it Freelancers as Knowledge Workers: Shifts in Working Conditions and Work Autonomy in Crowd Work

Abstract

New forms of work via online platforms—here referred to as crowd work—have caused big shifts in the organization of work. This article addresses the question as to how the institutional and organizational conditions in crowd work have had an impact on it freelancers working at a platform in Germany. The article starts with a literature review on the settings of it freelancers in the 1990s—forming a spirit of optimism towards the it sector—which is followed by a review of current developments in crowd work with regard to worker’s autonomy and organizational control. We complement these findings with a qualitative interview case study from the year 2020 about the platform Upwork. Our aim is to analyze how previous expectations from the 1990s are related to societal and organizational processes of today. Based on our results we argue that for it freelancers closing processes, both on societal and organizational levels, prevail in the context of crowd work.