is a doctoral student at Paris Dauphine-PSL University and director of the Master’s in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at EDHEC. His research focuses on the future of work, algorithmic management, and the Anthropocene. He has been working with Philonomist since 2019.
Picture © CP
IN BRIEF
“Algorithmic management” describes the automatic planning, allocation, control, or evaluation of workers’ tasks by software.
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
A team of American researchers led by Min Kyung Lee first used this expression in 2015, in an article on the interactions between humans and computers. But the phenomenon is actually older, as it is rooted in the scientific organisation of work thought up by Taylor at the beginning of the 20th century as well as in the automated use of work-related data described by Shoshana Zuboff since 1988 in In the Age of The Smart Machine.
Everything accelerated in the early 2010s, with the start of the gig economy, or platform economy. These platforms are designed to connect a demand with a supply of flexible and temporary service, offered by self-employed workers. The aim: to process thousands of requests simultaneously in order to be profitable, whilst satisfying users with an immediate and appropriate response. But organising and supervising the work of freelancers dispersed in time and space 24 hours a day is far beyond the capacity of human managers!
So what better than algorithms to take care of it? In a second, the computer system collects user data, produces an offer, communicates instructions to each party, and stores the transaction history to improve its d
…Subscribe to Philonomist and gain free access to all our content and archives for 7 days. You'll also receive our weekly newsletter. No commitment. No bank details required.
You're already subscribed to Philonomist via your employer?
Connect to your account by filling in the following details (please provide your professional email address).
