When ‘who’s in charge?’ is ambiguous: Managerial repair of worker-client breakdowns in relational gig work | WIP Seminar with Laura Lam

HYBRID DELIVERY

Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 892 0661 9255
Passcode: wip

Organizations with distributed or gig-like workforces face unique challenges in balancing formal and informal managerial control. While algorithms enable scalability, these formal controls often falter in relational work, such as care provision, where performance is subjective and expectations vary. Drawing on the literature on interpersonal breakdowns, this study examines how managers repair worker–client disruptions in a homecare agency that distributed control of directing work to workers. Based on an 18-month ethnography, I identify two main repair practices - procedural (rule-based) and relational (mutuality-oriented) - and show that successful repair depends on their strategic combination. Managers used complementary configurations, counterbalancing the type of repair with the nature of the breakdown, to restore alignment without undermining distributed control. This research extends control theory by showing how managers layer informal repair practices in settings with minimal formal control.

Laura Lam is a PhD student at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto where she holds a SSHRC J.A. Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and she is a 2022-2023 R.F. Harney Graduate Research Fellow. She is a researcher at the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) program in Migration and Integration and her research interest is at the nexus of migration, precarious employment and gender, with a focus on the use of app-based digital labour platforms. She has previously worked in a marketing capacity with various startups and technology accelerators, and currently co-owns an employment-based social enterprise based in Vancouver, The Good Chocolatier.

Our CIRHR Work-In-Progress Seminar series allows members of our community to discuss early-stage research. Future guest speakers include:

• September 24, Daisy Pollenne, Postdoctoral Fellow, INSEAD
• October 22, Sajdeep Soomal, PhD student, Department of History
• November 12, Jason Sockin, Assistant Professor, Cornell University