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  • 2021
  • Working Paper

Being the Boss: Gig Workers' Value of Flexible Work

By: Laura Katsnelson and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Workers who join the gig economy face a challenging trade-off. Gig work provides worktime flexibility and a sense of being one’s own boss, but gig workers forgo certain protections that employees enjoy. In this paper, we study the work patterns of a large sample of... View Details
Keywords: Gig Workers; Flexible Work Arrangements; Worker Welfare; Labor; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms
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  • November 2022
  • Case

Para: Pay Transparency and Gig Drivers' Rights

By: Christopher Stanton and George Gonzalez
The case presents the founding vision and early days of a young startup that seeks to empower delivery drivers with tools and transparency. The company's flagship mobile app has been taken up by tens of thousands of delivery drivers across major U.S. cities who use it... View Details
Keywords: Gig Workers; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Disruptive Innovation; Compensation and Benefits; Technology Industry; San Francisco
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  • Forthcoming
  • Article

Who Benefits from Online Gig Economy Platforms?

By: Christopher T. Stanton and Catherine Thomas
Online labor platforms for short-term, remote work have many more job seekers than available jobs. Despite their relative abundance, workers capture a substantial share of the surplus from transactions. We draw this conclusion from demand estimates that imply workers'... View Details
Keywords: Gig Economy; Knowledge Workers; Online Platforms; Job Search; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Wages; Demand and Consumers
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  • September 24, 2021
  • Article

A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy

By: Li Jin, Scott Duke Kominers and Lila Shroff
Platforms are fundamentally changing the contract between workers and companies—and the workers and creatives that create value for platform companies, and rely on platforms for their livelihoods, often have little power when it comes to getting their concerns... View Details
Keywords: Gig Workers; Decentralized Collective Action; Internet and the Web; Labor; Labor and Management Relations; Digital Platforms
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  • 03 Jul 2020
  • News

Gig Workers Are Here to Stay. It’s Time to Give Them Benefits.

Keywords: Alex Rosenblat
  • November–December 2023
  • Article

Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets

By: Isamar Troncoso and Lan Luo
Profile pictures are a key component of many freelancing platforms, a design choice that can impact hiring and matching outcomes. In this paper, we examine how appearance-based perceptions of a freelancer’s fit for the job (i.e., whether a freelancer "looks the part"... View Details
Keywords: Freelancers; Gig Workers; Demographics; Prejudice and Bias; Selection and Staffing; Jobs and Positions; Analytics and Data Science
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  • 17 Nov 2020
  • News

Building the On-Demand Workforce (Report)

Keywords: gig workers; gig economy
  • 22 May 2019
  • Podcast

From gig to gig: Thumbtack’s CEO on the challenges facing contract workers

The phrase “gig worker” often conjures an image of a driver providing a routine service for low pay. But freelancers provide services on a contracted, or “gig,” basis in a wide range of fields from cosmetology to carpentry. In this episode, Joe hosts Thumbtack CEO... View Details
  • 24 Sep 2021
  • News

A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy

Keywords: Gig economy; gig workers
  • 20 Sep 2021
  • Research & Ideas

How Much Is Freedom Worth? For Gig Workers, a Lot.

For some gig workers, losing the flexibility to set their own schedules is equivalent to taking a 17 percent pay cut, according to new research that explores the wages and work habits of DoorDash drivers. App-based platforms that allow... View Details
Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Technology
  • 18 Oct 2021
  • Blog Post

How Much is Freedom Worth? For Gig Workers, a Lot.

For some gig workers, losing the flexibility to set their own schedules is equivalent to taking a 17 percent pay cut, according to new research that explores the wages and work habits of DoorDash drivers. App-based platforms that allow... View Details
Keywords: Consumer Products
  • 28 Apr 2022
  • Research & Ideas

Can You Buy Creativity in the Gig Economy?

workers to get their creative juices flowing. “It turns out, on average, these gig workers are very responsive to competition,” says Zhu, who co-authored the forthcoming... View Details
Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds
  • December 2022
  • Article

Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market

By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. We study the effects of competition on gig workers' effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell... View Details
Keywords: Gig Workers; Platform-based Markets; Novel Writing; Creative Production; Platform Bias; Employment; Digital Platforms; Creativity; Books; Competition; Contracts
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  • 09 Oct 2024
  • Podcast

Worker welfare: From theory to tangible good

Good Business Lab cofounder Anant Nyshadham on demonstrating the ROI of better worker conditions and getting from academic exercise to large-scale implementation. View Details
  • 25 Feb 2020
  • News

Task Force

the hands of consumers. Workers have three options for compensation: mobile phone credit, bank transfers, or digital gift cards for brands including Amazon, Netflix, Starbucks, and Uber. The idea for Zubale evolved over time. One... View Details
Keywords: Julia Hanna; gig economy; Retail Trade
  • January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
  • Case

Brigad: The Future of Work

By: Nien-he Hsieh, Elena Corsi and Daniela Beyersdorfer
In 2019 Florent Malbranche, CEO and co-founder of the French tech startup Brigad, pondered the next growth steps. Founded in 2015, Brigad’s objective was two-fold: to help restaurants and bars find qualified staff for punctual shifts, and to make it easier for... View Details
Keywords: Platform Business; Gig Economy; Regulation; Entrepreneurship; Marketplace Matching; Growth and Development Strategy
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  • 07 Nov 2023
  • Research & Ideas

When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look the Part'

graphic design. Freelancers constituted 36 percent of the US workforce in 2021, according to Upwork, a freelance platform. Aiming to establish trust in this largely virtual gig world, many platforms encourage freelancers to include a... View Details
Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis
  • 11 Aug 2020
  • Blog Post

Supporting Independent Workers During COVID-19: One Phone Call at a Time

work remotely during the pandemic, but for a huge swath of the population, working from home was simply not an option. This was especially true for many gig workers and small business owners – it’s tough to... View Details
  • 20 Nov 2024
  • Podcast

Beyond exit interviews: Knowing why workers quit makes for better job matches

Thinking of employees as 'hiring' their jobs opens the way to a detailed analysis of worker motivations, frustrations, and long-term goals, which can reduce costly turnover and make career development a collaborative process. Harvard Business School professor Ethan... View Details
  • November–December 2020
  • Article

Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan
As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal... View Details
Keywords: Talent Acquisition; Platforms; Skilled Labor Recruitment; Gig Economy; Talent and Talent Management; Selection and Staffing; Internet and the Web; Strategy; Digital Platforms
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