011): 1481–1499. In a massive study of 177 interviews across sixteen organizations, this article explores the experience of virtual work building on the Job Characteristics Model. Finds that high levels of perceived electronic dependence and lack of copresence in virtual work can negatively affect experienced meaningfulness and responsibility. These harmful effects are mitigated by developing intimacy and identification in virtual interactions, as well as by improving task significance, autonomy, and feedback. Gilson, L. L., M. T. Maynard, N. C. Jones Young, M. Vartiainen, and M. Hakonen. “Virtual Teams Research: 10 Years, 10 Themes, and 10 Opportunities.” Journal of Management 41.5 (2015): 1313–1337. Presents a comprehensive review of ten years of research on virtual teams. They identify ten themes in the literature: research design, team inputs, team virtuality, technology, globalization, leadership, mediators and moderators, trust, outcomes, and ways to enhance virtual team success. They also propose ten opportunities for future research. Golden, T. “Co­Workers Who Telework and the Impact on Those in the Office: Understanding the Implications of Virtual Work for Co­Worker Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions.” Human Relations 60.11 (2007): 1641–1667. While many studies examine the impact of teleworking on teleworkers themselves, Golden examines how teleworking impacts coworkers in the physical office. In this study, he finds that the prevalence of teleworking is negatively associated with how satisfied non­teleworkers are with their teleworking coworkers. Further, coworker dissatisfaction is related to increased turnover intentions. In other studies, Golden and colleagues explore how teleworking affects knowledge sharing and the effects of manager teleworking. Kelliher, C., and D. Anderson. “For Better or for Worse? An Analysis of How Flexible Working Practices Influence Employees’ Perceptions of Job Quality.” International Journal of Human Resource Management 19.3 (2008): 419–431. Examines the relationship between flexible working practices, including remote work and flexible scheduling options, and perceptions of job quality. They find that flexible work largely improves perceptions of job quality, particularly in the dimensions of control and autonomy. It also reduced stress for most workers but increased stress for some. However, flexible work was perceived as having a detrimental effect on opportunities for learning and advancement. Kelliher, C., and D. Anderson. “Doing More With Less? Flexible Working Practices and the Intensification of Work.” Human Relations 63.1 (2010): 83–106. This study finds, in line with prior work, that flexible working practices are associated with higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, this study also finds increased work intensification for those who work remotely and who work flexible schedules. They propose a social exchange theory explanation in that workers feel a need to trade increased effort for the flexibility given. MacDuffie, J. P. “12 HRM and Distributed Work: Managing People Across Distances.” The Academy of Management Annals 1.1 (2007): 549–615. MacDuffie reviews a growing literature on geographically distributed work, specifically highlighting the human resource strategies that support virtual teams. He contrasts strategies that minimize distance with those that increase capacity for coping with distance. He also emphasizes the importance of attending to different dimensions of distance—cultural, administrative, and economic—in managing a blended workforce with standard and nonstandard workers. Rockmann, K. W., and M. G. Pratt. “Contagious Offsite Work and the Lonely Office: The Unintended Consequences of Distributed Work.” Academy of Management Discoveries 1.2 (2015): 150–164. Like Golden 2007, this study examines the effects of remote work arrangements on the coworkers in the office. They find that coworkers choose to work remotely not only for traditional reasons but also because of what they see their coworkers doing. In this way, remote work can spread contagiously through an organization, as can perceptions of remote work. Flex Scheduled Work Alternative work arrangements often provide for variations in the timing and duration of work, including arrangements such as flextime and compressed work weeks. Kossek and Michel 2011 suggest that only half of employees work a standard fixed daytime work schedule of five days a week. Wood 2016 notes some work schedules are made flexible to meet the needs of the firm, particularly variation in product and service demand. Other flexible work schedules help meet the needs of workers. With more than 80 percent of US families being dual­career or single parent, more workers are juggling work and family demands resulting in the need for more flexible work schedules. Comparing six countries, Hamermesh and Stancanelli 2015 documents that Americans are working more “strange hours”—nights and weekend hours— than most of the developed world. Research has identified individual and organizational benefits and costs associated with offering flexible work schedules. Kossek and Michel 2011 suggests that by offering flexible schedules, companies are more likely to attract and retain high­ skill workers who reciprocate with more engagement, productivity, or quality work and less absenteeism, turnover, or accidents. Although flexible schedules, including ubiquitous access to electronic communications, often leads to work spillover into non­work life, which can increase work­family conflict (Allen, et al. 2013; Butts, et al. 2015). Hornung, et al. 2008 find that flexible schedules are often negotiated as part of idiosyncratic deals, or I­deals, which have been found to reduce work­family conflict and unpaid overtime. However, there are costs associated with individually negotiated flexible work schedules. Leslie, et al. 2012 warns that for full­time employees, schedule flexibility often comes with a stigma, contributing to lower wages, poorer performance reviews, and marginalization. In particular, Rogier and Padgett 2004 finds that women who work flexible schedules are perceived as having less job­career dedication and advancement motivation. To mitigate these costs, Perlow and Kelly 2014 and Kelly, et al. 2011 recommend organizations should develop system­wide flexible work practices, which lead to increased schedule control and reduced turnover. Allen, T. D., R. C. Johnson, K. M. Kiburz, and K. M. Shockley. “Work–Family Conflict and Flexible Work Arrangements: Deconstructing Flexibility.” Personnel Psychology 66.2 (2013): 345–376. Allen and colleagues conducted a meta­analysis of the effects of workplace flexibility on work­family conflict. They compare the effects of different dimensions of workplace flexibility, including flexible schedules versus flexible location, and availability versus use of flexible arrangements. They find that flexible work arrangements have only mild effects on reducing work­family conflict, flextime being more impactful than flexplace, along with other more nuanced findings about use and availability. Butts, M. M., W. J. Becker, and W. R. Boswell. “Hot Buttons and Time Sinks: The Effects of Electronic Communication During Nonwork Time on Emotions and Work­Nonwork Conflict.” Academy of Management Journal 58.3 (2015): 763–788. This study uses experience sampling to examine how electronic communication during non­work time influences employee emotional responses and work­nonwork conflict. They specifically explore the effects of the affective tone and time demands of the electronic communication. They found that affective tone and time demands are associated with angry responses, which are associated with work­ nonwork conflict. They also find an interaction effect of abusive supervision strengthening the effects of the communication. Hamermesh, D. S., and E. Stancanelli. “Long Workweeks and Strange Hours.” ILR Review 68.5 (2015): 1007–1018. Using survey data from the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, this study finds that US workweeks are long compared to the European countries, and that Americans are more likely to work nights and weekends. Further, the propensity for Americans to work evening or “strange hours” is only minimally related to their long workweeks. Hornung, S., D. M. Rousseau, and J. Glaser. “Creating Flexible Work Arrangements Through Idiosyncratic Deals.” Journal of Applied Psychology 93.3 (2008): 655–664. In a study of a German government agency, Hornung and colleagues found that flexible work arrangements and personal initiative were positively related to the negotiation of idiosyncratic deals (“i­deals”). They also found that i­deals including flexibility in hours of work were negatively related to work­family conflict and working unpaid overtime, but unrelated to organizational commitment. These authors have several studies on the antecedents and effects of various types of i­deals. Kelly, E., P. Moen, and E. Tranby. “Changing Workplaces to Reduce Work­Family Conflict: Schedule Control in a White­Collar Organization.” American Sociological. Review. 76.2 (2011): 265–290. This study uses longitudinal data before and after a workplace initiative to increase employees’ schedule control to see whether it affects work­family conflict. The initiative, called the Results­Only Work Environment (ROWE), increased schedule control and reduced work­family conflict for employees with high and low job demands. The effectiveness of the initiative demonstrates the importance of schedule control for our understanding of job quality. Kossek, E. E., and J. S. Michel. “Flexible Work Schedules.” In Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Building and Developing the Organization. Edited by S. Zedeck, 535–572. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2011. This chapter provides a detailed review of OB research on flexible work schedules. Reviews relevant theories, motivations for flexible work practices, measurement and conceptualization challenges, individual and organizational outcomes, and directions for future research. Leslie, L. M., C. F. Manchester, T. Y. Park, and S. A. Mehng. “Flexible Work Practices: A Source of Career Premiums or Penalties?” Academy of Management Journal 55.6 (2012): 1407–1428. Drawing on theory on signaling and attribution, this study examines how the use of flexible work practices affects employees’ career success. The article finds that taking advantage of flexible work practices has career benefits when managers make productivity attributions and has career costs when managers make personal life attributions. In other words, perceptions of why employees adopt flexible work practices affect whether it helps or hurts their career success. Perlow, L. A., and E. L. Kelly. “Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life.” Work and Occupations 41.1 (2014): 111–134. Flexible work practices in organizations typically follow an accommodation model, helping individuals accommodate their work demands with no changes in the work structure or culture: this may lead to negative views of those who adopt flexible scheduling. This article discusses a “work redesign model,” illustrated by two specific cases, that alters the structure and culture of work to enable more flexible work without negative repercussion. Rogier, S. A., and M. Y. Padgett. “The Impact of Utilizing a Flexible Work Schedule on the Perceived Career Advancement Potential of Women.” Human Resource Development Quarterly 15.1 (2004): 89–106. This study demonstrates that women who work a flexible schedule are perceived as having less career advancement potential than women who work a regular schedule. Women on a flexible schedule were perceived as having less job­career dedication and less advancement motivation. Wood, A. J. “Flexible Scheduling, Degradation of Job Quality and Barriers to Collective Voice.” Human Relations 69.10 (2016): 1989–2010. This qualitative study unpacks the negative effects of manager­controlled schedule flexibility on perceptions of job quality and work­life balance. Many of the studies on the benefits of schedule flexibility fail to recognize the distinction between worker­controlled flexibility and manager­controlled flexibility. Lower­skilled workers are more likely to suffer from negative effects of manager­controlled flexibility. On­Demand Work A relatively recent phenomena, starting in 2011, research on the on­demand economy is burgeoning. Sundararajan 2016 and Scholz 2016; (see Books and Edited Volumes) provides a thorough historical overview on the on­demand economy tracing it from its predecessors of Ebay, Craiglist, and Kozmo. The introduction of an on­demand company into a marketplace can have adaptive effects, such as creating new organizational structures as described by Valentine, et al. 2017 (cited under New Forms of Organizing), and disruptive effects, such as increasing competition in counterpart occupations (Cramer and Krueger 2016) and industries as documents by Cramer and Krueger 2016 and Zervas, et al. 2014, respectively. Sundararajan 2016 argues this more benign form of capitalism—“crowd­based­capitalism”—spreads the impact of capital and worker autonomy. Workers’ experience and financial earnings vary across working contexts (on crowdsourcing see Brawley and Pury 2016; on driving platforms see Hall and Krueger 2016; Rosenblat and Stark 2016; Lee, et al. 2015; on financial earnings see Farrell and Greig 2016). Rockmann and Ballinger 2017 finds that on­demand work meet psychological needs, thus, increasing intrinsic motivation and organizational identification. However, the on­demand economy is not without a dark side. With managerial control being placed in the hands of algorithms and the absence of traditional legal oversights, participants in the on­demand economy are at risk for exploitation (Rosenblat and Stark 2016; Lee, et al. 2015) and discrimination (Edelman, et al. 2017; Hannák, et al. 2017). Brawley, A. M., and C. L. Pury. “Work Experiences on MTurk: Job Satisfaction, Turnover, and Information Sharing.” Computers in Human Behavior 54 (2016): 531–546. One of the few studies explicitly examining the working behavior of MTurk workers, as opposed to their comparability to undergraduate subject pools. Similar to traditional workplace contexts, MTurkers job satisfaction was consistently negatively related to turnover; however, traditional predictors of job satisfaction were insignificant, suggesting that new theoretical concepts may need to developed to understand the experience of crowd­sourced workers. Cramer, J., and A. B. Krueger. “Disruptive Change in the Taxi Business: The Case of Uber.” The American Economic Review 106.5 (2016): 177–182. One of the first comparisons between an on­demand company and its traditional organizational counterpart, this article suggests the rising market presence of Uber is partly based on inefficiencies in the taxi industry. Specifically, four factors contribute to higher utilization rate of Uber cars: Uber’s matching algorithm, large­scale and flexible labor supply, and surge pricing, as well as inefficient taxi regulation. Edelman, B., M. Luca, and D. Svirsky. “Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence From a Field Experiment.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9.2 (2017): 1–22. In an experiment on Airbnb, this study finds that applications from guests with distinctively African American names are 16 percent less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctly white names. Farrell, Diana and Fiona Greig. “Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy.” New York: JPMorgan Chase Institute, 2016. A rich empirical report on consumers’ and workers’ financial transactions with on­demand­platforms using consumer account data. Hall, J. V., and A. B. Krueger. An Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber’s Driver­Partners in the United States (No. w22843). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016. First comprehensive analysis of the labor market of Uber’s driver­partners based on survey and administrative data. Suggests that workers share more similar characteristics with the general workforce (as opposed to taxi drivers and chauffeurs) and value flexibility. Hannák, A., C. Wagner, D. Garcia, A. Mislove, M. Strohmaier, and C. Wilson. “Bias in Online Freelance Marketplaces: Evidence from TaskRabbit and Fiverr.” In Proceeding of the 35th American Computing Machinery Cooperative Supported Computer Work. 1914–1933, 2017. Finds that gender and race are significantly correlated to worker evaluations in two on­demand platforms. Lee, M. K., D. Kusbit, E. Metsky, and L. Dabbish. “Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data­Driven Management on Human Workers.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1603–1612. Seoul, South Korea: ACM, 2015. Seminal paper coined the term “algorithmic management,” that is, how human jobs are assigned, optimized, and evaluated through algorithms and tracked data. Explores how workers feel toward algorithmically assigned work and optimization. Rockmann, K. W., and G. A. Ballinger. “Intrinsic Motivation and Organizational Identification Among On­Demand Workers.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 102.9 (2017): 1305–1316 (2017). By fulfilling innate psychological needs, on­demand work will further develop intrinsic motivation and, correspondingly, organizational identification with the on­demand firm for workers. Rosenblat, A., and L. Stark. “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers.” International Journal of Communication. 10 (2016): 3758–3784. Questions the role of platforms in shaping the power relations and communications between employers and workers. Suggests that Uber leverages significant indirect control over how drivers do their jobs by exacerbating the information and power asymmetries between the platform and workers. Sundararajan, A. The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd­Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Foundational book explores the origins and social and economic implications of this emerging world of work, coining the term “crowd­based capitalism” as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism. Zervas, G., D. Proserpio, and J. W. Byers. “The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry.” Journal of Marketing Research 54.5 (2014): 687–705. The introduction of Airbnb to a marketplace results in less aggressive hotel pricing, suggesting an impact that benefits all consumers not just platform consumers. Related Concepts In this last section, we review several related themes that emerged in the literature on the new world of work. We start by reviewing the impact of technology on how people experience their work. We then consider how alternative work arrangements impact workers’ identity and career trajectories. Then we provide some references to alternative forms of organizing happening in response to alternative work arrangements. Finally, we discuss the older cousin to the on­demand economy, the sharing economy. Adverse Effects of Technology As described previously, technology is increasingly facilitating flexibility in when, where, and how work is accomplished. These flexibility affordances offer numerous individual and organizational benefits. However, the increasing prevalence of technology in our social lives has several potential harmful effects. Work is increasingly characterized by virtuality, with interactions increasingly mediated by technology. Dodgson, et al. 2013 presents a striking example of this in a case describing virtual simulations used at IBM where virtual worlds are created with digital characterizations of people and objects in which they can interact. These virtual worlds offer opportunities for enhanced organizational learning by facilitating playful engagement with the technology. But it is precisely the lack of realness, which makes it playful, that also reflects what Turkle 2011 describes as the banalities of electronic interaction. Turkle warns that our growing propensity to rely on technology to mediate social interactions creates a dependence on technology. We treat technology as people, and “invent ways of being with people that turn them into something close to objects” (p. 168). Technology can constrain capacity for human expression in social interactions, dampening our emotional lives and creating a new solidarity. Turkle also described 21st­century technology as a corporate trap that keeps us tethered to our screens. Perlow 2012 is a popular book on “sleeping with your smartphone” and it similarly describes how the purported flexibility technology provides to work wherever you are causes people to work wherever they are. Mazmanian, et al. 2013 examine this “autonomy paradox” and finds that the flexibility that comes with mobile devices intensifies expectations of availability, reducing workers’ ability to disconnect from their work. Another stream of research has explored the effects of the increasing surveillance made possible by technology. Sewell and Barker 2006 and Sewell, et al. 2012 find that surveillance can be approached and/or viewed as coercive, legitimate, or intrusive. Watson, et al. 2013 found that performance monitoring can create apprehension and reduce learning and skill development, another example of how technology in the workplace can be experienced as dehumanizing. Dodgson, M., D. M. Gann, and N. Phillips. “Organizational Learning and the Technology of Foolishness: The Case of Virtual Worlds at IBM.” Organization Science 24.5 (2013): 1358–1376. This exploratory case study examines the use of virtualization technology to facilitate organizational learning. With this technology, they create virtual worlds with digital representations of people, objects, and processes, which creates opportunities for playful engagement in meetings, rehearsals, and brainstorming sessions. They discuss how play, facilitated by technology, enhances learning. Mazmanian, M., W. J. Orlikowski, and J. Yates. “The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals.” Organization Science 24.5 (2013): 1337–1357. Mazmanian and colleagues interviewed forty­eight knowledge workers to explore how their use of mobile devices in their work affected their autonomy over when and where they worked. They found that in the short term, mobile devices did create a sense of increased autonomy. But over time, there emerged a collective expectation that workers should always be available to respond to work messages, and an escalating engagement that ultimately diminished autonomy. Perlow, L. A. Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2012. In this popular book, Leslie Perlow outlines the costs associated with always being connected to your work, and how teams can collaboratively encourage more disconnecting from work. By disconnecting from work while at home, employees become more satisfied with their work and their work­life balance; and thus they become more efficient and effective at work. Sewell, G., and J. R. Barker. “Coercion Versus Care: Using Irony to Make Sense of Organizational Surveillance.” Academy of Management Review 31.4 (2006): 934–961. Sewell and Barker review the literature on organizational surveillance, which presents two opposing views of surveillance: surveillance as a form of caring, and surveillance as a form of coercion. They then consider how organizational members grapple with these opposing messages to find the “true” meaning of surveillance in their organization. They propose a similar strategy for an organizational research program on the meaning of surveillance. Sewell, G., J. R. Barker, and D. Nyberg. “Working Under Intensive Surveillance: When Does ‘Measuring Everything That Moves’ Become Intolerable?” Human Relations 65.2 (2012): 189–215. This study is an empirical illustration of the theory paper above. Observes how call­center employees alternate between seeing surveillance as a legitimate managerial tool serving everyone in the organization and as an intrusive device serving a narrow interests. From their findings, they outline a framework for dialectical analysis of performance management that moves beyond rigidly opposing categories. Turkle S. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011. Turkle presents compelling insights on the social and human costs of becoming increasingly dependent on technology to satisfy social needs. Technology dehumanizes social interaction by constraining emotional expression and inhibiting genuine presence. She warns of the increasing social isolation people will experience as they turn to technology to constantly mediate social interaction. Watson, A. M., L. Foster Thompson, J. V. Rudolph, T. J. Whelan, T. S. Behrend, and A. L. Gissel. “When Big Brother is Watching: Goal Orientation Shapes Reactions to Electronic Monitoring During Online Training.” Journal of Applied Psychology 98.4 (2013): 642–657. Examines how the use of electronic performance monitoring in web­based training can negatively affect learning and skill development from the training. They find that participants who were high in “avoid performance goal orientation” experienced greater apprehension and decreased skill attainment with asynchronous monitoring. Participants who were high in “prove performance goal orientation” experienced greater apprehension and decreased skill attainment with real­time monitoring. Job Sequencing and Identity Management in Contemporary Careers One line of research explores how workers craft careers outside of traditional organizational careers ladders. Arthur and Rousseau 1996 describe the concept of boundaryless careers or careers that cross physical and psychological boundaries. One example of a boundaryless career ae academics and real estate agents whose career mobility and value are sustained by external social networks. Hall 2004 focuses on a related construct: protean careers where individuals’ subjective values (e.g., success) drive employment decisions. More recent work uses different theoretical lenses, such as identity, to look at the subjective experiences of workers in alternative working arrangements. Workers who lack the psychological and physical structure of a profession or organization must develop alternative ways of constructing identities, maintaining professional relationships, and crafting job sequences. George and Chattopadhyay 2005 find that contract workers identify with both the contracting organization and the client. Petriglieri, et al. 2017 describe how workers create connections to people, places, routines, and a broader purpose to handle the emotional challenges of working independently. Brianna Caza and colleagues (Caza, et al. 2017) look at multiple job holders who craft authentic identities across workplaces. Similarly, Petriglieri, et al. 2017 workers who craft careers, sequencing jobs across multiple organizations, craft portable selves to help adapt to their current and future organizations. From a hiring perspective, Leung 2014 finds that employers value individuals with somewhat erratic career progressions of similar jobs. Arthur, M. B., and D. M. Rousseau, eds. The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Boundaryless careers are marked by physical and psychological mobility in that careers sequences are not orderly or tied to a single organization. Offers six definitions of meanings of boundaryless careers including careers that draw validation and marketability from outside the present employer (e.g., academics), are sustained by external networks or information (e.g., real­estate agent), and moving across organizational boundaries (e.g., stereotypical Silicon Valley career). Caza, B. B., S. M. Moss, and H. Vaughan. “Being, Feeling, and Seeming Me: The Process of Authenticating Multiple Work Identities in the Context of Multiple Job Holding.” Administrative Science Quarterly 63.4 (2017): 703–745. Explores the identity practices multiple job holders develop to cope with the struggles of working across multiple work contexts. Finds that for people with multiple valued identities, authenticity is the result of creating and holding cognitive and social space for several versions of one’s true self. George, E., and P. Chattopadhyay. “One Foot in Each Camp: The Dual Identification of Contract Workers.” Administrative Science Quarterly 50 (2005): 68–99. Explores the dual identification of contract workers, noting that contract workers identify with both the employing and client organizations based on perceived characteristics of the organization as well as social relations within the organization. Finds that perceived characteristics of the organization are more closely related to identification with the employer and social relation relations variables are more closely reacted with identification with the client. Hall, D. T. “The Protean Career: A Quarter­Century Journey.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 65.1 (2004): 1–13. Review of protean careers, a career orientation in which the worker’s core values are driving career decisions and where the main success criteria are subjective (i.e., psychological success). Leung, M. D. “Dilettante or Renaissance Person? How the Order of Job Experiences Affects Hiring in an External Labor Market 1.” American Sociological Review 79.1 (2014): 136–158. In a study of an online crowdsourced labor market for freelancers, Leung finds that employers prefer individuals with a somewhat erratic career path, demonstrated by moving incrementally between similar jobs. Petriglieri, G., S. Ashford, and A. Wrzesniewski. “Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities.” Administrative Science Quarterly 64.3 (2018): 1–47. Absent organizational or professional membership, workers create a psychological holding environment through cultivating connections to people, places, routines, and a broader purpose. Holding environments enable individuals to make sense of the broad array of emotions experienced in their working lives. Petriglieri, G., J. L. Petriglieri, and J. D. Wood. “Fast Tracks and Inner Journeys: Crafting Portable Shelves for Contemporary Careers.” Administrative Science Quarterly 63.3 (2017): 479–525. Workers in contemporary careers craft portable selves that can be deployed across organizations. Portable selves serve to anchor participants to their current organization while preparing them for future assignments. New Forms of Organizing As workers are becoming increasingly detached from traditional organizations, with increased flexibility in employment, scheduling, and work location, they are coming together in new ways to provide the structure and support they otherwise lack. For example, Garrett, et al. 2017 finds that independent workers are increasingly joining coworking spaces, paying membership fees for access to a physical space and membership in a social community. Faraj, et al. 2011 and O’Mahony and Lakhani 2011 document that technology is also facilitating the emergence of online communities as a new mode of organizing, which enables knowledge sharing and collaboration among workers in alternative work arrangements. O’Mahony and Ferraro 2007 work on open­source communities and Valentine and colleagues (Valentine, et al. 2017). research on “flash organizations” demonstrates how workers are able to self­organize in order to accomplish complex goals, while still maintaining a level of independence and flexibility absent a formal organizational structure. Even in the on­demand economy, independent contractors (e.g., Uber drivers) are organizing to support each other and coordinate interests in order to limit the control of the platform organizers (e.g., Uber) (see Scholz 2016 cited under Sharing Economy). These new forms of organizing call for new organizational theorizing and revising outdated theories to reflect the new world of work. Faraj, S., S. L. Jarvenpaa, and A. Majchrzak. “Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities.” Organization Science 22.5 (2011): 1224–1239. Faraj and colleagues unpack the nature of online communities, a growing, virtual organizational form of knowledge collaboration. They find that online communities are characterized by fluid, dynamic flows of resources in and out of the community. This fluidity creates tensions, which can be generative as participants dynamically create roles, channel participation, and evolve technology affordances. Garrett, L. E., G. M. Spreitzer, and P. A. Bacevice. “Co­Constructing a Sense of Community at Work: The Emergence of Community in Coworking Spaces.” Organization Studies 38.6 (2017): 821–842. This qualitative study of a coworking space demonstrates how independent workers work together to co­construct a sense of community that is accessible to each member and customizable according to the members’ individual desires for engagement. The case shows how autonomy and flexibility enables a more authentic community to emerge in a coworking space than is often experienced in traditional organizations. O’Mahony, S., and F. Ferraro. “The Emergence of Governance in an Open Source Community.” Academy of Management Journal 50.5 (2007): 1079–1106. Using qualitative and quantitative data, O’Mahony and Ferraro examine how an open source software community, with porous boundaries and no obvious hierarchy, generate a governance structure. They find that through a dynamic process, the group came to a shared understanding of formal authority, which they only supported when they created mechanisms to limit that authority and preserve democratic control. O’Mahony, S., and K. R. Lakhani. “Organizations in the Shadow of Communities.” In Communities and Organizations. Edited by Chris Marquis and Royston Greenwood. 3–36. London: Emerald Group Publishing, 2011. O’Mahony and Lakhani review the concept of community and its relevance to organizational theories, illustrating how communities contribute to inspiring the creation of formal organizations, mediating the growth and performance of organizations, competing against formal organizations, and living beyond the death of formal organizations. They argue that community forms have been neglected in organizational theory despite their increasing relevance. Valentine, M. A., D. Retelny, A. To, N. Rahmati, T. Doshi, and M. S. Bernstein. “Flash Organizations: Crowdsourcing Complex Work by Structuring Crowds As Organizations.” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 3523–3537. Denver: ACM, 2017. Valentine and colleagues introduce the idea of flash organizations—crowdsourced workers structured like organizations—to achieve complex and open­ended goals such as website development and product development. Sharing Economy Originally described as an alternative to market­based systems, sharing economy marketplaces traditionally allowed for goods and services to be bartered or exchanged through an alternative currency, such as time (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Sundararajan 2016). Schor and Fitzmaurice 2015 proposes a typology of sharing economy marketplaces based on platform orientation and type. In a study of sharing economy participants, Hamari, et al. 2016 reports intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors, such as enjoyability, cost savings, and wanting to create a more sustainable planet. More recent work has critiqued the growth of the sharing economy, noting the difference between the sharing economy’s widely articulated goals of openness and equity and actual practices. For example, Scholz 2016 disagrees that platforms such as Uber be considered part of the sharing economy, as their main benefactors are its owners and investors. Schor, et al. 2016 notes how participants in sharing economy marketplaces use culture capital to segregate, excluding low­status members. Lastly, Dillahunt and Malone 2015 notes how members of disadvantaged communities are often unable to enter the sharing economy due to lack of trust. Botsman, R., and R. Rogers. What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harper Business, 2010. Traces the evolution of a new consumer culture—collaborative consumption—where value lies in having access to an object as opposed to owning the object itself. Dillahunt, T. R., and A. R. Malone. “The Promise of the Sharing Economy Among Disadvantaged Communities.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2285–2294. Seoul: ACM, 2015. A lack of trust in platform technology makes it challenging for those in disadvantaged communities to access the sharing economy. Hamari, J., M. Sjöklint, and A. Ukkonen. “The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67.9 (2016): 2047–2059. Participation in the sharing economy is motivated by ecological sustainability (intrinsic motivation) and cost savings (extrinsic motivation). Scholz, T. Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. Provides a history and typology of sharing economy companies. Argues that much of the sharing economy has been co­opted by market forces and suggests an alternative ownership structure (platform cooperatives) to fairly coordinate activities. Schor, J. B., and C. J. Fitzmaurice. “Collaborating and Connecting: The Emergence of the Sharing Economy.” In Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption (2015). Edited by Lucia Reisch and John Thogerson, 410–425. Cheltham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2015 Explores how the digital technologies have enabled trust and reputation to be established without face­to­face contact. Proposes a typology of the sharing­economy based on type of provider (peer­to­peer or business to peer) and platform orientation (for profit or not for profit). Schor, J. B., C. Fitzmaurice, L. B. Carfagna, W. Attwood­Charles, and E. D. Poteat. “Paradoxes of Openness and Distinction in the Sharing Economy.” Poetics 54 (2016): 66–81. Using evidence from four sharing economy marketplaces, argues that inequality is reproduced through micro­level interactions that exclude individuals based on cultural capital. Sundararajan, A. The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd­Based Capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Provides a historical overview of the sharing economy and charts its evolution to the on­demand economy. Highlights the important policy implications of the sharing economy and suggests possible new directions for self­regulatory organizations, labor law, and funding the social safety net. back to top Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.