网络平台劳动的合约特征、实践挑战与治理路径

Contractual Features of Online Platform Labor, Practical Challenges and Governance Approaches

随着信息网络技术的发展和应用,平台经济催生出形态各异的网络平台劳动,日渐成为数字化时代就业方式和劳动组织最引人注目的新变化.实践表明,网络平台劳动不同程度地实现了弹性用工、包容性就业和工作自主,但同时也弱化了劳动权益保障和就业安全.本文基于双边市场理论视角,通过文献梳理,全面阐释了网络平台劳动的合约特征、劳动关系管理挑战及治理路径,并提出了进一步研究的理论分析框架,以期为丰富和发展中国情境下的网络平台劳动研究提供借鉴和参考.

Summary:The advent of online platform labor,which arises from platform economy in Web2.0 era,has become the most appealing change with regard to the employment mode and labor organization in digital era.In practice,because of different work content and operation modes,online platform labor has been given different names,such as cloud work,crowdwork,gig worker,Uberization,etc.In recent years,based on the theoretical perspectives from different disciplines such as labor economics,political economy of communications,sociology and computer science,a great deal of exploratory researches have been made regarding online platform labor and thus some preliminary understandings of its new forms and new features have been achieved.In essence,online platform labor can be recognized as a kind of new labor,which is premised on information and communication technology,mediated through the internet platform,digitally carried out by algorithms,and finally realizes exact match-making of labor on demand and intelligentized management of labor process.From the perspectives of the economics of two-sided markets,this paper fully elaborates contractual features of online platform labor,addresses main challenges to labor relationship management,outlines possible ways for improving online labor platform governance,and identifies some significant themes and weakness in the research on online platform labor,in order to provide some helpful reference and guidance for enriching future research in the Chinese context.of one product will damage the performance of its competitors.This negative spillover is asymmetric among products with different brand strength.Products with higher brand strength have a larger spillover effect on products with lower brand strength,while they get less affected by other brands.Products sharing the same brand name could generate value transfer and have a positive spillover effect among each other.What’s more,despite of the resistance to the negative spillover from competitive brands,strong brands suffer more loss from their negative WOM.Therefore,it is especially important for them to maintain positive online WOM.This study makes three main theoretical contributions.Firstly,previous studies tend to focus only on the direct effect of online reviews on product performance,while this research discusses its spillover effect based on the accessibility-diagnosticity framework,expanding the perspectives on the effect of online reviews.Secondly,this research emphasizes the important role that brands play in the online environment and provides a new angle to analyze the interaction of traditional business characteristics and the online environment.Although social media has dramatically changed the way how a business reaches its customers,building a strong brand is still crucial to gain competitive advantages.Thirdly,this research examines and discusses how reviews of different valence affect online WOM and how this effect differs among brands,contributing new empirical evidence to the usefulness of online reviews.