Publication | Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work

Authors: Kathleen Griesbach , Adam Reich, Luke Elliott-Negri, and Ruth Milkman

Researchers at INCITE have published a new study analyzing the processes by which food delivery platforms like Instacart, Postmates, and GrubHub control their workers. Drawing on a survey of 955 food delivery workers and 55 in-depth interviews, the researchers found variation in the extent to which different platforms use algorithmic management to assign and evaluate work. Instacart, the largest grocery delivery platform, was found to regulate the time and activities of workers more stringently than other platform delivery companies, exerting a particularly demanding type of control that the authors term “algorithmic despotism.”

This study was conducted as part of INCITE’s Grocery Delivery Workers Project, which seeks to explore a variety of pertinent questions about the grocery delivery industry.

Read the full paper here, published in Socius, here.