Technology and Innovation Commons^™

The Big, Gig Picture: We Can't Assume The Same Constructs Matter, Alice M. Brawley Newlin

Management Faculty Publications

I am concerned about industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology's relevance to the gig economy, defined here as the broad trends toward technology-based platform work. This sort of work happens on apps like Uber (where the app connects drivers and riders) and sites like MTurk (where human intelligence tasks, or HITs, are advertised to workers on behalf of requesters). We carry on with I-O research and practice as if technology comprises only things (e.g., phones, websites, platforms) that we use to assess applicants and complete work. However, technology has much more radically restructured work as we know it, to happen in …