Algorithmic management and worker agency: The platform perspective on algoactivism

Abstract

Do platform workers inadvertently strengthen the algorithmic management (AM) systems they seek to resist? Drawing on 37 interviews with digital labor platform managers, this paper provides an organizational perspective on workers’ “algoactivism” in food and grocery delivery. We reveal that platforms are not passive targets and their reactions to algoactivist acts unfold through a dynamic cycle of sensemaking across three stages: noticing, framing, and acting. We identify key determinants at each stage, explaining why platforms react differently to worker acts. Unlike traditional organizations with formal conflict management procedures, we suggest that platforms operate as adaptive socio-technical systems, continually recalibrating managerial mechanisms through experimentation. We find that workers exploit gaps that platforms subsequently close, rendering them unwitting contributors to their own control. Explaining workers’ algoactivism and its role in shaping AM practices, we situate sensemaking within the duality of AM, highlighting how its interpretive flexibility creates tensions between intended design and actual use. We refine this conceptualization, asserting that the recursivity of AM is not open-ended, as interpretive flexibility may shrink with platforms continually adapting to algoactivist acts. While mutual shaping persists, recursive dynamics may compress worker agency, exposing the limits of algoactivism and challenging assumptions about its emancipatory potential.