Organizing And Controlling Strategies For Gig Economy And Traditional Economy

Organizing and Controlling In Traditional Economy

Question:

Discuss about the Organizing and Controlling Gig Economy for Employees.

Increased demand of part time job significantly modified the contemporary structure of the world economy. Though the contemporary economy is fully functional around the world, a new economic trend came up in recent time and is developing in significant pace that is gig economy. Gig economy is operating side by side with the contemporary form. Both the employees and employers due to the unique characteristics exploit the benefit of this particular type of economy. The basic characteristics that need to be followed to be characterised under gig economy are irregular schedule, employee’s investment, platform based arrangement and task based salary (De Stefano 2015). The employees willing to focus on part type job are enabled to earn from this economic structure, whereas the employers with low economic stability can utilise this economy. Investment in the gig economy is significantly less compared to the traditional one. However, this makes it hard for the management of gig economy to control their work and workers, as there is no face-to-face interaction between the employees and management. Hence, it is important to reconsider organising and controlling strategies in the gig economy.

It is an all time effort of the management of any organisation to control their workforce for attaining greater control over the organisational performance. A fine example of control can be retention of employees for longer period. Goetsch and Davis (2014) argued that management’s control over the employees is essential factor for ensuring organisation performance. Greater control will help in directing workforce and attaining organisational goals. It further helps in estimating the future performance, which in turn will help in reformulating organisational goal. Managements historically incorporated a number of strategies for controlling their workers to attain greater organisational performance. Gandolfi (2013) argued that organisational structure plays vital role in organising and controlling the workflow and performance of the workers. The organisation structure again depends on the need and is modified accordingly with the organisational goal. Hence, it is possible to conclude from the article that there is no universal organisational structure, which will be effective for every company in controlling their workers. However, Gandolfi (2013) opposed the view of affectivity of multiple organisational structure and communicated the need of horizontal structure in controlling the workforce in capitalism economy. Horizontal or flat structure of an organisation is composed of two primary layers. Each and every employees working in the organisation have to directly report to the top management of the company. However, Tran and Tian (2013) criticised the efficiency of horizontal structure in case of larger organisation, where vertical structure represents greater applicability. This enables the organisation to empower departmental managers to take necessary decisions for the attaining greater performance and controlling the workers.

Organizing and Controlling In Gig Economy

Bernardin and Wiatrowski (2013) on the other hand prioritised performance appraisal for gaining greater control over the workers. According to the authors, it is important for the management to have understanding of their employee performance. This will help them in identifying the need of guidance of individual worker in the organisation and need of extended control for extracting greater performance. Ahmad and Afthanorhan (2014) supported the need of performance appraisal and communicated the need of performance matrix in organising employees within the organisation. This will help evaluating the input given by the employees and the expenses carried out on the particular employees. The final performance is then acquired from the comparison of the factors incorporated in the matrix.

Emanuel et al. (2013) extended the use of performance appraisal and related it with the performance standard. This is considered as one of the important strategy implemented by the organisations to control their employee performance. The management applying this strategy sets target for individual employees working in the organisation that needs to be achieved within certain time frame. The targets are again related with the incentive policies where the employees receive additional benefits for achieving the target set by the organisation.

Lastly, Giltinane (2013) related leadership style with the organising and controlling of it employees. According to the employees, need of leadership is beyond motivating individual workers and have significant role in organising and controlling the employees and their contribution to the institution. McCleskey (2014) further proposed the efficiency of situational leadership in controlling the workers. The author argued that the altercative leadership represents the highest level of control over the employees, however fails in motivating them. Hence, according to their findings, the situational leadership can provide greater efficiency as the managers using this leadership can change according to the situational need and organise workers to satisfy the needs.

Strategies useful in gig economy largely differ from the ones used in the capitalistic economy due to the nature of the both. The primary reason controlling the strategies and altering them for the gig economy is the less formal structure of the organisation where the employees and managers are in less or no face-to-face interaction. Hence, it becomes difficult to control the workforce in the gig economic settings. The strategies effective in gig economy are as follows.

The first and foremost strategy as proposed by Gandolfi (2013) is the performance standard strategy. The companies like uber that are operating in the gig economy follow this strategy for stabilising their workflow. This enables them to gain considerable control over their employees. A basic target is set for the employees, which they need to achieve for the full payment of their basic salary. Overshoot achieved is considered as the incentive. This not only helps the company to maintain their performance and standard of products and services, but also works helps them in motivating their employees and drive them for claiming the incentive proposed. Emanuel et al. (2013) further argued that the performance standards for the gig economy is considerably high compared to the capitalistic for gaining better control. However, the overall structure of the strategy remains constant in both the cases.

Strategies for Controlling Workers in Gig Economy

Outsourcing can be another strategy for controlling employees in gig economy. Outsourcing as explained by Milberg and Winkler (2013) is the strategy incorporated by the organisations that distributes the responsibilities of production or services to the third party. The third party is then responsible for controlling the production and services. Incorporation of this strategy will help the companies release their tension of performance measurement, as it will rest with the party concerned. The third party organisations will be responsible for hiring and retaining the employees where as well as managing the same. The only concern of the company is to receive the amount of work required from the outsourced company.  This will both reduce the costing and responsibilities while satisfying the need of control.

Lastly, implementation of technology in monitoring is another control strategy the companies in gig economy can adopt. As argued by Costa et al. (2013) monitoring using technology will enable the company to keep constant track on the worker. This will help knowing the progress made by the employees and the gap between the achievement and target. The company can then communicate with the employee according to the performance provided. For example, the management of online product Delivery Company can track their employees through GPS tracking devices. They can further use technology in tracking on the progress made by the individual employee and direct them according to the need for attaining success. Costa et al. (2013) further argued that this is required for tracking the gig employees as the contingent economy does not require this as the management has daily interaction possibilities.

The gig economies provide a number of advantages and disadvantages for both the employee and the employers. These benefits have the potential to lead either direction of dystopia or utopia. Dystopia a referred by Lobel (2017) is the unpleasant state of the world that leads to distraction of social or cultural stability. Utopia on the other hand is the idea state of the society that brings tranquillity and harmony. Hence, replacement of capitalistic economy into gig economy can possibly bring either of dystopian or utopian state of the society. As argued by Kenney and Zysman (2015), gig economy provides a number of opportunity for the employer that involves lower cost, easy and fast hiring and settlement, employment of individual form different time zone and working with multiple specialised freelances. Hiring a freelancer provides opportunity for the employers to hire staffs for a comparatively low cost that reduces incurred cost. Furthermore, the resources used by the employees in case of gig economy are their own and company does not hold the liability to carry the incurred cost in the process. Abraham et al. (2017) further argued that the company working in gig economy can hire their employees from different that ensures twenty-four hours of input that raises the organisational performance. This enables the companies to satisfy the customer need and provide them the necessary service around the clock. This further enables the mixture of different culture and society. These factors can contribute in towards the development of utopian society in the future.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Gig Economy

Employees on the other hand gains opportunity of flexibility (De Stefano 2015). The employees having issues with time and feasibility to attend office can easily earn through this new economic setup. For example, the potential employees like homemakers, single mother can avail this for sustaining their families. This enables them to chose their time and place of work, hence facilitating them with the opportunity concentrate on children’s development. The flexible workplace and time interests many of the modern generation as they can conduct multiple work at a time and enjoy their lives fulfilling their desires. Hence, this can bring stability in the family structure by providing them the opportunity to nourish both at a single point of time. Hence, this can contribute towards better society expected in an utopian society.

Security on the other hand is one of the major issues that have the potential of leading to the dystopian society as this can alter the social balance. The companies in this economic structure loose their control over employees due to the less visibility. Hence, the performance can likely be compromised due to the flexibility. As opined by Haripershad and Johnston (2017), this can give raise to the ethical issue form the employee side as it they can take leverage of the situation and provide less input towards the organisational goal. Moreover, organisational failure can again be related to the social disability as it fails to serve the societal need.

Conclusion

Conclusion can be drawn from the above that gig economy provides a number of opportunities that can lead to the attainment of utopian society, which can further bring social stability. However, the adverse effect calculated by the scholar can cause ethical dilemma and direct the society towards dystopia. However, the proposed control mechanism can help the organisations in retaining their control over their employees. Retaining the control over employees can help them eradicating the issues identified and stop it from leading towards dystopia.

Reference

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Costa, A., Keane, M.M., Torrens, J.I. and Corry, E., 2013. Building operation and energy performance: Monitoring, analysis and optimisation toolkit. Applied Energy, 101, pp.310-316.

De Stefano, V., 2015. The Rise of the Just-in-Time Workforce: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork, and Labor Protection in the Gig-Economy. Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J., 37, p.471.

Emanuel, M., Sherry, J., Catapano, S., Cornman, L. and Robinson, P., 2013. In situ performance standard for eddy dissipation rate. In Preprint and Recording, 16th Conf. of Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology, Austin, TX, Amer. Meteor. Soc (Vol. 11).

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Giltinane, C.L., 2013. Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard (through 2013), 27(41), p.35.

Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Haripershad, S. and Johnston, K., 2017, July. Impact of the Gig Economy (Uber and AirBnB) in South Africa. In ECSM 2017 4th European Conference on Social Media (p. 146). Academic Conferences and publishing limited.

Kenney, M. and Zysman, J., 2015, June. Choosing a future in the platform economy: the implications and consequences of digital platforms. In Kauffman Foundation New Entrepreneurial Growth Conference (Vol. 156160).

Lobel, O., 2017. The Gig Economy & The Future of Employment and Labor Law. USFL Rev., 51, p.51.

McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.

Milberg, W. and Winkler, D., 2013. Outsourcing economics: global value chains in capitalist development. Cambridge University Press.

Tran, Q. and Tian, Y., 2013. Organizational structure: Influencing factors and impact on a firm. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 3(2), p.229.