The Consequences of Visibility and Opaqueness for Platform Workers

Abstract

Digital technologies can considerably increase the visibility of people’s behaviours and activities, and therefore researchers should pay more attention to visibility and opaqueness in organisations. This paper focuses on visibility in terms of the information given or mediated to workers. The aim of this paper is to examine consequences of visibility for workers who carry out work tasks through digital labour platforms. The research will focus on how visibility or opaqueness in practice promotes or hinders workers’ capacity to act and to make informed choices in their work. The visibility paradoxes of connectivity, performance and transparency are used as methodical lenses. The same platform operations can have both empowering and marginalising consequences for workers. While labour platforms continuously improve visibility to workers, they may also hide, inadvertently or intentionally, key information.