סמינר בניהול טכנולוגיה ומערכות מידע

Speaker: Lior Zalmanson, Tel-Aviv University, Coller School of Management.

Title: " Speaking Up in Online Labor Platforms - A case study of Amazon Mechanical Turk" (joint with Gal Oestreicher-Singer, Britt Hadar and Yotam Liel)

Abstract: Speaking up in the face of injustice is critical for improving organizations and a key
factor in preventing undesirable outcomes ranging from social biases, discrimination, and
unethical behavior to catastrophic incidents. In this work, we study the behavior of speaking up
among online labor platform workers. Gig-based online labor platforms have long been the
center of controversy. Although they offer low entry barriers and flexibility, contributing to

workforce diversification, the absence of regulation has made platform workers susceptible to

exploitation. Our studies of 831 gig workers working on Amazon Mechanical Turk find that
approximately 75% of workers suffer from unfair treatment at least once a week, yet most
workers do not speak up in the face of unfairness. We further mapped the reasons preventing
workers from speaking up. Our findings offer insights into the drivers of gig workers’ motivation
to speak up, with implications for both the design of such platforms and for academics using
such platforms to commission work and recruit participants for experiments.