 When gig workers become essential: Leveraging customer moral self-awareness beyond COVID-19Julian Friedland and David B. Balkin Business Horizons, 2023, vol. 66, issue 2, 181-190 Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic intensified economic reliance on gig workers that perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad-hoc tasking services within the developed and developing world. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as low-skilled laborers but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. These workers’ newly elevated moral and economic status increases consumer demand for corporate social responsibility toward this stakeholder group, specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves against potential reputational crises. To do this, we propose a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory that leverages customers’ self-perceived virtuosity to increase gig-worker freedom. Keywords: Algorithms; Ethical branding; Empathy; Well-being; Workers’ rights (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:66:y:2023:i:2:p:181-190 DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2022.05.003 Access Statistics for this article Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier |
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