Amazon Mechanical Turk and the commodification of labour

Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:New technology, work, and employment work, and employment, 2014-11, Vol.29 (3), p.213-223
Main Authors: Bergvall-Kåreborn, Birgitta, Howcroft, Debra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amazon
Boundaries
Cost
Crowd employment
Crowds
Crowdsourcing
Digital labour
Employees
Employment
Enabling ICT (AERI)
Geography
ICT firms
Information systems
Informationssystem
Internet
Labour costs
Labour force
Law
Mechanical Turk
Minimum wage
Möjliggörande IKT (FOI)
New technology
Obligation
Outsourcing
Platform
Regulation
Risk
Studies
Technology
Turks
Websites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables firms to shift costs and offload risk as they access a flexible, scalable workforce that sits outside the traditional boundaries of labour laws and regulations. The micro‐tasks of ‘clickwork’ are tedious, repetitive and poorly paid, with remuneration often well below minimum wage. This article will present an analysis of one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites—Mechanical Turk—to illuminate how Amazon's platform enables an array of companies to access digital labour at low cost and without any of the associated social protection or moral obligation.
ISSN:0268-1072
1468-005X
1468-005X
DOI:10.1111/ntwe.12038