University of Twente Student Theses
Exploring the HR management of crowdworkers : who does what?
Becking, A.W.J. (2018) Exploring the HR management of crowdworkers : who does what?
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| Abstract: | The rise of the internet allows organizations to make use of new ways of working, such as crowdsourcing. When using crowdsourcing, a task is outsourced by a requestor to an undefined group of people, called the crowd via an online platform. The fact that crowdworkers are not formally seen as employees of these platform, but are likely to still be managed led to the following research question: ‘What HR practices are used for managing crowdworkers and who is responsible for executing these practices?’ In order to be able to answer this question, data was gathered by conducting an exploratory case study at a crowdsourcing platform active in the food delivery industry, called Food@home. Data was gathered by conducting interviews with platform representatives, such as the country manager, supply associates, rider support associates and crowdworkers. Next to these interviews, data was collected by conducting participant observations. These participant observations were done by becoming active as crowdworker for the platform and start delivering meals. It became clear that a wide variety of HR practices is present within the Food@home ecosystem and the ecosystem all actors bear responsibility for the execution of these practices. Some interesting findings include; the selection process was found to be really short, to get to get crowdworkers on the road as soon as possible; training was delivered to restaurants but due to institutional pressures, crowdworkers did not receive real training; both restaurants and requestors have and influence on the job design of the task performed by the crowdworker; incentives were in used to get the crowdworkers on the road, and to keep them on the road. When coming back to the answer of the research question, it can be said that the actors together are responsible for the execution of those HR practices that are being used to manage the entire ecosystem. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Administration MSc (60644) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/75930 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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