Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers
15 May 2024
11:00 -12:30
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Room W2.01 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Organisational Theory and Information Systems Seminar
Speaker: Dr Hatim Rahman, Kellogg School of Management
About the seminar topic
Organisations increasingly use algorithms to determine who gets hired, how workers are evaluated, and even who gets fired. To examine the implications of organisations’ use of algorithms in the labor process, I conducted a longitudinal study of one the largest digital labor platforms for high-skilled work. I found workers were confronted with and responded to the algorithms controlling them in ways that existing theory does not adequately account for.
First, new workers engaged in practices which inadvertently contributed to suboptimal wages and inefficient job matching when then they encountered the cold start problem: the algorithm struggled to recommend new workers to jobs primarily because they had no prior rating history. Second, for experienced workers who obtain a rating evaluation, the platform’s algorithms create what I call reputational interdependence: the platform’s algorithms share workers’ rating scores within and across other digital platforms and organisations, without workers’ consent or control. Together, I theorise and elaborate on how the increasing use of algorithms in the labour process signals a profound shift in the way markets and organisations try to categorise and ultimately control workers, compared to previous forms of control.
Speaker bio
Hatim A Rahman is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organisations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. His research investigates how artificial intelligence, undergirded by algorithms, is impacting the nature of work and employment relationships in organisations and labour markets.
This research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, Academy of Management Annals, and Academy of Management Discoveries. His research and teaching have received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER award. In 2023, he was named as one of the best 40 business school professors under 40 years of age by Poets & Quants.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.