This Research Handbook explores how gig workers’ careers fit into the evolving employment landscape. It provides essential insights into how individuals can navigate the gig economy successfully and sustainably.
Bringing together a diverse, global collective of contributors, the editors showcase how careers can unfold in the gig economy. They investigate a wide variety of occupations from cleaners to performing artists and from courier work to short-term contracts in the IT and design sectors, demonstrating the complexity of gig employment. Authors assess the dynamics of flexibility, unpredictability, meaningfulness and sustainability to present a detailed picture of the advantages and challenges of gig work in a fast-paced and complicated modern world.
Scholars and students focusing on work or industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, the sociology of work, decent work, and economic growth will find this Research Handbook a useful reference tool. Consultants and policy makers focusing on regulatory frameworks will additionally benefit from its real-world insights.
Contents
1 Introduction: towards an inclusive perspective on careers in the gig
economy 1
Jos Akkermans, Anne Keegan and François Pichault
2 Exploring precariousness in the gig economy using a multiple-level
perspective 15
Annabelle Hofer and Daniel Spurk
3 Decent work and meaningful work: insights from gig work 36
Evgenia I. Lysova and Yiluyi Zeng
4 Career sustainability in the gig economy: a delicate balancing act 51
Sofie Jacobs, Jos Akkermans, Beatrice Van der Heijden and Ans De Vos
5 Developing professionally while working independently: career
development of professionals working in the gig economy 67
Erin Reid, Susan Ashford, Brianna Caza and Steve Granger
6 Identifying career trajectories in the gig economy: from professional career
path to anti-career 85
Dominique Kost and Christian Fieseler
7 Disruptive events in disruptive work: how career shocks impact gig
workers 96
Maria Tamontseva, Karen Pak and Jérôme Sulbout
8 The meaning and practice of benefits for gig workers 112
Kristine M. Kuhn
9 A configurational approach to career success in the gig economy 125
David Cross, Huainan Wang, Qingyang Xu and Mina Beigi
10 Working hard to make it work: career-based opportunities and risks in app
work 138
James Duggan, Anthony McDonnell, Ultan Sherman and Ronan Carbery
11 Careers and the gig economy: analyzing the broader effects of gig work on
career patterns, dynamics and outcomes 149
Jeroen Meijerink and Anne Keegan
12 Freelancing, Platform Work and Precarious Careers 165
Pulignano Valeria, Karol Muszyński and Maite Tapia
13 Union membership: a career self-management strategy to cope with the
career difficulties associated with working in the gig economy 178
Pauline de Becdelièvre
14 When matchmaking is not enough: the new role of labour market
intermediaries in supporting gig worker careers 187
José L. Gallegos, Bas A.S. Koene and François Pichault
15 Careers in the gig economy: the institutional context 202
Tui McKeown, Patricia Leighton and François Pichault
16 Careers and gig work in Sub-Saharan Africa 215
Desmond Tutu Ayentimi and John Burgess
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