{"id":5202,"date":"2019-03-12T11:11:49","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T15:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/?page_id=5202"},"modified":"2019-06-03T13:40:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T17:40:50","slug":"job-gig-uber-lyft","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2019\/job-gig-uber-lyft\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it a job? Or a gig?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the age of<\/strong> Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork, the line between employee and contractor has grown increasingly fuzzy.\u00a0New research by Andrei Hagiu<\/a>, an associate professor of information systems at Questrom,\u00a0and Julian Wright<\/a> of National University of Singapore suggests a useful proxy is how much decision-making power firms cede to workers. For example, do ride-sharing companies hand what the researchers call \u201ctransferable investment decisions,\u201d such as car quality and maintenance, to drivers or make those calls at a corporate level?<\/p>\n

Because these decisions affect customer demand and revenue, Hagiu and Wright\u2019s research<\/a>, published in\u00a0Management Science<\/em>, suggests that revenues should fall to whoever makes the investment calls. A firm that chooses to control most of these transferable decisions should expect to keep a higher share of revenue and to employ its workers. An organization that enables workers to make more of these decisions should engage them as independent contractors and give them a bigger slice of the returns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen deciding how much control to allocate to their agents over revenue-enhancing activities, firms must match more control with higher revenue shares,\u201d says Hagiu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the age of Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork, the line between employee and contractor has grown increasingly fuzzy.\u00a0New research by Andrei Hagiu, an associate professor of information systems at Questrom,\u00a0and Julian Wright of National University of Singapore suggests a useful proxy is how much decision-making power firms cede to workers. For example, do ride-sharing companies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14430,"featured_media":0,"parent":5191,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"story.php","meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nIs it a job? Or a gig? - Questrom Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2019\/job-gig-uber-lyft\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it a job? Or a gig? - Questrom Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the age of Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork, the line between employee and contractor has grown increasingly fuzzy.\u00a0New research by Andrei Hagiu, an associate professor of information systems at Questrom,\u00a0and Julian Wright of National University of Singapore suggests a useful proxy is how much decision-making power firms cede to workers. 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