Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Critical Success Factors for the Future of Work in Gig Economy: Determinants for Gig Entrepreneurs

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Sustainability in the Gig Economy

  • 1648 Accesses

Abstract

The gig economy provides a platform for work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution presenting the highest publicized form of work of the century. Gig economy has become a key enabling the development of future work. The growth of this new form of work in various industries is spontaneous and accelerating at a terrific speed sweeping through industries. Several concerns have emerged across practices such as asserting the benefits and costs as contested in the emerging debates. The critical concern is whether the gig economy can survive the upswing of labour market demands, thus positing the actual determinants of critical success factors. This chapter focuses on conceptualization of just-in-time workforce and the key motivators of entrepreneurial drive to be in this economy. This chapter on critical success factors strengthens emerging labour issues in the perspective of legal imperatives, beyond misclassification of transformation of work in gig economy such as perceptions and attitudes of the future workforce. Recommendations for managing the future workforce as the way forward are considered as a way of retooling talent management practices. In conclusion, the economic environment continues to be disrupted by numerous global megatrends that continue to shape the development of the gig economy. Gig workers and employers need to take these emerging trends into consideration to be resilient.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abraham, K. G., Haltiwanger, J., Sandusky, K., & Spletzer, J. R. (2016). Measuring the gig economy. Society of Labor Economists Annual Meetings.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abraham, K. G., Haltiwanger, J., Sandusky, K., & Spletzer, J. (2019). The rise of the gig economy: Fact or fiction? AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 357–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Adams, A., Freedman, J., & Prassl, J. (2018). Rethinking legal taxonomies for the gig economy. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 34(3), 475–794.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allon, G., Cohen, M., & Sinchaisri, W. (2018). The impact of behavioural and economic drivers on gig economy workers. Available at SSRN 3274628.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aloisi, A. (2015). The rising of on-demand work: A case study research on a set of online platforms and apps. The IV regulating for decent work conference. Geneva: ILO. Retrieved February 9, 2021, from https://hci.cs.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/elaw/cs889/reading/turkopticon.pdf

  • Ashford, S. J., Caza, B. B., & Reid, E. M. (2018). From surviving to thriving in the gig economy: A research agenda for individuals in the new world of work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 38, 23–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asih, S. N., Sucahyo, Y. G., Gandhi, A., & Ruldeviyani, Y. (2019). Inhibiting motivating factors on online gig economy client in Indonesia. 2019 International conference on advanced computer science and information systems (ICACSIS) (pp. 349–356). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Auditianto, A. S., Gandhi, A., & Ruldeviyani, Y. (2019). Discovering the influencing factors of physical gig economy usage: Quantitative approach on clients9 perception. 2019 International conference on advanced computer science and information systems (ICACSIS) (pp. 357–362). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banwari, V. (2018). Gig economy: challenges and opportunities in India. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, 5(1), 314–420.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berg, J. (2016). Income security in the on-demand economy: Findings and policy lessons from a survey of crowd workers. Comparative Laboratory and Policy Journal, 37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burtch, G., Carnahan, S., & Greenwood, B. N. (2018). Can you gig it? An empirical examination of the gig economy and entrepreneurial activity. Management Science, 64(12), 5497–5520.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carr, C., Hall, R., Mason, A., & Varney, E. (2017). Cueing employability in the gig economy: Effects of task-relevant and task-irrelevant information on Fiverr. Management Communication Quarterly, 31(3), 409–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherry, M. A., & Aloisi, A. (2017). Dependent contractors’ in the gig economy: A comparative approach. AM UL Rev, 3, 635.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cho, W., & Cho, S.-E. (2020). Entrepreneurial challenges in business model for the gig economy: Agendas for research and business development. International Journal of Entrepreneurship, 24(1), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Churchill, B., & Craig, L. (2019). Gender in the gig economy: Men and women using digital platforms to secure work in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 55(4), 741–761.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Stefano, V. (2015). The rise of the just-in-time workforce: On-demand work, crowd work, and labour protections in the gig economy. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 37, 471.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Stefano, V. (2016). Introduction: Crowdsourcing, the gig economy, and the law. Comparative Labor Law and Policy, 37(3).

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloitte. (2017). The 2017 Deloitte millennial survey—Apprehensive millennials: Seeking stability and opportunities in an uncertain world. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deng, X., Taylor, J., & Moussawi, S. (2020). Introduction to the minitrack on crowdsourcing and digital workforce in the gig economy. Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dokko, J., Mumford, M., & Schanzenbach, D. W. (2015). Workers and the online gig economy. The Hamilton Project, 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donovan, S. A., Bradley, D. H., & Shimabukuru, J. O. (2016). What does the gig economy mean for workers?

    Google Scholar 

  • Dubrin, A. (2018). Tolerating ambiguity for leadership and professional effectiveness. Page Publishing Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • EY Global. (2018). The gig economy: A chance to control your costs of accelerating your growth. EY Global. Retrieved February 8, 2021, from https://www.ey.com/en_gl/growth/the-gig-economy--a-chance-to-control-your-costs-or-accelerate-yo

  • Gerber, S., & Krzywdzinski, M. (2019). Brave new digital work? New forms of performance in crowd work. Work and Labor in the Digital Age. Emerald Publishing Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gol, E., Stein, M., & Avital, M. (2019). Crowd work platform governance toward organizational value creation. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 28(2), 175–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goods, C., Veen, A., & Barratt, T. (2019). Is your gig any good? Analyzing job quality in the Australian platform-based food-delivery sector. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(4), 502–527.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, M., & Woodcock, J. (2018). Towards a fairer platform economy: Introducing the fair work foundation. Alternate Routes, 29, 242–253.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenwood, B., Burtch, G., & Carnahan, S. (2017). Unknowns of the gig economy. Communications of the ACM, 60(7), 27–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, S., & Krueger, A. (2015). A proposal for modernizing labour laws for twenty-first-century work: The independent worker. Retrieved February 8, 2021, from https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Proposal_for_Modernizing_Labor_Laws_fo.html?hl=&id=CrR8jwEACAAJ

  • Healy, J., Nicholson, D., & Pekarek, A. (2017). Should we take the gig economy seriously? Labor and Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work, 27(3), 232–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/10301763.2017.1377048

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heeks, R. (2017). Decent work and the digital gig economy: A developing country perspective on employment impacts and standards in online outsourcing, crowd work, etc. Development Informatics Working Paper, 71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ho, C., Slivkins, A., Suri, S., & Vaughan, J. (2015). Incentivizing high-quality crowd work. Proceedings of the 24 international conference on world wide web, (pp. 419–429).

    Google Scholar 

  • Houstoun, L. (2003). Business improvements districts (2 ed.). Urban Land Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howcroft, D., & Bergvall-Kåreborn, B. (2019). A typology of crowd work platforms. Work, Employment, and Society, 33(1), 21–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hsiao, J. C., Moser, C., Schoenebeck, S., & Dillahunt, T. R. (2018). The role of demographics, trust, computer self-efficacy, and ease of use in the sharing economy. Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCAS conference on computing and sustainable societies, (pp. 1–11).

    Google Scholar 

  • Huang, K., Yao, J., & Yin, M. (2019). Understanding the skill provision in gig economy from a network perspective: A case study of Fiverr. Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, 3(CSCW), (pp. 1–23).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, A., Samman, E., Tapfuma, S., & Mwaura, G. (2019). Women in the gig economy: Paid work, care and flexibility in Kenya. London: Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

    Google Scholar 

  • Irani, L., & Silberman, M. (2013). Turkopticon: Interrupting worker invisibility in Amazon mechanical Tuk. The SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irani, L. (2015). Difference and dependence among digital workers: The case of Amazon mechanical Turk. South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(1), 225–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jabagi, N., Croteau, A., Audebrand, L., & Marsan, J. (2019). Gig workers’ motivation: Thinking beyond carrots and sticks. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnes, G. (2019). The gig economy in the UK: A regional perspective. Journal of Global Responsibility.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaine, S., & Josserand, E. (2019). The organization and experience of work in the gig economy. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(4), 479–501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kalleberg, A. (2000). Nonstandard employment relations: Part-time, temporary and contract work. 26, 341–365. https://doi.org/10.1146/annual.soc.26.1.341

  • Karlsson, K., & Wranne, J. (2019). Motivation in the gig economy: A case study of gig workers in the IT and business consulting industry. Master of science THESIS. KTH Royal Institue of Technology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, K. M. (2016). The rise of the “Gig Economy” and implications for understanding work and workers. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 9(1), 157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lehdonvirta, V. (2018). Flexibility in the gig economy: Managing time on three online piecework platforms. New Technology, Work and Employment, 33(1), 13–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lobel, O. (2017). The economy and the future of employment and labour law. USFL Review, 51, 51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mahmod, M., & Hassan, H. (2020). Spatial crowdsourcing: Opportunities and challenges in motivating Malaysian women’s participation in gig economy. 2020 IEEE conference on e-learning, e-management and e-services (IC3e) (pp. 76–81). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Margaryan, A. (2019). Workplace learning in crowd work. Journal of Workplace Learning.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKinsey Global Institute. (2015). A labor market that works. Connecting talent with opportunity in the digital age. McKinsey Global Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKinsey Global Institute. (2016). Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy. McKinsey Global Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mukhopadhyay, B., & Chatwin, C. R. (2020). The significance of Herzberg and taylor for the gig economy of China: Evaluating gigger incentives for Meituan and Ele. Me. International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics, 9(4), 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nedelkoska, L., & Quintini, G. (2018). Automation, skills use and training, OECD social, employment and migration working papers. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/2e2f4eea-en

  • Ng’weno, A., & Porteous, D. (2018). Let’s be real: The informal sector and the gig economy are the future, and the present, of work in Africa. District of Columbia: Center for Global Development. Retrieved from http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/509519

  • Petriglieri, G., Ashford, S. J., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2018). Thriving in the gig economy. (April), (pp. 140–143). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2018/03/thriving-in-the-gig-economy

  • Poon, T. S. (2018). Independent workers: Growth, trends, categories, and employee relations implications in the emerging gig economy. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 31(1), 63–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prassl, J. (2015). The concept of the employer. Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Prassl, J. (2018). Humans as a service: The promise and perils of work in gig economy (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ratcliffe, J., & Flanagan, S. (2004). Enhancing the vitality and viability of town and city centres; The concept of the business improvement district in the context of tourism enterprise. Property Management, 22(5), 377–395. https://doi.org/10.1108/02637470410571210

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, J., Wardale, D., & Lord, L. (2019). The double-edged sword of a seasonal academic career. Higher Education Research and Development, 38(3), 623–637.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silberman, M., & Irani, L. (2016). Operating an employer reputation system: Lessons from Turkopticon 2008–2015. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 37(3), 505–541.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silver, B. (2003). Forces of Labor: Workers Movements and Globalisation Since 1870. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Singer, N. (2014, August 16). In the sharing economy, workers find both freedom and uncertainty. New York Times. Retrieved February 9, 2021, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/technology/in-the-sharing-economy

  • Sinicki, A., Sinicki, & Ramachandran. (2019). Thriving in the gig economy. Apress.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, A., & Stanford, J. (2017). Regulating work in the gig economy: What are the options? The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 28(3), 420–437.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (2020). Can prosocial incentives within a goal-setting scheme motivate workers?

    Google Scholar 

  • Van den Heuvel, M., Demerouti, E., & Peeters, M. C. (2015). The job crafting intervention: Effects on job resources, self-efficacy, and affective well-being. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(3), 511–532.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waas, B., Liebman, W., Lyubarsky, A., & Kezuka, K. (2017). Crowd work—A comparative law perspective. Bund Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warner, A. (2021). 30+ Freelance Stats—Why the gig economy is growing in 2020. Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/freelance-stats/

  • Williams, A., Mark, G., Milland, K., Lank, E., & Law, E. (2019). The perpetual work-life of crowd workers: How tooling practices increase fragmentation in crowd work. Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, (pp. 1–28).

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, A. J., Lehdonvirta, V., & Graham, M. (2018). Workers of the Internet unite? Online Freelancer Organization among Remote Gig Economy Workers in Six Asian and African Countries, 33(2), 95–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Woodcock, J., & Graham, M. (2019). The gig economy. Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woodcock, J., & Graham, M. (2020). The gig economy; A critical introduction. Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu, Q., Zhang, H., Li, Z., & Liu, K. (2019). Labour control in the gig economy: Evidence from Uber in China. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(4), 574–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yin, M., Suri, S., & Gray, M. (2018). Running out of time: the impact and value of flexibility in on-demand crowd work. Proceedings of the 2018 CH conference on human factors in computing systems, (pp. 1–11).

    Google Scholar 

  • Zwick, A. (2018). Welcome to the gig economy: Neoliberal industrial relations and the case of Uber. GeoJournal, 83(4), 679–691.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Strathmore University Business School, Nairobi, Kenya

    Joseph Odhiambo Onyango

Authors
  1. Joseph Odhiambo Onyango
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Odhiambo Onyango .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Ashish Gupta

  2. Department of Economics, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Tavishi Tewary

  3. School of Environment & Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Onyango, J.O. (2022). Critical Success Factors for the Future of Work in Gig Economy: Determinants for Gig Entrepreneurs. In: Gupta, A., Tewary, T., Gopalakrishnan, B.N. (eds) Sustainability in the Gig Economy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8406-7_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation