[AISWorld] HICSS-57: CFP Minitrack on the Crowdsourcing and the Digital Workforce in the Gig Economy Mini-track

[Taylor, Joseph D]

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services and content by soliciting voluntary contributions in the form of an open call from a large network of individuals rather than an organization's employees or suppliers. For organizations, crowdsourcing provides an online marketplace to tap into the labor and intelligence crowd. While crowdsourcing has been found to potentially provide new opportunities for workers, others have identified the legal and regulatory challenges associated with foster equitable, sustainable development through digital mediated work.
During the past decade, scholars from different disciplines have paid increasing attention to the design and development of crowd-based platforms and the intelligence and innovation arising from crowdsourced contests and competitions. Studies on the technical systems and collective intelligence are informative, but our understanding of the crowdsourcing phenomenon cannot be complete without a comprehensive understanding of the crowd itself, the work made available on the digital platform, work conditions, and its institutional, regulatory and societal impacts.
More broadly, crowdsourcing contributes to the growth of the gig economy, the labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs, enabled by on-demand apps such as Uber and TaskRabbit. A new kind of flexible structure in the gig economy replaces the fixed employer-employee relationship in traditional organizations. While the new, flexible structure in gig work affords extreme flexibility, it is also associated with instability in income and shifting of risks to workers.  For example, the platform companies have shifted the operation risks from the employer to the worker because the platforms do not provide workers with training, health or retirement benefits. Moreover, workers participating on different types of platforms, i.e., for "place-based work" or "remote work," are likely to experience different types of risks in gig work. While much western research considers this work precarious, we call for indigenous theorizing of this phenomenon in non-western environments. With the increasing concerns in the gig work and gig economy, coupled with increasing oversight by regulatory bodies, it is important for both academia and policy makers to not only understand the work conditions and the impact of gig work on workers but also propose solutions to address the concerns.
We believe that this minitrack is well positioned to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues in the technology-enabled and mediated crowdsourcing work environments. As discussed above, the digital platforms provide crowd workers with open, easy, and free access to gig work, creating and sustaining the crowdsourcing-based online labor market. However, a power asymmetry exists: the crowdsourcing platforms privilege the platform owners who have the power to control the digital work environments (such as the sourcing models, compensation models, and work policies) but disadvantage the crowd workers who felt being ignored and marginalized. Such power asymmetry provides opportunities for abuse in the crowdsourcing work environments. Thus, we call for research that critically examines the current work conditions and policies on the digital platforms and propose new work processes, platform designs and polices to enhance the digital work environments and foster social inclusion and equity. In this regard, our minitrack answers the call by the IS community to enhance the DEI in relation to IS and IT development, use, and impacts.
Finally, it's important for both academia and industry to better understand the impact of the post pandemic transformation on work and workforce participating in both remote and place-based gig work. In the long term, technological developments at the intersection of crowdsourcing, gig work platforms and AI can potentially shape work at different levels. Research on the future of work and the essential skills and abilities of future workforce will update our knowledge and broaden our visions about the next generation of workforce.
Thus, this minitrack calls for research on the three critical aspects of crowdsourcing, gig work, and digital workforce. Potential issues and topics on crowd workers and digital workforce include, but are not limited to:
*       Diversity, equity, and inclusion in crowdsourcing work environments
*       Employment relations in online labor platforms
*       Ethical issues in the gig labor market and managing the gig workforce
*       Gig work in developing economies
*       Gig work and workers in post pandemic work environments
*       Gig work risk, worker behavior and performance
*       Gig workers' participation, motivation and work-life balance
*       Gig work conditions
*       Global workforce in crowdsourcing and gig economy
*       Information technology and gig work
*       Integrating gig work into the remote workforce
*       Labor agency in the gig labor market
*       Online communities of gig workers
*       Organizational and regulatory challenges in the gig economy
*       Psychological aspects of digital platforms on workers (e.g., Technostress, Well-being)
*       Regulatory oversight of gig work platforms and labor market
*       Skill development and career pathways of gig workforce
*       Technology advancement, AI and future of work

Important Dates for Paper Submission

June 15, 2023 | 11:59 pm HST:           Submission Deadline
August 17, 2023 | 11:59 pm HST:        Notification of Acceptance/Rejection
September 22, 2023|11:59 pm HST:  Deadline for Submission of Final Manuscript for Publication
October 1, 2023 | 11:59 pm HST:        Deadline for at least one author to register for HICSS-57
Minitrack Co-Chairs:
Joseph Taylor (Primary Contact)
California State University, Sacramento
joseph.taylor at csus.edu<mailto:joseph.taylor at csus.edu>
Lauri Wessel
European University Viadrina Frankfurt and and Norwegian University of Science and Technology
wessel at europa-uni.de<mailto:wessel at europa-uni.de>
Jan-Hendrik Passoth
Chair for Sociology of Technology
European University Viadrina Frankfurt
passoth at europa-uni.de<mailto:passoth at europa-uni.de>