Algorithmic Management in the Platform Economy

  • David Stark
  • Ivana Pais
Keywords: Algorithmic management, platforms, Taylorism, rankings, organizational forms

Abstract

The platform model is the distinguishing organizational form of the early decades of the twenty-first century. Whereas actors in markets contract, hierarchies command, and networks collaborate, platforms co-opt assets, resources, and activities that are not part of the firm. As a distinctive organizational form, the platform model confronts a distinctive managerial challenge: how to manage value-creating activities that are undertaken on the platform but not in the firm? In a triangular geometry, platform owners co-opt the behavior of providers and users, enrolling them in the practices of algorithmic management without managerial authority having been delegated to them. Acting on their own behalf, the ratings and other activities of providers and consumers are algorithmically translated into rankings and other calculating devices that circulate through feedback loops that are twisted rather than circular. Algorithmic management involves a peculiar kind of cybernetic control because at each fold of the feedback loop accountability can be deflected and denied. Whereas Scientific Management in the early twentieth century offered a legitimating principle for the growth of a new managerial class, algorithmic management in the early twenty-first century is reshaping the managerial class. Its power asymmetries at the organizational level are related to coalitions at the regulatory level in which platform owner and investors are in alliance with platform consumers.

Author Biographies

David Stark

Professor of Social Science at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom) and Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology at Columbia University Department of Sociology (USA). Address: 116th Street and Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA.

Ivana Pais

Associate Professor in Economic Sociology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), Milan (Italy). Address: Largo A.Gemelli1, 20123, Milan, Italy.

Published
2021-06-01
How to Cite
StarkD., & PaisI. (2021). Algorithmic Management in the Platform Economy . Journal of Economic Sociology, 22(3), 71-103. Retrieved from https://vo.hse.ru/index.php/ecsoc/article/view/12527
Section
New Translations