Line managers and the gig economy: an oxymoron? Paradox navigation in online labor platform contexts

This chapter discusses the implications of platform-enabled gig work for line managers. Platform-enabled gig work concerns short-term work assignments (or "gigs") where supply and demand for labor is matched by online labor platforms like Uber, Deliveroo and Fiverr. Many gig workers do not have an employment relationship with the platform they work for and are managed by software algorithms that automate HRM activities and managerial decision making. In this chapter, we ask the question whether OLPs diminish the role and status of line managers or render them more important than ever? We argue that the role of line managers in the gig economy involves the navigation of the paradoxes posed by online labor platforms. These paradoxes - and ways to navigate them - are different depending on whether line managers (1) are employed by a standalone freelance platform, (2) source labor using a freelance platform, (3) work for an organization that has a spin-off freelance platform, (4) organize an intra-organizational gig platform themselves, or (5) supervise workers that perform work via an intra-organizational gig platform.