ILPC 2027

Winner Takes All: Bidding and contesting for highly skilled work on internet platforms

Jörg Flecker, University of Vienna

Pamela Meil, Institute for Social Science Research, Munich
Annika Schönauer, Working Life Research Centre FORBA, Vienna

Philip Schörpf, Working Life Research Centre FORBA, Vienna

 User generated content is a term describing active internet contributors, who put in a „certain amount of creative effort“, which is „created outside of professional routines and platforms“and then is published in some context. Other related aspects of user generated content are „User Innovation“, defined as innovation by intermediate users (firms, individuals or user communities) rather than suppliers (producers or manufacturers) (Bogers et al. 2010) and „Crowdsourcing,“ the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it…in the form of an open call: Both by peer production, but also by…individuals. The crucial prerequisite is … the open call and the large network of potential laborers. (Howe 2006) The user receives (potentially) …economic rewards, social recognition, development of skills, while the crowdsourcer obtains what the user has brought to the venture. User-generated content is largely perceived as a form of peer production or cooperative work which potentially has democratizing effects by promoting free access, new opportunities, user empowerment, and alternative forms of entry in professions. Crowdwork, however, carried out in the framework of crowdsourcing through the use of platform intermediaries, has been seen as an extension or extreme version of outsourcing and offshoring developments that have been carried out as strategies in traditional industrial and service companies for some time. As such, it has been linked to processes of standardization and codification among what had been relatively complex work tasks and functions.

Currently we are witnessing developments in the use of digital media which represent a fusion of processes, combining aspects of global value chains, user-generated content, and crowdworking which have a number of ramifications for working conditions, employment security, work content and work flows within and between companies, and wages. These developments also affect a broad range of occupations: from creative professions such as designers, writers, and artists to highly skilled technical professions such as engineers, technical designers, and software developers.

The paper looks at jobs being offered through internet platform sites in Germany and Austria for creative workers and technically skilled professions both in terms of the target group, the type of work, the means of applying, the remuneration, and the contract form. It also utilizes data from interviews conducted with creative crowdworkers in Austria. A number of issues are raised concerning the outsourcing of highly skilled work to platforms and on the shifting configuration of value chains between individual workers, intermediate employers and companies. The analysis examines processes of fragmentation of work, integration of work processes between units in the chain, forms of management control, implications for careers and reputations of the workers, as well as implications for existing employment regulation. The paper will also begin to explore how work processes between external and internal units in the chain are segregated and re-integrated.