PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

In this paper, we examine to what extent crowdsourcing by work organizations as a form of outsourcing of work activities via digital platforms implicates changes in the inequality structure of the employment system. The mediation and organization via platforms seems to replace a workplace specific structuring of crowdworkers’ working conditions. However, this is only partially the case. Based on relational inequality theory this paper emphasizes that the design of crowdsourcing and crowdworking is part of negotiation processes within work organizations with specific inequality regimes which comprise different consequences for regular employees as well as crowdworkers. On the one hand, this applies to the question whether employees within work organizations are substituted or threatened in their work gratifications by crowdsourcing, or whether crowdwork supports existing processes in the work organization. On the other hand, it concerns whether crowdworkers are exploited by work organizations, or whether crowdwork is an alternative form of employment that fits to certain life stages and patterns.