"AlgoWork": DFG-funded follow-up project started on December 1, 2023

In December 2021, the project "Algorithmic Control: Implications for Workforce from a Legitimacy Perspective" (AlgoWork) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), was launched. The project is carried out in close cooperation between the Chair of Information Systems, esp. Business Engineering at TU Dresden (Prof. Martin Wiener) and the Department of Information Systems & E-Services at TU Darmstadt (Prof. Alexander Benlian).
Following the initial project phase, we were now able to successfully obtain an extension and will continue the project for another two years until December 2025.

The goal of the research project AlgoWork is to examine the conceptual nature and worker-level implications of algorithmic control (AC), broadly defined as the managerial use of sophisticated algorithms along with advanced information technology (IT) as a means to align worker behaviors with organizational objectives.

During the first phase of the project, several articles have been published in leading journals and at leading international conferences, significantly expanding the state of research on AC. In a first step, a conceptual framework for AC was developed to provide the research community with a shared understanding of AC (Hirsch et al., 2023). Building on this framework, the project team developed the first ever AC scale in the course of a comprehensive scale development process (Alizadeh et al., 2023a, 2023b) to enable quantitative studies in the field of AC research in the future. Further studies examined the phenomenon of AC from various perspectives and addressed, among others, workers' resistance against AC practices (Jiang, 2023; Jiang et al., 2021), workers legitimacy judgments of AC practices (Wiener et al., 2021), or the emergence of "technostress" through the use of AC (Cram et al., 2022).

In the further course of the project, the focus will now initially be on developing a taxonomy of AC systems as an extension of the AC framework and the AC scale, as well as deriving archetypes of AC systems from this taxonomy. Furthermore, in addition to examining AC in the context of the platform economy, where AC initially emerged, the area of traditional, non-platform organizations will also be given greater focus, as AC practices are increasingly being used here as well. The question of how workers resist against AC practices will also be intensively addressed in the further course of the project with the aim of developing a process model that reflects the different types of workforce resistance against AC practices.

The overarching goal of the research project is to contribute to the responsible design and use of AC systems. Both in terms of the practical use of AC and in terms of the design of regulatory efforts by policy-makers. The project thus also fits under the broader umbrella of the future of work and is expected to add valuable insights to this body of research.
 

References

Alizadeh, A., Hirsch, F., Benlian, A., Wiener, M., & Cram, W. A. (2023a). Measuring Workers’ Perceptions of Algorithmic Control: Item Development and Content Validity Assessment. HICSS Proceedings.

Alizadeh, A., Hirsch, F., Benlian, A., Wiener, M., & Cram, W. A. (2023b). Perceived Algorithmic Control: Conceptualization and Scale Development. ECIS Proceedings.

Cram, A. W., Wiener, M., Tarafdar, M., & Benlian, A. (2022). Examining the Impact of Algorithmic Control on Uber Drivers’ Technostress. Journal of Management Information Systems, 39(2), 426-453.

Hirsch, F., Alizadeh, A., Wiener, M., & Cram, A. W. (2023). Algorithmic Control in Platform and Traditional Work Settings: An Updated Conceptual Framework. ECIS Proceedings.

Jiang, J. (2023). Covert Resistance Against Algorithmic Control on Online Labor Platforms - A Systematic Literature Review. ECIS Proceedings

Jiang, J., Adam, M., & Benlian, A. (2021). Algoactivistic Practices in Ridesharing-A Topic Modeling & Grounded Theory Approach. ECIS Proceedings.

Wiener, M., Cram, A. W., & Benlian, A. (2021). Algorithmic control and gig workers: a legitimacy perspective of Uber drivers. European Journal of Information Systems, 32(3), 485-507.